March 22, 2022

See you next time at the HIMSS 2023 EXPO – April 17-21, McCormick Place, Chicago

AFC Industries PA at HIMSS 2023: Healthcare Workstations and the AI Infrastructure Question at McCormick Place, Chicago

 

Table of Contents

  1. What Was HIMSS 2023 and What Was on the Agenda?
  2. What AFC Industries PA Exhibited at HIMSS 2023
  3. Why AI in Healthcare Still Requires the Right Physical Infrastructure
  4. What AFC Industries PA’s Products Enable in AI-Augmented Clinical Environments
  5. Three Years at HIMSS: What That Conference Presence Means

 

QUICK ANSWER —AFC Industries PA, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of medical carts and healthcare workstation solutions, exhibited at HIMSS 2023 — the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference and Exhibition — held April 17–21, 2023 at McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois. HIMSS 2023 was dominated by themes of artificial intelligence and machine learning in clinical decision support, healthcare cybersecurity, and workforce technology and clinician well-being. AFC Industries PA’s exhibit addressed the physical infrastructure layer that all of these digital health priorities depend on at the point of care: medical carts, mobile workstations, ergonomic mounts, and custom OEM configurations for healthcare environments.

 

When we wrote the forward invite for HIMSS 2023 at the close of HIMSS 2022 in March 2022, the healthcare IT landscape was emerging from two years of emergency-driven digital transformation. By the time April 2023 arrived and McCormick Place in Chicago filled with 28,000-plus healthcare IT professionals, the conversation had shifted again. The emergency was over. The question was what the new normal of healthcare digital infrastructure looked like when built deliberately rather than deployed under pressure.

HIMSS 2023 had a clear answer: artificial intelligence. Not AI as a future possibility, but AI as an immediate operational reality — AI-assisted radiology reading, AI-powered EHR documentation tools, AI-enabled clinical decision support, machine learning models embedded in diagnostic workflows. The conference sessions and exhibition floor both reflected a sector that had moved from “what is AI in healthcare” to “how do we deploy it safely, effectively, and at scale.”

For AFC Industries PA, that conversation landed directly on the products we brought to McCormick Place. AI-assisted diagnostics still require a radiologist at a reading room workstation. AI-powered EHR documentation tools still require a mobile cart at the bedside. AI-enabled clinical decision support still requires a clinician with access to the right digital interface at the right place in the care pathway. The physical infrastructure layer doesn’t change because the software layer gets smarter. We were at HIMSS 2023 to make that argument in person, and it resonated.

 

What Was HIMSS 2023 and What Did the Agenda Cover?

HIMSS 2023 — the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society Annual Conference and Exhibition — ran April 17–21, 2023 at McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois. McCormick Place is one of the largest convention facilities in North America and has been the home of multiple HIMSS conferences; it also hosted RSNA 2022, the radiology conference at which AFC Industries PA exhibited earlier in the same conference cycle.

Three themes dominated HIMSS 2023’s agenda:

  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning in clinical decision support. AI in radiology (AI-assisted image reading, automated measurement and flagging), AI-powered EHR documentation (ambient clinical intelligence, automated note generation), and AI-enabled clinical decision support tools. The American College of Radiology had published its AI appropriateness criteria; SIIM had convened working groups on AI deployment standards; and the conference floor was dense with vendors positioning AI capabilities. The questions the HIMSS 2023 audience was asking were deployment questions: how do these systems perform in real clinical environments, what infrastructure do they require, and how do you maintain quality when the AI is wrong?
  • Healthcare cybersecurity. Ransomware attacks on health systems had accelerated significantly through 2022 and 2023. HIMSS 2023 had an unusually heavy cybersecurity focus, with sessions on zero-trust architecture, endpoint security for clinical devices, and supply chain risk in medical equipment procurement. Physical device security — ensuring that medical carts and mobile workstations with network connectivity were secured against endpoint compromise — was part of that conversation.
  • Workforce technology and clinician well-being. Clinician burnout had reached crisis levels in the post-pandemic healthcare workforce. Technology’s role in addressing burnout — or in contributing to it through documentation burden, alert fatigue, and poorly configured systems — was a major HIMSS 2023 theme. This connected directly to the ergonomic workstation research that AFC Industries PA had covered in our article on radiologist well-being and repetitive stress injuries — the physical environment is part of the clinician well-being equation, not separate from it.

For more on HIMSS, visit himss.org. AFC Industries PA also exhibited at HIMSS 2022 in Orlando and HIMSS 2021 in Las Vegas.

 

What AFC Industries PA Exhibited at HIMSS 2023

AFC Industries PA’s HIMSS 2023 exhibit reflected the maturity of the company’s healthcare product range after three years of continuous conference engagement with the health IT sector. The products on display addressed the physical infrastructure requirements that HIMSS 2023’s agenda themes — AI deployment, cybersecurity, and clinician well-being — all presuppose at the point of care.

 

AFC INDUSTRIES PA PRODUCT CATEGORIES AT HIMSS 2023

Medical carts and point-of-care platforms. Medical carts for bedside EHR access, medication administration verification, and clinical decision support access at the point of care. As AI-powered clinical tools are embedded into EHR platforms, the mobile cart that delivers EHR access to the bedside becomes the delivery mechanism for AI-augmented clinical support.

Computer carts and mobile workstations. Computer carts and mobile workstations for clinical documentation mobility, nurse station flexibility, and point-of-care digital access across ward, clinic, and community environments. Mobile workstations are the physical infrastructure through which ambient AI documentation tools — which listen to clinical conversations and generate notes automatically — reach the point of care.

Ergonomic mounts and track systems. Ergonomic mounts and track mount systems for reading rooms, clinical workstations, and diagnostic environments. With AI-assisted radiology reading tools embedded into PACS workflows, the reading room workstation is now the interface through which radiologists interact with both the images and the AI. Correct ergonomic configuration sustains the sustained attention that AI-augmented reading sessions still require from the human reader.

Custom and OEM configurations. Custom and OEM medical cart builds for health systems requiring specific AI platform integrations, endpoint security configurations, or workflow-specific cart builds that standard product ranges don’t address. As AI tools multiply in clinical environments, the physical integration requirements — where the AI interface sits on the cart, how it connects to the clinical network, how it is cleaned between patients — increasingly require custom specification.

Cleanroom solutions. Cleanroom workstations and carts for pharmaceutical compounding, sterile processing, and medical device environments. AI-assisted quality control in pharmaceutical manufacturing is a growing HIMSS-adjacent application area where cleanroom workstation infrastructure intersects with AI-enabled inspection tools.

 

Why AI in Healthcare Still Requires the Right Physical Infrastructure

The most common misunderstanding in healthcare AI deployments is the assumption that better software reduces the importance of physical infrastructure. The opposite is closer to true. More capable AI tools deployed on inadequate physical platforms produce worse outcomes than less capable tools deployed on correct platforms, because the physical inadequacy undermines the AI’s ability to function as designed.

Consider AI-assisted radiology. An AI model that flags potential nodules in a CT series is only useful if the radiologist can see the flagged finding at the correct display luminance, with the display correctly positioned at eye level, and with sufficient physical comfort in the reading station to give the flagged finding the sustained attention it requires. Deploy the same AI on a workstation with an uncalibrated display, a monitor positioned 20cm below eye level, and no height adjustment for the reader’s working height — and the AI’s clinical value is compromised by the physical environment regardless of its algorithmic quality.

The same argument applies to AI-powered EHR documentation tools. Ambient clinical intelligence that listens to a patient encounter and generates a draft note is only useful if the clinician is in the patient room with the right mobile workstation to verify and complete the note immediately rather than returning to a central station where the context of the encounter has partially faded. The AI reduces the documentation burden; the mobile cart is what allows that reduction to happen at the point of care.

AFC Industries PA’s position at HIMSS 2023 was straightforward: AI raises the stakes for physical infrastructure quality, because the clinical value of AI tools is directly dependent on the quality of the physical environment through which they are delivered. Better software makes the hardware requirement more visible, not less important.

What AFC Industries PA’s Products Enable in AI-Augmented Clinical Environments

  • Medical carts with AI-integrated EHR platforms: The cart is the delivery mechanism for ambient documentation tools, AI-powered medication verification, and AI-assisted clinical decision support at the bedside. Battery capacity, surface durability, and height adjustment determine whether that delivery happens reliably or intermittently.
  • Reading room workstations with AI-assisted PACS: The workstation is the interface for AI-flagged findings. Monitor positioning, height adjustability, and ergonomic configuration determine whether the radiologist can give those flags the sustained attention they require across a full reading session.
  • Mobile workstations with ambient documentation AI: The mobile workstation is what keeps the ambient documentation tool in the room with the patient. The AI generates the note; the cart’s battery and mobility determine whether the clinician stays with the patient through the encounter or returns to a central station.
  • OEM configurations for AI platform-specific integration: As AI tools diversify across clinical environments, the physical integration requirements — where the AI interface sits, how it connects to the clinical network, how the hardware is maintained — increasingly require custom builds rather than standard product adaptations.

 

For more on how physical workstation configuration affects clinical performance — including the ergonomic research that connects workstation design to diagnostic quality — see our article on ergonomic improvements and radiologist well-being and our RSNA 2022 exhibit recap.

 

Three Years at HIMSS: What That Conference Presence Means

HIMSS 2023 was AFC Industries PA’s third consecutive HIMSS National Conference and Exhibition: Las Vegas in 2021, Orlando in 2022, Chicago in 2023. Three years is enough to see the conversation evolve — from post-pandemic return, to the reckoning with what had been deployed under pressure, to the AI-dominated agenda that is shaping what healthcare digital infrastructure needs to look like for the next decade.

What hasn’t changed across those three years: the healthcare IT sector’s need for physical infrastructure that matches the ambition of its digital investments. Better AI. More integrated EHRs. More capable telehealth platforms. Every one of those improvements places demands on the carts, workstations, and mounting systems that deliver them to clinicians and patients. AFC Industries PA has shown up to HIMSS every year because that is where the conversation about those demands happens at scale, and because the people having the conversation — the hospital CIOs, the clinical informatics directors, the biomedical engineers, the nursing technology leads — are exactly the people our products are built for.

Contact the AFC Industries PA team to discuss your facility’s clinical workstation or medical cart requirements. Browse the full product range, explore custom and OEM configurations, or use the product configurator to begin a specification. AFC Industries PA is based at 230 S Poplar St, Berwick, PA 18603, serving healthcare facilities across the Mid-Atlantic and United States.