Over the past decade, healthcare organisations have learned a hard lesson: replacing one monolithic EHR with another does not deliver transformation. True progress requires a different architectural mindset. The Postmodern EHR emerged as a response to this reality, separating stable, standardised clinical data from rapidly evolving applications, and enabling health systems to modernise without repeated system replacements.

In this session, Tomaž Gornik will build on the Postmodern EHR concept and explore how it is now maturing through two powerful forces: artificial intelligence and national-scale platform deployments. What began as an architectural vision is increasingly becoming the operating model for regions, countries, and large healthcare systems seeking both innovation and long-term resilience.

The presentation will examine how national shared care records and digital health platforms are providing the durable data foundations that Postmodern EHR architectures depend on. By providing clinical information in open repositories, these platforms enable multiple EHRs, specialist systems, and new digital services to coexist while sharing a single, trusted patient record. This model is already supporting nationwide services such as shared medication lists, patient portals, registries, and cross-border data exchange.

Building on this foundation, Tomaž will explore how AI can be safely and effectively introduced into healthcare systems when the underlying data architecture is sound. Rather than focusing on standalone AI tools, the session will show how AI becomes a system capability: supporting clinical modelling, assisting with data capture and structuring, enabling semantic enrichment, and accelerating the development of new clinical workflows. Crucially, these capabilities depend on high-quality, standardised data and strong governance, conditions that Postmodern EHR platforms are designed to provide.

This session is intended for digital health leaders, policymakers, architects, and clinical informatics professionals shaping the future of healthcare at the regional or national scale. Participants will gain a clear understanding of how Postmodern EHR principles, combined with AI and platform-based infrastructure, are enabling a new generation of patient-centred health systems.