Agentic AI connects global software with local healthcare

The Salesforce World Tour brings together a collection of experts, customers, and panelists every year to discuss AI innovations and data solutions. It offers attendees the opportunity to hear success stories and serves as a marketplace of ideas for the future of AI integration and how big technology can promote real, industry-specific change while also driving business growth.

This year, Salesforce invited athenahealth Chief Strategy Officer Michael Palantoni to speak on the two companies’ partnership and the launch of the Agentforce for Health platform. Palantoni focused mainly on one touchstone: how agentic AI and large-scale technology can help enhance interoperability with local health systems.

The healthcare industry faces a constant challenge: optimizing workflows without becoming overwhelmed by technology. At the same time, payers and providers need stronger connections with local health systems. Palantoni explained how athenahealth’s partnership with Salesforce and its integration of agentic AI helps meet both needs – streamlining operations for payers and providers while simultaneously helping improve patient communication and engagement.

Why agentic AI matters in healthcare

Clinicians want to spend the bulk of their time on what matters most – providing real and translatable patient care. Too often, however, they find themselves bogged down by administrative tasks and paperwork.

According to athenahealth’s 2025 Physician Sentiment Survey (PSS), clinicians spend an average of 15 hours per week on administrative tasks¹. The emergence of electronic health records (EHR) and AI-powered solutions aim to remedy this problem. But EHR learning curves and a lack of automation can sometimes contribute to more work and clinician burnout. That’s where agentic AI comes into play.

You might think of traditional AI as a “prompt and response” model. But agentic AI does more than simply respond to inputs and data. It interprets and analyzes the data to take action in streamlining and offloading repetitive tasks for clinicians. In doing so, agentic AI can benefit patients by expanding the potential for patient engagement.

Indeed, agentic AI can provide direct inputs and something of a line of communication to patients themselves by accessing data in the connected ecosystem. With appropriate permissions, agentic AI solutions can access patient histories to help clinicians assess needs and potential care gaps, then leverage the data to help provide insights for clinicians to action on or adapt as needed. That level of outreach promotes greater connectivity from global cloud-based software all the way to local health systems, practices, and individual patients.

How Agentforce for Health helps promote interoperability

Promoting interoperability and increasing data sharing between payers, providers, and patients has become more important than ever in the current healthcare ecosystem. However, Palantoni feels interoperability is still lagging behind.

During his appearance at the Salesforce World Tour, Palantoni argued that interoperability suffers in patient- and consumer-driven spaces, citing things like access, scheduling, and important communications and follow-ups as critical areas for improvement. Integrating Salesforce’s Agentforce for Health toolkit with the athenahealth platform can help offer solutions in these areas.

Palantoni discussed appointment scheduling as a particular use case. With Agentforce for Health, patients can call in and connect to agents with real-time API integration. The documented information then lands in the athenahealth system, which helps schedule patients directly with their local practice – also taking into account care history, health status, potential care gaps, and existing practice rules.

The use case reinforces how agentic AI can help enhance patient engagement.

“This is a type of interoperability that is not just the clinical data for the providers,” Palantoni said, “but now puts the patient in the middle of that – of how they are communicating with their practice.”

Allowing patients direct access to a national platform like Salesforce while simultaneously leveraging agentic AI systems within the athenahealth portfolio can help establish better connectivity with local service organizations and PCPs.

Providing specialized tools to satisfy individual practice needs

The benefits of agentic AI can only help clinicians if they are readily accessible. For those reasons, agentic AI solutions within the athenahealth Marketplace integrate directly with the athenaOne® solution. These AI-powered solutions aren’t just accessible: they offer different, specialized tools that can cater to individual practice needs.

Some practices might incorporate Health Talk A.I. if they are prioritizing closing care gaps to meet value-based requirement (VBC) care gaps or fostering more patient interaction and satisfaction. Health Talk A.I. acts as an extension of care teams by automating patient outreach, intake, and scheduling. It also facilitates patient interactions with secure messaging and scheduling capabilities while also documenting and communicating important follow-ups.

Alternatively, practices in culturally diverse or multinational communities may opt for DeepCura AI Agent. The platform supports 17 different languages and aids clinicians in every step of a patient encounter. DeepCura AI engages patients before appointments and gathers structured health data before they see providers. The initial intake serves as a backbone, helping automate clinical workflows every step of the way by extracting important information during visits and providing structured notes for post-visit insights and follow-ups.

Multiple agentic AI solutions within the athenahealth Marketplace can also help automate prescription refills. The solutions synthesize data and patient profiles to help suggest a refill for clinician approval before sending refills directly to the nearest pharmacy, closing the intake loophole.

The growing availability and variety of agentic AI solutions can help enable greater localization and EHR customization. Some will be available natively as part of AI-native athenaOne. Practices can choose the solution that best meets their current needs and immediately include them in the integrated workflow. And remember, these agents will proactively synthesize and interpret data in the ecosystem to help automate administrative tasks. So, instead of dealing with a new technological learning curve, clinicians can focus on work that truly applies to patient care.

This is a type of interoperability that is not just the clinical data for the providers,” Palantoni said, “but now puts the patient in the middle of that – of how they are communicating with their practice.

Partnership with Salesforce deploys agentic AI solutions on national and local scale

Palantoni repeatedly stressed the importance of reaching local health networks. The partnership between Salesforce and athenahealth is a step in the right direction.

By integrating with the athenahealth platform, Salesforce’s national cloud capabilities are grounded in rich, real-time data from local healthcare ecosystems — helping to enhance true interoperability. When Agentic AI agents can access and act on that data, they do more than streamline workflows; they can help drive better patient outcomes, reduce administrative burdens, and free clinicians to focus on delivering meaningful care.