York, Pa.-based WellSpan Health has become a “continuous innovation engine” able to rapidly scale new technologies like AI, its innovation leader told Becker’s.
As part of that focus, the nine-hospital system recently promoted Mark Kandrysawtz to the role of senior vice president and chief innovation officer. Becker’s caught up with Mr. Kandrysawtz to discuss his innovation strategy and successes.
Question: What’s going to change about your role, and what will your new responsibilities entail?
Mark Kandrysawtz: At WellSpan, innovation became a system-level priority as part of our 2025 five-year strategic plan. As we round out that plan and begin looking ahead to our 2030 plan, the elevation of innovation within the organization is a doubling down on the role it will play in our transformation. It’s a priority in terms of expanding innovation culture and competencies so we can successfully address the problems we face.
These challenges include industry changes and shifts in patient demographics — people aging into our systems of care and those who are sicker with multiple comorbidities. On the supply side, we’re experiencing generational workforce shortages across the board. This creates a gap between growing demand and constrained supply, so we have to think differently about how we serve our communities going forward.
Q: Different health systems define innovation differently. How do you define it at WellSpan Health? What falls under the umbrella of innovation?
MK: We define innovation as the way we use people, processes and technology to solve problems and pursue opportunities. That work happens across three core functions.
First is research and development. That team focuses on product, service and experience design transformation projects. These are large, complicated efforts. We use a term here, “feed multiple birds with one scone,” instead of the traditional “kill two birds with one stone.” It’s a recognition that solving big, systemic challenges is an opportunity to drive multiple strategies at once. For example, a transformation that increases clinical quality might also personalize the experience, help us grow and improve efficiency — all at the same time.
We do this work internally through a human-centered design consultative approach and externally through a consultancy called Benjamin & Bond.
The second function is our digital experience team. They manage all custom WellSpan digital user experiences for consumers and team members, including our flagship website, our MyChart-enabled patient digital account, and about 25 other technologies forming our digital ecosystem.
The third component is our corporate venture capital strategy. We make targeted investments in early-stage companies that support our transformation and digital initiatives. Altogether, these three components — internal transformation, digital engagement and external ventures — comprise our innovation strategy.
Q: Is there an innovation project — or maybe more than one — that you’re particularly excited about or that has shown positive results?
MK: We organize our innovation portfolio around user experiences we’re creating and improving. A lot of organizations focus on vertical technology strategies — AI being a big one. You can’t go anywhere without hearing about AI. While we view AI as a tool in the toolkit, the degree of transformation it enables is significant.
One area I’m especially excited about is what we call “digital pathways.” These automate care experiences from beginning to end — say, notifying someone they’re eligible for a cancer screening, guiding them through the decision to get screened, helping them schedule it, preparing for the test, and delivering results. AI allows us to go beyond traditional self-service capabilities.
A good example is our collaboration with Hippocratic AI on our WellSpan AI care team assistant, “Ana.” Ana supports complex tasks we could never afford to do via human outreach. It’s additive and value-adding work that enhances the customer experience.
This year, we aimed to automate six of 72 priority health maintenance topics — things patients should do regularly to stay healthy. One of those is colorectal cancer screening. While we already had automation to recognize eligibility and support scheduling, we lacked the ability to support patients preparing for a colonoscopy, which can be a challenging experience.
With AI, Ana automatically calls patients preparing for the procedure, uses conversational AI to ensure they feel comfortable and informed, answers questions, and keeps them on track. When they arrive for the procedure, they’re ready, and we can complete it and help them stay cancer-free. We’re using that level of engagement across the board, because self-service isn’t enough. Our customers deserve a deeper connection — even when we can’t afford to do it with human staff.
Q: Earlier, you mentioned some healthcare challenges, but from an innovation standpoint, what’s the biggest challenge in using innovation to address those problems?
MK: Innovation is often associated with concepts like disruption and disintermediation. At WellSpan, over the past five years, we’ve focused on creating the culture and competencies needed to do this work proactively.
In the past, “change” might have been seen as risky, making initiatives harder to pursue. But now we’re at a point where we’ve become good at managing cycles of change. We know how to lead a workforce through change, and it’s that coupling of change leadership with technical capabilities that’s our secret sauce.
We can move from idea to proof of concept to pilot to enterprise scale more rapidly than most in the industry — not just because we have the capabilities, but because we’ve built the culture and strategy to support it. Change is always a top challenge in innovation, so we built that competency from the start.
Q: You also mentioned that WellSpan has a venture capital arm. Are there any investments that have paid off or companies that have gone on to do exciting things?
MK: Yes, several of our collaborators are finding success, but our approach is a bit different. We focus on creating mutual value. One of our strengths is being a really good first or alpha customer. We know how to unlock the complexity of a health system for startups.
Take Hippocratic AI and their conversational model. We bring to the table deployment knowledge — how to actually implement a solution within a health system. That’s valuable to them and helps them refine their product, while also solving our challenges. It’s about harnessing internal ingenuity in a way that’s beneficial to both parties.
Q: Thinking about your new role, say three to five years out, what do you hope to have accomplished, and how do you plan to get there?
MK: I envision an organization capable of large-scale innovation. That means running multiple cycles at once — from discovery and early learning, to proof of concept, to pilots — all as part of a continuous innovation engine.
We’ve focused on building process, talent, competencies and frameworks to ensure innovation performs with the same quality and reliability we apply in clinical settings. The goal is for innovation to stop being a novelty or side function, and instead mature into a core capability — just like clinical operations. It’s already a differentiator. Imagine what we could do if we operated at that larger scale.
Q: How do you measure ROI on these innovation projects?
MK: Every project is multivariate. Using the “bird-and-scone” analogy again, we start by projecting the potential impact on the organization. Take our early work with ambient documentation. We were among the first to adopt AI for that, and we approached it with a purposeful pilot process.
We examined metrics like provider engagement, documentation time, revenue per provider, patient throughput, and even provider turnover. Each project drives different variables, and sometimes we don’t know in advance what they’ll be. That’s part of our innovation sprint process — discovering, monitoring and projecting impact at scale.
In the case of ambient documentation, we later evaluated outcomes. Most of our providers now see more patients daily, spend less time on documentation, and report greater satisfaction. In healthcare innovation, we’re comfortable quoting projections, but it’s just as important to go back and prove the actual impact — and to build full case studies.
