WittKieffer Execs on How the Chief AI Officer Role Is Evolving

An increasing number of large health systems are considering hiring chief AI officers. But what skill sets are most important in these roles and how can health systems set these executives up to succeed? Healthcare Innovation recently put these and other questions to two consultants at executive search firm WittKieffer. 

Jeff Sturman is managing partner in the firm’s Information Technology and Digital Leadership Practice. Before joining WittKieffer, he served as senior vice president and chief digital information officer at Memorial Healthcare System/South Broward Hospital District in Florida. Zachary Durst is a principal at WittKieffer and focuses on the recruitment of healthcare CIOs and chief digital officers.

Healthcare Innovation: We are always interested in interviewing these new chief AI officers, but you guys are in an interesting position to see how health system requirements are changing. Could you talk about how you see the role evolving or maturing since we first started hearing about them several years ago?

Sturman: There may be some indecision about whether this role is something everybody needs or not. Does everyone need a leader in AI? I think the simple answer is that it depends on an organization's sophistication and their level of innovation. Organizations that are a bit more strategic in the use of data and technology are leveraging AI in this new and innovative way, whereas there are still a lot of organizations saying we don't need to invest in an AI leader yet. 

We are seeing academic health systems look at AI from a perspective of not just research, but truly from a differentiation standpoint — how they can influence the behavior of their providers, make the burden less, while also affecting patient care. They have sophistication in their electronic health records, and this is translating to the next level of data usage, and that's really AI.

Durst: We did a market assessment on chief AI officers a few years ago and we identified six in the country. We haven't done a recent market analysis, but our sense is that the number has more than quadrupled over time. And the reason is that organizations are maturing to the point where they might necessarily need that leader, especially the bigger or more complex organizations, like an academic medical center. The acceleration has just been exponential for this particular role. 


In a lot of organizations, they started their AI journey without an AI leader and looking at back-office functions such as claims denials and the finance side of the house. Now we've seen that move into a lot of clinical applications.

When they hire a chief AI officer, their goal is getting from a pilot to an enterprise AI program. That's inclusive of things like governance, change management, and advanced data definitions. 

HCI: When they don't have someone yet with this title, are they doing a lot of this work by committee — like a data governance committee. In that case, is it clear who's leading this work, or is it all over the place?

Durst: It’s all over the place. I can think of two academic health organizations where it is specifically done by committee. In other organizations, it's the data and analytics leader who may know enough about AI to lead it but isn't a specialist. In some organizations. it's the CMIO, who may have a bit of a data science background, who's taking that on.

Sturman: Even if someone's not recruiting for an AI leader, and they are recruiting for a CIO or CMIO, if AI is not part of their job description, then we would advise you that you're missing the boat. You can't implement an application today without the vendor talking about AI.

HCI: Zach, you said the number of people with this title has quadrupled in the last couple years. What does the reporting structure usually look like? Are they reporting to the CIO?

Durst: It is a small sample size so far, but the most common thing we're seeing is that they are reporting up through the CIO with a strong tie to the CMIO. In some cases the chief AI officer is a dyad partner to the chief data and analytics officer.

HCI: If a large academic medical center came to you and said we need a chief AI officer, can you generalize about what skill set or background they're looking for to fill that role?

Sturman: There are a couple of buckets they tend to fall into. One is an industry leader that's looking to make a change into a mission-oriented environment — so think master’s or Ph.D.-trained AI leaders who are currently doing this for financial services or commercial or tech, and they're drawn to the mission of healthcare. They want to come in and make a difference, and they're going to bring that high-level technical acumen to the work.

Durst: Those that come from healthcare might have a background in informatics or be a physician with data science experience.

Sturman: A physician leader is really coming in from the perspective of clinical change management. They are thinking if we are changing the workflow to include AI, how do we make sure our clinical community is going to trust what the AI is telling them? 

Durst: Rarer still are data and analytics people in healthcare today who have really advanced their skill set to a point where they have either solely focused on AI or they are looking at AI in addition to a broader data analytics portfolio.

HCI: In imaging, AI has been around a little longer, but perhaps operating a little bit separately. So if you’re hiring a chief AI officer, are they going to oversee all that work, too?

Sturman: We’ve seen a convergence now toward what I'll call platform-based AI, not necessarily one-off solutions. So even the imaging solution vendors have generalized their platforms to be not just imaging-based solutions to be much more broad in clinical focus. I think we've seen that the AI leader needs to understand clinical workflows, imaging workflows, revenue cycle workflows — the whole gamut of how really AI is going to influence what I'll call operations strategy and patient care.

HCI: What are some challenges a brand new chief AI officer faces, and what are some ways a health system can set them up to succeed?

Durst: To help them succeed, an unending landslide of money would be helpful, but that's probably not going to happen. I go back to the conversation on different profiles. A person coming from tech, they're going to struggle with change management and understanding the nuances of healthcare. If it's that person, they need a really strong CMIO partner in order to be effective. If it's a physician leader who's coming into AI, their focus around change management and and data governance is going to be an area where they're going to have to ramp up more quickly and get to know that at an enterprise level. A data and analytics leader is going to be in the middle ground between the two because they're not a clinician, but maybe they understand healthcare, and they need to make sure they leverage the right partners.

Sturman: Just like we implemented the EHR, just like we implemented ERP, you lose when you make these IT projects. If you don't get the right level of executive sponsorship, if you don't get the right level of physician leader, if you don't get the right level of project management, and you don't treat these like enterprise programs, and you make these AI initiatives and sit in the building of IT, you will set yourself up for failure. So to get behind the AI leader, the health system needs to make sure that it exposes them to the right level of operations backed up by healthcare system strategy. If you're the AI leader and you're doing something clinically and you're not working with your chief medical officer, you're in trouble. 

HCI: That leads me to a CMIO interview I did a few weeks ago with Dr. Matt Anderson at Arizona-based HonorHealth. I was interviewing him about some of the ways they're using AI, and then I asked him if they were considering hiring a chief AI officer. He said not yet, add that it comes down to how you view AI — is it something that needs to be managed, or is it a tool that everybody's using? I asked if he thought the chief AI officer title is just going to go away and he said yes. So I'm wondering if you guys think that this role is going to have staying power.

Durst: I think it's too early to say. We don't think the role is going away. We think it's going to evolve. Now what it evolves into is really the question. Fifteen years ago there were a lot of chief innovation officers across health systems, but over time what we saw was that innovation role evolved into what become a chief digital officer role with innovation integrated into it in different ways. So it's not going away. It's just going to become something different over time as organizations become more mature. It could be called something else, or it could be combined with other roles. We don't know. It’s too early to say that. 

Sturman: I have a great deal of respect for HonorHealth and Dr. Anderson and Dr. Jim Whitfill, who's the chief transformation officer there. They're not wrong in their perspective, but it's early. I do think this function will be there. It might exist in many different forms and many different roles. Will every organization in 10 years have a chief AI officer? I'm going to bet no.