AVBCC 2026: The Future of Oncology AI Is Already Here

I landed in New York last week still buzzing from CHAI in Austin, where the conversation was all about how health systems can adopt AI responsibly. A few hours later I was walking into the New York Athletic Club for the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care (AVBCC) Summit, where that same question was being asked by the people who actually run cancer care: oncologists, practice leaders, payers, pharmacy directors, and policymakers.

It was also one of the rare weeks when our team was all in one place. Dan Caron, Doug Cassidy, and I spent three days working the halls together, and I came home with one overwhelming impression: what we are building at Health Universe no longer sounds like the far-flung future to oncologists and administrators. It sounds like now. And it is being warmly embraced.

A setting worth the trip

There are conference centers, and then there is the New York Athletic Club. AVBCC has made the NYAC its home for years, and it is easy to see why. Sitting on Central Park South, the club carries more than a century and a half of history, and it gives the summit a feel that no convention hall can match. Sessions ran across the 9th floor Lounge and the 10th floor suites, and the hallways in between became some of the most productive meeting rooms of the week.

AVBCC runs as an invitation-only forum, and the setting reinforces that. You are not shouting over a trade-show floor. You are having real conversations, over coffee or between panels, with the people who make decisions about how cancer care is delivered and paid for. Our thanks to the AVBCC team and the NYAC staff for hosting such a well-run three days.

What we heard: the themes that defined AVBCC 2026

The agenda was packed, with dozens of sessions spanning policy, payment, pharmacy, and technology. A few themes kept surfacing no matter which room I was in.

1. AI is moving from point solutions to infrastructure. The first wave of oncology AI produced a crowded field of single-purpose tools for documentation, prior auth, trial matching, coding, and patient engagement. A recurring message this year was that oncology care is not a set of disconnected tasks. It is a long, complex workflow that spans physicians, nurses, pharmacists, payers, and life sciences. Panels like "From Point Solutions to Practice Infrastructure" asked whether AI can become a connective layer across that whole arc, from pre-visit planning to toxicity monitoring to real-world evidence. Leaders want a foundation, not another login.

2. Value-based care has a measurement problem, and AI may be the fix. Several sessions made the case that value-based cancer care has not stalled because the goal was wrong, but because oncology has lacked a usable way to measure what matters. Outcomes-based contracts have repeatedly broken down under data complexity and attribution disputes. The question in the room was whether AI, EHR-derived data, ePROs, and interoperability standards can finally make value measurable, auditable, and actionable. The use-case sessions from organizations putting value-based contracts into practice suggested the industry is ready to move from talk to execution.

3. From surveillance to foresight. Bispecifics, CAR-T, radiopharmaceuticals, and complex oral regimens are moving into community oncology faster than the infrastructure to support them. Multiple panels argued that reactive monitoring is no longer enough when toxicity can escalate in hours. The goal is to use longitudinal patient data to anticipate which patients are heading toward trouble, and act before it happens.

4. Collapsing the wall between research and routine care. Sessions on clinical trial gaps and the research-care divide pushed for embedding research-grade data capture into everyday workflows, so every patient interaction can inform care and evidence generation. Trial enrollment, biomarker testing, and real-world evidence all came back to the same root issue: the data exists, but it is not organized or put to work.

5. Humans and AI as partners. Across the board, the message was not "AI replaces clinicians." It was about building the right partnership: letting AI handle the data-heavy, repetitive work while clinicians keep the judgment, context, and empathy that cancer care demands. Security, privacy, and governance were treated as prerequisites, not afterthoughts.

Layered on top of all of this was a policy backdrop that no one could ignore, from the IRA's effect on oncology economics to the future of prior authorization and conversations with CMS leadership. The pressure on practices to do more with less is real, and it is making the case for practical AI more urgent.

Funding cancer innovation: on the panel with Dan and Oncology Ventures

One of my personal highlights was joining Dan on the Thursday morning conversation, "A Working Playbook for Funding Cancer Innovation," moderated by Ben Freeberg of Oncology Ventures, alongside Kaitlin Christine of Gabbi.

They talked candidly about what it takes to build and fund companies in oncology today: how investors evaluate AI companies in a crowded market, why proving value in real clinical workflows matters more than a slick demo, and how founders can align with the economic realities that practices and health systems face. Ben brought the investor lens, Kaitlin brought the founder's perspective, and Dan shared what we have learned building Health Universe as a platform that health systems can actually deploy. It was an early start, but the room was full and the questions kept coming well after we wrapped.

Health Universe on the main stage

On Friday morning, Dan took the main stage in the 9th floor Lounge for "AI on Display: Transforming Oncology," a showcase of live demonstrations from companies building AI for cancer care. Rather than a slide presentation, each company took the audience directly inside its platform.

Dan walked through how Health Universe works: a HIPAA-compliant, ONC-certified platform for deploying AI agents directly against clinical data, inside the workflows care teams already use. He showed how our skills can be assembled and deployed to tackle the exact problems the summit had been debating for two days, whether that is surfacing patients for trials, organizing longitudinal data for monitoring, or pulling together the evidence needed for value-based contracts.

Why our platform resonated

What struck me most was the reaction. In past years, a conversation about AI agents working on clinical data often started with skepticism or a polite "maybe someday." This year, attendees came to us with specific use cases already in mind. They asked how quickly they could get started, how our skills plug into their existing systems, and how we handle security and governance.

That shift maps directly onto the themes of the summit. Leaders are tired of point solutions. They want infrastructure that connects their data and workflows, that can be deployed safely, and that can grow with them as needs change. That is exactly what we have built. Our skills give teams reusable, purpose-built capabilities they can put to work quickly, and our platform gives them the compliance and control that oncology demands.

Doug, Dan, and I left with a stack of follow-ups from practice leaders, cancer centers, and partners who want to keep the conversation going.

The future is now

If there was one takeaway from AVBCC 2026, it is this: AI in oncology has crossed a line. It is no longer a question of if, but how, and how fast. Oncologists and administrators are not waiting for a far-off future. They are looking for partners who can help them put AI to work today, responsibly and at scale.

This is a really exciting time for Health Universe. Going from CHAI in Austin to AVBCC in New York in the same week, I saw the same thing in both rooms: the healthcare community is ready. We are grateful to everyone who stopped by, joined our sessions, and shared their challenges with us. Let's keep building.

If you met us at AVBCC, or wish you had, we would love to continue the conversation. Reach out to the Health Universe team to see how our platform and skills can work for your organization.