From AI for clinical documentation to imaging, health system CIOs have been busy investing in emerging technologies to improve patient care and help providers become more efficient.
Becker’s asked CIOs around the country: “What has been your best IT investment of late and why?” Here are their responses:
David Hall, MD. CIO of OSF HealthCare (Peoria, Ill.): The immediate thing that comes to mind is our go-live of DAX Copilot. I’m guessing I’m not the only CIO who might mention this.
The use of generative AI in the physician office through DAX Copilot is one of the best things that’s happened to primary care in a long time, and really an enormous efficiency gain for clinicians.
It’s been a great investment for OSF HealthCare, for a few different reasons: the turnaround for providers, reducing their “pajama time,” reducing the time they’re in notes and documenting. They’re actually seeing more patients, and we haven’t changed their schedules. We haven’t asked them to see more patients. I firmly believe they feel like they have the opportunity to now double-book or see patients in slots that maybe they didn’t feel like they had the opportunity to do so before.
It’s been good to work with Microsoft and Nuance on this, to the point where we’re now piloting their ordering through this. We’re one of the first organizations to order using DAX Copilot in Epic, and we’re showing some success there.
Chris Harper. Senior Vice President and CIO of University of Kansas Health System (Kansas City, Kan.): One of our recent IT investments has focused on the administrative integration of technology across the University of Kansas and with the health system. This initiative reflects our belief that investing in the right people — particularly IT leadership and staff — is key to delivering better technology outcomes for our users. By unifying our technology strategy and digital assets across the health system, KU Medical Center and other KU campuses, we are streamlining IT operations, improving clarity of investments and accelerating decision-making.
As a result, patients, clinicians, researchers, faculty and students now have easier access to both foundational technologies and emerging advanced systems — including the recent growth in artificial intelligence. Integrated IT services have been critical to this progress, enabling seamless collaboration and efficient management of our technology infrastructure across all entities.
One example of this innovation is our partnership to develop and deploy AI-powered ambient voice technology. This solution is already delivering significant clinical value by reducing administrative burden for providers — giving them more time to focus on patient care. At the same time, this technology supports our goal of aligning research with real-world care delivery. By measuring reductions in cognitive workload, we are not only improving clinical outcomes but also generating research insights that help us deliver safer, more efficient care for every patient we serve.
John Kenagy, PhD. Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Administrative Officer of Legacy Health (Portland, Ore.): Best recent investment has to be in our people! After five years of working remotely and dealing with our industry’s financial pressures, our IT staff remains innovative and resilient. We recently invested time and money in training days where everyone joins to learn and grow. External trainers offer fresh perspectives and industry insights, while our internal experts share their deep knowledge and practical experience specific to Legacy. We invested in formal training that attendees could select toward Microsoft certificates in artificial intelligence, data governance, and security.
The result has been increased employee engagement, appreciation for being an employer committed to their professional development, increased number of certified analysts and engineers, and better knowledge to support our operational partners.
Debbie Mullins. Vice President and CIO of UofL Health (Louisville, Ky.): I think the best investment has been ambient listening technology. While we have a number of projects underway, that one seems to really have helped physicians. What we’re hearing is, “You’ve changed my life.” You don’t frequently hear that from a provider relative to a technology solution, but that’s what we’ve been hearing from a lot of our providers as we’ve been rolling out ambient listening technology. That’s been probably one of our better values over the past year or so.
Robin Parkin. Chief Information and Technology Officer of UVA Health (Charlottesville, Va.): At UVA Health, the most broadly used AI is our Microsoft DAX implementation in the ambulatory setting, which is still rolling out. We have currently surpassed 600 physician users. This product offers automated documentation that resides within the electronic medical record. Physicians are very positive about how it gives them back time, reduces cognitive load through automation, allows more time to focus on the patient, and enhances their overall electronic medical record satisfaction in the process. We look forward to expanding in the inpatient space and also evaluating this product for residents and nurses in the near future.
Donna Peters. Senior Vice President and CIO of TriHealth (Cincinnati): The biggest impact we’ve had overall has been in the AI space, which has really been fantastic. We here at TriHealth focus on what our CEO calls “getting healthcare right,” and that’s a laser focus on population health, keeping our community well, higher quality care, lower cost, all those things.
So when we think about our investments, we’re trying to think about: How do we focus our efforts, time, resources, which are scarce, on the things that drive that strategy? So trying to align our AI products has been a challenge, because there are so many products out there.
We’ve had a lot of success in AI imaging, focusing on early detection of disease. It couples nicely with population health. We’re seeing dramatic results in early detection of cancer. And early detection of cancer means better outcomes for our patients.
With breast cancer, with our AI product, we’ve had a more than 10% increase in stage 0 and stage 1 breast cancer detection, which is amazing. Lung nodules are up 20% for early detection of lung cancer. So it has really been a huge success in terms of being able to get better outcomes, lower costs; certainly for the provider, it’s more efficient.
Sissy Schilling. Vice President and CIO of Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa, Fla.): The best investment that IT has made of late is the investment in Workday as our new ERP. Our current ERP is 20 years old, heavily customized and requires many standalone systems to support the organization. Moving to an integrated platform allows for operational efficiencies and positions us to leverage inherent AI functionality in a modern ERP.
Peter Solberg, MD. Chief Health Information Officer of Dartmouth Health (Lebanon, N.H.): The most exciting new IT exploration Dartmouth Health has taken on is the pilot of ambient listening clinic note documentation. Positioned as the signature gen AI tool of the moment, we have been finding that it really does materially help lift the burden of documentation for our at-times beleaguered providers, and the future prospects of integration with other key tasks in the electronic health record (from setting up orders, to creating patient friendly instructions, to aiding with coding and billing functions) seem not only revolutionary but actually in reach in the near future.
We have found the technology stunning at times in the quality of its synopsis, if at other moments clearly a work in progress that demands real proofing by our clinicians — all very exciting prospects for the evolution of our field even if it will take real work and investment to get us there.
Shane Thielman. Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer of Scripps Health (San Diego): It may sound contrarian, but some of our most impactful recent IT investments have focused on optimizing existing platforms and solutions to improve access, convenience, patient care and operational efficiency. More or newer technology isn’t always better — especially in a time when healthcare organizations face increasing financial pressures.
At Scripps, we continue to expand and integrate our digital and virtual care models to meet evolving consumer preferences, such as self-scheduling and same-day, on-demand virtual visits. We are also utilizing existing technology to implement a systemwide operations command center, which has been instrumental in improving patient flow and throughput and soon will include a centralized telemetry hub. This will collapse technology silos and unify telemetry monitoring standards across all of our hospitals.
Through collaborative efforts, we have rationalized our analytics portfolio to ensure new reports and dashboards align with operational goals and strategic priorities. This disciplined approach has reduced expensive curiosity, increased automation of manual processes, and enhanced coordination of internal talent to accelerate progress on initiatives that directly impact care and outcomes.
We also remain focused on enhancing the EHR end-user experience with ambient speech, optimization of disease-based order sets, and thoughtful incorporation of clinical decision support to add value at the point-of-care. By personalizing the user experience, we can better maximize system features and return more time to direct patient care activities.