Artificial intelligence is reshaping healthcare. For many front-line workers, the technology feels abstract, opaque or out of reach. But once they’re equipped with AI literacy education, health systems experience a renaissance of possibilities.
Peter Chang, MD, senior vice president and chief transformation officer at Tampa General Hospital, believes that closing this knowledge gap is one of the most urgent challenges facing health systems today. Dr. Chang straddles clinical operations and digital transformation, and he’s seen firsthand the disconnect between what’s technically possible and what staff understand. As more health systems invest in AI-driven tools, success hinges not only on adoption but also on comprehension.
In theory, AI tools can automate documentation, predict patient deterioration and optimize scheduling. In practice, those benefits often remain theoretical unless staff understand how the tools work and why they matter.
“There’s some really cool AI that’s starting to infiltrate the [physician] space,” Dr. Chang said. “Things like ambient listening, prescribing technology where they don’t have to write their notes — it’s sort of generated for them. They’re starting to get it. But I think a lot of the front-line team that actually interact with patients every day have some idea of what technology could provide for them, but they’re missing the other 90% and it’s not their fault. They’re not technologies; they’re clinicians. Trying to impart the realm of possibility inside of their world is one of the biggest challenges we’ve had.”
Dr. Chang believes the solution lies in structured collaboration between technologists and end users. Before Tampa General rolls out any AI tool, his team embeds with the front-line staff to understand workflows, pain points and opportunities.
“That marriage between somebody that knows what’s technically possible with somebody that knows the workflow — to put those two pieces together — is super important,” he said. “That’s the gap we have to bridge, and it’s a really fascinating one. But once you show the front-line team how things are done and what capabilities could potentially be, then you open the floodgates.”
Once staff understand how the tools can help, they become enthusiastic contributors.
“It starts to come at you like a tsunami — all the requests that come in, which is really exciting,” he said. “From a prioritization perspective, that’s the next challenge: figuring out, even after we deploy a tool, it’s like a snowball rolling down a hill. IT starts off small, but as you deploy more tools and more people start to use it, more requests for enhancements come in. How do you prioritize and manage those things?”
The best solution is a strong governance structure. There are real risks in using AI without strong guardrails to protect patient information and halt hallucinations. It’s also necessary for a human to monitor the AI and keep the results consistently on track.
AI literacy isn’t a one-time training module. It’s a cultural shift. At Tampa General, the goal isn’t to turn every clinician into a coder — it’s to help them understand the potential of the tools available and how their input shapes those tools. Dr. Chang sees this as a long-term commitment to workforce development.
“We’re not looking at this as a way to replace the existing workforce that we have,” he said. “We are looking at it as: can we make our workforce more efficient so as we grow, we don’t need to hire additional FTEs?”
That message — AI is about augmentation, not replacement — is central to the hospital’s change management strategy. Dr. Chang believes AI’s success in healthcare will depend less on technical sophistication and more on emotional resonance. Patients remember how the nurses and physicians made them feel, and how comfortable they were throughout the care journey. That’s why Tampa General is focused not just on engineering AI, but on building competency around it.
“We’re a big believer in our people and our ability to diversify our skill set,” he said. Dr. Change also noted, “We’re trying to get the message out to our team that these automated and advanced analytics and artificial intelligence tools that we have, they aren’t meant to replace people.”
