The pressure on health system executives to move fast on artificial intelligence has rarely been more acute. Vendor pipelines are full, board expectations are rising, and the fear of falling behind is real. Chris Carmody, recently named CIO of Pittsburgh-based UPMC, is pushing back against the impulse to deploy it without the right infrastructure in place.
“I think one of the challenges is to actually slow things down to accelerate,” Mr. Carmody said during an episode of the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
His approach to responsible AI adoption covers three areas. The first is governance to establish the structures and processes that allow a health system to evaluate which problems are worth solving before any technology is acquired. The second is problem prioritization.
“These are the top three, five, 10 problems that we’re trying to solve as an organization and focus and channel our efforts on making those successful so we can build off of that and move things forward and take advantage of the opportunity with AI,” Mr. Carmody said. “But it really does start with that governance piece and the processes around to support it.”
The third area is user training, which Mr. Carmody considers as important as the technical work that precedes it.
“We make sure that the users that are having their workflows changed are trained to understand the why behind utilizing that technology and what the benefit is,” he said.
UPMC’s position to act on that framework was built through a years-long infrastructure investment. As recently as a year ago, the system operated across 10 separate EHR instances, a level of fragmentation Mr. Carmody described as “like sprinting a marathon from an IT perspective.”
UPMC has since consolidated onto a single Epic platform, migrating years of data from legacy systems to create a unified clinical foundation. A reliable data layer is what makes meaningful AI deployment possible at scale.
The same caution shapes how UPMC approaches diagnostic AI, where imaging has produced the clearest early track record.
“I think we have to be measured with our approach and adoption of leveraging things like AI to help perform some of that diagnostic work,” Mr. Carmody said. “There’s obviously been a lot of success cases in the imaging space, and that’s a great place to build off of. But there’s also a lot of data, and we just have to be very cautious about how we approach that and leverage the technology. We don’t wanna just adopt technology for technology’s sake.”
Technology vendors compete fiercely to get into health systems, and oftentimes aggressive to sign the deal. But without specific benchmarks for performance, there’s no guarantee companies will truly partner with health systems to achieve their promised goals.
“What is unfortunately the case far too often for my liking is our technology partners come in and they make the sale, we do the transaction, and then they disappear,” Mr. Carmody said.
The technology solution is never complete at the point of sale. It must integrate with existing platforms, adapt to clinical workflows, and evolve alongside the organization’s needs over time. None of that work is possible if the vendor has moved on.
“Their technology is not the end all be all, especially when you’re acquiring something out of the gate,” Mr. Carmody said. “You have to integrate it and make sure it works with the rest of your technology platforms, let alone integrate into the workflows for the users of that technology.”
UPMC’s own experience navigating that integration complexity is extensive, especially while consolidating EHRs. The process underscores the basic requirement of any consequential technology partnership: an engaged partner who treats the go-live as a beginning of the partnership, not an end.
“What we look for, and I encourage all health care IT to look for, are partners that stay engaged, that stay accountable, and work with you to actually solve the problems,” Mr. Carmody said.
His standard for what that engagement should look like is deliberately counterintuitive. The vendors he trusts most are the ones who never quite settle in.
“Your technology partners are always a little uncomfortable,” he said. “Anytime they get comfortable, that’s a bad sign that they’re being complacent, and we need to work together and partner and innovate to drive health care forward.”
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