Something has shifted in how health system technology leaders talk about artificial intelligence. The tone is becoming more cautionary and the warning is not about AI failing to deliver on its promise but instead that health systems are moving too fast in the wrong direction.
Chris Carmody, CIO of UPMC in Pittsburgh, put the problem in structural terms.
“The most dangerous trend in health IT is treating AI as a collection of projects rather than a strategic capability,” Mr. Carmody said. “While experimentation is important, it can be challenging to achieve meaningful organizational impact.”
His enterprise is taking a deliberate approach, building the governance, leadership and enterprise adoption infrastructure needed before scaling. The measure of success, in his framing, is not the number of AI initiatives a system can point to.