The Digital Frontier: How Children's Wisconsin is Redefining Pediatric Care

LAS VEGAS, NV – March 05, 2026 – As the healthcare industry converges on Las Vegas for the annual HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition, a spotlight is shining on one of the most complex and critical areas of medicine: pediatrics. In a field where patient care inherently involves an entire family unit, Children’s Wisconsin is emerging as a leader by pioneering a digital-first approach to family engagement. In partnership with the care orchestration platform Xealth, the health system is set to unveil the strategy behind its innovative Family Health Engagement Platform at HIMSS26.

The upcoming session, titled 'Creating a Digital Family Engagement Platform that Demonstrates Value,' will feature Children’s Wisconsin's Chief Medical Information Officer, Dr. Kimberly Cronsell, alongside Xealth's COO and Co-founder, Aaron Sheedy. Their presentation promises to offer a blueprint for how health systems can strategically deploy digital tools to deepen patient connections, empower families, and, most importantly, demonstrate tangible value in a landscape crowded with technological promises.

A New Prescription for Pediatric Engagement

For years, a significant challenge in pediatric care has been ensuring that families receive consistent, understandable, and timely information. A child's diagnosis can trigger a whirlwind of appointments across different settings—from an emergency department visit to an inpatient stay or a follow-up at an ambulatory clinic. In the past, this fragmented journey often led to families receiving varied, sometimes conflicting, educational materials, creating confusion and anxiety.

Children's Wisconsin has tackled this problem head-on by standardizing its educational content through its new digital platform. Now, a family receives the same core information and resources for a specific condition regardless of where or when they interact with the health system. This move not only enhances health literacy but also builds a foundation of trust and reliability. The platform is designed to be a single source of truth, delivering a tailored, data-driven experience that goes far beyond simple information delivery.

The initiative is a direct response to the unique challenges of pediatric digital health. Navigating the stringent privacy regulations of both HIPAA and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) while designing an experience that is engaging for both children and their adult caregivers requires a nuanced approach. By focusing on a 'digital-first' strategy for family engagement, Children's Wisconsin is creating a system that learns what works. The health system is actively analyzing how families interact with the materials, seeking to understand the most effective content and timing for different patient populations. This data-driven feedback loop is crucial for refining the platform and ensuring it meets the evolving needs of families.

The Power of Care Orchestration

The technological backbone for this transformation is provided by Xealth. In a market where new digital health tools are constantly emerging, the primary obstacle for health systems is not a lack of options, but the difficulty of integrating them into a cohesive strategy. Clinicians are already facing immense pressure and burnout, and the prospect of juggling multiple disparate applications and logins is a non-starter.

This is where the concept of 'care orchestration' becomes critical. Xealth's platform embeds digital programs, patient education, remote monitoring tools, and other clinical workflows directly into the existing Electronic Health Record (EHR). For a doctor or nurse at Children's Wisconsin, this means they can 'prescribe' an educational video, a digital monitoring tool, or a specific care plan from the same interface they use to manage every other aspect of a patient's chart. This seamless integration eliminates friction, reduces the administrative burden on care teams, and ensures that digital tools become a natural extension of the clinical workflow rather than an additional chore.

This strategy positions Xealth as a key enabler in a competitive digital health landscape. While EHR giants like MEDITECH and Oracle Health are building out their own patient engagement tools, and platforms like Praia Health focus on patient experience orchestration, Xealth’s advantage lies in its ability to act as a universal adapter, allowing health systems to integrate best-in-class solutions from over 70 partners without disrupting established workflows. The collaboration with Children's Wisconsin serves as a powerful case study, demonstrating how this orchestration can be applied to a highly specialized field like pediatrics to drive scalable and meaningful change.

From Data to Deeper Connections

Ultimately, the goal of the Children's Wisconsin and Xealth collaboration extends beyond technological implementation. It aims to fundamentally change the relationship between healthcare providers and the families they serve. By delivering personalized, timely, and consistent digital education, the platform empowers parents and caregivers to become more active and confident participants in their child's health journey.

This shift moves care beyond the four walls of the hospital. An empowered family is better equipped to manage conditions at home, recognize warning signs, and adhere to treatment plans, which can lead to better health outcomes and fewer emergency visits. The data gathered from the platform on family engagement provides invaluable insights, helping care teams understand what information resonates most and when it is most needed. This creates a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement, strengthening the bond between the health system and its patients.

As Xealth's Aaron Sheedy noted, this approach has clear benefits for all involved. “Activating digital care resources that are easily accessible to families and caregivers drives better outcomes and strengthens the bond between health systems and patients,” he said. “This approach delivers clear, measurable benefits for patients, caregivers, and providers, enhancing the overall care experience. We are honored to work with innovators such as Children’s Wisconsin, who push the industry forward by demonstrating tangible improvements.”

The presentation at HIMSS26 is poised to be more than just a project showcase; it represents a significant step forward in the digital transformation of healthcare. By proving that a thoughtfully designed digital engagement platform can deliver measurable value in the complex world of pediatrics, Children's Wisconsin and Xealth are offering a model that other health systems will be watching closely.