In 2024, hospital and health system CIOs are focusing on exploring generative AI use cases, with the aim of driving greater efficiencies for their organizations and staff.
Becker's asked five hospital and health system CIOs: What is one thing you are laser-focused on for 2024 at your organization?
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Michael Elley. CIO of Baptist Health (Little Rock, Ark.): We will be hyper-focused on evaluating, partnering in development and deploying generative AI to appropriate use cases throughout our organization. Spanning from clinician effectiveness and patient experience all the way to cybersecurity augmentation efforts; these are just a few areas we are excited about exploring.
Michael Saad. CIO of Munson Healthcare (Traverse City, Mich.): The one word I would use to describe our 2024 focus: empowerment. We are focused on providing our team members with the tools and relevant data that empower them to provide the best care possible for our patients.
For our caregivers, this means providing them with tools to assist with clinical documentation, information sharing and clinical decision-making.
For our administrative areas, this means automating repetitive tasks and providing them with tools so our patients can better access our services and connect with our providers.
Scott Waters. Chief Information and Technology Officer of Overlake Medical Center (Bellevue, Wash.): We are moving from smaller pilots and use cases into utilization of gen AI at scale for Overlake. I will be focused on continuing to establish the necessary governance structure to ensure that AI use in our organization is vetted effectively using multiple lenses (ethical, access/equity, patient/caregiver safety, efficiency, etc.) and involving a diverse group of people from our organization, medical staff and our community.
If we are effective in the evaluation, prioritization and deployment of gen AI technologies to solve the right challenges, we will see an accelerated timeline from initial pilot to widespread use. I am very excited and focused on the potential to take a big leap forward in 2024 in this area.
Will Landry. Senior Vice President and CIO of Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System (Baton Rouge, La.): We are laser-focused on helping to improve revenue cycle operations. This also includes improving RevCycle technology and systems support.
Roger Lutz. CIO of Independence Health System (Greensburg, Pa.): Key role will be continuing to recruit in a tough talent/labor market.