The 2025 HIMSS Global Conference & Exhibition brought more than 28,000 healthcare and tech leaders from around the world to the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, March 3-6, to explore the latest in healthcare innovation and the future of digital health.
Artificial intelligence was front and center at HIMSS25, with announcements about AI software launches by Microsoft, Zoom and Teledoc, among others, reinforcing AI’s growing role in clinical decision support, workflow automation, and ultimately, patient outcomes. An inspiring keynote by Simone Biles, the most decorated Olympic gymnast in history and the leading advocate for mental health awareness, underscored how the future is still very much human.
HIMSS traditionally features stellar exhibit design, so we decided to take a more modular approach this year and dug into some of the core aspects of booth experiences on the show floor.
Demo Stations
Considering that many exhibitors at HIMSS present software, demo stations that are functional, welcoming and generally part of the brand aesthetic are key. Brands took this opportunity to build conversations around more than just a kiosk.
HR and workforce management solutions company UKG brought arguably the most thoughtful demo stations, emphasizing the company’s commitment to human capital. Each of the eight stations was ADA-compliant, featuring either a curved couch around a large, lowered display or a selection of padded stools, with soft lighting and foliage also speaking to employee well-being.
Google Cloud let partner organizations do the talking about integrating the brand’s AI-powered tools at demo stations that felt very much on-brand. A recognizable color scheme and a pegboard-style backdrop with key design elements spoke to functional and modern solutions.
Tapping into a new frontier of AI agents, Dell Technologies created an intimate space in an otherwise open booth to let attendees interact with its new digital human assistant. The demo area glowed with on-brand blue and protected the experience from the noise of the show floor while building the intrigue for the interaction.
Meeting Space
A crucial booth element at this appointment-rich show, meeting and conversation spaces were not just modular spaces tucked in the back. Think transportive, color-rich setting and comfort-first design that created an elevated, on-brand experience.
Leveraging the snow theme, cloud-based data storage company Snowflake invited attendees for conversations in what looked like ski gondolas. Warm colors and frosted plexiglas made meeting space a key visual cue at Health Catalyst, a healthcare data company. Epic’s booth leaned more into the “wild” than “techy” software vibe and created literal fireside chats. Ellkay offered open seating and also two semi-private meeting spaces that added unique architectural elements to the overall booth.
A cloud communications company, Twilio, checked pretty much all exhibit design and swag boxes, but we’ve giving it a special nod for its small but mighty meeting room behind a sliding barn door.
Coffee
If you think you’ve had good coffee on a show floor, think again. Spilling over from healthcare congresses, hospitality was part of the DNA at HIMSS, with coffee bars integrated into booth design in the most thoughtful ways. Warm orange and purple hues framed the cozy coffee bar at CodaMetrix, where attendees could also pick up swag with their latte. Nordic, a health and tech consultancy, figured the coffee can work doubly hard if attendees walk around the floor with branded coffee cups. And, of course, Cisco, amping up the tech vibe, brought back their Café Cisco, where texting the word “coffee” started the order that would emerge within minutes in all its oat-milk-latte deliciousness topped with a frothy brand logo.
Activations
Quests are still hot, and Salesforce activated a relatively small footprint with a very engaging quest: powered by a custom cookie, attendees could build their own AI agent and claim a reward along with additional brainpower.
At a small but very effective booth by PolyAI, a conversational platform powered by AI agents, attendees couldn’t resist picking up the receiver of the old-school phones for a snippet of a conversation. Nostalgia definitely met what’s next in tech here.
SmarterDX invited attendees to get an etch-a-sketch of themselves by an artist and keep the toy as a memento, another nostalgia moment. GE Healthcare leaned into the opposite end of the spectrum and featured a “Faces of Healthcare” experience that created AI-assisted attendee portraits.
Swag
HPE and AWD, as well as Slack, had attendees line up for swag before they even got to the show floor. Vending machines strategically positioned in the hallway dispensed branded socks, totes, and insulated tumblers, among other treats, for a swipe of the badge.
Inside, exhibitors went all out with thoughtful, well-made and clearly coveted items. At a massive exhibit by Waystar, a healthcare software company, swag had its own show floor, not unlike a museum gift shop, adjacent to the meeting rooms. From mugs to shirts, no one was leaving empty-handed and could still enter to win a pair of custom Nike sneakers in brand colors.
Some promotional items had entire storylines. If your data is unclean, it’s angry is the premise behind a popular Angry Infomonster, a plush toy by Clinical Architecture. The company’s solutions can help clean up the data, making it “happy,” and since the quality healthcare data is a journey, this year’s limited release giveaway was a “Hiking Infomonster.” Collapsable coffee cups and microfiber sheets, new sticker sheets and Post-It notes also went with the hiking theme.
One of our favorite themes in swag came from Itiliti Health that occupied a tabletop but creatively brought to life their tagline “fostering harmony between payers and providers” by visualizing the parties as cats and dogs and offering rope toys and feather wands. Indeed, the best possible outcome for all.
