IT departments used to be judged on whether they could deploy software on time. CIOs say that bar has moved: The job now is redesigning clinical workflows, owning outcomes alongside clinicians, and building governance into every AI implementation from day one rather than bolting it on afterward.
Becker’s asked CIOs two questions: How are health system IT departments changing in the era of AI, and what’s the boldest tech bet you’re making over the next two years? Their answers, below, describe IT moving from a support function to a co-owner of clinical and operational results.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
How are health system IT departments changing in the era of AI?
Garrett Olin. CIO of Shasta Community Health Center (Redding, Calif.): Changes for IT in the AI era are around upskilling, supporting implementation, more complex security risk and increased vendor assessment/management.
Tony Damron. Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President of Pikeville (Ky.) Medical Center: The biggest shift I’m seeing at Pikeville Medical Center is that IT is no longer just a support function for AI — it’s becoming a co-owner of clinical and operational outcomes. When we launched our Epic Ambient AI pilot with roughly 30 providers this summer, the conversation in our IT department wasn’t “how do we deploy this software,” it was “how do we redesign workflows and measure impact on documentation burden and patient face-time.” That’s a different kind of IT work than we were doing five years ago. The work today has become less about whose vendor name is stamped on it and more about how to keep patients and clinicians happy while implementing technology to drive the organization forward.
AI is also raising the bar on how we evaluate any new technology, even outside of “AI projects” per se. When we recently evaluated staffing platforms, the presence of AI-driven optimization changed the ROI conversation entirely — it wasn’t just about finding a scheduling tool, it was about what predictive, adaptive systems could do for labor costs and nurse satisfaction that a static rules engine couldn’t.
Governance has become a core IT deliverable, not an afterthought, because at a rural, independent health system like ours, we don’t have the luxury of large data science teams to catch problems after the fact. IT has to build that right out of the gate of any implementation.
What’s the boldest tech bet you’re making over the next two years?
GO: The boldest tech bet over the next two years that I am making is greater use and integration of agentic AI to automate and augment processes across the organization. Clinical, revenue cycle, quality, finance, strategy and more will all be involved in the use and integration.
TD: While AI is taking the world by storm in many different ways and AI is the most popular technology in the world, that doesn’t always make it the correct decision to implement in a clinical setting. I think health system executives are all cautiously optimistic about how AI agents can continue to help in healthcare while leaving the clinical decision-making in the hands of the providers. So, we will continue to make our biggest bets on using artificial intelligence in healthcare, especially to automate manual tasks and free more clinical staff up to do patient care and not as much screen time. Simply put, we are still betting on AI in healthcare and I see that continuing well into our future.
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