Integrating Technology and Healthcare
Hospitals and health systems are facing constraints, pressure, and growing operational complexity. At the same time, tools and technology available to address these challenges are more capable than ever.
The West Health Accelerator at the American Hospital Association’s Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) was created to aid hospitals and health systems in adopting and enhancing technologies across care environments.
“We recognize that technology is moving really quickly, and at the same time, we recognize that hospitals and health systems have no shortage of innovation,” said Helena Bonfitto of AHA’s HRET. “The Accelerator is really about how we marry the two. How do we take the evolution of technology and the innovation that is happening and support the execution of that with hospitals and health systems across the nation.”
A Collaborative on Geriatric Care
One way the West Health Accelerator has engaged interested hospitals is through their collaborative for adopting digital tools for better aging care. It’s a 6-month learning collaborative designed to help hospitals operationalize and standardize their EHR workflows to support evidence-based care for older adults. By presenting proven approaches and giving other healthcare organizations practical ways to implement them, the collaborative elevates this area of healthcare as a priority among participants.
Now, UHN is preparing to expand its focus on providing care for the aging population.
“The motivation reflects what we’ve seen with the spreading and scaling of geriatric care programs, and that better hard-wired care for older adults typically results in better care for all populations,” said Mike Kurliand, Director of Digital Health at West Health.
Three Technology Pathways
Operationalizing effective technologies across care environments takes shape across three domains at the Accelerator. Challenges that routinely occupy hospital staff, such as patient engagement and capacity, were considered when examining healthcare organizations currently excelling using technology for those concerns.
1) Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Identifying the best ways to integrate AI in the hospital setting is crucial as it becomes more common, and additional uses in healthcare arise. “It’s something that hospitals and health systems are already using, but have to be ready to continue to evolve their use,” said Kurliand.
“So through that area within the Accelerator, we are not only looking at the ways that hospitals are leveraging AI in responsible ways that result in improvement in outcomes in the areas that we identified… but also, how we support hospitals and health systems in implementing and scaling and using AI responsibly.”
For older adult care, this can include ambient clinical documentation and predictive modeling. The Accelerator helps hospitals answer questions on how AI use can be responsible and valuable.
2) Electronic Health Record (EHR) Organization
The Accelerator’s work with Mass General Brigham demonstrates improvements in EHR workflows, offering a technology hub that leads by example. “An end user, a hospital or healthcare professional, can go in and find resources that help them better understand what Mass General Brigham is doing with their EHR to hardwire best practices for older adult care,” said Bonfitto. “[It shares] exactly what they did, and resources to help bring this to their leadership to make the case.”
3) Virtual Care
The ability to provide quality care virtually can expand access within a health system and aid older adults who have transportation difficulties and mobility limitations. The Accelerator highlights continuous monitoring and virtual nursing cases to serve as examples for systems in need of improvement in that area.
Modeling Solutions for Older Adult Care
In addition to providing technology-focused improvements for healthcare systems to implement, the Accelerator highlights organizations that have already achieved innovations in their clinical and operational care. For care of older adults specifically, the Mass General Brigham partnership represents the important improvements in care that result from technology, resources and expertise.
The aging-focused learning collaborative launched in June 2026 and has amassed more than 100 hospitals and health systems—representing approximately 130 participating organizations. Those enrolled receive structured support in implementing and adopting the workflows and complete the implementation work between sessions.
“When we were going out and seeking systems who might be interested in this work, we pitched it to them, and the question was, ‘What’s the catch?’ ‘Do we pay for this?’ ‘Is there limited access?” said Evie Brady, Program Implementation and Evaluation Manager at West Health. “The mission is that we are making hardwired care more accessible to other sites and systems. So there really was no catch.”
Driving Learning and Scaling Over Time
The three-year funded initiative began in April, with expansion to continue. At its core, the Accelerator is about supporting hospitals and health systems in implementing, adopting and scaling those technology solutions. In real-time, this engagement includes monthly virtual sessions for participants, as well as virtual office hours with subject matter experts. Health system leaders are able to bring their questions and receive implementation support that is scalable and sustainable.
“Our hope is that this larger accelerator serves kind of as a flywheel to support hospitals and health systems in taking the steps to implement and scale, and then sustain these solutions,” said Bonfitto. “Ultimately over time, hopefully, in the duration of three years and beyond, we’ll start to see improvements in those priorities and challenges that we are striving to address through the use of technology.”