Top 5 Digital Health stories of 2025

Digital health continues to reshape how people connect with care — breaking down barriers of distance, time and access in ways that were once unimaginable. In 2025, those advances moved from promise to practice, with new technologies helping patients get care faster and using data to make more informed decisions. OSF HealthCare, through its OSF OnCall digital health arm, has been able to reach communities that have long been underserved. From artificial intelligence and virtual care to immersive technologies and smarter data use, OSF OnCall continued to push health care forward.

These are the Top 5 digital health stories of 2025, in no particular order.

From crisis to confidence: Patient praises new OSF 24/7 primary care – Marci Schneider Batsakis of Orland Park, Illinois was the first patient enrolled in OSF CompleteCare 55+, a new hybrid model of primary care in Evergreen Park, using virtual visits and digital connections to help older people get fast access to providers and stay on top of their health. Schneider Batsakis called the round-the-clock care team number when her blood pressure became dangerously high and that led to timely treatment in the hospital, follow-up support, and a care plan tailored to her needs.

OSF HealthCare receives $1.5 million for new mobile pregnancy and postpartum care unit An OSF OnCall Connect mobile van will offer doorstep service as an extension for women on Medicaid enrolled in a pregnancy and postpartum digital support program. Meridian and Centene Foundation provided $1.5 million in funding for the van to operate in maternity deserts in 12 Illinois counties.

OSF HealthCare offers another layer of monitoring for moms and babies – OSF HealthCare launched 24/7 virtual labor monitoring to enhance in-person care with AI technology. AI software alerts OSF OnCall Acute OB nurses to potential risks, enabling quick coordination with staff at Family Birthing Centers at hospitals across the OSF HealthCare Ministry. This is part of a broader effort to reduce mortality rates among women and babies which remain high compared to other wealthy nations. As part of that effort, we also opted to extend to all patients in the I-80 region, regardless of payor, a Medicaid program for virtual visits and digital support. The area has lost a number of OBGYN providers.

Skip the wait with new OSF OnCall virtual exam visit – OSF OnCall Urgent Care walk-in clinics can get busy, especially during the winter with respiratory viruses. So OSF HealthCare installed new technology in urgent care clinics, allowing patients to do in-office virtual visits and bypass the waiting room. Visitors to the OSF OnCall Urgent Care can get accurate testing and diagnoses using digital tools and an on-screen OSF medical provider.

OSF HealthCare using virtual ER to cut patient wait times – OSF HealthCare is using an innovative approach to help reduce wait times in the emergency departments at OSF HealthCare Saint Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa and Peru. Patients who meet certain criteria will be given the option to divert to a virtual medical exam through the use of advanced technology and an onsite nurse.

Top 5 OSF Innovation stories of 2025

As we kick off a new year at OSF HealthCare, we’re looking back at 2025 and the big steps we took to make it easier for patients to access care and health information. Working alongside our academic and business partners, we continued to tap into shared expertise and use artificial intelligence in thoughtful, responsible ways — always guided by what’s fair, appropriate, valid, effective and safe (FAVES).

Those efforts are reflected in our Top 5 OSF Innovation stories of 2025, listed in no particular order.

OSF HealthCare named one of America’s Most Innovative Companies – Fortune recognized OSF for its innovation culture and forward-thinking approach, highlighting digital and AI-driven advancements transforming care delivery. OSF first received this distinction in 2023.

OSF Innovation brings VR beating hearts to life for safer surgeries – Thanks to a breakthrough at OSF Innovation, surgeons can “see” their patient’s heart beating in 3D before ever stepping into the operating room. For surgeons, the benefits are game-changing. They can see not only the anatomy but also how it changes with every beat. This is especially critical for conditions such as hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, where the problem lies in how the heart contracts. Even more surprising, the AI began rendering valves — structures notoriously difficult to see on CT scans.

An OSF inventor collaborates to help kids play safely through cancer – Exercise physiologist Nick Kemp collaborated with OSF Innovation Studio to design Port Guard that protects the central venous access port for kids with cancer who want to play and stay active. Seven-year-old Amaneigh Stevenson, pediatric cancer patient, was part of testing and declared, “It makes me feel safe. I love it a lot.”

OSF developing app to diagnose migraines sooner and more accurately – For millions of people living with migraine headaches, getting the proper diagnosis can take years, sometimes even decades. A new digital tool developed by a team at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria (UICOMP) and OSF HealthCare aims to change that by helping primary care and other first-contact healthcare providers to identify patients with migraine quickly and accurately.

Decoding your DNA to prevent disease – Using innovative genetic testing, OSF HealthCare stepped farther into personalized medicine in 2025, with a pilot to allow people to be tested with just a swab of their cheek for genetic mutations to determine if someone is at high risk of any of 10 major diseases. So called polygenic testing is not yet covered by insurance but for someone with a a family history of heart disease, cancer or Alzheimer’s, this $250 test could provide some early warning signs and better yet, early intervention.

OSF HealthCare has partners with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Tata Elxsi, a global leader in design and technology services to address critical health care challenges in rural America. Historically, digital health innovations have concentrated on urban populations, leaving rural communities underserved. This pioneering initiative combines advanced technology with academic research from Gies College of Business and Carle Illinois College of Medicine, leveraging real-time OSF HealthCare data to deploy hyper-localized digital health kiosks funded by Jump ARCHES. These kiosks aim to improve healthcare accessibility and outcomes in underserved regions.

Rural areas face steep barriers to health care access, including limited technology awareness, long distances to doctors, poor network connectivity, low population density, and inadequate payer coverage. A detailed OSF-based analysis by the Gies College of Business found that extending access to primary and preventive care in remote and rural areas significantly reduces avoidable emergency care visits among these populations. The initiative focuses on chronic and behavioral diseases and addresses four key challenges: Hospital re-admission and post-acute care health monitoring, geographic and access barriers, health care education and preventive measures, and chronic disease management.

At the core of this initiative is Tata Elxsi’s TEngage platform, a scalable, effective and comprehensive digital health solution designed to deliver seamless health care in rural areas through the kiosks. These kiosks run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure and incorporate technologies such as Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) for vital sign collection, Hospital Information System (HIS) integration, telehealth services, and secure data workflows. Discussions are underway to incorporate IoT-based remote monitoring, further enhancing the platform's capacity to deliver proactive, continuous care to rural communities.

Beginning in Illinois, the initiative will expand to many counties over three years through a phased approach that allows kiosks to adapt based on community usage and feedback. The kiosks will have advanced features, including telehealth integration, health monitoring, and AI analytics for epidemic tracking and predictive health care insights. Additionally, the devices offer cloud-based management, electronic health record connectivity, automated workflow, and telecom infrastructure that enhances connectivity. The TEngage platform ensures rapid deployment and scalability, establishing a foundation for broader adoption in the future.

Ann M. Willemsen-Dunlap, OSF HealthCare, said, “The computer interface that Tata Elxsi has developed will help community health workers as they bring health screenings and health connectivity to rural Illinois. This will strengthen OSF HealthCare’s ability to meet patients where they are, even if that is miles away from a hospital or clinic.”

Telecom service providers play a vital role in enabling this project by providing the critical last-mile connectivity required for seamless health care access in remote and rural communities. This collaboration demonstrates how partnerships between technology innovators, research institutions, and health care providers can effectively address societal challenges.  The initiative encourages community partners, clinicians, funders, and policymakers to participate in expanding this innovative model across the United States, creating a transformative, technology-driven blueprint for the future of rural healthcare.

Prof. Ujjal Kumar Mukherjee, Gies College of Business and Carle Illinois College of Medicine, added, “For people in remote and underserved areas, basic health care often means traveling long distances or having no access to care at all. But when health services are connected through a hub-and-spoke system—from hospitals to regional clinics, to mobile rural clinics, and finally to local health kiosks—we can bring care step-by-step closer to where people live. A simple kiosk at the last mile becomes more than a device; it’s the final link in a larger network that helps ensure no one is left out.”

Sreevatsa Sahasranaman, Sr. Vice President & Head of Healthcare Business at Tata Elxsi, said, “This partnership demonstrates our commitment to driving health care innovation and showcases how technology can make quality care accessible to all. By combining the University of Illinois’ research insights with our expertise, we are delivering hyper-customized care and impactful solutions that touch rural communities and elevate healthcare delivery to new milestones.”

Telehealth stakeholders at a recent, national conference in Phoenix detailed how digital care needs are evolving as providers shift to a longer-range, integrated, and personalized mode of digital health care.

Peoria, Illinois-based OSF HealthCare continues to expand digital transformation, by continuing to invest in research and core technologies, along with creating an omni-channel experience for patients. That transformation was highlighted during a spotlight presentation at a conference hosted by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA).

Jennifer Junius, RN, MSN, senior vice president at OSF OnCall Digital Health and John Vozenilek, MD, chief medical officer, Innovation & Digital Health at OSF HealthCare stressed that standardization, investment in infrastructure and security, along with collaboration with community partners and across departments is crucial for delivering seamless care.

OSF built upon its early foundations of digital care with an virtual ICU that was co-located in the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center, the Innovation space for OSF HealthCare. Dr. Vozenilek shared that necessity during the COVID pandemic kicked into high gear, longer-term plans for digital transformation.

“We then built systems of care tools and technologies around that, leading up to now when we have more than 800 Mission Partners (employees) that are part of OSF OnCall.” Dr. Vozenilek added, “Through the process of innovation, we took our creativity and put it into action and that action was realized in the care we provide through OSF OnCall today.”

Junis emphasized the importance of developing guiding principles for new care models. Establishing a single point of contact to help patients navigate and seamlessly get the care they need was a big priority in the guiding principles of OSF OnCall. 

Now OSF OnCall has multiple programs that are clinically integrated, that can really care for patients 24/7/365. 

Junis explained the vision. “We wanted to create self-service tools we knew all other industries were moving towards. We wanted to put the patient’s care in their own hands by creating transparency. We wanted to be proactive.”

Other guiding principles: “We wanted to use data, innovation, and intelligence to be able to outreach to our patients when they needed something before they even knew they needed it.” Junis outlined, “We also want to empower our clinicians and employees to have the right tools, the right technology at the right time. That would lead to care for patients where and how they wanted to receive it.”

Another benefit to an integrated digital health approach is that it allows OSF HealthCare to better manage capacity. OSF OnCall focuses on three distinct efforts: digital experience (allowing patients to reach us in a way that works for them), digital care (that includes new models such as using virtual hospitalists, hospital-at-home or mobile solutions that can connect people to a care team) and on-demand services (walk-in and virtual urgent care).

OSF HealthCare is also exploring strategies to enhance care delivery such as leveraging artificial intelligence in medical technology and predictive analytics, using mobile clinics and digital health navigators and centralizing processes such as data and analytics for care management.

For example, during a Main Stage presentation at ATA, Brandi Clark, OSF OnCall vice president of Digital Care said integrating digital tools that are easy to use can transform the patient experience.

“We are really focused on the end-to-end experience of our patients and the way that our patients experience us from the front end of our website. So, Aniq (from partner Fabric Health) mentioned the AI-driven Chatbot (Clare) that we have at OSF – it’s a great example of the way that technology has changed the experience of the patient and enabled our caregivers to be focused where our patients need them to be.”

Clark says OSF is continually evaluating existing technology partnerships and whether alternatives exist that could provide more value.  Collaboration focuses on a select, few partners where there is mutual benefit to helping startups build products using health system data and insights.

Clark emphasized clinical efficiency in telehealth is vital, so pilots prioritize clinician involvement and a regular feedback loop while new technology and workflow are tested. She highlighted digital tools can help clinicians be more efficient and make more informed decisions, but they can’t replace them. Using tools to make providers better at what they do is what Clark calls “the secret sauce.”

Here is more information about OSF OnCall and OSF Innovation.

Video clips of Dr. John Vozenilek and Jennifer Junis

Video of Brandi Clark

B-roll for Use guiding principles to develop digital health strategy