LAS VEGAS—As agent-based artificial intelligence becomes mainstream, a message released this week shows that federal medical leaders are fully supportive of moving quickly to get AI agents into patients’ hands.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, M.D., speaking at the 2026 Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference & Exhibition on Thursday, said the use of AI agents has the potential to expand access to care in rural and other underserved areas, help patients and Medicare beneficiaries better manage their health information, and assist in medical decision-making.
“With all the warp-speed advances that Amy[Gleason, CMS advisor]is making, why couldn’t we start deploying agent AI by the end of this year? Why couldn’t we start deploying agent AI to every Medicare beneficiary? It might not be ready by the end of this year, but it will definitely be there by the end of this administration,” Oz said in his keynote at HIMSS26. “Telecoms are doing this right now. Banks are doing it too. If agent AI can provide advice and buy mortgages, you should be able to use the same technology to choose which (Medicare Advantage) plan to go with or which doctor to see.”
Oz found the audience at HIMSS26 to be largely positive, as healthcare startups, electronic medical records vendors, and other technology companies actively promoted their AI tools and capabilities during the four-day conference.
“The fundamental problem right now is that health care continues to experience inflation while other sectors of the U.S. economy have advanced through the use of technology and are deflationary,” Oz said.
CMS administrators argued that the use of AI could help close access gaps in rural areas. The Rural Health Transformation Program would invest $50 billion in rural health care over five years ($10 billion a year), but those funds don’t address the problem that many doctors don’t want to live outside of urban areas, Oz noted.
“You can’t buy mental health professionals. They don’t live there. They don’t want to work there. They don’t want to be there. That’s not going to happen,” he said, noting that the use of AI tools could expand the reach of doctors into these communities.
The use of telerobotic technology could expand the reach of obstetricians and gynecologists to underserved areas, he said.
The use of digital health and remote patient monitoring could also reduce costs by moving more care into patients’ homes and centralizing care further upstream, Oz argued. “With remote patient monitoring and better tools to verify it, not in the ER or ICU, but in my home, kitchen, bedroom, and living room, I can win the battle to protect my health.”
CMS is also advancing the use of technology through the Health Technology Ecosystem Initiative to modernize Medicare and advance next-generation digital health for patients, making it easier for patients to access their health data.
CMS’ 2026 technology goals center around two priorities: advancing an interoperability framework and increasing the availability of apps that help Medicare patients manage diabetes and obesity, access conversational AI tools, and replace paper questionnaires with digital check-ins.
Since July, more than 700 healthcare organizations have joined the HealthTech Ecosystem Pledge, which is completely voluntary, said Gleason, acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service and strategic advisor to CMS. The goal is to have tangible results from these pledges in place by March 31st. Just this week, Samsung and Microsoft announced new AI capabilities in line with their CMS initiatives.
“I think where we can really shine is when we can actually provide these tools to patients 24 hours a day, for those 1,000 moments a day when they have to make decisions about their health and their doctor is not there and they need that guidance,” Gleason said Thursday.
“I think we need to embrace this and help people understand how much this can help them. This is not about marketing. It’s about supporting their health and daily decision-making in a personalized way,” Gleason said.
Health tech companies are ready to deploy agent AI, but are Medicare beneficiaries ready to use these technologies?
A KFF survey last fall found that the majority of older adults use digital health tools and are interested in making more use of them to navigate the health care system and manage their health care needs. About 8 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older have used a health app or website in the last year, and a large majority say it has made it easier to navigate the health care system. Half of them (55%) use multiple apps. There was no difference in the proportion of people aged 65 and older (77%) and those aged 30 to 49 (76%) who had used an app or website to help manage their care in the past year.
However, older adults still have major privacy concerns when it comes to AI.
The use of AI looms large in plans to expand digital health technology, but only 31% of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older trust AI “a lot” (8%) or “a lot” (23%) to access their medical records and provide personalized information and advice, a KFF survey found. Public trust in AI tools to schedule appointments, send messages, and access medical records is generally low. And both the general public and older adults are concerned about the privacy of their health information, which is controlled by governments, technology companies, and insurance companies. Although hospitals are doing better, a KFF survey found that half of all people are still concerned about the privacy of medical information managed by hospitals.
Oz acknowledged that based on insights from Medicare beneficiary data, older adults currently do not trust AI and that trust issues will be a challenge for advancing new technology.
“Our greatest enemy and your greatest challenge is nihilism,” he told a medical audience.
“No one has told them the use case of why it’s going to change their lives for the better. It looks like a tool we use to sell to them and help hospitals address their problems, but it doesn’t necessarily address their problems. As a group, we need to embrace the reality that we need to reach people who want to use these tools in both health and medicine and force them to come up with ideas. This means that using this right will save lives, transform our ability to access care, and give us control.” It’s a $1.8 trillion business and we’d be ashamed if we used it incorrectly, but we can’t escape the process and there’s no reason not to imagine that we can provide support where there are no answers. ”
“We have a tremendous opportunity to use technology to be a deflationary and stabilizing force, to improve care and improve quality of care, so we can fulfill our mission as Americans as a whole, and it would be shameful for us not to take advantage of that,” Oz said.
