AI ROI, agentic innovation in spotlight as HIMSS approaches

Healthcare has transitioned the abstract AI hype of years past into a reality in which agentic AI is used daily in clinical and administrative settings. Now that the industry has embraced AI to enable administrative efficiency, enhance clinical decision support and bolster patient satisfaction, leaders want to know whether the return on investment (ROI) was enough to warrant this overhaul. 

At a roundtable hosted by Google Cloud in advance of the 2026 HIMSS conference, a series of product launches and new data on AI ROI suggest that the industry's enthusiasm for AI, and agentic AI in particular, is not slowing down. 

"In 2026, we're entering what I call an agentic moment for healthcare," Aashima Gupta, global director of healthcare strategy and solutions at Google Cloud, said during the roundtable.  

"This is a shift from AI chatbots to AI as an active participant in healthcare workflows. We're talking about agents that are not just giving a request or response. These agents can reason. They can orchestrate. They can take action across the system while continuously improving." 

Below are some announcements released ahead of HIMSS, which takes place in Las Vegas from March 9 to 12. All these companies use Google Cloud's integrated AI stack, but that is not their only common thread. An early theme emerging from these announcements is the healthcare industry's growing embrace of agentic AI, with some companies now demonstrating tangible ROI from its adoption. 

CVS Health 

CVS Health is one of the companies proving that the agentic AI buzz in healthcare is only getting louder. The company has announced the creation of Health100, a health tech services subsidiary that will use agentic AI to engage consumers across the healthcare ecosystem, regardless of whether they are CVS customers. 

Health100 is central to a new strategic partnership between CVS Health and Google Cloud. The tool was built on Google Cloud's infrastructure and leverages Gemini for its AI capabilities. The tool aims to connect benefits, health systems and retail pharmacies into a single consumer platform in an effort to break down silos and promote interoperability. 

"So, the problem is that each [organization] today operates as a silo for historical reasons, and sometimes even as a walled garden. If you want a complete picture of your health, you have to manually gather it, then you have to reconcile it," Tony Ambrozie, chief digital, technology and information officer at CVS Health, said during the roundtable. 

"On top of that, you have to figure out -- when you have a need -- figure out who to see, where to go, what's covered, and what [it] will cost. The uncertainty alone creates friction. Fragmentation creates fatigue, and fatigue leads to disengagement. That's what Health100 is designed to help over time, to change." 

CVS Health touted the tool's ability to unify lab results, pharmacy and wearable data and more into a single comprehensive health record. It will also recommend providers and facilities to patients based on cost estimates and benefit information, and lead patients to next steps for chronic conditions through a digital health gateway.  

CVS Health also said in its press release that it intends for Health100 to serve as a "conduit to pharmacist-led care management to leverage an integral, underutilized and trusted clinical touch point." 

Health100 will launch in 2026, with a first look at the tool coming at a Google event in March. 

Waystar 

Waystar announced an expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud to further enhance its agentic AI capabilities and fast-track its goals for an autonomous revenue cycle. Specifically, Waystar plans to enhance its platform "with greater strategic integration of Google Cloud's Gemini models and data infrastructure," it said in a press release. 

Waystar and Google Cloud have been partners since 2024. Since then, Waystar has launched AltitudeAI, a software suite that aims to accelerate reimbursement and reduce administrative waste. Waystar also recently launched a proprietary AI agent embedded directly within revenue cycle workflows. 

"Waystar connects over one million providers to every major payer, powered by more than 100,000 live integrations across electronic medical record systems. That scale means nearly 60% of the US patient population flows through our platform each year," Chris Schremser, chief technology officer at Waystar, said during the roundtable.  

"With this connectivity and data, we are fundamentally re-imagining how the entire payment process works as we build the autonomous revenue cycle from that first eligibility check all the way through the final payment." 

Waystar focused its presentation not only on the promise of increased efficiency and savings, but also on proven ROI. 

Within its first year, Waystar said its AltitudeAI suite has prevented more than $15 billion in denied claims and reduced 90% of the time spent on denial appeals and recovery. 

"And these aren't just numbers. They represent nurses spending more time with patients instead of paperwork, hospitals investing [in] better equipment instead of administrative overhead, and patients like us getting clearer, faster answers about our healthcare costs," Schremser said. "We actually believe that we are uniquely positioned with AI to do this autonomous revenue cycle." 

Humana 

Humana is another company embracing agentic AI to ease administrative burden. In February, Humana announced the launch of Agent Assist, an agent that summarizes call conversations and surfaces relevant benefit information for Humana representatives at its call centers, which handle up to 80 million calls annually. 

Agent Assist was built using Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience and integrates into Humana's existing call center systems.  

"We are always looking for new ways to enhance the member experience by making those interactions more personalized, accurate, and faster," Japan Mehta, chief information officer, Humana, said in the February press release. "Agent Assist puts responsible innovation directly into the hands of our advocates, helping them to focus on what matters most -- helping our members." 

Humana began implementing the Agent Assist tool in October 2025, and a full rollout is planned for Humana member service centers in 2026. 

Quest Diagnostics 

On March 2, Quest Diagnostics announced Quest AI Companion, a chat feature that allows patients to understand their lab results in real time. Quest said that the tool is the result of its new strategic collaboration with Google Cloud. 

The agent analyzes up to five years of a patient's lab data from Quest result reports to identify patterns that could indicate health risks. Patients can ask the tool to define medical terminology, draft questions for their healthcare provider and translate lab values. 

"Patients often tell us they want help simplifying and understanding their test results and what the results communicate about their health," Nicole Antonson, vice president of digital solutions and interoperability at Quest Diagnostics, said in the press release.  

"For more than 50 years, Quest has been a trusted provider of laboratory results. Now, Quest AI Companion builds on this history and empowers patients to analyze their results and spot trends they can discuss with their healthcare provider, for smarter and simpler testing that illuminates a path to better health." 

The tool is available now to all adult users of MyQuest, Quest's patient-facing mobile app and portal. 

Highmark Health 

Highmark Health is also embracing agentic AI. Richard Clarke, chief data and analytics officer at Highmark Health, noted that the broad adoption of AI capabilities across Highmark's workforce has already created a significant impact for the organization. 

"Really, the next chapter is bringing a complex multi-agent support to our employees," Clarke said at the roundtable.  

In addition to discussing the ROI of Sidekick -- Highmark's generative AI assistant that the organization said delivered $27.9 million in value for Highmark in 2025 -- Clarke demoed a new agentic tool called Apex.  

Apex is a medical chart processing platform that Highmark has implemented internally, powered by a Gemini family of models. The agentic platform reads medical charts, interprets reimbursement policy, validates clinical criteria and coding and synthesizes the findings into digestible insights. An auditor can then confirm the outcome and make a final determination. 

"And we're really excited about, not only that use case, but the extensibility to many places where complex information, unstructured information is used for decision making -- that could be medical charts, images, labs, et cetera, in places like our quality or risk adjustment. So, we see a ton of extensibility for that platform," Clarke said. 

"We really, frankly, are just kind of getting started when it comes to these multi-agent systems to really increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our work." 

As health tech companies gear up for HIMSS, attendees can likely expect additional announcements surrounding agentic AI and real-world use cases that prove AI ROI. 

Jill Hughes has covered health tech news since 2021.