By Jonathan Kersting
On a stage framed by ambition and algorithms at the 2026 Think!AI Summit, two unlikely allies laid out a vision for the future of healthcare. One came from the world of hospital logistics and workflow. The other from elite data science and large-scale analytics. Together, leaders from TeleTracking Technologies and Palantir Technologies argued that the next great healthcare breakthrough would not be a miracle drug, but a smarter system.
Moderated by Audrey Russo, the keynote brought together TeleTracking Co-CEO Chris Johnson and Palantir’s Lead Architect for U.S. Healthcare, Jonathan Jungck. Their mission: explain how their new partnership is transforming raw data into real-world decisions, and why that matters for patients, providers, and an industry under immense strain.
Johnson began by tracing TeleTracking’s unlikely origin story. What started decades ago in a basement grew into a platform now embedded in more than 900 hospitals worldwide. Along the way, the company learned a hard truth: healthcare is not broken because people don’t care. It struggles because its systems are overwhelmingly complex.
“You can’t re-engineer healthcare,” Johnson explained. “You have to break it down.”
That philosophy became the backbone of TeleTracking’s approach. Rather than chasing sweeping reforms, the company focuses on hundreds of small, interconnected workflows: admissions, transfers, discharges, transport, room turnover, referrals. Each step may seem minor. Together, they determine whether a hospital runs like a precision instrument or a clogged artery.
Today, those workflows converge inside hospital command centers, operational hubs that resemble air traffic control for patient care. Here, real-time dashboards, predictive analytics, and AI-powered alerts help administrators anticipate problems before they become crises.
If TeleTracking understands the terrain, Palantir provides the engine.
Jungck described how Palantir’s platform evolved from academic research and national security projects into large-scale healthcare applications, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. That experience taught the company how to integrate fragmented data systems and turn information into action.
At the heart of the partnership is Palantir Foundry, a platform that connects clinical, operational, and financial data into a unified environment. Instead of forcing hospitals to chase information across dozens of systems, Foundry brings it together and makes it usable.
“Our goal isn’t dashboards for dashboards’ sake,” Jungck said. “It’s decisions.”
One of the keynote’s most compelling themes was “network integrity,” Johnson’s term for keeping patients within a health system’s care ecosystem. When patients fall through the cracks between inpatient, outpatient, and home-based care, everyone loses. Outcomes suffer. Costs rise. Trust erodes.
TeleTracking and Palantir aim to close those gaps.
Using AI-driven recommendations, the platform can suggest alternative specialists, identify faster referral pathways, and surface nearby providers with availability. If one cardiologist is booked for weeks, the system might propose another qualified physician who can see the patient tomorrow.
It is not automation for its own sake. It is navigation in a maze.
Both speakers were careful to dismantle the idea of AI replacing clinicians.
In healthcare, Jungck noted, decisions carry ethical, emotional, and life-or-death consequences. Algorithms may surface patterns, but people remain accountable. In practice, AI functions as an advisor, not a commander.
“Most of the time,” he said, “it’s about recommendations.”
Johnson echoed the point more personally. He spoke about nurses, transport staff, environmental services teams, and care coordinators. These professionals, he said, are the soul of healthcare. Technology should not overshadow them. It should protect their time, reduce friction, and restore focus on patients.
In this model, AI becomes a quiet assistant: scheduling smarter, flagging risks earlier, smoothing transitions, and eliminating unnecessary chaos.
The keynote offered tangible proof. Johnson cited a Tennessee health system that reduced average patient length of stay by an entire day. The improvement did not come from one dramatic innovation, but from hundreds of incremental optimizations.
A faster discharge here. A smoother transfer there. Fewer delayed referrals. Better coordination.
Stacked together, those gains reshaped performance.
“That’s where the magic is,” Johnson said. “Domain expertise plus advanced analytics.”
What emerged from the discussion was not a sales pitch, but a blueprint.
Healthcare’s future, Johnson and Jungck argued, will belong to organizations that master three things: integrated data, intelligent workflows, and trusted human-AI collaboration.
It will not be flashy. It will be systematic.
In an industry where burnout is high, margins are thin, and demand is relentless, that discipline may be the most radical innovation of all.
As Russo wrapped up the session, one message lingered in the room: AI will not save healthcare on its own. But in the hands of people who understand both patients and processes, it just might help it breathe again.