Shama Hyder
Shama Hyder keynote speaker for Healthcare

Keynote Speaker · Healthcare

Healthcare Keynote Speaker
Shama Hyder

Keynotes on AI adoption, patient experience, and Strategic Urgency for health systems, medical associations, digital health companies, and payers. Named to the 2026 TIME100 Creators list in the Leaders category. Check availability for your event date.

Why Healthcare Organizations Choose Shama

What Healthcare Leaders Actually Need Right Now

Healthcare leaders are navigating simultaneous changes in AI, clinical workflows, revenue cycle operations, patient engagement, and workforce dynamics. The keynote explores how to decide which changes deserve strategic attention and which can wait.

Shama is a Professor at Link School of Business. She built and led Zen Media for 17 years before selling the company. She advises leaders at Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase, and has delivered keynotes for EMAAR and SEMA. Her books include the forthcoming Seven Signals (Simon & Schuster, 2027), The Applied AI Business Playbook, Momentum, and The Zen of Social Media Marketing.

For healthcare audiences, Strategic Urgency examines how leaders can distinguish meaningful signals from temporary turbulence and decide when to test an idea or pursue broader organizational change.

Healthcare programs can be tailored with relevant industry data, examples, and framing for the audience, event format, and conference theme.

Booking Info

Formats

25, 45, 60 min · Workshop · Emcee

Availability

In-person · Virtual · Hybrid

Contact

team@shamahyder.com

Check Availability →

Hyder Index · Healthcare & MedTech

Healthcare is changing faster than organizations are responding

61

Significant Gap

71

Change score

49

Response score

70%

Keeping up

Healthcare & MedTech scored 61 in the October 2026 reading, a Significant Gap. Change scored 71 and response scored 49, so companies are keeping up with about 70% of the change around them.

The score held at 61 from September and is down from 66 in May. The gap has narrowed, but change is still ahead of response. The October reading notes that OpenAI connected ChatGPT for Healthcare to Epic's record system, with UCSF Health as a pilot partner, and that the FDA kept AI radiology software under premarket review. It found little evidence of hospitals changing their own budgets, hiring or workforce.

For a healthcare leader, that means AI is arriving through Epic's record system and FDA review, and the organization's own budgets, hiring and workforce plans have to catch up. Shama's Strategic Urgency keynote gives your leaders a way to decide which of those changes to act on first.

Shama created the Hyder Index to measure the Change-Response Gap: how fast industries are changing versus how fast companies are responding. 50 means even, higher means a wider gap, and 60 to 69 is a Significant Gap. A new reading is published the first Tuesday of every month. See the full Healthcare & MedTech reading →

“Shama Hyder's session was incredibly informative, engaging, and approachable. She delivered valuable, tangible takeaways tailored specifically to our audience, making AI feel accessible and actionable. From an event planning perspective, Shama and her team were wonderful to work with. If you're looking for a dynamic speaker with a focus on AI, I highly recommend Shama Hyder.”

Emily Murnen

Event Manager | DSOA LLC

Watch Shama

Unlocking AI-Powered Customer Experience

A 90-second clip from her 2025 Health & Fitness Association keynote. Shama explains why customers feel friction a company can’t see and walks through her People, Process, Personalization model. Patient experience teams face the same question: where does the friction sit, and what should AI fix first?

Check Availability →More videos in the speaker kit →

Topics

Keynotes for Healthcare leaders

Applied AI for Healthcare Leaders

Healthcare leaders know AI is not optional anymore. The challenge is knowing where to start, which use cases deliver near-term ROI, and how to implement without disrupting clinical teams or eroding patient trust. Shama delivers a practical, framework-driven keynote that cuts through the AI hype and gives healthcare executives a clear system for evaluating, prioritizing, and adopting AI in ways that are operationally sound and patient-centered. Designed for digital health summits, health system leadership events, revenue cycle and operations conferences.

Strategic Urgency for Healthcare

Healthcare organizations face a constant stream of market signals — regulatory shifts, technology breakthroughs, workforce pressures, payer changes, and competitive moves. The leaders who win are not the ones who react to all of them. They're the ones who know which signals are truly urgent and which can wait. Shama's Strategic Urgency framework gives healthcare teams a repeatable system for making that distinction, informed by 17 years of building and leading Zen Media through technology change. Designed for annual leadership summits, CEO forums, health system board strategy sessions.

Winning Patient Loyalty in the AI Era

Patient expectations have shifted permanently. Digital-native patients now compare their healthcare experience to their best consumer experience. AI is creating both the pressure and the opportunity to close that gap. Shama delivers the strategic playbook for healthcare organizations using AI to create more personalized, more responsive patient experiences at scale — without losing the human connection that drives loyalty. Designed for patient experience conferences, consumer health events, healthcare marketing summits.

Leading Transformation Without Losing Your Team

Healthcare transformation depends on trust across clinical staff, administrative teams, and management. This keynote examines leadership choices around organizational change, team communication, and adoption planning. Designed for healthcare leadership development programs, workforce and culture events, and health system all-hands.

Frequently Asked Questions

What topics does Shama Hyder cover as a healthcare keynote speaker?

Shama speaks on Applied AI for Healthcare Leaders — covering practical AI adoption strategies that balance clinical innovation with operational efficiency and patient trust. She also delivers her proprietary Strategic Urgency framework, which helps healthcare executives identify which market signals demand action now versus which can wait. Additional topics include winning patient loyalty in the digital age, leading organizational transformation without burning out teams, and building a resilient healthcare brand in a disruption-heavy environment. All keynotes are customized to your health system's specific challenges, audience level, and conference theme.

Is Shama a fit for healthcare events where AI is a central topic?

Yes. Shama tailors this keynote for health systems, medical associations, digital-health companies, payers, patient-experience leaders, and healthcare leadership audiences focused on practical AI adoption.

How do the healthcare AI, patient-experience, and workshop programs differ?

The healthcare keynote is tailored for health systems, medical associations, digital-health companies, payers, and patient-experience audiences. The broader AI keynote serves cross-industry rooms, the customer-experience keynote focuses on loyalty and trust, and Rewired adds hands-on AI workshop time.

Why hire a healthcare keynote speaker who is not a clinician?

Shama approaches healthcare audiences from an operator and business-strategy perspective. She built and led Zen Media for 17 years before selling the company, advises leaders at Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase, and brings that experience to conversations about AI adoption, patient experience, and organizational change.

What types of healthcare events does Shama speak at?

Annual health system leadership summits, medical association conferences, hospital CEO forums, healthcare innovation events, revenue cycle and patient experience conferences, PE-backed healthcare portfolio gatherings, digital health summits, and women in healthcare leadership events. Her audience has ranged from frontline clinical managers to C-suite executives and health system boards.

How does Shama customize her keynote for a healthcare audience?

Before every keynote, Shama's team conducts a pre-event briefing to understand the audience composition, the strategic priorities your organization is navigating, your conference theme, and the specific outcomes you want attendees to leave with. Healthcare-specific case studies, regulatory context, and industry data are woven throughout. The result is a keynote that feels built for your room — not recycled from a generic speaking circuit.

What formats are available for healthcare conferences?

Available formats include 25, 45, and 60-minute keynotes, executive workshops, panel moderation, and fireside chats. A keynote can also be paired with the Rewired AI Workshop for additional hands-on implementation time.

How far in advance should I book Shama for a healthcare conference?

Submit an inquiry at shamahyder.com/check-availability or email team@shamahyder.com with the event date, location, audience, and preferred format to check current availability.

Ready to Book?

Book Shama for your Healthcare event

Every keynote is custom-tailored to your audience and industry. Contact us to check availability.

Check Availability →team@shamahyder.com →