Three critical tech mistakes Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) can't afford to make in 2025 involve mishandling AI, overlooking cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and creating unsustainable IT integration.

Mishandling AI Governance and Data Quality

• Failing to establish robust governance for AI tools leads to risks like biased algorithms, privacy breaches, and compliance violations.

• Poor data quality—plagued by silos, incomplete records, or inconsistent standards—results in unreliable AI outputs, potentially harming decision-making and equity.

• CBOs must treat data stewardship and transparent AI oversight as board-level priorities, investing in frameworks for validation, reviewing model decisions, and ensuring accountability.

Overlooking Third-Party and Vendor Cybersecurity Threats

• Many healthcare CBOs now depend on outside software or cloud vendors—yet outages, breaches, or attacks on these providers directly endanger continuity of care and patient trust.

• Recent high-profile vendor breaches demonstrate how indirect vulnerabilities can have devastating operational and reputational impacts.

• CBOs need to vet vendor security rigorously, include cyber resilience clauses in contracts, and maintain incident response plans for vendor-related risks.

Creating Unmanageable Technology Integration Complexity

• In the rush to modernize, some organizations connect new platforms “point-to-point” with older legacy systems, leading to brittle architectures and mounting technical debt.

• Lack of a long-term integration plan makes IT ecosystems hard to manage, scale, or secure—hampering innovation and stalling digital health initiatives.

• Sustainable success depends on hybrid strategies: gradual core system modernization, flexible integration frameworks, and retiring obsolete tools before new rollouts.

CBOs prepared for 2025 will resist quick fixes, proactively govern their data and tech stack, and demand high standards from every technology partner—ensuring both mission impact and operational resilience.