Who's Hiring Chief AI Officers in Healthcare, and Why?

By Hillary Ross, Nick Giannas, Zach Durst, Scott Dethloff, and Wendy Kerschner

In healthcare, Artificial Intelligence promises to transform patient care, the work lives of clinicians and staff, the way information is interpreted, and how the business of healthcare is done. It will be integrated into almost every activity healthcare providers do from the bedside to the boardroom. The healthcare industry has been relatively slow to adopt AI tools: a McKinsey analysis of AI maturity by sector places it 7th out of 12 sectors. However, many leading health systems are embracing AI and hiring Chief AI Officers and other AI leaders as point-persons for how the technology is assessed, piloted, strategically applied, and integrated across their organizations.

WittKieffer began writing on the emergence of the healthcare Chief AI Officer in 2022, and recently conducted proprietary research examining dedicated AI leadership roles across the top 100 health systems (by revenue) in the U.S. Our findings show that the prevalence of CAIOs in healthcare is 6%, slightly behind other sectors; Research from Foundry reveals that 11% of midsize to large organizations across industries have a CAIO. In the coming years we expect more health systems to create and elevate the status of this role while also expanding the AI capabilities of their teams.   

In many organizations the CIO or Chief Digital Officer is responsible for AI assessment, strategy, governance, use cases, and adoption. While these executives will be critical to the successful incorporation of AI into their organizations, this arrangement is not sustainable given the growing importance of and demand for AI in addition to the full plate of responsibilities of today's CIOs and CDOs.

Emerging Phenotypes

What are the early adopters in healthcare focusing on? Our firm's analysis uncovered three main phenotypes of AI leaders working across health systems today. These phenotypes reflect both the vision and scope of the role, as well as career pathways and educational backgrounds.

·         Operations: implementing AI into the workflow to improve electronic record management and advance other operational aspects from HR to billing to revenue cycle and beyond;

·         Transformation: integrating AI more broadly to improve operational efficiency and update existing care models to harness the potential of AI tools;

·         Research and innovation: focusing on the research and development end of creating new AI tools that can be implemented to innovate healthcare practices across diagnostics, treatment, and patient experience.

The varying scope of these roles aligns with a need for varying leadership profiles and experience. Operations leaders typically come from a data or medical informatics role, and approximately half held M.D.s. Transformation leaders tend to come from data, computer science, or bioinformatics roles. Research and innovation leaders typically hold a Ph.D. or M.D. and have strong prior experience in academic medical centers or other research settings. Organizations will have different structures depending on their strategic priorities.   

Ultimately, each system must decide how their needs and goals are best served by AI to identify the optimal approach to its implementation and corresponding leadership. Given the fast-moving nature of technological development and near-certainty of regulatory changes, systems must be ready to adapt and refine their approaches as needs and tools evolve.

To determine the phenotype preferred for an organization's Chief AI Officer and the direction of AI initiatives, we encourage healthcare organizational leaders to address the following questions:  

·         Where do we stand in terms of AI adoption and education? Are we an early adopter? Are we comfortable lagging behind to learn from the trials and errors of others?

·         If AI adoption is overseen by a CIO or driven by a committee across departments, will it get the attention and unified vision it needs? Would a Chief AI Officer be better positioned to drive AI in a dedicated manner?

·         If we do need a CAIO, how broad should the role be? How do we define it to align with our mission-critical strategies?

·         What are the risks and ethical considerations that must be addressed? How do we account for that from a governance perspective?

·         How do we properly resource our AI efforts, given the immense promise of AI to be transformative and thus a differentiator in the marketplace?

·         What will success look like? What metrics will we use? Where do we want to be in five years?

It will be interesting to see how organizations give shape to their AI leadership and find creative ways to leverage the technology. As AI continues to evolve, the integration of AI officers in healthcare holds the promise to help revolutionize patient care, operations and enhance medical outcomes in a meaningful way for generations to come.  

Please reach out to us if you would like to discuss AI leadership within your organization and how we can assist in the recruitment and development of these executives: hross@wittkieffer.com, ngiannas@wittkieffer.com, zdurst@wittkieffer.com, sdethloff@wittkieffer.com, wkerschner@wittkieffer.com.