It’s been a busy few weeks for Qualtrics. Two weeks after announcing its XM Data & AI platform – coming in 2027 – it held an (understandably) long-delayed coming out party for its plans to dominate the healthcare industry. Although Qualtrics announced its intention to acquire PG Forsta last year, the deal didn’t close until May of this year, postponing necessary conversations between the two companies’ employees until all regulatory hurdles were cleared.

There’s a lot that’s still fuzzy, but some things are now quite clear:

  • This is a “yes, and” situation for Press Ganey clients. Press Ganey’s platforms and resources will remain available to clients for the foreseeable future, and they now have access to Qualtrics – with contract flexibility that enables a single pricing model that works across interactions regardless of the platform.
  • Qualtrics is betting big on synthetic research. The company has developed dozens of different synthetic personas and “cohorts” of customers, based on actual customer data, and these cohorts can be used to query and test with synthetic panels of many different customer types – including ones that are hard to reach, such as persistently disengaged patients. Future capabilities look to enable HCOs to ‘converse’ with these patients to understand hesitations, perceptions, and what next best action will actually influence behavior change.
  • The goal is to get to the “So what?” faster. Qualtrics’ data and analytics teams are developing and advancing AI-powered predictive capabilities that will parse signals and identify just-in-time decisions and proactive interventions, such as prioritizing patients for rounding or adding evening appointment availability. This will empower more HCOs to right size solutions and get from “this is the problem” to “this is the best solution for us.”

That said, the fuzzy is still pretty fuzzy. Though some of the underlying capabilities exist today, a concrete roadmap outlining what will be delivered when hasn’t been shared yet. We have to be realistic about the bold future Qualtrics envisions: a connected ecosystem that combines patient, clinician, payer, operational, and experience data to improve outcomes and business performance. As our colleague Colleen Fazio wrote after the XM Data & AI launch event, some of these features (like predictive capabilities) are things that have been promised in this market for years.

Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations still lack the interoperable data foundations required to support that vision. We also know that client-side data infrastructures – especially in healthcare – are still hugely fragmented and often have significant hygiene and governance issues. This is also a dramatically different way of thinking, because healthcare organizations are used to focusing on what’s within their sphere of control, but Qualtrics is leveraging Press Ganey to evolve towards ecosystem-level approaches. Not all organizations may want to get in on that, at least initially.

More announcements are sure to come. We expect the next batch at Press Ganey’s HX27 conference in February 2027, followed by Qualtrics’s (retitled) XM conference in April 2027.

What to do for now

Forrester clients can schedule a guidance session to discuss the implications of these announcements and what is to come, or read our recent research covering Qualtrics, including the latest Wave from Colleen Fazio and Boris Evelson, The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management And Analytics Solutions, Q3 2026. Highlights are available in their post-Wave blog post.

Not a Forrester client? We have published multiple blogs covering Qualtrics’ journey over the last year, including its AI and healthcare ambitions. Check them out below!

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