Hospitals are swimming in metrics — quality scores, throughput data, readmission rates, to name a few — but for those responsible for steering a facility’s digital transformation, one question looms above the rest: How to know when technology is actually improving care?
For Virginia Hospital Center’s chief medical informatics officer, Usman Akhtar, MD, the answer is deceptively simple. “Reduction in clinician burden without sacrificing quality,” he said. If a tool lightens the load — fewer clicks, less documentation, less cognitive strain — and patients do just as well or better, that’s progress. “If it adds friction,” he said, “it’s not.”
Across the country, CMIOs echoed versions of that same calculus: that success lies not just in what can be measured, but in what can be felt — in the rhythm of a clinical day that flows more easily, in the small moments of care no longer interrupted by screens.
Jennifer Goldman, DO, CMIO at Hollywood, Fla.-based Memorial Healthcare System, said she looks at two things: whether clinicians actually use the technology, and whether it moves the key metrics the organization set before implementation. Adoption, in her view, is its own kind of evidence. “If people are choosing to use it, it’s helping,” she said.
Others framed their North Star in broader terms. “If patients do better and clinicians feel better, we’re winning,” said John Potts, DO, CMIO of Radnor, Pa.-based Main Line Health. For him, technology’s value shows up in “safer, faster, more equitable care — at equal or lower cost.”
But Neal Chawla, MD, CMIO of Raleigh, N.C.-based WakeMed, warned against chasing only what can be charted. “Not everything measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured,” he said. Ambient AI scribes, for instance, might not yet show up in the data, but freeing doctors from typing may still transform the experience of care.
Elie Razzouk, MD, CMIO of Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based AdventHealth, sees it as a balancing act among three aims: better outcomes, smoother experiences and greater efficiency. “The Holy Grail,” he said, “is achieving all three simultaneously.” But true progress, he added, happens when “technology disappears into the workflow — when it feels less like a system and more like an ally that quietly makes care safer and decisions smarter.”
For Amer Saati, MD, CMIO of Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health, the guiding framework is the quintuple aim: improving outcomes, patient experience, clinician well-being, health equity and cost efficiency. Each innovation, he said, should push one or more of those fronts forward.
“Simplify workflows, reduce burnout, enable data-driven, equitable care — that’s the measure,” he said.
At Nashville, Tenn.-based Ardent Health, Brad Hoyt, MD, CMIO, looks for something even harder to quantify.
“The real measure is whether technology gives clinicians more time to think, connect and care,” he said. “When it improves the human experience for patients and caregivers, that’s when we know it’s making a difference.”
Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Health’s Joseph Evans, MD, CMIO, tracks the effectiveness of clinical decision support tools — both in guiding evidence-based care and in avoiding the alert fatigue that fuels burnout. “By measuring decision support efficiency, we can link informatics strategy directly to outcomes, waste reduction and better community health,” he said.
Taken together, one theme is clear: the North Star for digital innovation in healthcare isn’t just efficiency or data — it’s human betterment. Technology succeeds when it strengthens the relationship between clinicians and patients, not when it stands between them.
