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This Month in Healthcare IT: Remarkable News in May
Making real progress in digital health transformation requires staying aware of recent regulatory shifts, trends, reports, and new technologies — it’s not optional, it’s fundamental. By knowing that digitalizing healthcare delivery effectively is not possible without deep sectoral knowledge, we equip relevant stakeholders from healthcare authorities to healthcare professionals with up-to-date resources.
This blog series helps you explore the latest advancements in healthcare IT by gathering the pivotal updates and emerging trends from the global ecosystem together. In this month’s edition, we deliver critical developments redefining digital health transformation from the past weeks.
Here are the top 10 news that reflect the recent developments in the healthcare IT sector from May 2025:
1. The World Health Organization (WHO) published ‘World Report on Social Determinants of Health Equity’ which focuses on digital technologies’ impact on health outcomes.
The WHO released a global report, ‘World Report on Social Determinants of Health Equity,’ emphasizing that digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) hold the potential to improve population and individual health.
According to this report, digital health transformation can help overcome physical barriers and workforce limitations. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s telemedicine initiative is presented as an example for the statement. Although digital solutions can improve access to health and social services, the report expresses that digitalization is not equally available either between or within countries. Hence, it is important to prioritize closing the digital divide to ensure that digital tools benefit all populations.
Source: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240107588
2. The United Kingdom (UK) government announced Cancer 360 which is a new technology accelerating cancer diagnosis.
Cancer 360 is a new National Health Service (NHS) digital system which centralizes all cancer patient data, helping doctors prioritize urgent cases and speed up diagnosis.
This new technology, currently being rolled out across NHS trusts, helps doctors access complete patient information easily, enabling faster and more coordinated treatment. It reduces administrative tasks and waiting times by presenting all the information clinicians need about their patients in one place, ultimately improving patient care. In other words, Cancer 360 eliminates the need for health professionals to gather vital information about cancer patients from different systems.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/governments-tech-reform-to-transform-cancer-diagnosis
3. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed the first AI-assisted scientific review pilot.
The FDA completed the new generative AI (GenAI) scientific review pilot, demonstrating the potential to cut review tasks from days to minutes. According to the agency’s timeline, GenAI will be deployed across all centers by 30 June 2025.
Through the GenAI tools, FDA scientists and subject-matter experts spend less time on tedious, repetitive tasks which often slow down the review process. These tools ultimately help contribute to faster drug and therapy approvals, and their success became concrete via the pilot. According to the agency, continuous improvements and feedback integration will be implemented to address evolving needs and enhance public health outcomes.
4. The WHO selected the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) as a collaborating centre on digital health.
The UOC, which is located in Barcelona, Spain, is designated as a WHO collaborating centre on digital health for 2025-2029.
This university will support WHO/Europe in assessing and improving telemedicine and digital health services and developing guides, methodologies, and strategies for the integration of digital tools into national health systems. Furthermore, it will analyze the implementation of digital solutions by considering WHO/Europe’s priorities on universal health coverage, climate change, and ageing.
5. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will build a data platform in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to research autism and other chronic diseases.
The NIH partnered with the CMS to uncover the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases. The partnership involves the creation of a real-world data platform combining electronic health records, data from wearable health technologies, and claims data.
Through a tech-enabled mechanism offering secure and timely data exchange, this pilot program will focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to research diagnosis trends, treatment outcomes, care access disparities, and economic impacts. It will be extended to other chronic diseases in the future, aiming to improve public health and patient outcomes via effective research.
Source: https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/nih-cms-partner-to-research-root-causes-of-autism.html
6. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) organized a webinar on the European Health Data Space.
The HIMSS hosted a global webinar, titled ‘The European Health Data Space: What’s Changing and What’s Next,’ on May 20th. This webinar focused on the impact of the EHDS on healthcare ecosystems worldwide.
The webinar session, which included the HIMSS’ Senior Director of Government Relations, Senior Advisor, and Policy Advisor as speakers, delivered a comprehensive overview of the EHDS framework. During the session, participants concentrated on the EHDS legislation, implementation, and its effects on global digital health transformation.
7. The WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean launched the All-Hazard Information Management (AIM) Toolkit to accelerate health emergency response.
The AIM Toolkit utilizes GenAI to reduce the time needed to produce critical response documents from weeks to minutes. This system maintains high technical quality and contextual relevance.
Through the AI-powered system, WHO teams can access and organize technical guidance and tailor essential documents like risk assessments and response plans to specific countries and hazards automatically. The toolkit reduces the burden of manual documentation, allowing experts to focus on high-level analysis and strategic decision-making.
8. The HIMSS supports the MATCH IT Act of 2025 which addresses patient misidentification in the United States (U.S.) healthcare system.
The HIMSS announced its support for the bipartisan Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2025.
The MATCH IT Act of 2025 aims to solve patient misidentification by standardizing patients’ demographic information and improving interoperability without increasing burdens on healthcare providers and health systems. According to HIMSS Senior Vice President and Head of Government Relations, Tom Leary, the bill holds the potential to increase patient safety, protect patients’ data privacy and security, and enhance care coordination.
9. The CMS, in partnership with the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP/ONC), seeks public input on strengthening digital health infrastructure.
The CMS and ASTP/ONC are seeking public input to improve digital health technologies which empower Medicare beneficiaries.
The request for information (RFI) focuses on digital health management and care navigation applications, interoperability and seamless data exchange, secure access to health data, and reducing administrative burden. This initiative, which demands input from patients, caregivers, providers, payers, technology developers, and other stakeholders, aims to create a patient-centric digital healthcare system.
10. South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare encourages an AI-driven project for autism screening.
Yonsei University and Seoul National University, South Korea’s top universities, received $6.6 million government funding to develop AI-powered digital and medical devices for screening autism. This project, which is backed by the National Center for Mental Health and Ministry of Health and Welfare, aims to promote the early detection of ASD in the country.
This project, which is expected to be released by 2028, will use data from 1,200 infants and toddlers for autism detection. This initiative, involving South Korea’s major hospitals, will overcome the limitations of current diagnosis methods and contribute to better treatment outcomes.
Source: https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/asia/korea-launches-7m-big-data-project-boost-autism-screening
These recent initiatives embody that digital tools hold substantial promise for transforming the healthcare industry both nationally and globally. By being part of this digital transformation, we empower national health systems to deliver better health services with our technologies.
As the UK government aims to accelerate cancer diagnosis through Cancer 360, our Chronic Disease Management comes to the forefront. This technology, as a Population Health Management product, provides healthcare professionals with personalized care plans and recommendations on chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases. The system facilitates continuous monitoring of patients with chronic diseases and ensures seamless data flow by integrating with electronic health records (EHRs).
In addition to the effective management of chronic diseases, another critical trend in May is the advancement of efficient scientific and medical research. This is well illustrated by the FDA’s GenAI scientific review pilot. In alignment with this trend, we have developed ShareMind, our advanced AI-driven platform designed to accelerate and support scientific research by enabling secure, privacy-preserving data analysis. ShareMind allows researchers to gain meaningful insights from healthcare data without direct access to sensitive information, thereby promoting rigorous and ethical research practices while ensuring stringent data protection.
Another hot topic is health emergency response and readiness. For instance, the WHO Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean released the AIM Toolkit for the efficient production of critical response documents in a short span of time. Like the WHO’s toolkit, we focus on health emergencies and threats through Predis which is our AI-based early warning system. Predis monitors data related to healthcare services and medication distribution to identify anomalies and forecast potential risks. These insights empower healthcare authorities and stakeholders to optimize resource allocation and respond swiftly in times of health crises.
June also covers the negative impact of patient misidentification; The HIMSS highlights the consequences of patient misidentification by supporting the MATCH IT Act of 2025. With the aim of minimizing patient misidentification, we deliver our Enterprise Master Patient Index (EMPI). This technology unifies identity and reference data from multiple health information systems, centralized public information systems, and other external sources into one consistent, reliable reference point. Through EMPI, healthcare providers have an accurate and complete view of patient information, leading to error-free patient data management and seamless interoperability between different healthcare systems.
With our data-driven, solution-oriented products, we increase operational efficiency and strengthen national health infrastructures. Our products and solutions involve Interoperability, Patient Engagement, Prescription & Medicine Management, Drug Traceability, AI & Analytics, Population Health Management, Personalized Healthcare and Hospital Information System.
Let’s shape the future together by adopting digital health solutions, as always!
