At health systems around the country, AI champions are organically emerging to drive the technology’s growth and convince skeptical peers of its value.
Healthcare leaders say the most effective AI rollouts aren’t coming from the top down — they’re being driven by these passionate early advocates already experimenting on the front lines. CIOs told Becker’s they’re leaning on these AI fanatics to evangelize the technology while keeping formal guardrails in place to ensure its safe, appropriate deployment.
“We’ve found that credibility and adoption move much faster provider-to-provider than they ever do through IT or leadership alone,” said Darrell Bodnar, CIO of Whitefield, N.H.-based North Country Healthcare.
Ryan Cameron, EdD, chief information and innovation officer of Omaha-based Children’s Nebraska, pointed to what he called an “AI aha moment”: when some staffers proposed and later built HeyMedicaid.med, an agentic solution for determining patients’ Medicaid eligibility. The champions weren’t “pitching AI,” he said, but “fixing a deeply human problem.”
“When people could see the platform automatically gathering data, guiding next steps, and escalating only when human judgment was needed, skepticism quickly turned into curiosity,” Dr. Cameron said.
The Children’s Nebraska Mammel Innovation Center has served as a hub for development, pairing AI pioneers with IT, legal and compliance leaders to focus on scalable solutions.
“We gave early adopters permission and executive air cover to experiment safely and responsibly, while anchoring their work in real user needs and outcomes,” Dr. Cameron said. “Most importantly, we moved them from ‘users’ to co‑designers, putting them in front of leadership to demonstrate impact and learning.”
AI torchbearers also materialized from the ground up at Virtua Health, a five-hospital system based in Marlton, N.J., surfacing from clinical informatics, analytics, operations, and IT. They were already using data to change decisions or workflows, asking sharp questions of the technology, and testing ideas within the current governance structure.
“Once identified, elevation wasn’t about titles or spotlighting,” said Tom Gordon, senior vice president and CIO of Virtua Health. “We pulled them closer to enterprise conversations, connected them with peers, and used their work as concrete examples when talking with leadership.”
He explained what successful AI adoption typically looks like: A respected clinical or operations leader shows how insights from data or AI changed a decision, reduced variation or saved time. Colleagues’ suspicion softens into interest after realizing the tool didn’t replace human judgment.
North Country Healthcare put forth an SBAR framework (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) for AI suggestions, but otherwise let champions arise on their own.
“Our early adopters quickly came forward once given the opportunity,” Mr. Bodnar said.
Still, the rural, three-hospital system has a formal evaluation and approval process for AI tools, ensuring appropriate governance, security and organizational alignment.
“The key for us is balance by creating enough structure to scale adoption while preserving the authenticity and momentum that come from grassroots engagement and trust,” Mr. Bodnar said.
Health systems are also bottling this entrepreneurial spirit by creating repeatable paths for ideas to move from pilots to scaled deployment. In the process, these AI trailblazers are solving one of health IT’s most stubborn and least sexy problems: people actually using the technology.
“AI adoption doesn’t accelerate because an organization declares it a priority — it accelerates when trusted people demonstrate value, leadership removes friction, and governance provides clarity instead of constraint,” Mr. Gordon said. “Our role as CIOs is to create those conditions and let the organization move.”
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