This year's ASHE Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference was one to remember, bringing together facilities professionals and vendors from across the country in Minneapolis to connect about the industry and where it's headed. FSI, healthcare's leading CMMS, was on the ground with our largest booth and staff presence in company history.
Between the sessions, the exhibit floor, and the conversations that spilled into the hallways, a handful of topics kept coming up no matter who we talked to. Here's what stood out most.
1. Cybersecurity is now a facilities problem, not just an IT problem
Cybersecurity used to sit squarely on the IT side of the org chart. Facilities teams knew it mattered, but it wasn't the line item they owned or the audit they had to pass.
That's changing fast. Healthcare infrastructure is being actively targeted, and the questions facilities leaders are fielding have gotten a lot more pointed. It's less about proving a system is secure and more about answering what happens when it isn't: how do you keep a building running through a network outage, and what does a downtime plan actually look like when the systems you rely on go dark? Facilities teams are being pulled into that planning directly now, not briefed on it after the fact.
2. AI has gone from "should we?" to "why aren't we already?"
Last year's AI conversations at conferences were mostly hypothetical: could AI be embedded into our facilities team someday? This year, that question was settled. What we heard instead was cautionary: if you're not using AI to be more efficient, you're behind.
The use cases have also gotten a lot more specific. People weren't speculating about AI in general terms. They were talking about cleaning up messy asset data, staying ahead of compliance deadlines, and catching problems before they turn into work orders. Another important theme came up again and again: knowledge transfer. Experienced technicians are retiring, and their institutional knowledge is walking out the door with them.
In our role as CMMS provider for leading healthcare systems across the US, incorporating AI into the product is top priority – and we already have.
3. Digital twins are becoming the future visual system of record
Static floor plans and drawings have never told the full story of what's actually happening inside a hospital: where equipment really lives, how systems connect, what's changed since the last renovation. Digital twins are the industry's answer to that gap.
What facilities leaders described wanting is a single virtual model of their physical space that ties everything together: assets, work orders, floor plans, photos and other media, CAD and LiDAR scans, the areas each system serves, and compliance status, all in one place instead of spread across five tools. Nobody was debating whether digital twins are a good idea. The real conversation was about how to build one without starting from scratch. As more teams get hands-on experience, digital twins are starting to look like where visual documentation is headed by default, not a futuristic extra.
4. Building automation integration has moved from nice-to-have to must-have
Building automation systems aren't new. What has changed is how much patience facilities teams have for a BAS that doesn't talk to anything else.
The standard now is for alerts and alarms to flow straight into the same system where the rest of the work gets managed, automatically generating work orders and asset notifications instead of sitting on a separate screen that someone has to remember to check. Nobody wants another dashboard to monitor. They want it handled inside the system they already use every day.
Conclusion
If there was one thread running through all four conversations, it's that facilities teams are done with disconnected systems and "someday" technology. Whether it's planning for a cyberattack, putting AI to work, building a digital twin, or pulling BAS alarms into daily workflows, everyone wanted the same thing: fewer screens, better data, and tools that help them keep the building running. We left Minneapolis energized, and we don't want to wait until next year to keep these conversations going. If any of these topics are on your team's radar, let's talk.
Interested in learning more about healthcare's leading CMMS? Contact the team at FSI to see how our solution can help your facilities management teams.