Artificial intelligence is quickly shifting from a buzzword to a business imperative for home medical equipment (HME) providers.
That’s according to some of the industry’s top executives, who recently addressed the topic at the HME Business FUTURE Conference in Dallas.
“AI isn’t coming; it’s already here,” Dewey Roof, CEO of Valere Health, a technology-enabled respiratory management company, said at FUTURE.
AI is shaping the HME market – and health care, more broadly – in new ways each and every day. Looking at HME specifically, the use cases for AI include automating referral intake and documentation, and redefining workforce and workflow models – just for starters.
Currently, many HME organizations are in the process of exploring how AI can shape their operations in 2026 and onward. While big, ambitious projects are exciting, step 1 needs to be securing foundational leadership buy in.
“The first and foremost thing – and this probably goes without saying – is that leadership, front to back, needs to be on the same page,” Roof continued. “They all need to be committed to building that internal architecture that includes AI and doesn’t just think of AI.”
In fact, the pace of AI innovation is so rapid, that Roof described this moment as a “watershed” period for HME providers, who face tightening margins, staffing pressures, shifting payer dynamics and other challenges. Without strong leadership commitment, Roof warned, “you probably have been left behind.”
Similar sentiments were echoed by Brian Nannie, senior vice president of client strategy and innovation at Notable Systems, a San Mateo, California–based automation platform that helps health organizations modernize administrative workflows.
“Leadership needs to understand what they’re getting into and how it can be applied,” Nannie said at FUTURE.
Other increasingly relevant use cases for AI in the HME space include better patient monitoring and adherence support as well as inventory and supply-chain optimization.
On the inventory side, a recently released industry report from In90group and HME360 found that the financial toll of poor inventory management totals an estimated $4 billion annually.
“Despite advances in technology, the vast majority of HME providers still track inventory manually,” the report noted. “Staff are pulled away from higher-value tasks to count supplies manually, reorder based on guesswork, and double-check inventory levels through phone calls, all while managing multiple warehouses, trucks and consignment closets.”
In addition to leadership buy-in, HME leaders caution that AI progress requires investing in solid infrastructure to build upon.
“If your core application is legacy or not conducive to supporting next-gen products, it can create more work,” Wayne Hudson, director of growth at NikoHealth, a software firm specializing in cloud-based HME management systems, said at FUTURE. “Don’t strap a jet engine to a horse and buggy.”
Anecdotally, the most promising AI applications are emerging on the front end of the business, such as referral intake and documentation, where inefficiencies often pile up, executives said at FUTURE.
“That’s where the problems are,” Roof said. “That’s where all the complexity resides. Applying AI on the front end makes a load of sense and really sets the company up for a healthier outcome on the other side.”
As automation expands, Roof and Nannie agreed that AI can move beyond efficiency toward something more strategic: data-driven evidence that shows payers the industry’s value.
“AI is going to allow us to do that – to go back to the payers and say, ‘Look at what we’re doing,’” Roof said. “Our industry has done a less-than-average job of demonstrating our value.”
