Becker’s is proud to recognize the chief digital officers who are driving transformation in modern medicine. As technology reshapes how care is delivered, accessed and experienced, these executives are adopting new tools and fundamentally reimagining what healthcare can look like.
Working at the crossroads of technology, clinical care and patient experience, these leaders bridge the worlds of IT and the bedside, translating complex technological capabilities into real-world solutions that streamline EHRs, eliminate friction from clinical workflows, and make high-quality care more accessible to more people.
Note: This list was compiled using nominations. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it an endorsement of included leaders, hospitals, health systems or associated healthcare providers. Leaders cannot pay for inclusion on this list. We extend a special thank you to Rhoda Weiss for her contributions to this list. Leaders are presented in alphabetical order.
Contact Anna Falvey at afalvey@beckershealthcare.com with questions or comments.
Shakeeb Akhter. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Mr. Akhter leads one of healthcare’s most ambitious digital transformation programs. He oversees enterprise technology, data and analytics, AI, automation and cybersecurity for the system, advancing a bold vision to build an intelligent patient- and provider-centered organization that predicts needs, personalizes care and optimizes operations. Under his leadership, CHOP achieved Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “Stage 7” for inpatient and outpatient, Epic “Honor Roll” statuses that advanced to “Magna Cum Laude” this year, and College of Healthcare Information Management Executives “Digital Most Wired Level 8” recognition. Mr. Akhter has scaled AI and automation across the enterprise, deploying 26 models and solutions that save thousands of hours monthly, while leading national adoption of Epic’s generative AI tools for clinical documentation, messaging and care insights. These digital assistants are embedded into workflows to improve efficiency and restore clinician time. He also oversees the expansion of digitally enabled care models, which now serve more than 50,000 patients through remote monitoring, virtual care and eConsult models, reducing readmissions and accelerating access. Mr. Akhter is also modernizing the system’s technology core through a full cloud migration. Additionally, he established a data trust office to ensure high-quality, governed AI-ready data. To prepare the workforce, he founded a digital university and reskilling program, which has now trained more than 10,000 employees in AI, automation and emerging technologies.
Scott Arnold. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital. Mr. Arnold serves as executive vice president and chief digital and innovation officer at Tampa General Hospital, where he leads enterprise innovation, technology and cybersecurity strategy, as well as biomedical device integration systemwide. Since joining Tampa General in 2010 to lead the health system’s largest EHR conversion, he has expanded his scope to include TGH Ventures, the organization’s innovation center and corporate venture fund. He has played a leading role in applying predictive analytics and AI to streamline care delivery, including Tampa General’s expanded work with Palantir to evolve “CareComm” into a care coordination command center that aggregates thousands of data points to support operational decision-making. Under his oversight, Tampa General is deploying Palantir’s AI platform to build a care coordination operating system and automate workflows, including revenue cycle processes, while encoding clinical prioritization and frontline decision support. Leveraging real-time data and coordination capabilities, the organization reported a 3% reduction in sepsis-related mortality in the first couple of years of implementation, representing nearly 200 lives saved. Mr. Arnold has also embedded innovation into Tampa General’s culture by scaling “IdeaMVP” through TGH Ventures, enabling team members to move solutions from concept to implementation with dedicated resources and support.
Kathy Azeez-Narain. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Customer Innovation Officer at Hoag Health System (Newport Beach, Calif.). Ms. Azeez-Narain leads the development and execution of Hoag’s digital and AI-enabled strategy, overseeing efforts to optimize patient access, enhance the care journey, and seamlessly connect patients from offline to online engagement through a comprehensive digital ecosystem. She has distinguished herself by delivering solutions that work in practice, bringing deep fluency in clinical workflows, regulatory rigor and patient safety to every initiative she leads. Among her standout accomplishments, Ms. Azeez-Narain led the creation of “Nona,” a free mobile app providing personalized prenatal and postpartum guidance for families served by Hoag’s nationally recognized maternity program, as well as “Hoag Compass,” a membership-based health optimization program integrating advanced diagnostics, DNA testing and personalized coaching. She also spearheaded the launch of “Hoag On Demand,” a 24/7 virtual urgent care platform, and developed a digital gastroesophageal reflux disease risk assessment tool that connects patients directly to a nurse navigator for faster diagnosis and treatment. In parallel, Ms. Azeez-Narain operationalized AI as a scalable capability across Hoag, building AI-powered agents, shared infrastructure, and responsible governance guardrails to embed intelligent capabilities safely into clinical and operational workflows. Her leadership earned her recognition as a 2025 “Innovator of the Year” by the Orange County Business Journal.
Sameer Badlani, MD. Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Digital Officer at Fairview (Minneapolis). Dr. Badlani leads AI and digital transformation, enterprise strategy and growth, innovation and ventures, consumer experience, data analytics and informatics, and IT and cybersecurity for Fairview. He has held his current role for nearly two years, and previously served as the system’s executive vice president and chief digital officer before taking on his expanded role. Prior, he was the chief health information officer and system vice president of enterprise data management and analytics at Sutter Health in Sacramento, Calif. He was also chief health information officer at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City and chief medical information officer at UChicago Medicine.
Ashis Barad, MD. Chief Digital and Technology Officer for Hospital for Special Surgery (New York City). In September 2024, Dr. Barad was appointed the inaugural chief digital and technology officer at the Hospital for Special Surgery, the world’s top academic medical center for musculoskeletal health. A physician executive with over 18 years of clinical and digital innovation experience, Dr. Barad previously served as chief digital and information officer at Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, where he led initiatives in AI, digital health and data analytics. At HSS, he leads enterprisewide digital strategy and technology operations to enhance patient outcomes, elevate care delivery and modernize the patient experience.
Tom Barnett. Chief Information and Digital Officer for Baptist Memorial Health Care (Memphis, Tenn.). Mr. Barnett leads information and digital strategy for the 24-hospital Baptist Memorial Health Care network, which serves Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. His role focuses on IT infrastructure, clinical workflows and digital engagement, pairing technology with thoughtful process redesign to create lasting value and patient impact. His leadership resulted in the health system’s Epic migration to Amazon Web Services, earning the system the 2024 “CIO100” and “CSO50” awards for innovation and security. A multi-time finalist for the Tennessee ORBIE “CIO of the Year”, he is widely respected for his pragmatic, results-driven leadership. His previous executive roles span University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Ill. and Detroit-based Henry Ford Health.
Denise Basow, MD. Chief Digital Officer at Ochsner Health (New Orleans). Dr. Basow spearheads efforts to scale digital innovations that enhance care quality, reduce costs, engage patients and improve the provider experience across Ochsner Health, a nonprofit healthcare system serving over 1.6 million patients annually. She also leads “Innovation Ochsner,” a pioneer in digital healthcare solutions, virtual health and telemedicine, where she develops and deploys remote patient management solutions targeting cardiometabolic conditions both within Ochsner and nationally. Dr. Basow has made AI a cornerstone of Ochsner’s mission, championing technology-driven initiatives that make care more precise, proactive and personal. Her work has prioritized accessibility, leveraging digital tools to simplify scheduling, improve insurance communication and connect patients to the right resources at the right time. Prior to joining Ochsner, Dr. Basow brought 25 years of experience from Wolters Kluwer and healthcare start-up UpToDate, where she served as CEO for 14 years and helped build a clinical effectiveness platform serving more than 2 million physicians globally.
Crystal Broj. Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston, S.C.). Ms. Broj sets digital strategy and leads organizationwide initiatives at MUSC that leverage emerging technologies, especially automation and AI, to modernize healthcare delivery, improve patient access and streamline operations across clinical, research, education and administrative functions. She is distinguished by her focus on practical, measurable results tied to real organizational needs, consistently framing technology deployment through the lens of human impact and ensuring digital tools enable care teams to focus on quality care and meaningful patient interaction. Under her leadership, MUSC has deployed an AI voice bot that supports appointment verification, cancellations and rescheduling outside regular business hours, as well as robotic process automation and AI agents to manage preventative care outreach, ambient scribe technologies that significantly reduce after-hours documentation burden for providers, and digital front-door and scheduling platforms that reduce no-show rates and decrease friction in patient navigation. Ms. Broj has been recognized as a HotTopics “Global Chief Digital Officer 100 Award” winner in both 2024 and 2025, a 2025 gold Stevie Award winner for “Female Executive of the Year” in the government or nonprofit category, and a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “Change Maker of the Year” finalist. A sought-after national speaker, she has presented at major industry forums and Becker’s events, contributing practical insights on driving measurable value through digital and AI investments.
Joy Brown. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer at Boston Medical Center Health System. Ms. Brown leads Boston Medical Center Health System’s technology organization, overseeing digital transformation, technology strategy, cybersecurity and data innovation with a steadfast commitment to improving healthcare access, efficiency and outcomes for patients and communities. Among her most significant accomplishments, she spearheaded the seamless integration of two system locations into a unified Epic platform, establishing a “one patient, one record” foundation that replaced fragmented data silos with a secure, interoperable infrastructure and improved patient outcomes across the entire network. Ms. Brown and her team have also led the health system’s data and AI strategy, with particular focus on deploying ambient AI technology to reduce clinical burnout. She has been instrumental in designing the system’s digital front door to manage every touchpoint of the patient journey, ranging from scheduling through follow-up. Thanks in large part to her work, Boston Medical Center Health System has been recognized as one of the “World’s Best Smart Hospitals” by Newsweek in both 2024 and 2025. Prior to joining the system, Ms. Brown brought deep cross-industry expertise as chief data officer at Verizon Media and as a leader of the global data, analytics and machine learning function at Capital One. She currently serves on the boards of Huron Consulting, ESO and ValidiFi.
Brad Carvellas. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer for Guthrie (Sayre, Pa.). Mr. Carvellas was appointed as senior vice president and chief digital officer for Guthrie at the end of 2025, following a national search during which he served as interim chief digital officer. In his role, he drives digital strategy, oversees all IT operations, and leads innovation initiatives through the use of data analytics and AI, with a focus on deploying cutting-edge technology and integrating digital solutions that support patient care and transform healthcare delivery across Guthrie’s communities. Mr. Carvellas brings a strong foundation in information security and risk management to his role, having joined Guthrie in 2020 as vice president of cybersecurity and CISO. Prior to joining Guthrie, he served as director of information security and risk management at Highmark Health in Pittsburgh. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Energized by the opportunity to partner with caregivers and lead innovation that enhances both the patient and provider experience, Mr. Carvellas brings a mission-driven perspective to digital transformation.
Deepesh Chandra. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Montefiore Einstein (Bronx, N.Y.). Mr. Chandra oversees digital and information technology strategy across clinical care, research and operations at one of the nation’s largest academic health systems, anchoring his leadership in financial rigor, operational simplification and next-generation digital innovation. A standout accomplishment under his leadership was securing $41 million in New York State funding to accelerate comprehensive enhancements to Montefiore’s cybersecurity program, strengthening identity protections, risk governance and enterprise resilience and elevating cybersecurity from a technical function to a clinical continuity strategy. Mr. Chandra established a formal enterprise AI governance framework through which ambient AI documentation technology was evaluated and deployed, reducing administrative burden and restoring meaningful clinical time to patient care, while an AI-based automated tagging process for active cancer patients improved care coordination accuracy to 95% and optimized the tagging process by 90%. His digital access initiatives drove a 25% increase in online primary care bookings, and he oversaw a major systemwide Epic upgrade supporting approximately 22,000 daily active users that reduced key system processing times from hours to minutes. Mr. Chandra has also advanced strategic partnerships with Dandelion, applying AI-driven analytics to accelerate drug development, and with Amazon One Medical to expand coordinated primary and specialty care access across New York.
Rohit Chandra, PhD. Chief Digital Officer at Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Chandra stepped into the chief digital officer role in 2022. He leads the information technology division and drives digital innovation across Cleveland Clinic’s health system. Dr. Chandra has more than 25 years of experience in digital technology and engineering. He previously served as the vice president of engineering at technology startup Sunshine Products.
Marc Chasin, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer for Onvida Health (Yuma, Ariz.). Dr. Chasin, both a physician and seasoned CIDO, bridges clinical care and IT at Onvida Health to ensure that technology empowers provider workflows and patient care. Since joining in 2024, he has focused on modernizing core systems like Epic EHR, improving infrastructure and deploying generative AI to enhance diagnostic accuracy. His leadership is rooted in real-world clinical understanding, ensuring tools are practical and intuitive for clinicians. Dr. Chasin ensures that every digital advancement directly enhances quality, access and provider-patient connection. Under his guidance, Onvida Health has been named a College of Healthcare Information Management Executives “Most Wired” hospital multiple times. Prior to Dr. Chasin’s current role, he held top IT roles at Westchester (N.Y.) Medical Center and Boise, Idaho-based St. Luke’s Health System, consistently driving digital innovation.
Saad Chaudhry. Chief Digital and Information Officer at SSM Health (St. Louis). Mr. Chaudhry brings more than 20 years of healthcare technology experience to his role at SSM Health, where he is responsible for the direction and oversight of IT, digital patient engagement, clinical informatics, analytics, facilities, real estate operations and physical security across the health system. A certified healthcare CIO and digital health executive, he has been recognized by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society as a “Top Future-50 Leader” for his digital transformation work, and currently serves on the boards of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and Graphite Health, and as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s School of Health. Mr. Chaudhry joined SSM Health in 2024 as the organization’s first chief digital officer before stepping into his expanded role, bringing prior leadership experience from Annapolis, Md.-based Luminis Health, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine, Pittsburgh-based UPMC, McKesson and international organizations in the United Arab Emirates. A signature initiative under his leadership is “Project One,” a comprehensive effort to modernize SSM Health’s Epic EHR foundations while streamlining and standardizing workflows to reduce care variation, eliminate duplicative documentation, and decrease cognitive and administrative burden on providers and team members. SSM Health has earned CHIME’s “HealthCare’s Most Wired” recognition for 12 consecutive years, a testament to the enduring strength of the technology foundation Mr. Chaudhry continues to build upon.
Zafar Chaudry, MD. Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Officer and Chief AI and Information Officer at Seattle Children’s. Dr. Chaudry joined Seattle Children’s as its chief digital officer in 2017. In his current role, he oversees technology initiatives and information systems across Seattle Children’s. His goal is to enable clinicians with the best technology to deliver safe and excellent care to patients. Dr. Chaudry began his career as a physician and has more than 30 years of experience in all aspects of IT. His background includes work in both healthcare and corporate settings in the U.S., Australia, Western Europe and the U.K. across enterprise infrastructure development, business intelligence, unified telecommunications, and the implementation of healthcare information systems and EHRs. He previously served as CIO at Cambridge University Hospitals in the United Kingdom.
Sunil Dadlani. Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer at Atlantic Health (Morristown, N.J.). Mr. Dadlani is responsible for enhancing the digital patient and consumer experience across Atlantic Health, which serves 7.5 million lives, with a particular focus on expanding and diversifying intelligent automation and AI throughout the health system. He is distinguished by a holistic, industry-agnostic approach to technology assessment that evaluates guiding principles, evolving definitions of patient experience, strategic investment models, data analysis and maximization of existing technology investments. Under his leadership, Atlantic Health was named a 2025 “CIO 100” winner by Foundry’s CIO, recognized for its use of automation tools to streamline prior insurance authorization processes, facilitating faster delivery of lifesaving care in a high-volume, time-sensitive environment. Mr. Dadlani’s commitment to cross-departmental collaboration ensures technology investments translate into measurable improvements for patients, clinicians and operational teams alike. His emphasis on responsible and strategic AI integration reflects a forward-thinking approach to building healthier communities through digital innovation.
Katie Dickens. Chief Digital and Information Officer and Assistant Vice President of IT Services at University of Kentucky HealthCare (Lexington). Ms. Dickens sets and executes enterprise digital strategy for an $8 billion academic healthcare system, ensuring technology investments advance clinical excellence, operational efficiency and long-term sustainability. She led a transformational redesign of the IT operating model, consolidating more than 900 professionals into a unified shared-services organization that strengthened governance, improved accountability and created a scalable foundation for sustained innovation. Ms. Dickens is currently leading a complex enterprisewide transformation encompassing concurrent Epic-to-Epic, Meditech-to-Epic and Community Connect implementations, advancing interoperability and standardizing workflows across the regional care network alongside a modern healthcare enterprise resource planning implementation. She established enterprise AI governance and led large-scale deployment of advanced technologies, including systemwide implementation of ambient listening and the Epic AI platform, reducing documentation burden and positioning the organization at the forefront of responsible AI adoption. Her cloud-first strategy further modernized the organization’s digital foundation through migration of the Epic production environment to Microsoft Azure and transformation of the enterprise data platform to Azure Databricks.
Sha Edathumparampil. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables). Mr. Edathumparampil is responsible for defining and executing enterprisewide digital and technology strategy at the largest health system in South Florida, overseeing all aspects of IT, including infrastructure, cybersecurity, data governance, analytics, AI initiatives and enterprise EHRs. He brings a uniquely cross-industry perspective to healthcare technology, having held executive roles at The Walt Disney Company, BMO Financial Group, American Century Investments and Sabre before joining Baptist Health. Among his standout accomplishments, Mr. Edathumparampil helped develop the award-winning “PineApp” digital front door to improve patient access and experience, significantly expanded the health system’s data analytics capabilities, and integrated AI into clinical and operational workflows to support personalized care and efficiency. Most recently, he led the selection and planning for Epic as Baptist Health South Florida’s new enterprise EHR system, a multi-year implementation designed to enhance patient care, clinician experience and operational performance. Under his leadership, Baptist Health has been recognized on Fortune‘s “Most Innovative Companies” list for three consecutive years and named one of the “World’s Best Smart Hospitals” by Newsweek in 2025.
Amy Feaster. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado (Aurora). Ms. Feaster brings more than 37 years of healthcare IT leadership experience to her role at Children’s Hospital Colorado, where she leads a bold transformation of the hospital’s IT division serving more than 300,000 children annually across 11,000 team members and 17 locations. Under her leadership, Children’s Hospital Colorado became the only health system to achieve top-tier performance on Epic’s honor roll for six consecutive years, generating more than $2 million in Epic incentives, and the first pediatric health system to achieve 10 gold stars in Epic’s “Gold Star” program. Ms. Feaster has driven remarkable financial stewardship across her tenure, including a $107 million increase in charge capture over five years, more than $30 million in cost avoidance and more than $57 million in accelerated cash flow, while also reducing help desk abandonment rates from 38% to less than 5% and saving the organization more than $250,000 annually through modernized clinical communications. She led the development of one of the nation’s most robust business continuity and disaster recovery programs and achieved an advanced BitSight Security rating that ranks Children’s Hospital Colorado as the top children’s hospital in the nation for cybersecurity posture, while implementing safety technology that averted 77,000 adverse drug events in a single year. Ms. Feaster has also spearheaded more than 50 AI-driven solutions that improve clinical decision-making, enhance documentation, strengthen security and meaningfully reduce clinician workload. She also led 240 major IT projects in 2025 alone, up from just 29 in 2017. Children’s Hospital Colorado has been named the No. 1 children’s hospital in the Rocky Mountain region by U.S. News & World Report.
Jim Feen. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer for Southcoast Health System (New Bedford, Mass.). Mr. Feen has led Southcoast Health System through a decade of transformative digital growth, including a major Epic implementation that unified disparate EHRs into a single, patient-focused system. His commitment to continuous learning and team empowerment has cultivated a high-performing digital division recognized with College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ “Most Wired Level 10” honors and Epic “Gold Stars Level 9” status. Mr. Feen’s strategic vision aligns digital innovation with clinical excellence, patient care and operational sustainability. Widely respected by staff, physicians, and industry peers, he holds roles on internal leadership committees and collaborates with national IT bodies.
Jeffrey Ferranti, MD. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of Duke University Health System (Durham, N.C.). Dr. Ferranti leads a team that envisions, strategically plans, and adopts integrated technology and information solutions, supporting clinical care, education and research. Among his major accomplishments was leading the enterprisewide Epic installation, which spanned three hospitals and over 300 ambulatory clinics. Both inside and outside of Duke, he is a thought leader in the informatics space. Prior to serving as chief digital officer, Dr. Ferranti was CIO, vice president for medical informatics and leader of Duke Health Technology Solutions. He also helped the health system roll out the enterprise deployment of Epic’s EHR system and provided strategic oversight of the health system’s technology.
Randall Gaboriault. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer of ChristianaCare (Wilmington, Del.). Mr. Gaboriault is responsible for leading digital technology and innovation initiatives at ChristianaCare. He also serves as chair of the Delaware Health Information Network, the first statewide health information exchange in the nation. In addition, he is board director and treasurer for Tech Impact, a nonprofit organization. Prior to joining ChristianaCare, he was senior vice president, CIO and strategic development officer for Teleflex, a global medical technologies provider.
Nari Gopala. Chief Digital Officer for Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.). Mr. Gopala was appointed chief digital officer of Mayo Clinic in December 2024. There, he leads enterprisewide digital strategy to elevate the patient and staff experience through transformative technologies. He collaborates closely with the medical director of Mayo’s Center for Digital Health to shape the institution’s future in digital healthcare. Before joining Mayo Clinic, he served as chief digital officer at Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, where he guided innovation across one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the nation. His prior leadership roles include senior technology positions at Amazon Web Services and Sony Online Entertainment, bringing a broad perspective to healthcare digitalization.
John Henderson. Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Rady Children’s Health (San Diego). Mr. Henderson provides strategic and operational leadership for enterprise technology, digital experience and data capabilities that support patients, families, clinicians and staff across Rady Children’s Health. He is distinguished by his purpose-driven approach to digital transformation, centering his work on making care more accessible, understandable, and connected for the children and families the system serves. Under his leadership, Rady Children’s has expanded intuitive tools including a branded wayfinding application to help families navigate clinical spaces and interactive patient care platforms that provide entertainment, visitor information and calming resources during appointments. Mr. Henderson has also championed enhancements to patient-facing digital platforms that improve family access to visit summaries, discharge instructions and essential health information, keeping caregivers informed and engaged throughout their child’s care journey. In 2025, he assumed a central leadership role in the merger integration of Children’s Hospital of Orange County and Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego, guiding the consolidation of a unified enterprise resource platform, alignment of EHR systems, and rationalization of more than 700 applications across the combined organization.
George T. “Buddy” Hickman. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, N.Y.). Mr. Hickman leads the planning, development and implementation of technology policy and activation across Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, founded in 1898 as the first facility of its kind. Since Mr. Hickman joined Roswell Park in early 2024, his team has delivered advances translating to benefits for patients, clinicians, researchers and workforce members. His work has helped stand up a framework for shared leadership and governance of progressive digital health and IT, organizationwide AI policy and governance, AI integration, data and development efforts with clinical, translational and scientific research colleagues, and an IT improvement plan based on internally led assessments and surveys. His team has also developed patient and workforce applications, improved infrastructure resiliency and raised the customer experience. Mr. Hickman has served the health industry as a CIO for more than two decades, touching every facet of the clinical and business continuum while supporting academic and research missions. An industry speaker, author and mentor in digital health leadership, he is a past board chair for the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, actively serves on industry and vendor advisory boards, and is past recipient of the John E. Gall Jr. “CIO of the Year Award.”
David Jaffray, PhD. Senior Vice President and Chief Technology and Digital Officer of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Dr. Jaffray is known globally for pioneering state-of-the-art image-guided radiation therapy, advancing the science and practice of medical physics, and international leadership in clinical data science for oncology. He draws on more than three decades of scientific expertise and proven skill as an innovator. In his current role, he leads the strategic design, acquisition, management and implementation of technological capacity across MD Anderson’s campuses. Dr. Jaffary also co-directs MD Anderson’s Institute for Data Science in Oncology, which is integrating the most advanced computational and data science approaches with MD Anderson’s clinical and scientific expertise. Since its 2023 launch, the institute has established multiple strategic collaborations with academic institutions and companies, recruiting talented data scientists to MD Anderson alongside affiliated internal collaborators to lead projects across the institution.
Jason Joseph. Chief Digital and Information Officer for Corewell Health (Grand Rapids, Mich.). Mr. Joseph has led a transformative digital evolution at Corewell Health, unifying digital services across regions and aligning team members behind a shared vision for accessible, equitable care. One standout accomplishment under his leadership was the successful rollout of the “One Epic Ecosystem”, which consolidated EHR systems across Corewell’s East, South and West regions, streamlining 400,000 patient records for seamless clinical continuity. He also championed the deployment of Abridge, an AI-enabled ambient documentation tool that cut after-hours documentation by 48% and boosted both clinician satisfaction and patient engagement. He fosters innovation through initiatives like the “Ways of Working” model, and hosts leadership summits that encourage collaboration, experimentation and operational excellence. Corewell Health’s digital services team earned recognition as one of Computerworld’s “Best Places to Work in IT” for 2025 and received the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society “Davies Award” under his guidance. Mr. Joseph also dedicates time to public service and sits on multiple community and industry boards.
Jennifer Junis, MSN, RN. Senior Vice President of OSF OnCall Digital Health at OSF HealthCare (Peoria, Illinois). Ms. Junis has pioneered scalable digital care solutions including virtual nursing, hospital-at-home, remote patient monitoring, robust tele-specialty models and innovative ambulatory care. She oversees the strategic and operational structure for digital care, including a systemwide transfer and logistics center. Her leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic was pivotal, implementing a five-year digital strategy in just five weeks and launching the pandemic digital response hub, which provided virtual care to thousands across the state of Illinois. Ms. Junis has advanced central monitoring across ICU, maternal/fetal and telemetry, improved quality and outcomes, developed digital navigation and care programs, and transformed the call center into an omnichannel digital experience. She established 22 urgent care centers with integrated virtual services and led a $64 million state initiative expanding access for Medicaid patients, reaching over 600,000 individuals through digital and virtual services.
Zain Kazmi. Associate Vice Chancellor, Chief Digital and Analytics Officer of Health Affairs at the University of Texas Health System (Austin). Mr. Kazmi leads several enterprisewide strategic initiatives and collaborations at UT Health, spanning digital health, technology and EHR optimization. Overseeing the health system’s data and AI program, he brings together top AI leaders from across UT’s health campuses and actively explores partnerships with other prominent academic medical centers.
Joel Klein, MD. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.). Dr. Klein brings a uniquely grounded perspective to enterprise technology leadership, drawing on 20 years as a board-certified emergency physician to inform his approach to IT strategy, change management and clinical workflow optimization across a health system encompassing 18 hospitals, more than 500 patient care locations, and a team of more than 1,000 IT professionals with a capital and operating budget exceeding $500 million annually. His clinical background spans service as president of an emergency medicine physician group and work as a physician for the Baltimore Orioles, where he instilled the crisis management, cross-functional teamwork and rapid problem-solving skills he now applies to enterprise-scale technology challenges. Prior to joining Hackensack Meridian Health in 2025, Dr. Klein served nearly a decade at the Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical System, most recently as senior vice president and CIO, where he led more than 800 team members, implemented a single Epic clinical system across the entire organization, overhauled physical network infrastructure and guided the organization’s command response to a worldwide Kronos timekeeping system outage. At Hackensack Meridian Health, his areas of early focus include IT security, governance and a transformational shift to Workday impacting payroll, accounts payable and financial systems across 38,000 team members and 7,000 physicians, alongside AI-enabled initiatives such as a platform to enhance operating room efficiency, which is currently being scaled across the system. Hackensack University Medical Center has been named to U.S. News & World Report‘s national honor roll and ranked No. 1 in both the New York metro area and New Jersey.
Omkar Kulkarni. Chief Transformation and Digital Officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Mr. Kulkarni leads transformative change across Children’s Hospital Los Angeles by designing and implementing innovative, human-centered digital solutions spanning the digital front door, virtual care, patient engagement, data management and an elevated patient experience. He built CHLA’s Innovation Studio from the ground up, establishing a platform focused on digital health solutions that address virtual care, social and emotional determinants of health, AI, voice recognition, virtual and augmented reality, digital therapeutics and medical devices. Among his standout accomplishments, Mr. Kulkarni launched “MyVisit,” an innovative web-based application providing families with real-time access to emergency department visit details directly from their smartphones, an initiative that reduced open-ended patient feedback about wait time concerns by 23%. He also led the implementation of an AI scribe solution to reduce physician burnout, with the pilot phase yielding a 47% reduction in burnout scores alongside reduced task load, mental fatigue and same-day note completion improvements. Under his leadership, the hospital became the first children’s hospital in the nation to deploy Moxi robot helpers for 24/7 pharmaceutical delivery and the first to deploy a virtual rooming experience for patient families, and the organization is currently piloting generative AI to translate discharge notes for Spanish-speaking patients. This effort is a particularly critical capability given that 60% of CHLA’s patients speak Spanish. Beyond CHLA, Mr. Kulkarni serves as founder and managing director of KidsX, an international pediatric digital health accelerator with more than 30 member children’s hospitals.
Matt Kull. Chief Information and Digital Strategy Officer for Inova (Falls Church, Va.). Mr. Kull leads all technology and digital strategy for Inova, where he has been a driving force behind the organization’s innovation journey and digital transformation. He successfully implemented AI-powered healthcare solutions such as Hyro and Abridge, enhancing patient interactions, clinical documentation, overall experience and efficiency. Under his leadership, Inova was the first in the nation to earn The Joint Commission’s “Responsible Use of Health Data” certification, highlighting his ability to champion innovation while safeguarding data privacy. His prior roles at Cleveland Clinic and Dallas-based Parkland Health included overseeing global tech expansions and implementing groundbreaking infrastructure like quantum computing and 5G-enabled hospitals. Mr. Kull’s expertise has been recognized nationally, including features in Forbes and numerous “CIO of the Year” accolades from Inspire CIO, DallasCIO and D CEO Magazine.
Pamela Landis. Senior Vice President of Digital Engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health. Ms. Landis leads digital engagement strategy, operational structure and technology for Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest integrated health network. She is a longtime executive in digital engagement, having begun her career in the field more than 25 years ago. Her team is responsible for creating a digital experience for consumers and patients, including the acquisition of patients through customer relationship management software, targeted digital marketing and search engine marketing, the activation of patients through websites, mobile applications, the patient portal and online appointment scheduling, patient access to care through an omni-channel patient access center, and the continued adoption of care through the use of virtual care. Since joining Hackensack Meridian Health in 2019, she has built a team of technologists, researchers, digital marketers, usability experts and engagement leaders. In 2025, the multi-channel Patient Access Center handled more than 3 million patient inquiries through phone, text, email and generative AI voice agents. There was a 52% increase of online appointment scheduling and more than $1 billion in appointment revenue was attributed to digital marketing channels. Prior to joining the system, she led digital efforts at Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health and the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System.
Michael Mainiero. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer at Catholic Health (Rockville, Centre, N.Y.). Mr. Mainiero is advancing digital innovation by orchestrating comprehensive digital transformation across the system. His role entails crafting and executing a dynamic digital strategy and managing the technological ecosystem of the organization, with oversight of digital strategy, technology, cybersecurity, telehealth and more. He is also leading the system’s Epic EHR implementation while maintaining focus on clinical workflow optimization and efficiency. Throughout his more than 25-year career, he has spearheaded digital transformation strategies, innovation and design in diverse settings such as start-ups, Fortune 100 companies and academic medical centers. Prior to his tenure at Catholic Health, he held leadership roles at New York City-based NYU Langone for 20 years, spearheading user experience, software and product development.
Janet Mak. Interim Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City). Ms. Mak assumed the role of interim chief digital officer in April 2025, taking on responsibility for the overall design and execution of MSK’s digital strategy. She brings nearly three decades of institutional knowledge and demonstrated excellence across the organization’s IT landscape to the role, having joined the organization as an application analyst in 1997 and steadily taking on increasing responsibilities and more complex IT projects to transform the cancer center’s technology environment over the years. Most recently, Ms. Mak served as vice president and head of solution engineering, where she oversaw multiple IT teams supporting the cancer center’s EHR, clinical and ancillary systems, and their various integrations. Before joining Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, she gained foundational experience at a healthcare software company building early-generation EHRs, grounding her career in the core systems that have come to define modern clinical care delivery. Ms. Mak will serve in this capacity until a permanent chief digital officer is identified.
Novlet Mattis. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer for Orlando (Fla.) Health. With oversight of a multimillion dollar budget and thousands of team members, Ms. Mattis leads Orlando Health’s expansive IT, digital innovation, supply chain, analytics and facility security operations. Her leadership has supported rapid system growth and technology modernization, including Epic consolidation, enterprise resource planning unification and cloud platform implementation. Ms. Mattis also spearheaded a sweeping AI-driven digital platform that supports virtual care, remote monitoring and ambient documentation, resulting in drastically improved safety, satisfaction and operational efficiency. She has built a high-performing IT organization with extremely high retention, and champions employee engagement through development initiatives. Her leadership has earned Orlando Health multiple national awards for health IT, including honors from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and Epic.
Gulshan Mehta. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Blanchard Valley Health System (Findlay, Ohio). Mr. Mehta leads enterprise IT, digital transformation, data and analytics, cybersecurity, and clinical applications at Blanchard Valley Health System, with additional oversight of supply chain, enterprise project management and biomedical engineering. He translates digital strategy into measurable operational, clinical and financial outcomes in a community health system environment. He inherited an organization marked by operational strain and legacy technology challenges, but systematically transformed IT from a reactive function into a trusted strategic partner. A hallmark of his tenure has been the responsible scaling of AI and automation, including the enterprisewide deployment of ambient clinical documentation that achieved greater than 70% physician adoption and a greater than 20% reduction in documentation time, alongside AI-enabled analytics and administrative automation that freed thousands of hours of manual work across the organization. Mr. Mehta has also driven major enterprise modernization efforts including EHR optimization and upgrades, cloud migrations, and the implementation of an enterprise data and analytics platform that improved data access, reporting consistency, and executive visibility while laying the foundation for advanced population health capabilities. Beyond his executive role, he serves as president of Technicore Clinical Engineering Services, a joint venture where Blanchard Valley Health System is the majority stakeholder, operating as a regional shared-services platform for biomedical and clinical engineering across northwest Ohio. Blanchard Valley Health System has earned the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives “Digital Health Most Wired Award” for two consecutive years and the “Baldrige Award” under his leadership.
Nader Mherabi. Executive Vice President, Vice Dean and Chief Digital and Information Officer of NYU Langone Health (New York City). Mr. Mherabi is responsible for all of NYU Langone Health’s information technology activities and development. He also leads the organization’s digital transformation initiative. In his more than two decades with the health system, he has worked tirelessly to create a singular IT department that homes a centralized electronic medical record for each patient. Prior to his tenure at NYU Langone Health, he served as vice president of Credit Suisse First Boston.
Aaron Miri, DHA. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Baptist Health (Jacksonville, Fla.). Dr. Miri is responsible for shaping the future of Baptist Health from an IT perspective, with an emphasis on digital strategy, innovation, cybersecurity and the enterprisewide integration of technology. With more than 20 years of healthcare and IT experience, Dr. Miri has a track record of transforming care delivery for consumers, patients and providers through collaboration with clinicians, internal stakeholders and technology partners. In the first year of his tenure at Baptist, he spearheaded the health system’s EHR transition to Epic and the launch of digital applications like “Baptist Access”, an all-in-one wayfinding platform, and “Baptist MyChart”, a secure patient portal. In 2024, Dr. Miri was named “CIO of the Year” by Florida ORBIE, the state’s premier technology executive recognition program. In 2016, The Obama Administration appointed Dr. Miri to the federal health IT policy committee, after which he was reappointed for a second term.
Jane Moran. Chief Information and Digital Officer at Mass General Brigham (Boston). Ms. Moran leads the development and operations of enterprise technology and AI enablement across the integrated academic health system, which includes founding members Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Leading a team of more than 1,800 digital experts, she is working to employ a number of digital innovations to enhance patient access and care coordination, including the implementation of ambient clinical documentation AI that supports more than 4,000 providers, reducing after-hours documentation time and improving both visit flow and clinician focus during patient encounters. These capabilities also include the implementation of conversational AI pilot programs to help individuals more easily schedule and manage appointments. Mass General Brigham is now expanding use of AI to equip and empower researchers to streamline clinical trial matching and research workflows, and is advancing a secure enterprise data platform to optimize research operations and expand data available to investigators. Through her team’s successful implementation of new enterprise AI platforms, staff have secure access to productivity tools and virtual agents that improve operational efficiency and digital fluency across the workforce. Ms. Moran was appointed to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s 2024 AI Task Force to strengthen the state’s tech competitiveness.
Kristin Myers. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.). Ms. Myers leads the enterprise digital services organization at Northwell Health, one of the nation’s largest health systems with approximately $23 billion in operating revenue and more than 104,000 employees. Ms. Myers’ responsibilities span digital experience, enterprise data and analytics, AI and intelligent automation, cybersecurity, infrastructure and cloud services, clinical informatics and IT shared services. Over the past two years, she has been a driving force in accelerating digital transformation through significant organizational change and multiple concurrent initiatives, delivering major implementations while building a stronger and more mature technology foundation for long-term innovation. A signature accomplishment under Ms. Myers’ leadership is the Epic “Wave 1” implementation, which brought the system live across eight hospitals and impacted approximately 39,000 users. This represents the first wave of a multi-year initiative aiming to consolidate more than 30 medical record systems and over 200 applications across the system. She also spearheaded the launch of Northwell’s AI Hub in mid-2024, a centralized and secure platform democratizing generative AI across the health system, now boasting more than 19,970 users, over 3.2 million interactions, and access to 23 diverse AI models from providers including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. Ms. Myers has additionally advanced a customer relationship management transformation strategy that integrates Epic and Salesforce to enable a 360-degree patient view, and is actively exploring agentic AI use cases to support a differentiated enterprise access strategy. A member of the Wall Street Journal technology council and the Global Salesforce CIO customer advisory board, Ms. Myers previously served as executive vice president and chief digital and information officer at New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System.
Simon Nazarian. System Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Technology Officer at City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.). Mr. Nazarian leads City of Hope’s enterprisewide technology vision, transforming and expanding digital, AI, and advanced analytics capabilities to support an expanding national cancer network and accelerate progress across diagnosis, treatment and research. A defining accomplishment under his leadership is the development and deployment of “HopeLLM,” a proprietary generative AI platform built by multidisciplinary digital, clinical and data science teams to responsibly leverage City of Hope’s extensive oncology data. The platform generates clinician-ready summaries for referred and new patients, dramatically reducing time spent reviewing hundreds of pages of records and flagging potential care friction such as missing documentation or inconsistencies that could delay scheduling. The platform has also been embedded into research and trial operations, supporting feasibility assessments for more than 200 clinical trials across City of Hope’s national system and compressing processes that once took weeks into minutes, enabling studies to open across multiple locations nearly simultaneously and expanding patient access to leading-edge therapies. Mr. Nazarian’s approach places a rigorous emphasis on responsible AI implementation, with HopeLLM built around human-in-the-loop clinical oversight, clear sourcing and citations, regulatory controls and continuous monitoring. Mr. Nazarian brings more than 25 years of experience across healthcare delivery, consulting and payer organizations, including roles at Optum Health, McKinsey & Company, Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Onyeka Nchege. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer for Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.). At Novant Health, Mr. Nchege leads the strategic deployment of cutting-edge consumer technologies and clinical solutions that elevate patient care and drive enterprisewide digital transformation. With nearly 30 years of leadership experience, including CIO roles at Toyota, Coca-Cola and Interstate Batteries, he brings a blend of operational insight and innovation fluency. His leadership at Novant has strengthened enterprise growth by aligning digital advancements with long-term organizational purpose and sustainability. His leadership has helped Novant earn accolades such as College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ “Most Wired” distinction and the National Committee for Quality Assurance validation for its “Community Connect” software. Thanks to his visionary approach to IT strategy and transformation, he was named “CIO of the Year” by the Carolina ORBIE Awards in 2024. Outside of the system, Mr. Nchege serves on the boards of Truveta, Apparo’s CXO tech council and Blumenthal.
Dwight Raum. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Information Officer at Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health. In his role as chief digital information officer, Mr. Raum aims to transform how Rochester Regional Health harnesses technology for better care, operating with a clear philosophy that innovation exists to close gaps, eliminate friction, and improve outcomes for patients and providers alike. Prior to joining Rochester Regional Health, he helped launch a nationally recognized healthcare technology innovation center that empowered clinicians and technologists to co-design and deploy digital health tools, and drove consumer-focused digital strategies at a health technology startup that made navigating care more accessible for patients and families. Since arriving at Rochester Regional Health in 2023, Mr. Raum has accelerated transformation across multiple fronts, including restructuring enterprise IT governance, rebuilding system resilience, and championing a “digital front door” initiative that has set a new standard for personalized, seamless patient engagement from scheduling through navigation. He has also developed a roadmap for responsibly embedding AI into predictive analytics, clinical support and operations, with an emphasis on both opportunity and accountability to ensure innovation directly benefits patients while maintaining appropriate safeguards. He has also led a cultural shift, guiding the system toward an innovation mindset where frontline staff feel trusted and supported to act on opportunities, balancing empowerment with accountability in ways that have measurably accelerated the pace of problem-solving across the system. Recognized nationally for establishing one of the first major healthcare technology innovation centers, Mr. Raum is an invited speaker at multiple national digital health forums with a proven ability to unite people, process and platforms for real-world impact.
Craig Richardville. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at UF Health (Gainesville, Fla.). Mr. Richardville will assume the role of senior vice president and chief digital and information officer at UF Health in May 2026. He brings more than 30 years of national healthcare IT and digital transformation leadership to the position, including nearly two decades as a chief information or digital officer for some of the nation’s largest and most complex health systems. As the senior executive responsible for enterprise digital strategy, IT, data and analytics, AI, and cybersecurity across UF Health, he will partner closely with clinical, academic, research and administrative leaders to advance the organization’s mission via secure, innovative, and high-performing digital and information capabilities. Most recently, Mr. Richardville served as deputy chief information officer at UF Health, where he played a key role in strengthening operational performance, advancing Epic modernization efforts and deepening collaboration across the system. In his expanded role, he will guide the development and execution of UF Health’s enterprise digital and information strategy, oversee clinical, business and research systems, advance responsible AI adoption, strengthen information security and privacy, and enable an increasingly digital and data-driven workforce. Mr. Richardville is nationally recognized for his leadership in healthcare innovation.
Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD. Senior Vice President for Data and Technology Solutions at Penn Medicine (Philadelphia). Dr. Schnall has held this inaugural role since May 2024, guiding the institution into a new era of data-driven healthcare by harnessing the rapid pace of technological advancement. In this capacity, he oversees the offices of the CIO, chief medical information officer and chief analytics officer, with teams collectively focused on improving the provider experience, enhancing patient outcomes and driving operational efficiency across the health system. Prior to this role, Dr. Schnall served two terms as chair of the department of radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, where he doubled both the size of the department and its research funding portfolio while creating a single Penn Medicine radiology residency program, now recognized as the top program in the nation. He also built a “One Penn Medicine Radiology” framework to standardize processes across facilities and fostered strong collaborations between community-based physicians and academic programs. A widely respected figure in medicine and research, Dr. Schnall continues to serve in a leadership role in the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group and has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the National Academy of Medicine. His combination of deep clinical expertise, research distinction and technology leadership makes him uniquely positioned to advance Penn Medicine’s mission of integrating data and innovation across all aspects of patient care and health system operations.
Lee Schwamm, MD. Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Health Officer and Associate Dean for Digital Strategy and Transformation at Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health. Dr. Schwamm brings a combination of clinical expertise, research distinction and digital transformation leadership to Yale New Haven Health, where he is charged with unifying siloed virtual care and digital enablement efforts into a single robust program spanning AI governance, virtual care model redesign, digital patient experience and physician wellness. Since his arrival, he has transformed a traditional IT hierarchy into an experience-led portfolio organized around the employee, care team, researcher/analyst and patient digital experience domains. His work is supported by three foundational layers, and he leads a team of nearly 700 digital employees alongside his dyad CIO/CISO partner. Dr. Schwamm pioneered the use of telehealth-enabled acute stroke care nationally, and during the first six months of Covid at Boston-based Mass General Brigham, he led adoption efforts for 10,000 clinicians to provide over 1.7 million virtual visits, all while introducing a suite of innovative inpatient virtual solutions. He co-founded the digitally-enabled American Heart Association “Get With the Guidelines-Stroke” clinical registry, which has now transformed stroke care across more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and over 8 million patient encounters. At Yale New Haven Health, he is architecting a reimagined digital front door that infuses generative AI and automation into the full patient experience, and is implementing ambient clinical documentation for routine clinical use while building the governance, policy and educational frameworks for responsible AI adoption systemwide. Dr. Schwamm serves as chair of the AI Task Force for the American Heart Association, digital health section editor for Stroke, and international advisory board member for Lancet Digital Health.
Eric Smith. Chief Digital Officer at Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston). Mr. Smith leads enterprise digital, data and analytics strategy for one of the largest health systems in the region, grounding his work in the quintuple aim to align technology, data and operations in service of high-value care for patients and providers. He directed Memorial Hermann’s systemwide Epic transformation, which was the largest technology initiative in the organization’s 118-year history, unifying clinical, operational and patient interaction data across all hospital campuses and outpatient settings. He has since driven adoption to more than 800,000 active “MyChart” users. Mr. Smith established a formal AI governance framework anchored in safety, privacy and value-based care priorities, and has deployed ambient listening and generative documentation assistants in clinical settings, with early deployments associated with a reported 44% reduction in clinician burnout. He also piloted an AI-powered voice assistant making thousands of patient follow-up calls weekly to improve care continuity, and advanced AI integration across revenue cycle workflows from physician documentation through coding. Mr. Smith has been recognized as a member of the Wall Street Journal technology council and has spoken at Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2025 and Digital Health 2025 on AI governance, smart hospitals and digital engagement strategy.
Ryan Smith. Chief Digital and Information Officer at Intermountain Health (Salt Lake City). Mr. Smith oversees all digital and technology functions at Intermountain Health, leading a team whose work supports simpler, more coordinated care for hundreds of thousands of patients and more than 68,000 caregivers across multiple states. Among his most significant accomplishments was leading one of the largest single-day EHR transitions in the country, successfully unifying eight separate legacy EHR systems onto a single Epic platform that went live on schedule across 33 hospitals and more than 400 clinics, supported by around-the-clock command centers, at-the-elbow assistance and a dedicated Epic coaching hotline. Mr. Smith also oversaw the development of an AI-powered triage agent that transformed IT ticket handling during the Epic transition. The agent was built in six weeks, scaled across all incident tickets within three months, and processed more than 100,000 incidents while automatically routing over 52% of command center tickets, ultimately saving at least three minutes per ticket and freeing more than 14,000 hours of staff capacity. He expanded online scheduling across additional specialties, driving a 55% increase and nearly 55,000 appointments in a single month, and launched a unified patient app that saw approximately 600,000 activations within 60 days in two regions. Mr. Smith also championed caregiver-focused digital improvements, including the deployment of approximately 7,000 iPhones for “Epic Rover” and nursing documentation tools that saved 7.9 million clicks and approximately 2,600 nursing hours in a single month. Mr. Smith is a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society communities, as well as a board member of DirectTrust.
Tressa Springmann. Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at LifeBridge Health (Baltimore). Ms. Springmann plays a central role in shaping enterprise strategy and digital transformation at LifeBridge Health. She is responsible for ensuring information systems and services enable clinicians to deliver high-quality care across the continuum, from inpatient to community settings. Over her 12-plus-year tenure, she has also held responsibility for performance improvement, Lean transformation initiatives and the system’s health information management function. Ms. Springmann is currently co-leading LifeBridge Health’s digital transformation, with a focus on security, consumer experience and digital innovation. Under her leadership, the organization has scaled telehealth and virtual care investments while intentionally aligning IT initiatives to generate revenue, improve quality and reduce costs. A nationally recognized leader, she is deeply engaged in industry governance and is a strong advocate for advancing women in healthcare IT leadership.
Lisa S. Stump. Chief Digital Information Officer at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City). Ms. Stump serves as CDIO for the Mount Sinai Health System and dean for information technology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she provides executive leadership over the organization’s enterprise digital and data ecosystem. In this dual role, she is responsible for core information technology and digital functions, cybersecurity and risk management, data privacy and governance, analytics, application portfolio management, digital experience, data democratization, and the advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. A member of Mount Sinai’s executive leadership team, Mrs. Stump plays a central role in shaping and executing the health system’s five-year digital and technology strategy, ensuring technology investments drive innovation, performance and long-term growth across clinical care, research and education. She focuses on leveraging emerging technologies, modern operating models and data-driven insights to create measurable value and elevate patient, clinician and learner experiences. Prior to joining Mount Sinai, Mrs. Stump served as senior vice president and chief information and digital transformation officer at Yale New Haven (Conn.) Health and Yale Medicine, where she led large-scale digital transformation initiatives across a complex academic health system.
Jason Szczuka. Chief Digital Officer at Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati). Mr. Szczuka serves as the first chief digital officer in Bon Secours Mercy Health’s history. Concurrently, he serves as president of its digital investing arm, Accrete Health Partners, making him responsible for both defining the ministry’s digital transformation agenda and building the venture infrastructure to sustain it. He is distinguished by his emphasis on execution, governance and accountability, establishing clear structures that connect executive sponsorship, operational ownership and defined success measures that enable the organization to move beyond pilot-driven innovation toward durable, scalable digital capabilities. Drawing on his background as co-founder of Brighter, a digital health platform later acquired by Cigna, and his tenure as chief digital officer at Cigna, Mr. Szczuka brings an experimentation-driven startup perspective that accelerates how Bon Secours Mercy Health evaluates and adopts new technologies. Under his leadership of Accrete Health Partners, the portfolio has grown to 10 digital health companies that now touch every operating team across the health system, with multiple new investments, a successful exit and six new digital projects launched within the past year alone. His approach consistently aligns digital initiatives with clearly identified clinical and operational needs rather than pursuing standalone technology deployments, supporting the expansion of virtual care, digital patient access, and data-driven decision-making across diverse markets and care settings. With his help, Bon Secours Mercy Health earned College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’s “Digital Health Most Wired Level 10” designation in 2025, the highest recognition available.
Luis Taveras, PhD. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Jefferson (Philadelphia). Dr. Taveras brings over four decades of experience driving transformative technology strategies to his role overseeing IT for Jefferson, Philadelphia’s second-largest employer and the region’s largest health system, which encompasses a leading university and nonprofit health plan. Following Jefferson’s acquisition of Lehigh Valley Health Network, Dr. Taveras spearheaded a sweeping digital integration effort that expanded the system from 18 to 33 hospitals and 45,000 to 65,000 employees. He was able to unify disparate systems, including 10 intranet platforms, into the single “JeffersonONE” platform. He also developed “Virtual Checkout,” a first-of-its-kind national model that allows patients to complete post-visit scheduling via video call from their exam rooms, reducing referral-to-appointment lag time from 18 days to just 5.5 days and cutting checkout wait times to an average of 22 seconds. Dr. Taveras also piloted ambient speech technology to reduce clinician documentation burden, helping decrease after-hours charting and contributing to reduced burnout across Jefferson’s care teams. Most recently, he led a collaboration with Qualified Health to deploy generative AI across Jefferson’s multi-state network, introducing an enterprisewide approach that combines workflow-level integration, secure data controls and healthcare-grade governance guardrails. Dr. Taveras is also a sought-after speaker and a passionate advocate for mentorship and professional development.
Shane Thielman. Corporate Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Scripps Health (San Diego). Mr. Thielman provides vision and leadership for the development, implementation, and execution of technology and biomedical engineering initiatives across a fully integrated network spanning five hospital campuses, 30 ambulatory sites, and a variety of administrative and specialty centers. He has built strong partnerships with clinical and business stakeholders throughout the organization, including leading the implementation of a comprehensive EHR and revenue cycle system that has served as a foundation for continuous improvement and operational alignment. Mr. Thielman spearheaded the development of the Scripps Health Operations Command Center, a centralized hub that integrates real-time data, advanced technology, and multidisciplinary expertise to improve patient flow, throughput, and discharge timeliness across all five hospital campuses, most recently adding a central cardiac patient monitoring hub to the initiative. Under his leadership, the system’s consumer-facing digital capabilities have expanded significantly, with new features including expanded online scheduling, automated waitlists, on-demand telemedicine, and published wait times for emergency departments and urgent care centers. These measures are all designed to improve patient access and experience. Mr. Thielman has also established an enterprise AI governance framework that blends safety, trust and measured decision-making, while overseeing a portfolio of more than two dozen AI solutions spanning clinical documentation, imaging, revenue cycle and safety. His leadership has helped Scripps Health earn the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ “Digital Health Most Wired” designation for both ambulatory and acute care in 2025.
Joel Vengco. Senior Vice President of Information Technology Services and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare. In his position at Hartford HealthCare, Mr. Vengco is responsible for leading all technology operations, enterprise applications, and data and digital transformation initiatives across 500 locations. He is currently focused on expanding access, garnering data and crafting consumer-centric digital experiences. Looking to the future, the health system will be deeply impacted by AI, agentic technologies and changes in the workforce. Mr. Vengco brings over 20 years of related experience to his role, having most recently acted as senior vice president and chief information digital officer at Springfield, Mass.-based Baystate Health. His primary professional goal is to utilize data and digital to personalize the patient experience.
Michael Waisbrot. System Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at UW Health (Madison, Wis.). Mr. Waisbrot serves in the dual role of chief information and digital officer at UW Health, holding enterprise accountability for the overall strategy, governance and execution of information services, digital transformation and technology operations across a large academic health system. With his calm leadership style and his ability to unify diverse teams around a “one team, one platform” approach, he has integrated previously decentralized teams, strengthened accountability, and improved collaboration across clinical, operational and technical domains. A signature accomplishment under his leadership has been advancing a systemwide digital and technology operating model focused on people-first transformation, operational safety and auditable outcomes, while simultaneously delivering impactful cost-optimization and margin-improvement initiatives through workforce efficiency programs, vendor and contract optimization, and disciplined portfolio prioritization. Mr. Waisbrot has also played a central role in advancing AI, automation and digital enablement, establishing governance and practical use cases that move beyond experimentation to deliver real operational value across clinical communications, service management and enterprise operational insights. UW Health has earned College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ “Digital Health Most Wired” recognition and was named to Newsweek‘s “World’s Best Smart Hospitals” list for 2025. University of Wisconsin Hospitals has also been ranked No. 1 in Wisconsin by U.S. News & World Report for 14 consecutive years, a standard of excellence that Mr. Waisbrot’s technology leadership continues to enable and support.
J. Joshua Wilda. Associate Vice President for Information Systems, Chief Information Digital Officer at University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City). Mr. Wilda leads the healthcare information systems team at University of Iowa Health Care, overseeing more than 600 employees and holding strategic responsibility for information technology services, clinical applications, and the health system’s digital transformation strategy across clinical, administrative, operational and research functions. Appointed to his role in September 2025 following a national search, he brings over 20 years of progressive leadership experience across integrated health systems and a proven track record of translating complex challenges into scalable, people-centered solutions that enhance clinical operations and patient experience. Prior to joining UI Health Care, Mr. Wilda served as chief digital and information officer at Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Health’s regional network, where he led a 12-month full regional IT integration across two health systems encompassing six hospitals, 115 care sites and a 733-bed flagship teaching hospital. He also launched a three-year innovation roadmap focused on Epic optimization, responsible AI integration, digital health equity and enterprise cybersecurity. He is co-author of the widely cited publication “Artificial Intelligence, Ambient Voice, and Healthcare: A Responsible Path Forward,” reflecting his national reputation for practical and ethical insights on integrating emerging technology in clinical care. Mr. Wilda has been honored with the 2024 Michigan ORBIE Award for “Healthcare CIO of the Year” and named a 2023 College of Healthcare Information Management Executives “Digital Health Leader to Watch.” Under his prior leadership, UI Health Care earned College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ “Digital Health Most Wired Level 9: recognition in both acute and ambulatory categories in 2025.
Laura Wilt. Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.). Ms. Wilt leads Sutter Health’s enterprise digital strategy across technology, innovation, digital patient experience, and data and analytics. Under her leadership, the system is advancing a systemwide focus on making work easier for clinicians and staff while expanding digital access and engagement for patients. In 2025, her teams saved more than 1.6 million hours through automation, AI and workflow simplification, including ambient clinical documentation, automated registration and administrative optimization. Since launch, system clinicians have used ambient documentation to generate more than 2 million notes, reducing the time providers spend on documentation by 27%. Ms. Wilt also oversees digital care delivery initiatives that extend care beyond traditional settings, including “Sutter Sync,” a digital care model that has enrolled more than 5,100 patients and is expanding to support additional chronic conditions. She leads efforts to standardize and integrate digital capabilities through Sutter’s “ONE Platform,” while accelerating adoption of applied AI tools such as “SutterIQ,” which is now used by more than 21,000 employees. Her work supports Sutter’s strategy to improve access, clinician experience and operational efficiency at scale.
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.