At HIMSS 2026, it was nearly impossible to walk ten feet without encountering another AI demo and lately, another mention of "agentic." But amid the noise, some of the most grounded perspectives came from those who have watched healthcare technology evolve across decades. In episode 8 of Doceree Dialogue – Chapter HIMSS, Neil Simon, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at CompuGroup [GU1.1]Medical (CGM), joined us to share what more than 30 years in healthcare IT has taught him about making technology and now AI actually work for the physicians and patients it's meant to serve.
CGM brings an unusually global lens to that challenge. A health IT company with deep roots in both Europe and the United States, it builds practice management systems, EMRs, and revenue cycle tools for ambulatory practices many of them the small and mid-sized private practices that form the backbone of everyday care.
Simon's career began with a front-row view of how medicine actually works. His father was a physician, and watching how the practice ran — combined with his own ability to build software led him to create a practice management system for his dad's office in the late 1980s.
"My dad was a physician, and I saw how his office ran. I could build software, so I built a practice management system for him in the late '80s — and that's how I got in," he said.
More than three decades later, he has spent his career building practice management systems and EMRs for ambulatory physicians, alongside revenue cycle tools. That long arc has given him a clear view of just how far the industry has come.
"I've seen it when we were all on paper records, trying to get medical records into doctors' hands. Now we're all trying to make that data more useful," he said.
One of CGM's defining characteristics, Simon notes, is its international footprint. The company is a major presence across Europe Germany, France, Italy, and the broader EU with additional operations spanning South Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia. That global vantage point is rare among the companies exhibiting at HIMSS, most of which are focused squarely on the US market.
The value of that perspective, he argues, comes from a simple truth: the mechanics of billing differ from country to country, but the fundamentals of care do not.
"Billing is different around the world, but treating patients as human beings is the same no matter where you are," he said.
Priorities like value-based care and population health, he points out, apply just as much in Europe as in the US. Europe's regulatory environment is often more stringent GDPR and tighter rules around AI and data use among them and Simon sees that as a useful preview rather than a constraint. Much of it, he notes, tends to reach the US eventually, as seen in California and other states, so CGM builds its products with those requirements in mind from the start.
Ask Simon about the friction clinicians still face, and he returns to a familiar frustration: for too long, physicians have felt less like caregivers and more like data-entry clerks.
"It's been physicians and providers who felt like data-entry clerks staring at their screens, entering data, and not really getting the benefit of the systems," he said.
Part of the difficulty is structural. The US alone has 50 states and dozens of specialties, each with its own requirements.
"Building a system for one of those is easy. Building one that spans all of them is very difficult," he said.
On top of that complexity, the market keeps shifting toward value-based care and new payment models that practices must continually adapt to. CGM's goal, Simon says, is to be more than an IT vendor: a partner that helps providers navigate that changing landscape while managing the full lifecycle of the practice, from scheduling and patient visits to claims and payment for offices ranging from a single physician to 50.
With AI and now "agentic" everything saturating the HIMSS floor, Simon's view of the technology is measured. Too much of what's on offer, he suggests, remains early-stage or narrow.
"A lot of AI today is still proof of concept, or point solutions that don't work through the whole workflow," he said.
The problem with bolt-on tools is practical: they force physicians to log into yet another app which, as Simon puts it bluntly, they hate. CGM's approach is to weave AI directly into the systems clinicians already use, so it becomes a natural part of their day rather than another destination. That kind of integration takes longer than many expect, but for Simon, that patience is the point.
"They always say healthcare is behind the times. In some ways we are but in some ways, we really want it to work. It's not just a toy," he said.
The company is also turning AI inward, using it to build better products and deliver faster, more responsive customer support.
If one application of AI has won physicians over quickly, Simon says, it's ambient documentation the "scribe" technology now spreading rapidly across practices. Its appeal, he explains, is rooted in something that was lost decades ago.
Back when he started, a physician would dictate notes into a tape recorder for someone else to transcribe a workflow that, for all its limitations, kept the doctor's attention on the patient. As screens took over, that eye contact faded. Ambient AI, Simon says, is bringing it back.
"The most common comment from our providers is, 'Wow, I forgot what it was like to look at a patient and talk to them,'" he said.
That immediate, human payoff is exactly why ambient AI has been adopted so readily where other tools demand far more change management to take hold.
Asked what healthcare leaders should prioritize over the next five years, Simon's answer was refreshingly direct. First: keep the patient at the center of every decision.
"No matter what we're doing, we should always be thinking about the patient," he said.
Second: respect the provider's reality, and resist the temptation to chase novelty for its own sake.
"Don't just come up with some whiz-bang solution. It really has to integrate into the full system and the workflows," he said.
That means designing around the entire patient journey from the moment someone decides they need an appointment, through treatment and recovery, all the way to reimbursement. In an industry dazzled by what AI might do next, Simon's closing thought was a grounding one: the technology that matters most is the kind that quietly serves the people at the center of care and gives physicians back the time, and the eye contact, to be present for them.