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Cutting-edge care, everywhere — Seema Verma on Oracle’s ambitious vision for the future
Redundancy isn’t just a problem in health IT, it’s the status quo. Overlapping systems and bloated tech stacks make it difficult for healthcare leaders to identify which solutions actually drive results. Instead, health systems are flooded with digital clutter that crowds computer screens and weighs down balance sheets.
It is in this context that Oracle Health has doubled down on its unique strengths — cloud scale, embedded AI and a robust data ecosystem — to focus on solving the most pressing issues facing patients and health systems.
During a keynote session dubbed “Healthcare AI in Action” at Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in September, Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager with Oracle Health and Life Sciences, articulated a clear vision for how the company aims to help shape healthcare’s future. With specific value propositions, the former administrator of CMS detailed how AI will support Oracle’s ambitious new strategy. Ms. Verma emphasized that the true measure of success for Oracle Health in the future will be how the company’s technology benefits patients.
“Oracle is using AI to drive transformation across the entire ecosystem, and the results will be nothing short of revolutionary,” Ms. Verma said. “No other company is taking this end-to-end application of AI, but at the end of the day, we do this for one reason, the patient.”
Cutting-edge care isn’t for everyone — yet
During an interview with Becker’s Hospital Review onsite at the summit, Ms. Verma reemphasized Oracle’s patient-first mission.
“At the end of the day, we’re here to drive better care for patients,” Ms. Verma said. “They need better treatments and better cures.”
While healthcare organizations of all stripes have long aspired to make “better care” and “better cures” a reality for more patients, these efforts have been consistently stymied by cost factors, limited access to care and uneven innovation.
Specialty care and clinical trials represent two areas fraught with access inequities. For example, approximately one-third of the U.S. population experiences barriers accessing a care specialist, according to a study published in BMC Health Services Research in 2024. In another striking example of the access challenges plaguing U.S. healthcare, an investigation published in JAMA Network Open in 2021, researchers found residents of rural areas are 77% less likely to be invited to participate in a clinical trial compared to urban residents.
Innovation is also unevenly distributed: world-class institutions may pioneer advanced care pathways and treatments, but smaller hospitals with fewer resources often struggle to access or adopt them. Even the basics of care are uneven, with fragmented medical records, opaque payer rules and outdated portals leaving patients and families to navigate the system largely on their own.
The future of care, everywhere
With a host of new tools and capabilities, Oracle is aiming to help reverse these trends. Its strategy is centered on embedding AI into clinical workflows, expanding access to research and making innovation shareable across the healthcare ecosystem.
One of the most tangible examples is Oracle’s next-generation EHR platform, designed to be voice-first and ambient. As physicians interact with patients, the system not only provides a draft of the record automatically but also will be able to flag clinical trial eligibility in real time. This type of functionality means patients in community and rural hospitals can be connected to the same cutting-edge opportunities as those treated at major academic medical centers.
Beyond the EHR, Oracle is building an AI data platform for life sciences, a secure environment that includes 120 million longitudinal patient records and genomic data. Researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and providers will be able to tap into this dataset to design smarter trials and speed drug discovery. Smaller health systems can also contribute their own data, ensuring trial designs reflect a broader range of patients and geographies.
On the care delivery side, Oracle is working to democratize clinical expertise through a clinical content store. Much like an app marketplace, the store will allow physicians and health systems to share proven care pathways.
“We want to make sure that everybody can leverage innovation. And so our clinical content store allows you to securely bring in content from anywhere, but it also allows anybody eligible to put content in the store,” Ms. Verma told Becker’s. “Think of it like an iPhone where you can get the different apps that you want. It’s the same concept. Nobody else is doing that.”
For smaller hospitals with fewer resources, this means access to specialty protocols pioneered at leading institutions, narrowing the gap between the standard of care in rural settings and what’s available at world-class centers.
For patients, Oracle is redesigning the portal experience to move beyond raw data dumps. The reimagined portal will deliver AI-driven, personalized insights that are easier to understand and act upon. By including elements often missing from legacy systems, such as imaging, the tool empowers patients to help inform their choices even when specialist access is limited.
Taken together, these solutions reflect Oracle’s bold vision for healthcare’s future: a care ecosystem where innovation isn’t confined to elite institutions, trial access isn’t dependent on geography, and every patient has the tools and transparency needed to pursue better outcomes.
A patient story
During her keynote, Ms. Verma shared the personal story of her neighbor to illustrate the real-life challenges access limitations create for patients. Her neighbor — Aiden Brown — is a four-time cancer survivor diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma as a child. Michelle Brown, his mother, joined Ms. Verma on stage and described carrying a “monster folder” of paper records between six hospitals in five different states, navigating insurance errors and doing independent research on the internet to identify potentially life-saving clinical trials.
For Ms. Verma, this patient story is both a source of inspiration and a call to action. It highlights the critical gaps in data interoperability, clinical trial access and the need for more patient empowerment. These are some of the very issues Oracle is hoping to help resolve with its reimagined EHR and associated tools.
This vision isn’t short on ambition as these challenges have persisted in the U.S. healthcare system for many years. During the keynote session, Ms. Verma acknowledged that she has been working on these problems for some time, but she also expressed resolve and a commitment to continue these efforts.
“I’ve been working on these things for a very, very long time,” Ms. Verma said. “I’m not giving up. Oracle’s not giving up.”
Seema Verma is a national health policy expert known for her meaningful and successful implementation of new programs for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), where she served as Administrator from 2017-2021. Verma’s engaging speeches are punctuated by her admirable intellect and relevant pulse on all things healthcare-related. To host her for a speaking opportunity, contact Worldwide Speakers Group.
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