LAS VEGAS—Samsung Electronics and digital health company b.well Connected Health are teaming up to eliminate traditional patient clipboards and replace them with smartphones.
Samsung Galaxy smartphone users will now have digital access to their complete health history through the Samsung Health app and will be able to share their medical records with participating providers via QR code. The companies say this will eliminate the need for patients to fill out medical questionnaires at nearly every medical visit.
Despite advances in technology, patients typically have to fill out the same forms at the doctor’s office, repeating relevant medical information from memory, and often have to log into multiple portals.
This new feature builds on Samsung’s two-year partnership with b.well Connected Health to develop a more connected consumer health experience based on mobile technology.
b.well integrates patients’ long-term health records, and Samsung ingests data from wearables and sensors that track key health metrics such as sleep, exercise, and nutrition, allowing consumers to see all their health information in one place.
“Your health information travels with you,” Kristen Valdez, CEO and founder of b.well, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview at HIMSS 2026. Through mobile technology, individuals can carry electronic health record data with them.
B.well operates a health data network designed to support consumer-mediated access to raw clinical data across more than 2.2 million health care providers and 320 health plans, laboratories and other sources. The company connects consumers to their health data through a nationwide network of health systems and data sources. This secure exchange is made possible by CLEAR’s secure identity platform, CLEAR1, which validates users and issues reusable digital IAL2 credentials that b.well can trust throughout the interaction.
The digital health company is also working with OpenAI to connect its AI chatbot, ChatGPT Health, to users’ medical records and wellness apps to provide more personalized answers to medical questions.
Samsung’s open ecosystem uses national standards to directly connect consumer devices to clinical workflows. Executives say health data can be securely moved into electronic medical records without manual entry, reducing the administrative burden on healthcare providers.
“We feel this is an important and necessary step towards reducing fragmentation in the medical field,” Ricky Choi, Samsung’s head of digital health, told Fierce Healthcare.
In addition to collecting and sharing their health records, Samsung Galaxy users can also interact with their clinical records through the Samsung Health app using b.well’s conversational AI and health assistant called bailey. AI assistants translate complex medical terminology into plain language, interpret diagnoses and medications, and help patients prepare for doctor visits.
“Conversational AI is running within Samsung Health, where consumers can interact and ask questions about their health records. They can also see visualized trend lines like, ‘What was my average A1C over the past 6 to 12 months?’ and get educated and informed about it,” Valdez said.
Samsung and b.well’s efforts to free patients from paperwork and tedious portal logins align with the federal government’s “Eliminating the Clipboard” initiative. This is a national initiative led by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to replace paper forms with digital check-ins.
Eight months ago, federal health policy leaders issued an ambitious call to action for the industry to modernize Medicare and advance the next generation of digital health to make it easier for patients to access their health data.
Since July, more than 600 healthcare organizations have joined the HealthTech Ecosystem Pledge, which is completely voluntary, Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS, said in January. The goal is to implement concrete results from these pledges by March 31, he said on the sidelines of the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference two months ago.
Valdez said it is past time for the healthcare industry to modernize and overhaul patient acceptance and health data sharing.
“Standards have been around for a very long time, and all we need to do is adopt them. Move from document exchange and CCDA to FHIR, move away from portal logins and passwords. ‘Portal phlebitis’ is a diagnosis that can be eradicated in our lifetime. Thanks to this (CMS) pledge, we are very close,” she said.
She added, “Frankly, I’ve never seen more urgency happening in the global health IT space to help commit to something that physicians, patients, and payers have wanted for a long time.”
Gleason, who started her career in nursing and then transitioned into healthcare technology, believes the time is right to move forward with these initiatives as consumers demand easier access to their health data along with advances in technology.
“We’ve never seen momentum like this,” Gleason told Fierce Healthcare, adding that CMS plans to launch an awareness campaign to educate providers and patients about the health tech ecosystem’s efforts.
Valdez noted that the health tech ecosystem’s pledge is supported by EHR companies, payers, device companies, and underlying LLM platforms. “As roads are built and paved, we look forward to building an ecosystem that takes the best of all technology and deploys it wherever patients are, making it easier for them wherever they are,” she said.
