When it comes to adoption among physicians, augmented intelligence (AI) has definitively turned the corner. According to findings from a survey issued by the AMA’s Center for Digital Health and AI, 81 percent of physicians are using the tools, making a significant uptick from recent years.
One of the key factors? Usability, according to Margaret Lozovatsky, MD. “Unlike in the past, when the perception was that the technology wasn’t sophisticated enough to be an enabler, now it feels like an enabler,” she said. “We’re finally starting to see clinicians say, ‘I can’t practice medicine without this.’”
Margaret Lozovatsky, MD
However, there is still reluctance around adopting AI, which leaders must be aware of. “Physicians need to trust these technologies,” she noted. During a recent interview, Lozovatsky, who joined the AMA as VP of Digital Health in early 2024, shared insights on how health systems leaders can work to build trust, which will become increasingly critical as AI initiatives continue to dominate strategic discussions.
“We’re seeing such high rates of adoption,” whether it’s for summarization, predictive models, or other uses. “This is unprecedented for clinical technology in my experience,” she said. “Clinicians like it because it decreases their workload and their cognitive load. It’s easy to use things that are helpful.”
What isn’t so easy is managing the pressure physicians face when it comes to patient safety. “There’s a lot of caution in the clinical environment to ensure that these tools are being rolled out safely,” she said. “We need to continue to build that trust.”
And while there’s no blueprint that will work across every organization, there are core elements that can help spur confidence and foster adoption.
The first is ensuring clinicians have a seat at the table. “If you have the right clinicians that are involved in the development and design of these technologies, it becomes integrated into their workflow, and you get buy-in,” she noted. Doing so can also help ensure AI initiatives are aligned with the organization’s strategic objectives, rather than being a ‘side project.’ “It’s about understanding what problem we’re trying to solve, and what’s the roadmap for solving that problem.”
That’s where governance comes in, noted Lozovatsky. At Novant Health, where she served as CHIO, the strategy was to create a “leadership triad” in which a physician, nurse, and informaticist worked together to identify and solve problems. One problem was the ever-increasing demand for tools, which she attributed to a lack of awareness around which functionalities are already available.
“To me, that means that we’ve failed in the design perhaps, but also in the education and the training that was not intuitive.” Additionally, “there was concern that if something goes wrong, there’s not a way to report this issue,” she said. “And that if there were changes to clinical guidelines and workflows, there wasn’t a robust process to monitor the output.”
These issues, as she learned, were hardly unique in healthcare, which is part of what prompted her to join the AMA – an organization she had been involved with for nearly a decade as an advisor. When they reached out about a possible opening, Lozovatsky welcomed the opportunity to amplify the voice of physician leaders, who have traditionally been positioned “at the elbow helping people figure out which buttons to push,” she noted.
That, however, is changing. In recent years, the CMIO/CHIO has evolved into an executive leader who can help drive clinical technology implementation. Having organizations like the AMA in their corner can “support the clinician voice,” and serve as a key advocate.
That support will become increasingly crucial as augmented intelligence continues to shape strategic planning. Once adoption has reached critical mass, the next frontier is to determine “how to support the next phase of technologies,” which can be challenging given the number of new products hitting the market.”
For leaders, it means cutting through the noise and figuring out how to integrate AI “in a thoughtful way so we can impact both our clinicians and our patients in a positive manner,” she noted. “That’s the endpoint we’re all after.”
And although many organizations have reported improvements after deployed AI tools – particularly in decreasing cognitive burden and boosting satisfaction – there will always be hesitancy, Lozovatsky said, urging leaders not to push too hard.
“Instead of creating an environment where we judge our clinicians for their cautious approach, we should listen to the reasons for the caution and partner with them to address their concerns so that we don’t inadvertently create patient safety issues,” she said. “We need to think about these issues as we continue to drive for AI utilization, adoption, and integration.
“Ultimately, we’re there to care for patients. And so, we need to make sure that whatever we do has a positive impact on patient outcomes. That has to be the North Star.”
Rick Leesmann of Sky Lakes Medical Center and Kristin Seubold of Skagit Regional Health have taken different paths to the CIO role, but they’ve arrived at the same conviction: sustainable innovation requires getting the fundamentals right first.
There is a version of the CIO job that looks like a perpetual sprint toward the next technology – the next AI tool, the next platform, the next capability. Rick Leesmann and Kristin Seubold are running a different race. Both lead community health systems where resources are lean, teams are small, and the stakes of getting something wrong are felt immediately. And both have reached the same conclusion independently: before you can innovate, you have to build something worth building on.
Leesmann is the CIO at Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a role he stepped into in 2024 after years in large academic health systems. Seubold is VP and CIO at Skagit Regional Health in northwestern Washington, now in her third year leading IT for a two-hospital system serving Skagit and Snohomish counties.
Their career paths diverged in meaningful ways. Leesmann made a deliberate move from a 16,000-employee system to a smaller organization, while Seubold took seven months off before her CIO role to reflect on what she actually wanted. But the priorities they have set since arriving look remarkably alike.
Rick Leesmann
Ask either leader what they tackled first, and the answer is the same: governance. Not AI, not infrastructure, and not a splashy new platform, but the organizational machinery that determines what, when, and why.
At Sky Lakes, Leesmann found a governance structure that “loosely existed” but lacked real enterprise buy-in. IT was doing work, but not the work operational leaders actually wanted. The result was a department that was busy and undervalued at the same time.
“You can’t just port something that worked over here. What you can port are lessons in what worked well and what did not,” he said. “You have to give them a reason to trust; to believe that the time commitment is worth it.”
Seubold encountered a nearly identical situation at Skagit. Her team felt the same disconnect: significant effort, limited visibility, and a growing sense of being out of step with what partners needed.
“My team felt undervalued because they were doing a lot of work, but it wasn’t the work that our partners wanted. We need groups of people coming together to help advise on what to do,” she noted. And even then, “we can’t do it all at once. We need to sequence and prioritize it.”
For both CIOs, establishing formal governance wasn’t just an administrative step – it was a trust-building exercise that gave operational leaders a seat at the table and gave IT a clearer mandate. And critically, it created the conditions for faster action when the right opportunities appeared.
Case in point: within a year of standing up governance at Skagit, physicians were asking why they didn’t have AI scribing tools. Because the foundation was in place, her team was able to move quickly. “I feel pretty proud of that,” Seubold said. “We’re building literacy around what it means to use these tools.”
Both leaders have had to fight a version of the same perception problem: IT as a cost center, a service desk, or what Leesmann called a “science fair department” where the work doesn’t translate into actual outcomes.
“To truly be seen as a partner, you have to get in there and understand what operations are dealing with,” he noted. The solution? Relentless alignment: making sure every technology initiative can be traced back to a clinical or operational outcome. When IT is visible for the right reasons – and not just when something breaks – the entire relationship changes.
Kristin Seubold
Seubold framed it slightly differently, but the destination is the same. Her goal is to shift IT from a reactive team that responds to requests to a proactive team that helps the organization anticipate and prepare.
Governance, she maintained, is what makes that shift possible. “We’re trying to put some structure in place so that 80 percent of the time we are being proactive, while recognizing that our jobs do come with an ounce of reactivity, because there are some things we can’t anticipate.”
Both leaders have learned that the hardest part of transformation isn’t the technology; it’s the people. And both have invested deliberately in building organizational change capability as a core competency, not an afterthought.
At Skagit, Seubold repositioned an open project manager role to focus primarily on change enablement and communications. That person now consults across the department on any initiative with significant organizational impact.
“A lot of what I would hear when I got here was, ‘We told them it was coming, and then they act like they don’t know about it.’ This is an opportunity to think about how we might do it differently. How might we reach these people in a way that is more effective?”
Her approach centers on early, layered communication – what she termed awareness building – starting as soon as a significant change is on the horizon, and well before execution begins. When Skagit moved to Microsoft 365, a migration that touched how virtually everyone in the organization managed email and files, the change went smoothly, which Seubold credited the deliberate investment in change enablement.
Leesmann emphasized a similar principle: the “why” behind any change has to be communicated clearly, repeatedly, and before people are asked to act on it. It’s particularly true in organizations with long-tenured staff.
“Honoring the past and then talking about and explaining the ‘why’ for what’s coming next is critical,” he said, adding that it helps “plant a seed” and encourage participation.
Another hurdle both leaders face is the prospect of delivering care to geographically dispersed populations, often in areas with limited connectivity and finite access to traditional clinical settings.
At Sky Lakes, Leesmann’s team has tackled this through an Epic-enabled mobile health clinic, which is designed to bring care directly into rural communities. The initiative sounds straightforward until you get into the details: satellite connectivity, generator runtime calculations, physical space constraints that have no parallel in a brick-and-mortar environment.
“The requirements for delivering safe and effective care don’t change just because you’re in a mobile setting,” he said. “They’re still there. So how do I provide not just ‘nice-to-haves’, but the ‘have-to-haves’?”
Seubold faces an analogous challenge at Skagit, where parts of the catchment area lack reliable broadband. “There are spots within our catchment area where it’s hard to get internet,” she noted. “You have to get Starlink or you have to think more creatively about that kind of access.”
Along with creative thinking, both leaders have found that a focus on relationship building is a critical aspect of the CIO role.
Leesmann believes that in a community health system, authority only gets you so far. Real progress depends on building the kind of credibility that makes people want to follow. He has applied the same philosophy to vendor relationships, rejecting transactional dynamics in favor of genuine partnerships.
“It’s the relationships that move things,” he stated.
Seubold concurred, adding that it’s a big focus at Skagit as well. At leadership huddles, she carves out time for reflection, encouraging team members to share what’s on their mind, whether it’s a struggle, an inspiration, or something they’ve been thinking about. It’s a practice she carried from her previous organization, and one she credits with building the kind of mutual understanding that makes a team more resilient.
Seubold, a certified yoga instructor, has brought mindfulness into practice, urging individuals to pause and take collective breaths before getting to business.
“When we are in that space [of high stress], we’re not operating as effectively as we could be,” she said, noting that grounding has helped her to maintain a positive perspective. “This is hard work, but we can still do it from this place of a little more calmness, a little more proactiveness.”
Both leaders are candid about how much work remains. For Leesmann, the near-term agenda includes a revenue cycle optimization effort, infrastructure resilience work, and the governance structures needed to manage AI responsibly as Sky Lakes expands its use of ambient scribing and other tools. His three-year roadmap, he acknowledges, is “more an organism versus an artifact,” and must keep evolving as the environment changes. “We should constantly be challenging: is this the outcome we truly meant to create?”
For Seubold, the focus is on creating a data lake that will allow Skagit to make more meaningful use of the information it already has, enabling self-service analytics, better decision support, and a stronger foundation for AI.
What unites both leaders, beyond their shared emphasis on foundations and governance, is a clear sense of why it matters. They are not building technology for its own sake. They are building it for communities that depend on their organizations to show up.
The ability to do so, according to both, is in a willingness to learn from others and share best practices – particularly among those at similar organizations.
“The reality is that healthcare is hard,” Leesmann stated. “But we’re not in this alone. Cultivating a network is incredibly important – just as important as technical skillsets. In this day and age, we need more networks. We need each other.”
This article is based on interviews conducted by Kate Gamble.
For years, health systems have largely played the role of customer – waiting for vendors to provide a solution, then adapting their workflows to fit. Michael Hasselberg, Chief Transformation and Digital Officer at Nebraska Medicine, believes that model is outdated.
In fact, he believes that academic health systems now have everything they need to build their own AI tools in-house – and that doing so can yield better-fitting and more scalable results than buying from outside.
Recently, Hasselberg shared his thoughts on how Nebraska Medicine is applying that theory in practice, why executive alignment is the hardest part of any transformation, and the surprising ways in which ambient tools can benefit nursing.
Michael Hasselberg, PhD
Hasselberg has spent several years championing the idea that healthcare organizations don’t have to take a back seat when it comes to innovation and development. “It’s never been easier for health systems – specifically academic health systems – to develop their own AI tools in-house and not have to be reliant on vendors,” he said.
The logic is straightforward: health systems now have access to the same foundational AI models as their industry counterparts, along with the data, the clinical domain expertise, and the specific problem sets that vendors sometimes lack. “We have the data, we have the problems, and we have the content expertise,” he said. “It’s easy for us to fine-tune these models and spin off tools to solve problems in our system.”
Nebraska Medicine has leaned hard into this approach. The organization has deployed more than 25 generative AI use cases built entirely in-house, releasing roughly one new tool per month. The team responsible – made up of data scientists and data engineers who have been relocated from IT into the strategy office – works through a rigorous prioritization process that scores potential projects on strategic alignment, safety impact, speed to execution, and return on investment.
That willingness to build rather than buy isn’t a new trend at Nebraska Medicine. It started in the 1950s, when the University of Nebraska partnered with the Bell Telephone Company to conduct virtual psychiatric grand rounds, leading to the birth of telemedicine.
A few decades later, the organization became the first in the U.S. to pilot ambient documentation on the provider side. “We were at the bleeding edge of the two biggest transformative technologies in healthcare,” Hasselberg noted. “It’s part of our ecosystem.”
That pioneering spirit is baked into the institution’s physical infrastructure as well. Current initiatives include a $2.2 billion hospital that’s under construction, an innovation design unit with smart modular rooms, a simulation center testing holograms, and a program that brings vendors in to test technologies before they ever reach a patient.
“There’s a lot of knowledge sharing happening there,” he added.
Where the true magic happens, however, isn’t so much in the technical work. “That’s the easy part,” Hasselberg noted. “The hard part is actually scaling that technology and successfully engaging your operational and clinical stakeholders around that technology. That’s where I think most folks fall down.”
Nebraska’s approach to this challenge is deliberate and top-down. Use case candidates go through process engineering, enterprise architecture review, then AI team scoping before ultimately being presented to the full executive team for a vote. The chiefs of finance, operations, medicine, nursing, HR, and legal are all at the table, alongside the CEO.
After identifying which use cases will move forward, “we then make sure that we resource it adequately from an operations and clinical standpoint,” he said. “It’s that level of alignment and rigor that allows us to have the success that we’ve had.”
The most powerful example of this approach in action is capacity management. By using AI to automate discharge workflows, predict bed availability, and match patient acuity to transfer timing, Nebraska Medicine has effectively created the equivalent of 31 additional hospital beds – without building a single new room.
“Five years ago, I would’ve never thought that was possible,” Hasselberg said. Beyond capacity, the team has built AI tools across revenue cycle automation, prior authorizations, OR scheduling optimization, MRI scheduling, quality registry reporting, and clinical trial matching, the last of which is a board-level metric for the organization.
The common thread across these use cases is that they sit in what Hasselberg calls the “back office” of the business – areas where AI errors can be caught and corrected before they affect patient outcomes. “If the AI gets it wrong, we still have a human in the loop,” he noted.
The same rigor and diligence that have driven the organization to success with other initiatives is being applied to ambient documentation – or more specifically, why the version that works for physicians doesn’t simply transfer to nurses. Hasselberg speaks from experience, having gained experience as a nursing aide, floor nurse, and a nurse practitioner before becoming a PhD researcher.
The challenge, he explains, is structural. Physician documentation tends to be narrative in form, which makes sense as physicians are already trained to “walk the patient through a head-to-toe assessment,” he said. Nursing documentation, by contrast, flows into structured flowsheets with discrete data fields, and nurses aren’t typically trained to verbalize their assessments.
Although some vendors are offering ambient documentation tools for nursing, Hasselberg is skeptical, noting that “it’s more of just speech-to-text translation. There’s a lot more development that needs to happen.”
What he’s genuinely excited about? Vision-based AI. Nebraska already has cameras deployed for virtual nursing and has begun building AI models that can observe patient rooms directly. A fall-detection vision model is already live. “I’m excited about the vision side,” he noted. “I think that’s where the future opportunity for ambient nursing is going to be – a combination of vision and language.”
It’s just one of many areas in which Nebraska Medicine has benefited from its strong emphasis on having the right infrastructure and people in place to push innovation forward. “The transformation that we’ve been able to do in a short period of time is remarkable.”
For CIOs, one of the most challenging – and increasingly difficult – aspects of the role is the ability to “perform and lead under pressure,” and establish a way forward, according to Christine Yang.
Doing so has never been easy, but for safety net organizations like Alameda Health System that service a large percentage of Medicaid patients, the struggle intensified after the H.R. 1 bill was signed into law last summer.
“We’re impacted just like so many others,” said Yang, who has been with the organization for 4 years, stepping into the CIO role in August of 2025. “And because we’re a public system, the impact is larger.”
Christine Yang
Fortunately, Alameda has spent the past few years building a foundation that she believes will position them well for success in the future.
“We’ve put the pieces in place through governance and our executive roadmap, and now we’re looking at operational efficiencies and transformation,” she noted. “That’s at the forefront for the whole organization. It’s not about replacing FTEs; it’s about improving efficiency and creating more time for patient care.”
Part of that, according to Yang, is keeping up with the latest offerings from Epic, which the organization fortuitously implemented just before Covid-19. “We’re excited about the rapid process Epic is making. That’s been a big accelerator for us,” she noted, adding that she’s particularly excited about the potential for Epic’s CDI nudges to improve documentation. “Physicians are always asking for help there. And so, we’re looking at every opportunity to automate and achieve real measurable impact.”
That’s where AI tools can also play a key role.
For example, ServiceNow’s AI Agents are being utilized to create support tickets, removing some of the administrative burden on already taxed teams. “We get so many inquiries, and users typically want a quick response,” Yang noted. “This helps a lot,” especially for organizations dealing with workforce shortages.
And she doesn’t plan to stop there; the organization is looking to use agentic AI to automate in areas such as finance and HR, along with clinical support tasks. Ideally, advanced analytics will be leveraged to help update EHRs, book appointments, and facilitate patient communication. “There are so many efficiencies that can be gained,” she noted.
One of the key factors in being able to realize those efficiencies is education, particularly when it comes to something as complex as AI. “Everyone has their own definitions – including the board,” said Yang, who has prioritized literacy and encourages open discussions.
“There’s a lot of talk about AI, but what does it mean for our health system? What type of value can it bring? Those are the questions we focus on,” she said, which covers everything from credit scores to how it fits into the roadmap. “I’m happy with the progress we’ve made thus far, and we’ll continue to push forward. This is an ongoing conversation.”
A key factor in what enables a safety-net organization like Alameda to have these conversations is its strong focus on process improvement, according to Yang. Her team, all of whom are Lean certified, has been tasked with identifying opportunities for improvement, and coming up with solutions that “show a true impact to the organization.”
Where Lean’s influence comes through, she believes, is in true problem-solving. “When we design workflows with our customers, it’s not just about troubleshooting when there’s an incident. It’s stepping back and saying, ‘what’s your workflow?’ And going from there.”
In fact, having not only Yellow and Green Belt-trained individuals, but also a Black Belt-certified leader (Alameda’s Chief Revenue Cycle Officer) has led to significant improvements in terms of escalating critical issues and reducing unnecessary communications. “They can see a difference because they’re solving problems differently,” she said. As a result, “we’re doubling down on process improvement. It’s a challenging time, but it’s also a moment for us to take the lead and make a difference.”
The challenges, however, won’t end anytime soon, which is why it’s so critical for leaders to maintain a consistent presence. “People look to us when there is a major situation or critical initiative that changes how we do operations,” Yang stated. “As a leader, I want to be steady. I want to be there for people.”
The way she hopes to achieve that? First, by creating a culture of “trust, clarity, and accountability,” which includes establishing a high-level of communication discipline among both leaders and staff. “I always want to make sure my team can focus, and that only happens when they aren’t getting all of the outside noises. That discipline is so important.”
The second is by mentoring, which she has done through a fellowship with the Carol Emmott Foundation, as well as within Alameda, an organization that “truly walks the talk” when it comes to professional development.
“We want to make those opportunities visible and real,” she said. “It’s not just words.”
“Most of us agree that nursing as a profession is pretty broken and we need to fix it.”
It’s a bold statement, but one that’s certainly supported by statistics.
According to a Health Affairs study, the total supply of registered nurses is dramatically decreasing as the need for care intensifies, and an alarming percentage of nurses leaving the workforce are under the age of 35. It has become so dire that the International Council of Nurses is calling for the worldwide shortage of nurses to be treated as a global health emergency, noting in a report that “protecting and investing in nurses as key to health system recovery.”
For people like Rebecca Freeman (to whom the above quote is attributed), this isn’t news; it’s the reality that nursing leaders deal with every day. “The whole profession is hanging onto a 40-year-old model of who we are and how we do things.”
And so the discussion has increasingly revolved around technology’s role in advancing nursing and filling some of the gaps. Specifically, AI tools have shown tremendous potential to take on administrative tasks, freeing up more time for face-to-face interactions with patients, which in turn can improve satisfaction.
Of course, there are myriad concerns with AI, ranging from the possibility of deskilling and the loss of human connection, to fears of job cuts.
It’s a lot to manage, but for CNIOs, leveraging advanced intelligence is no longer a rock to be kicked down the road. The question becomes how and where to use it. Recently, This Week Health spoke with two highly respected CNIOs – Freeman (UVM Health Network) and Sherri Hess (HCA Healthcare) about their approaches when it comes to selecting and implementing AI initiatives, how they’re meeting the challenges that arise, and what this means for the future of nursing.
Rebecca Freeman
At the core of any initiative is data – but beyond that, “good data,” Freeman noted. “It’s all about making sure your nurses and nurse leaders have the data they need to ensure that we’re delivering amazing care.”
Where AI comes in? Helping to turn data into information that can be utilized at the point of care, said Hess. “We spend so much time searching. If I could easily have the information I need, it would make a huge difference.”
The ideal scenario, in her mind, is to have not just vitals displayed for nurses when they enter a room, but also other critical details that can help nurses “get more connected with patients.”
In some cases, AI tools are being used to comb through documents to provide guidance on specific tasks like when to change central line dressings. Other examples include automating prior authorization requests and improving quality reporting, which can lead to significant time savings.
“My hope is that by taking away those things, we can have more time with the patient and focus on getting them out sooner,” Hess noted.
The education aspect, however, can be challenging, particularly given the fact that technology competency hasn’t been prioritized in nursing, according to Freeman.
“Most of our nursing faculty are low on that level of literacy, and so they don’t know how to integrate those competencies,” she said. “They’ll have an informatics lecture or course, and then we send them into the care setting, and it falls on the clinical educator or professional development specialist to move them from novice to expert.”
Although most seem to acknowledge that the workforce “desperately needs to be upskilled,” there’s little agreement as to who should bear the responsibility. “We need educators to expand their scope so that nurses have the knowledge they need to make informed decisions,” Freeman added.
The proliferation of AI tools is only adding fuel to the fire, she said, noting that “everybody either wants it or is terrified of it.” At UVM, she’s looking to quell those fears by holding 90-minute introductory sessions, both for executive leaders and staff, and making them available on-demand.
“Nurses are only going to trust artificial intelligence if they understand what we’re bringing in and how we’re using it,” she stated. “We need to educate nurses. We need them to be engaged in the build, governance, and education. Because this can really make their lives easier on a lot of levels.”
Sherri Hess
Hess, who has spent 26 years in nursing, isn’t surprised by the hesitancy many have to adopt AI. In fact, she believes the biggest barrier being faced now is one that’s always been there.
“It all comes down to change management. We can provide the best technology there is, but if we’re not preparing them for the changes,” it simply won’t stick, she noted. In addition to the most important component – the ‘why’ behind the change and the potential benefits – individuals want to know which challenges to anticipate. “If they’re going to lose some functionality with a new technology or an upgrade, they want to know.”
The tricky part is in finding time for education, which can be extremely difficult given providers’ hectic schedules. Hess’ strategy, therefore, is to offer as many variations as possible, from live and virtual classes to webinars, with the caveat that hands-on time is a must. “We need to ensure people get that hands-on instruction,” both before and after a change is introduced, she said, adding that leaders should leverage rounding to obtain feedback and escalate any problems.
The key to creating this type of culture, according to Hess, is in fostering collaboration across departments. “With any technology that touches clinicians, we need to be involved early on with our IT partners,” starting with the vendor selection process. “We need to make sure the technology meets our needs – and fits into the nursing strategic plan,” she said.
Doing so can go a long way toward successfully driving adoption and ensuring the organization as a whole is headed “in the right direction.”
It can also help organizations stay aligned with the ultimate objective: improving care. As more ‘shiny objects’ are introduced to the mix, nurses can become understandably concerned about how AI tools can jeopardize the patient relationship.
“We don’t want to lose that human connection,” said Hess. “We have to be able to maintain that clinical judgement and keep that human in the loop; we don’t want AI to override that.”
That’s where CNIOs and other leaders play a crucial role in helping to vet technologies and ensure they’re solving problems rather than making a splash, noted Freeman.
“We need to stop being dazzled by things like ambient listening. I don’t know if it’s worth the squeeze or where we should be focusing,” she said. “That’s what informatics leads need to be looking at.
Freeman’s hope, as the industry continues to progress at lightning speed, is for nurses and nursing leaders to capitalize on the opportunity to make their voices heard and help shape the future of the profession. “Sometimes in nursing, we don’t think big. We tend to think in a very structured way; that’s what makes us good at bedside care. I want to enable nurses to think out of the box,” especially when it comes to how AI is shaping healthcare.
Hess concurred, noting that it’s critical not to downplay the enormous impact nurses can have. “At the end of the day, we’re the last step between the patient and their care.”
Rebecca Freeman, VP of Healthcare Informatics and CNIO, The University of Vermont Health Network and Sherri Hess, CNIO, HCA Healthcare, are co-chairing 229 Project’s inaugural CNIO Summit, June 18-20, 2026 in Napa, Calif.
More than three years ago, Jefferson Health launched an initiative to help fill vacant shifts while decreasing reliance on costly travel nurses. The idea, according to Andrew Thum (AVP, Nursing Operations), was to “leverage internal resources that could fill the demand.”
Since then, the Philadelphia-based system has reduced its use of agency nurses by 75 percent. But the Nursing SEAL Team program has accomplished more than that; it has generated spikes in engagement and satisfaction among nurses, and enabled teams to more proactively manage staffing challenges.
“It’s helping us understand where the needs are so that we know in advance where we can have the most impact,” noted Thum.
Recently, he and Daniel Hudson (SVP, Nursing Operations and CNO, Ambulatory Nursing) shared their story with This Week Health, including why the program was conceived to how it’s constructed, and discussed both the results they’ve seen so far, and the effect they hope it will have on healthcare.
Daniel Hudson
The obvious catalyst of an initiative like the SEAL program is the nursing shortage – a problem that has existed for years but was exacerbated by Covid. Filling those roles, as leaders learned, required more than a competitive salary; increasingly, nursing candidates craved flexibility. “The newer generations in the workforce had different expectations around work and life,” said Hudson.
The other motivating factor – one that’s equally significant – is the “unsustainable” cost of temporary labor such as traveling nurses, which run around $120 to $130 per hour. “We had to do something,” he noted, particularly given the fact that Jefferson spanned 16 hospitals at the time (it now has 32 hospitals after a merger with Lehigh Valley Health Network).
The solution? Create a flex team that could serve a geographically dispersed network without having to incur travel and lodging expenses.
Of course, there were some questions that had to be addressed. “We needed to think about the frequency and cadence of deploying resources that were beneficial to us as an organization, while also keeping in mind the well-being and fatigue management of our people,” Hudson said. “How are we using the technology that we have to know how many resources we need, and when to move them?”
Part of that comes down to having the right framework, which starts with governance.
According to Hudson, there are two structures in place, each representing different facets of nursing leadership. Through these groups, they’re able to solicit feedback from regional CNOs and share information before making decisions, which helps build alignment.
It also provides a framework to review data, said Thum. “That structure helps to inform our procedures so that our staffing offices are functioning in the same standard, best-practice way and leveraging the technology and tools that we have across the system.”
Having consistent scheduling and payroll tools, he added, is a “foundational piece” in building and maintaining a successful staffing initiative. “Without that, it isn’t possible.”
Andrew Thum
On the other hand, with a solid structure in place, Jefferson’s teams can analyze data to identify the most significant gaps. “Our core teams build their schedules on every unit at every hospital across the health system,” he said. Once those are published, “we can then see where the needs are greatest, and deploy the SEAL nurses into those units.”
They’re also able to detect high rates of turnover, and adjust the numbers based on those findings. In that respect, “we’re still being proactive, because staffing is so dynamic and can change drastically,” Thum stated. “Especially at some of our smaller hospitals, where one vacancy can be the difference in a unit’s ability to provide safe care.”
To that end, Jefferson also utilizes local resources for unexpected absences (for example, calling in sick). But the ultimate objective is to think long-term, he reiterated. “Our goal is to use tools like our scheduling system, along with feedback from unit leaders, to forecast vacancies so that we understand in advance where we can be most impactful.”
What the data can also do is help identify variations in nursing practices across the system, which can “help inform opportunities for standardization, optimization, and best practices” he noted.
Of course, none of this can be done in isolation, according to Hudson. Along with nursing – which includes senior nursing executives as well as frontline managers – other key areas must be part of the discussion, including operations, finance, and legal. “You need all the right people building it together, you need a structure that supports decision-making, and you need accountability to measure progress and continually improve,” he said.
Tying all of this together, according to Hudson and Thum, is a multi-pronged strategy that revolves around three core premises.
“It’s not one thing alone that’s helped us to get where we are,” Hudson said. “It’s an integrated workforce strategy, and we’re going to continue to evolve that.”
It’s not just about making sure the right amount of nurses are available, but also that those nurses are engaged. Since the launch of the SEAL program, Jefferson has seen notable boosts in satisfaction, Thum noted.
The reason? It enables nurses to experience different environments – much like a traveling nurse does – while still reaping the benefits of being part of a system. “They feel a sense of belonging because they are Jefferson nurses,” he said. “As a result, they tend to be more reliable and are able to respond to situations more effectively. And our patients can expect to receive higher quality care.”
The initiative has also yielded another critical benefit: mentorship. In some of Jefferson’s units, as many as 75 percent of nurses have less than two years of experience, according to Hudson. That’s where SEAL nurses come in.
“When we have experienced nurses in a unit for six weeks, that’s invaluable,” he said. “They’re bringing that mentoring and support along with clinical knowledge. That’s really important, and it has been so advantageous for us.”
Since the program’s inception, Jefferson’s leaders believe it has lived up to the ‘SEAL’ moniker, providing “an elite team that is highly skilled and can be dropped into any situation and perform at a high level of expertise,” Thum noted. “That’s exactly what this team is. We can move them to the hospital of greatest need and expect the same level of expert nursing care.”
As the healthcare industry continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, leadership roles must keep pace, and the CNIO position is no exception.
“The nature of the role is becoming more and more strategic,” said Wendy Kerschner, Senior Associate, Healthcare & Information Technology Practice, WittKieffer. “As we go from focusing mostly on the EHR to now dealing with all of the other smart technologies needed to improve care delivery, it requires executive-level skills” to navigate the people and process aspects.
Whereas in the past, nursing informaticists were often “relegated to training” when a major initiative was happening, now they’ve taken on a more strategic function, according to her colleague Zach Durst, Principle, IT Practice. “Now it’s change management. It’s driving digital innovation across an organization. It’s analytics, quality metrics, and population health.”
The CNIO position, which had “unnecessarily been limited” in many organizations, “has become as expansive as the CMIO role.”
Zach Durst
The primary reason? “CNIOs can be instrumental change agents in addressing the myriad challenges nurses and other clinicians face,” noted a WittKieffer report. As informatics and technology are continuously woven through strategic plans, the need for a nursing informatics representative who can facilitate integration and lead consensus will only increase.
The position, according to the authors, “brings an invaluable perspective and fills an indispensable function of identifying solutions and leading change based on patient care and clinicians’ feedback and concerns.”
And, importantly, the CNIO acts as a bridge between nursing practice and technology, ensuring needs are being met on both sides so that systems can be utilized safely and effectively. That “bridge,” however, “has gotten a lot wider,” said Durst. “You need the ability to translate at every level of the organization, from the board level down to the frontline nursing staff.”
At the same time, added Kerschner, it’s important for CNIOs to possess “outstanding project management skills, political savvy, communication skills, and change competencies,” along with a forward-thinking mentality.
It’s a significant departure from the original job requirement. And in fact, HIMSS announced a revised description in 2025 “to reflect the evolving leadership, innovation, and digital transformation happening across nursing informatics.”
Wendy Kerschner
The update, which incorporates results from the HIMSS Nursing Informatics Workforce Survey, aimed to ensure the CNIO role “remains aligned with modern healthcare priorities, promoting data-driven care, enhancing patient safety and driving operational excellence.”
So what exactly does this mean for the CNIO? How is the job changing, and how are CNIOs viewed by others in the organization?
According to Durst, it starts with technology, which is becoming increasingly pervasive in healthcare. “Everything that operates in the health system, from the heart monitor to IoT devices to unified communications, it all comes back to technology,” he said. Because nurses are so close to patient care – and by extension, technology, “You need that nursing voice at the leadership table.”
Health systems appear to agree, as CNIO and equivalent roles (such as Chief Clinical Information Officer) have become more prevalent, particularly in larger organizations. “It’s not the norm yet for every organization to have a CNIO, but the trend is heading in that direction,” he noted.
In terms of reporting structure, there is still a great deal of variety. “We’re seeing that most CNIOs report to the CIO or equivalent, oftentimes with a dotted line to the CNO,” he said, while some answer directly to the CNO.
Increasingly, however, “we’re seeing it as a dyad partner to the CMIO, recognizing the importance of the nursing voice in informatics, technology, and digital optimization as being more hand-in-hand with the CMIO,” Durst noted. “Whereas in the past, nursing informatics was at the director level, sitting under a CMIO or applications. And so, we think that’s really a positive sign.”
So what are health systems looking for?
As the position has risen in prominence, the qualities that are most valued in the search process have certainly evolved, noted Kerschner. “When we’re speaking with clients and they’re deciding which candidates are going to move forward, things like communication skills and change management are tipping the scales,” she said. The ability to relate to stakeholders from different areas and “distill complex topics in a thoughtful manner” is highly valued.
But while the skillset has been established, questions remain around how candidates can build those skills. “It’s not a matter of getting an Epic certification,” said Kerschner. “There isn’t a clear roadmap.”
Durst agreed, noting that because the CNIO is still relatively novel, “the pipeline isn’t as formalized” for establishing a leadership skillset in nursing IT. The best avenues, they’ve found, are seeking out both informal and formal mentors in nursing, as well as technology, operations, and other areas, and leveraging professional associations such as AMIA.
“A lot of it comes down to learning by doing,” said Kerschner.
The development piece will become increasingly important as advanced analytics continues to infiltrate the healthcare space. “The CNIO needs to be the voice for nursing within the AI strategy,” she noted, and take the lead on “where to invest, how to integrate all of those tools and how they will interact with the overall stack and workflows.”
Added Durst, “organizations are going to need that voice when it comes to governance, data acquisition and utilization, and implementation, because any AI tool is going to affect workflow, and that workflow is going to impact every clinician across the environment.”
As a result, CNIOs will be looked up to help ease the transition for users, which Kerschner views as a natural progression of a position that has already evolved so much. “The role has expanded. It’s about building relationships, identifying new technologies, and being a leader within the organization,” she said. CNIOs, now more than ever, “must be results-driven, and be ready to measure and articulate successes.”
Zach agreed, noting that CNIOs have risen to the point where they are “inherently part of everything, from road-mapping to the execution around it,” he noted. “That's where the executive skillset comes in. You’re figuring out how things are going to get done, and getting them done.”
Healthcare organizations are experiencing exponential growth, and Texas Health Resources (THR) is no exception. The faith-based system – which provides care across 16 counties through 29 hospitals – is expanding, with plans for a new patient tower in Plano and a 12-story hospital in McKinney.
And that’s just the physical footprint.
The other major growth factor for THR, according to Joey Sudomir, involves advanced AI, which he believes can “allow us to grow the physical or virtual offerings to patients without actually having to increase the staff.”
Of course, doing so requires a solid execution strategy that prioritizes governance, and a commitment to making the right decisions for the organization, he explained during a recent interview with This Week Health.
Joey Sudomir
That strategy starts with identifying and implementing tools that meet the most pressing needs. For instance, they recently rolled out generative AI for chart summaries, which can be used to quickly create reports. The results, he noted, have been overwhelming positive. “We’re seeing efficiency improvements, which has been great.”
What they want to avoid is introducing too much change at once – not an easy task in today’s environment. “The pace at which Epic has started deploying over the last year has taken off,” he noted. The challenge for leadership is to “keep up with what they’re making available,” while still staying true to the goals and timeframes they’ve established.
One of those involves ambient listening, which has been live in physician clinics and urgent care for more than two years. The technology has garnered positive feedback for its ability to automate transcription and documentation, enabling providers to focus more on patient interactions. “We’re deploying tools that are helping people to their jobs,” Sudomir stated.
The next destination for ambient is most likely nursing, for which they’ll partner with Nuance. “There’s a lot of conversation about moving to a more mobile nature with nurses,” he said, adding that Epic’s Rover, a mobile app for nursing, will also be in the mix. “This completely changes the paradigm of a nurse’s interaction in the patient room. We plan to go full force on this.”
That’s where AI governance plays a significant role. To that end, they’ve developed a system-level program tasked with evaluating, reviewing, and overseeing use cases. As THR’s strategy matures to include “quicker, more agile deployments,” the strategy will continue to morph.
Also critical is the education and messaging piece, which can get lost in the shuffle. “We share our philosophies and blueprints in meetings, but then people don’t hear about it again for a couple of months, so it’s just not sticking,” he said. And while training modules and microsites can play a role in disseminating knowledge, what he really wants is for messaging to become “hardwired” into the fabric. “We need to start empowering from leadership down: what’s our messaging? How can we provide the right opportunities to apply AI within the business functions? We need to lean into that.”
One way is through executive forums, which can be utilized to convey positive messaging and address common doubts. “People are concerned for the future,” Sudomir said. “How does this impact me and my job? We need to convey that although we’re doing some things with automation, it’s automation with a human in the loop. We can automate tasks, but you still have the final button to push.”
Another key component of the organization’s AI ideology is the decision to leverage existing tools – particularly from Epic – rather than producing their own.
“We’re not going to be a development shop,” he said. “There are very few provider organizations that should be doing development,” outside of systems like Mayo Clinic, Intermountain, Providence, and UPMC that have built innovation arms and established a solid infrastructure. “For us, it makes more sense to take a partner and package-solution approach.”
It’s a strategy that has served the organization well in other areas as well, according to Sudomir, who noted that while AI may be “front and center,” it’s only a piece (albeit a large one) of the pie. In 2026, Texas Health is also reviewing the application portfolio suite, exploring the hospital room of the future, and going live with Epic’s Beaker module, along with “basic blocking and tackling” required to support patient care in a secure and efficient way.
And that, he has learned, means transitioning away from long-term strategic plans and embracing “smaller sprints” to ensure the strategy reflects the rapidly evolving landscape. “Things have changed so much in the past decade,” he noted. “By the time you’re in year 7 of a 10-year plan, it just doesn’t make sense, and so we’re now targeting more like a three-year plan.”
It’s a dramatic shift from what was once considered the standard, but for CIOs, change has become a constant. The role itself is no exception, according to Sudomir, who has held the title since 2015. “It has evolved from someone you rarely see or hear from, to a trusted business partner; someone who sits in on executive decision-making meetings.”
The catalyst – or at least, the primary catalyst – for the shift? Meaningful Use, which he referred to “the first true technology revolution in the healthcare provider space. It completely flipped how we think about technology as leaders. In my opinion, we’re sitting on the precipice of potentially the second with AI.”
As with Meaningful Use, the shift toward AI is forcing CIOs to step out of traditional boundaries and embrace new skills. Now, “it’s really more about business acumen and understanding how to apply technology to achieve results on the business side,” he said. “It's been a crazy evolution of our role.”
And it’s not going to stop anytime soon, according to Sudomir, who believes that going forward, more CIOs will come from the operational and project management worlds, “where they see more business in action,” and consequently, can provide a broader perspective.
Finally, it’s important not to underestimate other key leadership attributes. “You have to be interested in learning and rolling with the changing pace of technology and the new opportunities created by AI,” he said. “But on the flip side, you can’t be a dreamer, because dreamers don’t have to live off a checkbook. You have to be practical. There is so much information, so many tools, and so many people coming at you, and you have to be able to manage all of that. This is still a cost-constrained activity; you have to find that balance between inquisitiveness and practicality.”
For Houston Methodist, the idea of designing a fully integrated smart hospital was extremely exciting. Not just for the facility itself, which is equipped with advanced AI, voice-activated smart rooms and other innovations, but also what it meant for the entire 9-hospital system.
“We saw a unique opportunity to build a hospital from the ground up with technologies that had already been proven” in Houston Methodist’s existing hospitals, by those on front lines, said Michelle Stansbury, Associate Chief Innovation Officer and VP of IT Applications.
Cypress Hospital presented “an opportunity to put it all together,” according to Roberta Schwartz, EVP and Chief Innovation Officer. Indeed, when the 100-bed facility opened on March 17, 2025, staff were able to hit the ground running because of the groundwork that had been put in place, and the strategic way in which it happened.
Recently, Schwartz and Stansbury spoke with This Week Health about Houston Methodist’s journey, sharing insights on the ambitious vision that was laid out, and how their teams were able to execute on it.
Roberta Schwartz
It started, as many initiatives do, with a simple question: What do we want in a new hospital? An opportunity to build in innovation from the ground up doesn’t come along often, noted Stansbury. And so, they developed a 12-step framework identifying the overarching themes, one of which was to design for the technologies and capabilities of tomorrow.
“We wanted to be able to think about what’s coming down the pike in the future and put that infrastructure in,” said Schwartz. It was also about building an infrastructure that “we won’t have to change for the next 10 years, making sure every plug and piece is there so that it works from the moment we walk into a room. That’s what Cypress was designed for.”
What won’t have to happen, ideally, is the retrofitting her teams had to do to install MyChart Bedside TVs at Houston Methodist’s existing hospitals. After the technology had been seamlessly integrated in the new hospital, leaders didn’t expect it to be a big lift in other places – not realizing that steps had been taken to bring up “almost a special network for Cypress,” Schwartz added. “We figured out that they had gone around the infrastructure to bring it up. And so, when we wanted to scale it, we had to stop and say, ‘what did we do?’”
They needed to find a way to run MyChart Bedside on the Epic app. That’s where another critical component comes into play: vendor partnerships. And it wasn’t going to happen through a video call. “I’ve been in IT long enough to know that wouldn’t work,” said Schwartz. “We needed to do something quickly.”
What Houston Methodist needed was partners in the room, working side by side with developers to incorporate changes in real-time. “We could walk right over to our inpatient room of the future, which we have within our tech hub, and try it out. Did it work? Did it not work? Because if you’re just trying to get a vendor to make one change, it could be a week before you try it out. This was happening in hours. It was amazing to see.”
With the issues resolved, patients were able to realize the benefits of MyChart Bedside, including real-time access to care team information, schedules, medication lists, test results, and educational materials. For staff, it helps facilitate direct communication for non-urgent needs and enable virtual visits.
Michelle Stansbury
Although Stansbury was impressed with the results, she wasn’t surprised. “That’s what happens when you get a group of smart individuals together and say, ‘here’s what we need. How can we make it happen?’” she noted. “If you get everybody together, you’ll see the magic that can happen.”
The reality, however, is that managing change is much more about people and processes than the technology itself. If people aren’t fully on board, the magic simply won’t work. Therefore, a change as potentially impactful as replacing whiteboards with digital tools must be navigated carefully, according to Stansbury.
And it starts with face-to-face conversations. “We sat down with the nurses and said, ‘We know you’re used to whiteboards, but you need to switch to this solution to be able to talk with patients.’” Having those discussions “helped us to drive what we need to change and look at how we train nurses going forward,” she said.
With virtual nursing, Houston Methodist created a “widgetized” approach where users could click on icons to access different functions such as admission, discharge, and checking meds, according to Schwartz. The reported time savings have been so significant that Cypress is calling for a model in which virtual nurses become part of the care team on the floor.
“As you look at our strategies, we’re putting more control in the hands of the patient, whether it’s scheduling, registration, or other areas,” she said. “They’re interacting with us differently, and we need to be ready.”
It’s not something they take lightly. Implementing any change into the complex healthcare system is going to be a big lift; for that reason, Houston Methodist’s leaders make it a point to carefully weigh every decision, especially around technology.
“We know that we have to get human behavior to change, and there’s so much involved in that,” said Stansbury. “And so we have to ask, what’s worth our time? We don’t do innovation for the newest, shiniest toy. We innovate to solve problems.”
One of those problems? Physician offices would get flooded with calls from patients six days after a procedure to find out if they had the green light to drive. The solution? Schedule automated text messages to go out on day six providing them with pertinent information, as well as contact information for follow-up questions.
The result? A 60 percent drop in phone calls and a boost in patient satisfaction, according to Schwartz. And all her team had to do was ask about the nature of calls coming into the office. “We said, ‘let’s put it in an automated message. It’s quick and no one has to intervene,” she said. “And we found that people really do like interacting with us via text.”
Although there’s certainly buzz around the use of conversational AI agents to send out communications, Houston Methodist is employing a careful approach before diving fully in.
“You have to weigh these technologies,” Schwartz emphasized. “The availability and the excitement doesn’t always translate financially. But now we’re seeing that these fields are starting to mature. Doctors are more comfortable doing things virtually.”
And now, they’re looking into having mobility techs on the floor who can do consultations, rather than having a physical therapist show up on the floor. “We’re looking at, what evaluations can we do on our wound care patients? Can we do them on the virtual highway? We’re starting to look more at all of that.”
For Houston Methodist, it’s not about what’s “new or hot,” but rather, what’s going to serve the organization and patient population, and what tools will mature into usability in the coming years.
“To me, that’s the exciting part,” said Stansbury. “When everyone starts to get engaged and see the benefits of the technology we’ve brought in.”
The idea of leveraging genetic data in healthcare isn’t new. It’s been more than two decades since the human genome was first mapped, and there’s been no shortage of groundbreaking discoveries in the ensuing years.
Everyday use, on the other hand, hasn’t quite made the leap – at least, not for most organizations.
But at Frederick Health, a 261-bed community hospital based in Maryland, clinicians are using genetic data to create personalized disease prevention and treatment plans, which is leading to a higher level of care. The catalyst, according to CIO Jackie Rice, is being able to integrate genetic information from different labs into the EHR and present it to physicians at the point of care.
When it was first introduced in 2021, she felt it had the potential to be a game-changer.
Sure enough, data gathered from the first two years of the Precision Medicine and Genetics program yielded impressive results: a 25-minute time savings for every genetic test ordered, and a 50 percent reduction in the number of steps in the genetic test results process.
Jackie Rice
“I believe that genomics will be part of routine care across all specialties in the very near future, and be as commonplace as vital signs and routine laboratory diagnostics,” she noted. “We’re going to get vital signs, lab work, and genetic testing, and use them to make specific medical decisions.”
Doing so, of course, requires a significant investment and a great deal of collaboration and legwork. Recently, This Week Health spoke with Jackie Rice and Patricia Rice, Clinical Director of Precision Medicine and Genetics at Frederick (not related) about how the program is structured, what’s required to successfully implement and maintain it, and the benefits it offers for both patients and providers.
The premise itself is simple: any physician at Frederick can order a genetic test from the EHR, receive the results as discrete data in patient charts, and access interpretation and guidance within their EHR. The ability to extract genetic data from multiple labs – and present it at the point of care – is a key component.
“Providers can’t spend time clicking out and going to yet another portal,” Jackie Rice noted. “I say this all the time, about everything we do; we have to put information into their workflow in order for it to be helpful.”
It also has to be presented in a language that primary care physicians – who don’t tend to have an extensive background in genomics – can easily understand. But when physicians are given reports that are 20-30 pages long and need to be scanned, that’s not the case. Not only does it take time away from face-to-face care, but it can also prevent them from finding critical information.
“A patient can be on a statin and it won’t do a thing for them,” she noted. However, if patients undergo genetic testing, it can help unlock potentially life-saving information, particularly when it comes to antidepressants. “Seventy-five percent of genetic information is on just a few genes.”
And with the right pillars in place, providers can access that critical data and take action.
One of those pillars, according to Pat Rice, is clinical decision support. With Frederick Health’s solution, providers can click on the genetics tab to learn what testing a patient has undergone, and gain access to discrete results that may contain critical pieces of information. For example, if a patient has a BRCA1 mutation, and then develops cancer, they may be eligible for a very effective, targeted therapy.
Patricia Rice
Having all that data in one place has also helped dramatically improve the ordering process, according to Pat Rice. “Before, we had to enter all of the demographic information, the ICD-10 codes and diagnostics – that could take 20 minutes. This has sped up the time for order entry while also enabling them to view results discreetly.”
And although time savings are important, what’s just as crucial is ensuring that both providers and patients comprehend the information being presented – and how to proceed with it. To that end, Frederick has focused heavily on education, Jackie Rice stated. When the program was first introduced, providers expressed concerns about being able to effectively communicate with patients about genetic data.
That’s where pharmacy navigators came in. “You have to have the right people in place,” she said. “I don’t think you can start this – have the labs, do the testing, and put it out there – if you don’t have someone who can review it all with the patient,” while also offering support to physicians.
As technologists, “our job is to make sure clinical providers have all the information they need upfront, and they don’t have to click 10 times to try to get it,” Jackie Rice noted. “We put in tools that can flag conditions and ensure information is being accessed by the right parties.
Along with using pharmacy navigators, Pat Rice offered a few more helpful nuggets. First, “securing buy-in from the C-suite, ensuring they’re educated about precision medicine and the workflows and processes involved,” she said.
Second, creating not just a steering committee, but a “strong, passionate team,” with representatives from lab, oncology, IT, marketing, HR and other areas, to oversee the development and expansion of the initiative. “You need a team that’s really dedicated to this,” she added. “It’s not easy work, but it’s for a great cause.”
What organizations should not do, Jackie Rice cautioned, is expect immediate ROI, as it can be difficult to quantify. And so, rather than focusing on hard numbers, her team highlights what they call ‘Hearts and Minds stories’ that illustrate how genetic testing has led to improved outcomes, whether that means better treatments or earlier detection of a disease.
“This has been so beneficial to our community,” she said. “We’re so passionate about this, and we’re excited to see it grow.”
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