Virtual care arrived at HIMSS 2026 with more momentum and more variety than at any prior conference, reflecting a market that has moved well beyond pandemic-era telehealth expansion into something more structurally ambitious. The announcements in Las Vegas last week ranged from a major medtech company launching a connected hospital operating system to an autonomous robot navigating hospital corridors without a staff escort, to a wave of AI-enabled solutions targeting rural communities where workforce shortages are most severe.
HOTSPOT TAKE
Virtual care at HIMSS26 was split into two distinct tracks: enterprise platforms building connected hospital infrastructure, and a wave of rural-focused solutions using AI and mobile technology to extend care where workforce gaps are most acute.
Stryker Enters the Connected Hospital
Virtual care vendors filled the HIMSS26 exhibition floor in Las Vegas with announcements spanning connected hospital platforms, autonomous robotics, and rural access solutions. Photo courtesy of HIMSS26.
The highest-profile virtual care announcement at HIMSS26 came not from a telehealth company but from Stryker, the global medical technology leader, which unveiled its SmartHospital Platform through a newly formed internal business unit called Smart Care. The platform is designed to serve as a connective layer across the hospital — linking devices, data, and care teams into a unified ecosystem through four core capabilities: connected infrastructure, the Sync Badge hands-free voice communication device, the Engage middleware engine for alarm filtering and prioritization, and integrated virtual nursing and monitoring workflows.
Stryker’s entry into connected hospital software carries strategic weight that a startup announcement would not. The company’s 2024 acquisition of AI-assisted virtual care company Care.ai and its 2022 acquisition of clinical communications platform Vocera are now unified under SmartHospital, making it the first public signal that Stryker is integrating those acquisitions into a coherent platform rather than running them as separate product lines. The company currently integrates with more than 280 healthcare technologies and has positioned SmartHospital as an open ecosystem, not a replacement for existing EHR and workflow systems.
“The SmartHospital Platform is designed to evolve alongside health systems so teams can work more efficiently and stay focused on patient-centered care.” — Scott Sagehorn, VP/GM of Smart Care, Stryker
“We are dedicated to partnering with our customers on their digital journeys to help elevate care delivery,” said Scott Sagehorn, VP/GM of Smart Care at Stryker. “The SmartHospital Platform is designed to evolve alongside health systems so teams can work more efficiently and stay focused on patient-centered care.”
Jessica Mathieson, president of Medical at Stryker, framed the clinical purpose directly: “We remain focused on solving problems, helping nurses and staff spend less time navigating complexity and more time with patients.”
The platform is sold modularly, allowing hospitals to adopt individual components based on their readiness, with a dedicated sales segment focused on enterprise health systems and a parallel focus on smaller and rural facilities.
The SmartHospital launch coincided with a significant disruption at Stryker itself. On March 11, the second day of HIMSS26, the company announced it had experienced a cyberattack causing a global disruption to its Microsoft environment. Stryker stated it found no indication of ransomware or malware and that its internet-connected medical products remained safe for patient use, though order processing, manufacturing, and shipping operations were disrupted. CISA launched an investigation. A pro-Iran hacking group called Handala claimed responsibility, characterizing the attack as retaliation for U.S.-Israeli military strikes in Iran — making it, according to security researchers, among the first notable Iranian cyber retaliatory actions against U.S. critical infrastructure in the current conflict. As of this writing, Stryker reports the incident is contained and system restoration is underway.
VSee’s Autonomous Robot Navigates to the Bedside
HealthTech HotSpot covered VSee’s autonomous telehealth robot in detail when it debuted at HIMSS26 — but the announcement deserves mention in any virtual care roundup because it represents the most dramatic physical manifestation of where hospital telehealth is heading. The VSee AI Robot navigates hospital corridors using LiDAR and infrared night vision without requiring a staff escort, positions itself at patient bedsides, and supports virtual rounding, telestroke response, and specialist coverage across emergency departments and ICUs. According to VSee, it is the first fully autonomous telehealth robot purpose-built for hospital deployment.
The robot operates within VSee’s AI Workflow Engine, a no-code/low-code platform that connects clinical AI modules without requiring lengthy IT integration. For health systems navigating persistent staffing shortages, an autonomous robot that eliminates escort requirements addresses a friction point that limited adoption of earlier telepresence carts for more than a decade.
Andor Health and PsynergyHealth Target Rural Access
One of the most substantive virtual care announcements at HIMSS26 addressed a population that conference exhibit floors rarely serve directly: rural patients. Andor Health and PsynergyHealth announced an integrated model combining Andor’s ThinkAndor ambient AI platform with PsynergyHealth’s virtual clinical workforce to support rural hospitals through what the companies describe as a “rural workforce multiplier.”
Under the model, ThinkAndor handles ambient AI documentation, intelligent care coordination, and interoperability, while PsynergyHealth provides the operational layer: telehealth operations, care navigation, remote monitoring programs, and virtual specialist access. The combined approach is designed to allow rural hospitals to expand specialty services without adding physical headcount — a significant constraint in communities where clinician recruitment is structurally difficult.
“ThinkAndor and Psynergy together help rural providers increase access, improve efficiency, and deliver better outcomes for the patients who need it most.” — Pritesh Patel, COO, Andor Health
“This partnership combines AI-powered clinical automation of ThinkAndor with the clinical expertise of Psynergy to transform care delivery in rural communities,” said Pritesh Patel, Chief Operating Officer of Andor Health. “ThinkAndor and Psynergy together help rural providers increase access, improve efficiency, and deliver better outcomes for the patients who need it most.”
The announcement is aligned with the CMS Rural Health Transformation initiative, giving it policy tailwinds as the federal government seeks scalable technology-enabled models for underserved geographies.
GlobalMed Deploys Telehealth Beyond the Hospital Wall
GlobalMed, a Scottsdale-based digital health infrastructure company with more than two decades of experience serving the Veterans Health Administration and U.S. Department of Defense, introduced its Mobile Medical Response Unit at HIMSS26 in partnership with field deployment specialist MobileOp4. The unit is a ruggedized, field-deployable clinical operations platform integrating telehealth, diagnostic tools, and secure clinical connectivity for use in rural, frontier, and underserved communities.
According to the company, the Mobile Medical Response Unit is designed to support emergency response, remote specialty consultation, behavioral health services, and public safety operations in locations where traditional healthcare infrastructure is absent or inadequate. GlobalMed reports that its platforms have supported more than 60 million consults across more than 60 countries, providing a track record of scale that distinguishes it from early-stage rural telehealth entrants.
The announcement reflects a theme that recurred across HIMSS26’s virtual care announcements: geography is increasingly treated as a solvable problem rather than a fixed constraint.
Cherish and Aileen Close the Loop on Senior Care
A smaller but clinically pointed announcement came from Cherish and Aileen, which announced a partnership combining radar-based ambient monitoring with an AI voice companion designed for older adults living at home or in care settings. The system works as a closed loop: if Cherish’s radar sensors detect that a senior has missed a meal, woken at an unusual hour, or exhibited behavioral changes, Aileen’s AI companion proactively initiates a voice call to check in.
The model targets a population — aging adults with complex needs and limited clinical oversight — that has proven difficult for traditional telehealth to serve. The radar-plus-voice approach avoids the compliance and privacy friction of camera-based monitoring while maintaining continuous passive awareness of resident activity. According to the companies, the combined solution is designed to be affordable at the community and home care scale, not just for large health systems.
Virtual Nursing on Stage
Beyond specific product announcements, virtual nursing emerged as a prominent clinical theme in HIMSS26 sessions. Piedmont Healthcare presented its system-wide virtual nursing implementation at a featured session, with leaders describing how the Georgia health system achieved 24/7 virtual RN coverage across 17 hospitals and 2,700 beds in under 18 months. The session offered one of the most detailed operational accounts of a large-scale virtual nursing rollout available in any public forum this year, covering implementation methodology, infrastructure preparation, governance, and performance metrics.
Caregility’s virtual nursing implementations were also highlighted in pre-conference programming, signaling continued enterprise momentum for virtual nursing as a staffing and care quality strategy rather than a technology experiment.
A Market Defined by Access
The through-line across HIMSS26’s virtual care announcements is access — extending clinical capacity and specialist reach to patients and settings that have historically been underserved. Stryker’s SmartHospital addresses access within the hospital walls, reducing the friction that prevents nurses from spending time with patients. VSee’s robot extends specialist access to bedsides without requiring escort staff. Andor and PsynergyHealth, GlobalMed and MobileOp4, and the Cherish-Aileen partnership all address access beyond the hospital — in rural communities, underserved geographies, and home care settings where traditional care delivery models have not reached.
That convergence, from the hospital floor to the rural frontier, suggests that virtual care’s next phase is less about the technology of remote encounters and more about the infrastructure — physical, digital, and organizational — that determines who can receive care and when.
Photo credit: HIMSS26
— This original article was created with AI support.
