HIMSS conference attendees walk the exhibition floor
Source: HIMSS
Debates over artificial intelligence and its role in health care took center stage at the HIMSS Global Health Conference in Chicago this week, where more than 35,000 physicians, other health-care workers, executives and engineers convened to discuss the latest advancements in health and technology.
Companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon prominently advertised new health applications for AI on booths across a sprawling exhibition floor, and panels of experts answered questions about how the technology can be used to address industrywide challenges such as staffing shortages and physician burnout.
Many health-care organizations and companies have been using AI in various capacities for years, but a subset known as generative AI exploded into public consciousness late last year when Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched its viral new chatbot called ChatGPT. Generative AI refers to programs that can use fairly complicated prompts from end users to generate text or images.
Just as generative AI has captured the attention of the general public, it has also captivated the medical community.
AI was the focus of the HIMSS conference’s opening keynote, and HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf prefaced the discussion by revealing that he had asked ChatGPT how to solve global health-care challenges. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, or HIMSS, holds the conference each year.
Wolf posed the question to ChatGPT in jest, but David Rhew, global chief medical officer at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview that generative AI could really be “transformative” for solving big problems in the health-care industry.
“The opportunity to apply these large language models and the artificial intelligence in clinical workflows is tremendous, and we have to do it responsibly,” he said.
For Rhew, that means starting with “high-impact, low-risk” uses for the technology, such as streamlining administrative tasks.
Developing diagnostic or directly patient-facing generative AI applications are higher risk since they pose significant regulatory questions for companies, academics and federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration to work through. Rhew said to think of AI as if the health-care industry has just been introduced to a car, while none of the stop signs, traffic lights or roads have been created yet.
“We still have to figure out how to do this together,” he said.
HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf speaks at the HIMSS conference
Source: HIMSS
But in the meantime, administrative or “back office” tasks require less regulatory oversight, and there is a real need for efficient solutions, since clerical work is often burdensome for clinicians.
A study funded by the American Medical Association in 2016 found that for every hour a physician spent with a patient, they spent an additional two hours on administrative work. The study said that physicians also tend to spend an additional one to two hours doing clerical work outside of working hours.
Similarly, in 2017, the Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges published a survey where respondents said around 24% of their working hours are spent on administrative tasks. More than two-thirds of the physicians surveyed reported that administrative responsibilities “negatively affect their ability to deliver high-quality care.”
HIMSS attendees told CNBC they believe generative AI can help with these tasks.
Letting AI do the clerical work
On Monday, Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with Epic Systems, a health-care software company that helps hospitals and other health systems store, share and access electronic health records. More than 160 million people use Epic’s MyChart software, which provides patients with direct access to their health information and care team.
Epic’s first application of the AI technology automatically generates draft responses to the messages that physicians receive from patients through MyChart. The physicians don’t have to use the suggested draft at all, but it saves them time if they choose to edit or send it.
Seth Hain, senior vice president of R&D at Epic, told CNBC in an interview that AI could serve as an impactful hypothesis generation tool for physicians in the future. He said they will be able to ask patient-specific questions such as: What do you think I should look at next in regard to this problem?
Peter Lee, corporate vice president of research and incubations at Microsoft, told CNBC that an early look at Epic’s AI developments brought tears to his eyes.
“It just blew me away,” he said.
Microsoft’s speech recognition subsidiary Nuance Communications also announced a clinical notes application called DAX Express ahead of HIMSS in March. DAX Express aims to help reduce clinicians’ administrative burdens by automatically drafting a clinical note within seconds after a patient visit.
In a live demo at HIMSS, Nuance previewed future projects and showcased DAX Express’ capabilities, which were met with gasps and joyful exclamations from some of the physicians, nurses and health-care workers in the room.
More than 35,000 people attended the HIMSS conference in 2023
Source: HIMSS
Other companies are also working to use generative AI to reduce administrative burdens.
Amazon Web Services on Monday announced an expanded partnership with Philips, a Netherlands-based health technology company. AWS has already been supporting many of Philips’ existing cloud-based and AI initiatives, such as those that help radiologists analyze scans and medical images more quickly — even from their homes.
But Monday’s announcement means Philips will also use AWS’ generative AI technology to simplify its clinical workflows and advance its imaging capabilities even further.
“What’s most exciting is the fact that we are approaching a precipice where we have this tipping point, where we make the right thing the easy thing,” Shez Partovi, Philips’ chief innovation and strategy officer, told CNBC in an interview. “And right now, in most technology, the right thing is a lot of clicks away.”
Partovi said all the small tasks that physicians have to complete are like “death by 1,000 cuts,” so using AI to tease out administrative challenges can make a real impact on the quality of physicians’ lives.
On Tuesday, 3M Health Information Systems also announced that it is also working with Amazon Web Services’ machine learning and generative AI to help reduce physicians’ administrative workload. 3M HIS supports a conversational AI platform used by more than 300,000 physicians, and the company said in a release that the AWS technology will make it easier for doctors to automate and complete accurate clinical notes in the electronic health record.
Similarly, Google Cloud announced a Claims Acceleration Suite last week that uses AI to streamline health insurance claims processing and prior authorization.
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the current prior authorization process takes an average of 10 days. Google’s AI will help alleviate some of that administrative burden for providers by converting the unstructured data that appears in images, PDFs or other health records into a more easily digestible, structured format.
“They actually require a human being to go in there and to take that data and rekey it into the system for review,” Amy Waldron, director of global health plans strategy and solutions at Google Cloud, said during a media briefing with reporters at HIMSS. “Which, to me, makes absolutely no sense given that someone has to take time to put all that rich data there, and we have AI that can unlock that value.”
Generative AI has “tremendous” potential to improve administrative efficiency in health care, said Microsoft’s Rhew. But as health-care and technology companies continue to make more sophisticated advancements, industry leaders, regulators and academics in the community will have to ensure that generative AI is equitable and does not cause harm to communities.
The technology is vulnerable to bias and discrimination if it is trained on health-care data that does not properly represent a patient population, which could ultimately lead to inadequate decision-making or treatment plans.
As a result, Rhew said, there is a collective responsibility to figure out how to deploy AI with care.
“It is a transformative technology,” he said, “but we have to figure out how to do it responsibly.”
A Samsung flag flies outside the company office in Seoul, South Korea on February 05, 2024.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics has entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to a major company, a regulatory filing by the South Korean company showed Monday.
The memory chipmaker, which did not name the counterparty, mentioned in its filing that the effective start date of the contract was July 26, 2024 — receipt of orders — and its end date was Dec. 31, 2033.
Samsung declined to comment on details regarding the counterparty.
The company said that details of the deal, including the name of the counterparty, will not be disclosed until the end of 2033, citing a request from the second party “to protect trade secrets,” according to a Google translation of the filing in Korean.
“Since the main contents of the contract have been not been disclosed due to the need to maintain business confidentiality, investors are advised to invest carefully considering the possibility of changes or termination of the contract,” the company said. Its shares were up nearly 3% in early trading.
Local South Korean media outlets have said that American chip firm Qualcomm could potentially place an order for Samsung’s 2 nanometer chips.
While Qualcomm is a possibility, given its potential 2 nanometer project with Samsung, Tesla seems the more probable customer, Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC
Samsung’s foundry service manufactures chips based on designs provided by other companies. It is the second largest provider of foundry services globally, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The company said in April that it was aiming for its foundry business to start mass production of its next-generation 2 nanometer and secure major orders for the advanced product. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency.
Samsung, which is set to deliver earnings on Thursday, expects its second-quarter profit to more than halve. An analyst previously told CNBC that the disappointing forecast was due to weak orders for its foundry business and as the company has struggled to capture AI demand for its memory business.
The company has fallen behind competitors SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory used in AI chipsets.
SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has become the main supplier of these chips to American AI behemoth Nvidia. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
At Tesla, vehicle sales are slumping, profits are thinning and revenue from regulatory credit sales are poised to dry up due to Republican-led policy changes.
In the past, CEO Elon Musk’s futuristic promises have convinced investors to look past top and bottom line numbers.
Not now.
Following another fairly dismal earnings report this week, Musk told analysts on the call that Tesla’s electric vehicles will soon become driverless, making money for owners while they sleep. He also said Tesla’s robotaxi service, which the company recently started testing in a limited capacity in Austin, Texas, will expand to other states, with a goal of being able to reach half the U.S. population by year-end, “assuming we have regulatory approvals.”
It didn’t matter.
Tesla shares plummeted 8% on Thursday as investors focused on the immediate challenges facing the company, including the rapid rise of lower-cost EV competitors, particularly in China, and a political backlash against Musk that harmed Tesla’s brand in the U.S. and Europe.
Automotive sales declined 16% year-over-year in the second quarter for the EV maker, with weak sales numbers continuing in Europe and California. Musk said there could be a “few rough quarters” ahead because of the EV credits expiring and President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The stock bounced back some on Friday, gaining 3.5%, but still ended the week down and has now fallen 22% this year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq rose 1% for the week and is up more than 9% in 2025, closing at a record on Friday.
“Look, we love robotaxis. And robots,” wrote analysts at Canaccord Genuity, who recommend buying Tesla’s stock, in a note after the earnings report. “Over time, Tesla is well positioned to benefit from these future-forward opportunities.”
The analysts, however, said that they’re focused on the profit and loss statement, writing: “But we love growth too, in the here and now. We need the P&L dynamics to turn.”
Analysts at Jefferies described the earnings update as “a bit dull.” And Goldman Sachs said Tesla’s robotaxi effort is “still small” with limited technical data points.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who has previously called himself “pathologically optimistic,” has been able to sway shareholders and send the stock soaring at times with promises of self-driving cars, humanoid robots and more affordable EVs.
But after a decade of missed self-imposed deadlines on autonomous driving, Wall Street is watching Tesla fall behind Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
In Tesla’s shareholder deck, the company said the second quarter marked the start of its “transition from leading the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries to also becoming a leader in AI, robotics and related services.” The company didn’t offer any new guidance for growth or profits for the year ahead.
Regulatory hurdles
Business Insider reported on Friday that Tesla told staff its robotaxi service could launch in the San Francisco Bay Area as soon as this weekend.
But Tesla hasn’t applied for permits that would be required to run a driverless ridehailing service in California, CNBC confirmed. The company would first need authorizations from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
The CPUC told CNBC on Friday, that under existing permits, Tesla can only operate a human-driven chartered vehicle service, not carry passengers in robotaxis.
Waymo driverless vehicles wait at a traffic light in Santa Monica, California, on May 30, 2025.
Daniel Cole | Reuters
On the earnings call, Musk and other Tesla execs claimed the company was working on regulatory approvals to launch in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and other markets, in addition to San Francisco, but offered no details about what would be required.
Within Austin, the company said its robotaxi service had driven 7,000 miles, and that Tesla has been restricting its robotaxis’ to roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour. The Austin service involves a small fleet of about 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles equipped with the company’s latest self-driving systems.
The Tesla robotaxis rely on remote supervision by employees in a customer service center, and a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat, ready to intervene if needed.
Compare that to what Alphabet said on its second-quarter earnings call the same day as Tesla’s results.
“The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, and the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia,” Alphabet said. Meanwhile, Waymo has become significant enough that Alphabet added a category to its Other Bets revenue description in its latest quarterly filing.
“Revenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of autonomous transportation services, healthcare-related services and internet services,” the filing said. The Other Bets segment remains relatively small, with revenue coming in at $373 million in the quarter.
Regardless of investor skepticism, Musk is more bullish than ever.
On Friday, the world’s richest person posted on his social network X that he thinks Tesla will someday be worth $20 trillion. On the earnings call earlier in the week, he said that when it comes to AI for cars and robots, “Tesla is actually much better than Google by far” and “much better than anyone at real world AI.”
CORRECTION: The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, according to Alphabet. A previous version misstated the number of miles.
A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.
Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In an earnings call this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased an expansion of his company’s fledgling robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area and other U.S. markets.
But California regulators are making clear that Tesla is not authorized to carry passengers on public roads in autonomous vehicles and would require a human driver in control at all times.
“Tesla is not allowed to test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in an AV with or without a driver,” the California Public Utilities Commission told CNBC in an email on Friday. “Tesla is allowed to transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-AV, which, of course, would have a driver.”
In other words, Tesla’s service in the state will have to be more taxi than robot.
Tesla has what’s known in California as a charter-party carrier permit, which allows it to run a private car service with human drivers, similar to limousine companies or sightseeing services.
The commission said it received a notification from Tesla on Thursday that the company plans to “extend operations” under its permit to “offer service to friends and family of employees and to select members of the public,” across much of the Bay Area.
But under Tesla’s permit, that service can only be with non-AVs, the CPUC said.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC that Tesla has had a “drivered testing permit” since 2014, allowing the company to operate AVs with a safety driver present, but not to collect fees. The safety drivers must be Tesla employees, contractors or designees of the manufacturer under that permit, the DMV said.
In Austin, Texas, Tesla is currently testing out a robotaxi service, using its Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest automated driving software and hardware. The limited service operates during daylight hours and in good weather, on roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour.
Robotaxis in Austin are remotely supervised by Tesla employees, and include a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.”
On Friday, Business Insider, citing an internal Tesla memo, reported that Tesla told staff it planned to expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on that report.
In a separate matter in California, the DMV has accused Tesla of misleading consumers about the capabilities of its driver assistance systems, previously marketed under the names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD).
Tesla now calls its premium driver assistance features, “FSD Supervised.” In owners manuals, Tesla says Autopilot and FSD Supervised are “hands on” systems, requiring a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times.
But in user-generated videos shared by Tesla on X, the company shows customers using FSD hands-free while engaged in other tasks. The DMV is arguing that Tesla’s license to sell vehicles in California should be suspended, with arguments ongoing through Friday at the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings in Oakland.
Under California state law, autonomous taxi services are regulated at the state level. Some city and county officials said on Friday that they were out of the loop regarding a potential Tesla service in the state.
Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview that she had not heard from Tesla about its plans. She urged the company to be more transparent.
“I certainly expect they will tell us and I think it’s a good business practice to do that,” she said.
Moulton-Peters said she was undecided on robotaxis generally and wasn’t sure how Marin County, located north of San Francisco, would react to Tesla’s service.
“The news of change coming always has mixed results in the community,” she said.
Brian Colbert, another member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview that he’s open to the idea of Tesla’s service being a good thing but that he was disappointed in the lack of communication.
“They should have done a better job about informing the community about the launch,” he said.
Alphabet’s Waymo, which is far ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi market, obtained a number of permits from the DMV and CPUC before starting its driverless ride-hailing service in the state.
Waymo was granted a CPUC driverless deployment permit in 2023, allowing it to charge for rides in the state. The company has been seeking amendments to both its DMV and CPUC driverless deployment permits as it expands its service territory in the state.