Health-e Law Podcast Ep. 24
ViVE 2026: AI and the Future of Healthcare
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Listen to the podcast released April 7, 2026, here: https://www.sheppard.com/insights/podcasts/health-e-law-episode-24-vive-2026-ai-and-the-future-of-healthcare
Welcome to Health-e Law, Sheppard’s podcast exploring the fascinating health tech topics and trends of the day. In this episode, Sheppard partner and host Michael Orlando is joined by associate Michael Sutton to discuss their experience at ViVE 2026, one of the premier conferences for digital health innovators and leaders.
About Michael Sutton
An associate in the Corporate practice group at Sheppard’s Dallas office, Michael Sutton specializes in cutting-edge and disruptive areas of practice, blending healthcare, technology and legal compliance. In particular, he focuses on HIPAA and privacy regulations, considering their relationship with technological advancements in both healthcare and consumer sectors. He is skilled in negotiations regarding data usage and ownership rights, guiding clients on marketing or integrating technological innovations while navigating emerging regulations in digital healthcare, including artificial intelligence, web tracking, information blocking, offshoring and de-identification.
Michael has managed investigations, worked to resolve active breach incidents and advised clients on healthcare privacy and technology matters. He supports clients navigating HIPAA and other privacy laws to ensure their objectives are achieved within all legal and regulatory requirements. Michael also provides comprehensive regulatory services to a range of healthcare participants, including investors, managed care organizations, health plans and medical groups. In particular, he has tackled operational and contractual negotiations, licensing, compliance, and fraud considerations and conducted regulatory due diligence for transactions, including mergers and acquisitions.
Michael also supports transactions involving tech companies and healthcare providers, guiding negotiations related to software and service relationships while identifying vulnerabilities in targets and devising creative solutions to address them.
About Michael Orlando
Michael Orlando is a partner in Sheppard’s San Diego (Del Mar) office. He is team leader of the firm’s Technology Transactions team, a member of the Life Sciences, Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence teams, and co-leader of the firm’s Digital Health & Innovation team. Michael has more than 20 years of experience advising health technology companies, insurers, healthcare systems and providers, academic medical centers and research institutions, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical and wellness companies on intellectual property and business transactions in key strategic areas, including EHR systems procurement and integration, telehealth, mobile health applications, clinical decision support technologies, artificial intelligence, data use, wearable devices, remote patient monitoring, and other medical devices, research and collaborations, patent licenses, software licenses, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, revenue cycle management, and other outsourcing transactions.
Michael founded a software-as-a-service company before entering private practice and completed an in-house secondment at a publicly traded biotechnology company, an experience that informs his practical and business-focused approach to client engagements.
Transcript:
Mike Orlando:
From hospital boardrooms to startup war rooms, this is Health-e Law, powered by Sheppard’s Digital Health & Innovation team. We bring you quick and candid conversations with industry leaders, bringing sharp analysis and critical insights into what’s next
Welcome to the Health-e Law podcast. I’m Mike Orlando, a partner at Sheppard. And joining me today is my colleague, Michael Sutton, another attorney in our Digital Health team. We’ve just returned from ViVE 2026 in Los Angeles, which is one of the biggest healthcare leadership conferences in the country, and we have a lot to unpack today. So, Michael, before we dive in, can you set the scene for our listeners who may not be familiar with the conference.
Michael Sutton:
Absolutely. So, ViVE is an annual conference that’s really focused on healthcare and technology. This is really where the digital health execs and vendors in the healthcare industry come together to collaborate and engage. It’s a pretty cool place to be, but the real hallmark is just an absolutely expansive showroom with hundreds of booths, displays. They had all kinds of speakers that were discussing, you know, the latest trends in health tech, the latest opportunities, even the challenges. But it just really felt like you were getting a glimpse into the most cutting-edge innovation in health tech. So, pretty cool place to be
Mike Orlando:
Let’s set the big picture. Walking the showroom floor at ViVE, what was your overall impression about just how pervasive AI was in healthcare?
Michael Sutton:
Yeah, I mean, AI is everywhere. It really is. It doesn’t seem that long ago when we were first getting our first interactions with large language models where you could enter your prompts and we were all amazed by how intelligent they seem to be, but it’s just really expanded into healthcare in ways that I didn’t even think possible. Everything from ambient recording where they can pre-populate medical records to assessing radiology reports to determine whether masses or spots or marks, something just as simple as an image or malignant or trying to establish new standards of care and providing guidance for providers. I mean, it’s really finding its way, meaning AI was finding its way, into all sorts of areas that you wouldn’t have actually really anticipated. And I think it’s really just the beginning.
Mike Orlando:
Yeah. I think the other thing that maybe is the limit that I heard at the conference—since AI was so pervasive, it was really the theme of the conference—was interoperability and the issues around still having problems between legacy systems being able to communicate with each other. That there’s too many legacy systems still out there that are still being used that have different file formats, there’s a lot of different data from different systems and how do we integrate those together. And, although there’s great things like the FHIR standards and people are adopting those, but we still have a ways to go before AI can really reach its true potential because it’s only as good as the data you can input into it. So until all that data can be ingested across the board, then there’s still kind of limits to where the AI can go.
Michael Sutton:
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And that was one of the topics that I encountered a few times, the FHIR Conference, was really just how important data is becoming. Especially in the healthcare space, there’s just tremendous amount of information. A lot of this information is sensitive. But it’s so valuable in the sense that these AI tools are trained on that data, and that’s how the AI tools are able to get their insights onto trends in healthcare or to find gaps in care or to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in particular care settings. And what we’re really seeing both in practice but also at ViVE is just that it’s becoming a hot topic. And increasingly so that when we have contract negotiations or parties are working to negotiate some sort of a collaboration or a joint venture, data’s really becoming a sticking point. People want to get their hands on it. People want to be able to use it and leverage the insights, particularly through training AI models using that data. And so something that folks used to give away for free or not pay that much attention to is really becoming more and more important.
Mike Orlando:
Yeah. I mean, the data is altering the licensing and data protection provisions, but the ownership and use of that data has become valuable. I think the difference between a few years ago and now is that with AI being operationalized now, it’s not just, hey, let’s think about these great ideas, they’re actually being put in place now and people are seeing the value. And so now they’re a little bit more hesitant to give away their data for free. And it comes even more complex when we’re in this healthcare regulatory environment and we have HIPAA and state privacy laws and all the regulatory guidance we have to worry about as well. One of the other big themes I saw was agentic AI. And I mean, if everyone’s not familiar with agentic AI, it’s the AI agents, like little, you think about these little digital AI robots that are tasked with particular functionality and things that they need to go and do. And that was a real lively discussion, I think, at a few of the different panels that I saw. And also people were talking about it with their products about the unlimited use of agents not requiring sleep, not confined to typical work hours, and they can keep doing things 24/7, all kinds of tasks, anything you can dream up. And I was just curious if you saw the same kind of buzz on that topic at the conference.
Michael Sutton:
I did. There’s a lot of promise about the efficiencies of AI, particularly as you flagged. It’s not really constrained by the typical limitations that we as humans have. We get tired, we need sleep, we need to eat, we get fatigued at times, but AI can just keep marching without having to juggle those different limitations. But it will be really interesting to see how these tools are applied in practice. We’ve seen some interesting technologies in terms of chatbots where they can interact from a customer service perspective, but it will be really unique to see how these things are going to be leveraged and applied in practice.
Mike Orlando:
Yeah. I was particularly interested in where people are seeing the uses of these kind of technologies with the use of AI. And people were coming up with some great ideas on some of these panels where they were talking about follow-up calls with patients and asking them how they feel. I mean, I’ve been to the doctor multiple times and it’s like when a doctor actually calls back after my appointment and says, “How are you doing,” it’s pretty rare. I mean, I think if I’ve gone in for surgery, someone from the staff usually calls, is like, “Okay, how are you doing? Are you feeling okay? Did the procedure go well for you?” But for your typical visits and things, I don’t see that happening. And I think that’s a real first use case that would be really valuable.
And there was a panel I saw where they were discussing about how different types of AI agents could interact with each other to streamline that kind of communication with the patients. For example, one following up on a patient visit and the other one saying, “Hey, by the way, this AI discovered that this patient hasn’t taken their medication in a while. We should also follow up with them, say, ‘Hey, why haven’t you refilled your prescription?’” And get that communication out at the same time by an AI agent who calls with a wonderful human-like voice and has a discussion with the patient now about... And can ask it questions like a human being instead of just asking it to press “1” if you’re feeling good and press “2” if you’re not.
Michael Sutton:
I think that’s a really neat way that this technology could be applied. We keep hearing more and more about the importance of preventative care. You want to try to keep folks healthy before they get worse conditions or before they end up being hospitalized. And so when you can have these AI tools that are enabling more active monitoring of care and more active interventions of care, I think that there’s a lot of promise in that space, in particular. One thing that I thought was really interesting or one tool that I thought was very interesting was one that involved an agentic AI tool, but it was focused on diet choices. And so you would have this tool that would be familiar with your health profile, with your conditions. If you had high blood pressure or diabetes or some other condition, you would have access to this tool that would be familiar with your conditions, and then it could help you make positive choices. So you’re like, “Hey, AI tool, I think I want to eat this particular food.” And it may tell you, “Well, that’s high in sodium. Maybe you should make a different choice. And here are some examples of some of those choices.” So I don’t want to paint too rosy of a picture. There are also challenges that I noticed at the conference. Were there any that you saw as well?
Mike Orlando:
One of them was just the reliability factors still and safety, which is still a challenge to overcome. It’s understandable that people are hesitant to use it for more than administrative tasks at the moment. But the good thing was I heard a lot of panelists saying they’re ready to really step up the game and they really are trying to find out ways they can use it in a clinical setting that improves patient outcomes besides just the administrative task. But I mean, it is a structural issue within the healthcare organization. We’ve both dealt with AI governance assessments and advice for our clients. And obviously that’s a huge part of how you can help to avoid these issues by ensuring that all of the players at the health system are involved from lawyers to IT to clinical team, everybody together trying to figure out what the risks are and the challenges and try to figure out how to implement them correctly. I think unless they have the input from all of the players and stakeholders within the healthcare organization, they’re not going to know how to assess and what to look for and what controls to put in place to ensure that quality.
Michael Sutton:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. And one of the concepts that I heard repeated over and over again at ViVE was “human in the loop.” And that really is in a nutshell that there is still a role for humans in use and application of AI tools. We’ve all heard the promises of AI and what it may be capable of in the future and the magic that it may be able to work and the efficiencies that it can arm us with, but there still is a role for humans. And that’s particularly true in the healthcare setting. When you’re dealing with very sensitive situations, very unique patients, and very, very real consequences in the event that the AI tool gets it wrong or if there’s just a genuine mistake, there still is a role for human oversight. And so a lot of the tools that we saw, even where they were providing transcription services per a provider, where it was reviewing radiology reports to make a summary of findings or recommendations, or it was trying to remind providers of, “Hey, did you consider this condition or did you consider this interaction between pharmaceuticals,” there was still a role for the provider in exercising some oversight there. So there still is some room for humans in the loop here, and perhaps the robots won’t take all of our jobs just yet.
Mike Orlando:
Yeah, for sure. And from regulatory standpoint, I mean, that’s becoming more important as well because it’s being mandated from the FDA, from CMS, and different states also are starting to roll out things that are making it so that you have to ensure that there’s a human in the loop, and not only that, that it’s explainable and there’s transparency in how the decisions were evaluated by the AI and how the decision was made to rely on the AI’s output. And so we’re always going to be, I think, necessary to have for the foreseeable future, which is good to know. What are the other types of issues that you saw addressed at ViVE that we haven’t talked about yet?
Michael Sutton:
Yeah. So one thing that was a prominent topic was, is AI going to live up to the hype? And as I mentioned a few times, there’s a lot of promise around what AI can do. And there are lots of folks that are implementing AI or they’re starting to leverage it, either day-to-day activities or business operations. But really tracking the impact of AI is tricky because it’s so different from other technologies that we’ve leveraged in the past. So how can you really track the efficiencies that AI is introducing into your system? Or how do you really measure cost savings that AI tools may be providing you? What metrics do you use? So I think that’s going to be something that the industry really grapples with as it tries to figure out, is this really as effective as we’re being told that it is and that is it really making the impact that we think it should be?
Mike Orlando:
Yeah. I mean, that was a topic I heard at some of the panels and speakers as well was about the ROI of AI and whether it can be measured in terms of revenue or non-revenue, and how do we measure it and how do we justify the cost? Because one of the real themes I saw was that AI is a core part of our operations now. It’s going to continue to become a core part of our operations. It’s not like some optional thing now or it’s a little add-on. It’s like going to be a core part of every system that we’re using, all the medical equipment as well. So, where do we measure that? And it’s not always in dollar value. I mean, it’s really hard to look and say, “Okay, we spent this much on all these AI tools and here’s our increased revenue as a result.”
It’s more about measuring some of the things that aren’t on the balance sheet, the operational efficiencies, the call handling time. And that’s one I see even inside and outside industry actually of healthcare is like call handling time on the customer service end. But the patient experience, I guess that’s another one I heard. I don’t know if you heard, I saw about that. But kind of getting more responses and metrics from surveying clients about their satisfaction and their engagement and how things are going with the use of AI. So anyway, there’s a lot of administrative, there’s a lot of clinical, there’s pharmaceuticals, there’s patient experience and satisfaction that I think are all a lot of things we could start measuring and organizations need to start thinking about. Anyway, we’ve covered a lot of ground today and I just wanted to see if you had any other messages that you thought we needed to cover in our last final thoughts here as a takeaway from ViVE 2026.
Michael Sutton:
Yeah. And the reality here is that AI tools can really make a tremendous impact on the day-to-day quality of life of patients by just improving their care. And that’s really where the rubber meets the road, is in terms of how will this actually improve care. And for me, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that as we all adapt to a world where AI tools are going to be popping up in our day-to-day lives, as we grow more comfortable using those AI tools and as we gain more confidence and more trust in the reliability of these AI tools, that’s really what’s going to make or break and make some of these tools succeed is really establishing that relationship of trust.
Mike Orlando:
That’s a wrap on this episode of Health-e Law, powered by Sheppard’s Digital Health & Innovation team, where health innovation meets legal expertise. Until next time, stay healthy and stay informed.
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