Some of healthcare’s biggest challenges cannot be solved by one organization, one jurisdiction, or one executive team working alone.

That was the starting point for a recent CHIEF Executive Forum networking event that invited public-sector CHIEF members to bring an executive colleague who doesn’t typically participate in digital health discussions.
The idea was simple: broaden the conversation beyond traditional digital health roles and explore where greater collaboration could make a difference.

Looking beyond organizational boundaries

Throughout the evening, participants were invited to consider three questions:

• What digital health challenge are we unlikely to solve one organization at a time?
• Where are organizations facing similar challenges but tackling them separately?
• Where could CHIEF’s collective experience, influence, or convening power help accelerate progress?

The conversations highlighted several shared challenges, including interoperability and data sharing, AI governance and adoption, and coordination of care across organizations. Participants also pointed to opportunities for greater collaboration through shared evaluation, scaling successful solutions, collective procurement, and common standards.

One contribution captured a recurring challenge in digital health: “It’s adoption, not innovation (scaling).” The observation raises an important question: How can we move beyond developing promising solutions to adopting and scaling what already works?

From conversation to action

The discussion reinforced the value of bringing together executives with different responsibilities and perspectives. Digital health challenges are rarely just technology challenges; they involve clinical care, operations, organizational priorities, governance, and decisions that extend well beyond any single organization.

These conversations will help inform the CHIEF Winter Symposium on January 21, 2027, in Toronto, where members will continue exploring how to move from shared challenges toward practical action. Because identifying what we cannot solve alone is only the beginning. The next question is what we are prepared to do together.

The next CHIEF event is January 21, 2026. CHIEF Executive Forum members can register online here.
Learn more about the CHIEF Executive Forum here.