Meet fellow VF26 Participants, Panelists, and WebMD Ignite hosts over buffet lunch.

Opening remarks and official welcome to Valley Forum 2026.

Healthcare is under sustained financial pressure. Many systems rely on subsidies to remain viable while cost pressure continues to rise. At the same time, AI and prevention are beginning to reduce or shift utilization, directly challenging the revenue model the system depends on. This session examines which parts of healthcare are structurally viable, which are propped up, and what happens if utilization patterns shift at scale.

Brief intermission and refreshments between sessions.

Payer–provider conflict is no longer a back-office negotiation. It is playing out publicly and determining access, steering, and control of the patient relationship. Reimbursement, networks, and benefit design have become tools of influence. This session explores whether this is a temporary battle or a permanent shift in power, and who captures value as it intensifies.

Welcome reception and seated dinner with fellow VF26 attendees.

Engage with fellow VF26 attendees over buffet breakfast.

Decisions are increasingly made before patients enter the healthcare system. AI, navigation platforms, and benefit design are moving influence upstream and redefining how patients choose where and when to seek care. This session examines who controls those decisions, how demand is determined earlier, and what role providers play if they are no longer the starting point.

Brief intermission and refreshments between sessions.

Healthcare is inherently messy. It does not conform to clean models, predictable pathways, or consistent inputs. AI is built for the opposite. It depends on patterns, repeatability, and scale. The question is not whether AI can scale, but what happens when it does in a system defined by variability and exception.

Continue conversations with fellow VF26 attendees over buffet lunch.

The stack is starting to define the strategy. Not the other way around. As organizations consolidate around the EMR and other platforms, they simplify operations but narrow what they can see and do. The EMR captures known patients inside the system. It does not see demand, influence, or behavior outside of it. Growth does not happen inside closed workflows. It happens before, around, and beyond them. Strategy should define the capabilities required. The stack should follow. Most organizations have that backwards.

Brief intermission and refreshments between sessions.

Healthcare has traditionally operated on trust. The broader digital ecosystem runs on attention. Those models are now colliding. Patients are making decisions in environments driven by speed, visibility, and algorithmic ranking, not clinical authority. Trusted sources no longer control the context in which they appear.

Free time at the Alila before departing for group dinner.

Welcome reception followed by seated dinner with fellow VF26 attendees.

Buffet breakfast with fellow VF26 attendees before departure.