What a difference two years makes — for ViVE and healthcare
Small. Sober. And oh so quiet. The spaces, conversations and general tone last week at ViVE was a far cry from 2024. Then, we couldn’t stop talking about Billy Idol rocking ViVE at 68. Now, it’s healthcare that’s been rocked, by years of uncertainty.
If ViVE 2024 was a party, ViVE 2026 was Nerd Prom: simple, serious, with an invite that might’ve read: If you’re not for real, stay home. ViVE and healthcare’s reckoning felt very real this year. From funding to payment models, interoperability to AI, here are a few reasons why.
Choose your date carefully
ViVE then: When Billy rocked the stage, the call and response might’ve been Survive Til 2025. The market was thawing, slowly, and there was cautious optimism around AI while investors sniffed out companies masking deep problems. At ViVE ‘25, the financial permafrost lingered. The conference was already smaller and more subdued, and people were starting to get serious about solving real problems.
ViVE now: At ViVE 2026, the seriousness stuck. The market has culled capabilities masquerading as companies, and M&A looks way different. Today, you can’t just acquire businesses. You must acquire customers, and keep them.
Takeaway: After three years of frozen funding, a real Nerd Prom-er knows how to pick a date — or go stag until the right one comes along.
A new VBC king and queen?
ViVE then: We didn’t focus a lot on value-based care (VBC) in our Billy Idol roundup. By 2024, VBC felt like a bad prom: lots of money spent with little to show for it. From 2011-2020, CMMI spent $7.9 billion on 50 VBC models and realized just $2.6 billion in savings from a handful of them.
VIVE now: VBC lives! No surprise for Nerd Prom, with two new models taking king and queen: RHTP and ACCESS.
Announced July 2025, the Rural Health Transformation Program funds $50 billion to all 50 states over five years. This is not a traditional grant or loan. States submit transformation plans and are held accountable for outcomes that bolster rural access, workforce, and innovation.
The Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions Model — announced last December — is a 10-year program that offers stable, recurring payments for technology used to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, CKD, obesity, depression, and anxiety.
Takeaway: RHTP and ACCESS aren’t the old prom decor. The tech alignment is different. The measurement and assessment are different. Most importantly, the funding and payment are different. At this Nerd Prom, the feds are throwing money to incentivize tech and springing for a limo.
Data can’t keep missing the prom
ViVE then: Artificial intelligence was a whisper at ViVE 2024. We didn’t know what it could do, but we did know it needed the healthcare data locked in silos. Interoperability remained a problem even as volume grew, consumer data in particular from sensors and wearables.
ViVE now: It’s 2026 and healthcare data is still incarcerated. How can we enjoy Nerd Prom while our data sits in jail? Until we have real liquidity, real interoperability, the market-based reforms we’re betting on can’t do what they’re supposed to do. Let’s free the data but make sure it’s clean and real.
Takeaway: Consumers want data liquidity. Physicians do too. Liquidity supports the long views needed for real population health-level outcomes, enterprise change, and the patient journey.
All nerds to the dance floor
A conference is a microcosm of an industry. ViVE 2024’s vibe might have been: Healthcare’s broken but we can still party! ViVE 2026’s? Serious is the new black — a perfectly acceptable color for Nerd Prom.
Maybe conferences as we knew them are going the way of the movie theater. (I would say the fax but healthcare can’t let go.)
Or maybe this really is the moment that healthcare gets serious. About enterprise-level change. AI that doesn’t leave people and process behind. Authentic brands. True disruption.
Who says nerds can’t party?
Find more Sage insights here — and in our next blog from Sage’s new Chief Solutions and AI Officer, Christina Speck where she’ll share additional insights about AI in healthcare.
