HISTalk Interviews MEDITECH Executive Vice President and COO Helen Waters

[RMcCarthy]

MEDITECH Executive Vice President and COO Helen Waters recently met with HISTalk for an in-depth conversation about the EHR market. MEDITECH, now in its 55th year, helped shape the roots of the EHR industry and continues to reinvent itself via the Expanse platform — a cloud-native, AI-enhanced EHR system designed to meet the demands of modern healthcare organizations.
Helen shares her thoughts on the EHR market and competition, as well as how MEDITECH is leading healthcare innovation with the cloud, AI, interoperability, and more:

• AI and the Google Partnership - MEDITECH’s partnership with Google began with Google Cloud and has since expanded to offer solutions that extend beyond easing IT burdens into solutions that are impactful to the everyday workflow of clinicians. This includes the launch of Expanse Navigator, a tool that uses AI to extract and summarize structured and unstructured patient data in real time, to enhance clinical efficiency by giving physicians an intelligent, condition-specific longitudinal view of patient history.
  

“We wanted doctors to feel confident in the few minutes they have with a patient. Expanse Navigator helps make that possible,” Helen said.
Through Google's Vertex AI platform and Gemini models, MEDITECH has rolled out generative AI tools like automated hospital course-of-stay narratives, nurse shift summaries, and ambient scribe capabilities. These tools are already proving effective in reducing administrative burden, a critical pain point for clinicians.

• Interoperability - MEDITECH’s Traverse Exchange Network launched in the U.S. in late 2024. Unlike traditional approaches that require hospitals to adopt a single EHR vendor ecosystem, Traverse allows seamless data exchange between disparate systems using FHIR-based standards.
  

“The myth that you must be on a single system vendor to deliver quality care is outdated,” Helen noted. “Traverse lets hospitals choose what works best for them while still ensuring providers have complete patient information at the point of care.”

• Cloud Hosting - MEDITECH as a Service (MaaS) has seen strong market adoption, with over 120 organizations now operating fully on the platform. Unlike vendors that simply "lift and shift" on-prem systems to hosted environments, MEDITECH has fully embraced cloud-native development. This approach offers agility, performance, and scalability.
  

Looking ahead, MEDITECH remains focused on introspection, strategic innovation, and customer success. With growing traction across health systems, large and small, the company is poised to challenge legacy vendors and reframe what an EHR can do.
“This isn’t just about digital records anymore,” Helen said. “It’s about how foundational systems — including AI, voice, analytics, and patient-centered care — enable the future. We’re building for where the industry is going, not where it’s been.”