What HIMSS 2026 Made Clear: Infrastructure Shouldn’t Be the Headline

From conversations at our booth and in one-on-one meetings, a consistent theme emerged; Healthcare organizations are rethinking the role of infrastructure and cloud. Not because it matters less, but because it needs to operate so seamlessly that it fades into the background.

Providers, payers and health innovators kept coming back to a shared priority: environments that simply work. Reliable. Secure. Built for consistency. Workloads need to be resilient and predictable, staying out of the way so clinicians can focus on care delivery rather than technology friction.

This idea shaped our speaking session with Dell Technologies. Together, we explored how healthcare organizations are reframing infrastructure and cloud. When designed with intention, they become foundational. They support outcomes without demanding attention.

That shift aligns with what we see in our latest third-party report conducted by Coleman Parkes Research. Healthcare organizations continue to adopt cloud to improve reliability, flexibility and data security. The differentiator is maturity. Organizations pulling ahead, what we call cloud leaders, are operationalizing cloud in ways that strengthen resilience, security and AI outcomes.

In fact, 52% of healthcare leaders cite reliability and availability as top drivers for cloud adoption. That reinforces what we heard at HIMSS. Infrastructure must be dependable first. Everything else builds from there.

As Rackspace Technology VP of Sales Tim Lankes shared during the week, “Becoming a cloud leader isn’t about adoption alone. It’s about building an environment that is secure, resilient and designed to run seamlessly in the background so healthcare teams can focus on delivering patient care.”

That distinction matters. Many organizations are still navigating legacy infrastructure, security constraints and skills gaps. Those that move beyond adoption to true cloud advantage are seeing measurable gains, from stronger cyber resilience to more advanced AI integration and greater confidence in protecting patient data.

HIMSS 2026 made one thing clear. Healthcare doesn’t need more complexity. It needs infrastructure designed to support outcomes without getting in the way.

Explore the research and take the next step

Read our latest healthcare cloud report to see how cloud leaders are strengthening critical workloads, improving resilience and enabling AI-driven outcomes.