It seems that each year, new technologies and research drive changes in the medical field and nowhere was this more obvious in 2025 than in occupational health. This year was truly a year of transformation for the field with new guidelines from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM), the expanding number of AI use cases for occupational healthcare providers, and a growing understanding of how climate change is impacting worker health.
In this roundup we’re sharing some of our most read occupational health content to remind our readers of the year’s most important stories and start the New Year with insights that inspire action.
Read on to learn more.
ACOEM Releases New Guidelines for Occupational Electronic Health Records
In April 2025, one of the most important organizations overseeing the practice of occupational healthcare released new guidelines for organizations looking to start – or modernize – the occupational electronic healthcare record system (OEHR) fueling their occ health program. These guidelines help address the many nuances in the field regarding data governance, privacy, and interoperability, and provide organizations looking to implement an OEHR or upgrade an existing solution with the insights they need to make good decisions.
In this article we talked with occupational healthcare leaders to breakdown the 10 new guidelines and identify some of the most important factors that businesses, government agencies, and healthcare providers should take into consideration when evaluating solutions,
“Privacy and security obviously impact clinic staff, but as a quality-of-life improvement, medical surveillance is essential,” said Samantha Lodish, a former occupational health provider and administrator at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Health. “The ability to track employee compliance, have reminders go out automatically, and have employees complete documents or report injuries and illnesses online without having to step away from their workplace is something you can’t explain to somebody until they’ve seen it.”
Read the full article here.
AI Reshapes Occupational Health in Care Delivery and Information Management
There is virtually no field that AI has not started to reshape in 2025. For Occupational Health providers, right now the most significant use case is in helping improve clinical workflows. For example, some providers are using ambient AI to transcribe patient encounters, enabling them to spend more time connecting with the patient and also to reduce administrative burdens.
But, as Jeff Donnell, CEO and President of Enterprise Health, discussed during his presentation at this year’s Association of Occupational Health Professionals in Healthcare (AOHP) annual conference, while there’s a lot of talk about AI, not many occupational health clinics have begun to implement AI tools. His advice to occupational health practitioners and practice managers is to “just try it” citing well thought out use cases and new standards, like the FAVES framework, that will help guide the adoption of AI and help avoid pitfalls.
Perhaps the biggest issue in adopting AI in occupational healthcare clinics is the concern that AI will replace humans in the workplace. Donnell doesn’t see that happening, but he does believe that potential lost jobs will go to humans who understand how to use and extract value through AI.
Curious to learn more about AI in occupational health? Click here.
Climate Change is Making the Workplace More Dangerous
With one of the hottest and wettest summers on record, followed by the coldest and snowiest start to winter in decades, it’s clear that our climate is, in fact, changing. For most of us, climate change, thus far, has meant higher electricity bills and maybe a firsthand encounter with flooding or a wildfire.
However, for the millions of Americans who work outdoors or in factories, the impacts of climate change are far more dangerous. And, for the organizations that employ these workers and whose business depends on the continuity of operations, their challenge is to figure out how to protect their workers and manage risk for the organization.
The International Occupational Medical Society Collaborative (IOMSC) is one of the leading organizations addressing these issues in collaboration with occupational health experts and other partner organizations. At this year’s meeting, IOMSC launched a long-term project to understand the impact of extreme heat on workers around the world, create guidelines to protect workers’ physical and cognitive health, and ultimately, reduce worker deaths.
Learn more about the impact of climate change on worker health here. And subscribe to Future Healthcare Today to receive future articles on the vital role occupational health plays in mitigating the impacts of climate change on worker health.