10 Healthcare Leaders Turning AI into Measurable Outcomes

American healthcare is at an inflection point.

While many providers remain in early AI experimentation, a subset of health systems and specialty hospitals have moved into production with measurable results. These include teaching hospitals, regional systems, children’s hospitals, cancer centers, and specialty providers, all shifting from pilots to real-world use.

At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a 48-bed surgical unit deployed voice dictation software that reduced nurse overtime. At Hospital for Special Surgery, 96% of clinicians who tried an ambient documentation tool continued using it.

The results confirm what the industry had assumed but lacked evidence to show: AI deployed within clinical workflows, focused on reducing administrative burden rather than replacing clinicians, can deliver immediate, measurable gains in patient care and staff wellbeing.

These 10 leaders and organizations reflect different parts of care delivery. Some focus on documentation, others on diagnosis, and others on operations. Together, they show how AI can improve outcomes while keeping clinicians central to care.

Alda Mizaku, Chief Data & AI Officer

Children's National Hospital

Children's National Hospital is a 323-bed pediatric acute care facility founded in 1870 and the only Level I pediatric trauma center in the Washington, D.C., metro area. The hospital performs 17,000+ surgeries and conducts 649,000+ outpatient visits in 60+ specialties annually.

Alda Mizaku became Children's National's first Chief Data and AI Officer in June 2024, bringing 11 years of data leadership from Mercy Health. The organization piloted Microsoft's Dragon Ambient Experience (DAX), an ambient AI scribing tool that listens to patient encounters and auto-generates clinical notes. "The six-month DAX evaluation reduced EHR documentation time by approximately 10% and significantly lowered cognitive burden," Mizaku said to AIM Media House.

"We saw more eye contact with patients, faster note completion, and improved provider experience across tens of thousands of encounters." The outcomes extended beyond time savings: clinicians reported improved focus on patients and families rather than screens. Children's National is now expanding the ambient documentation system-wide while piloting additional AI use cases, including inpatient stay summaries and predictive analytics.

Mouneer Odeh, VP & Chief Data and AI Officer

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles operates 886 licensed beds across a 78-location network and serves over 1 million patients annually.

Cedars-Sinai became the first health system to deploy Aiva Nurse Assistant at scale, enabling nurses to document patient encounters through voice dictation. The app transcribes conversations and maps data to the 50 most commonly used Epic EHR fields, with notes filing directly into patient records after clinician validation.

"The Aiva app streamlines documentation, giving nurses back valuable time and improving both efficiency and patient experience," Mouneer Odeh, Chief Data and AI Officer, said to AIM Media House.

A pilot in a 48-bed surgical unit showed nurses significantly reducing documentation time, with increases in patient experience scores and some staff reducing overtime hours. Cedars-Sinai is expanding the tool system-wide while launching additional initiatives, including Momentum Spine for radiation-free scoliosis monitoring and a PhD in Health AI program embedded within the hospital.

Ryan Smith, Chief Digital and Information Officer

Intermountain Health operates 33 hospitals and 385 clinics across the Intermountain West with 64,000+ employees and 5,000+ physicians. The health system reports $9+ billion in annual revenue and was previously identified by President Obama as a model healthcare organization.

When Ryan Smith took his role in early 2025, Intermountain faced a massive challenge: migrating from eight EHR systems to a single Epic instance. The September 2025 go-live would generate tens of thousands of support tickets. Instead, Smith's team deployed an AI triage agent as the first point of contact, either solving issues immediately or routing tickets to the correct IT team with full context pre-populated.

"The AI agent deployed during the EHR integration now resolves more than half of all incoming tickets systemwide," Smith said to AIM Media House. "We've returned 14,000+ staff hours—approximately three minutes per ticket saved." Intermountain operates under a governance framework with seven core principles: accountability, transparency, reliability, ethics, equity, privacy, and security. The organization has also deployed over 4,000 RPA-based automation bots across the system.

Andy Crowder, SVP & Chief Digital and AI Officer

Advocate Health is the fifth-largest hospital system in the U.S., formed through the December 2022 merger of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health. The organization spans 69 hospitals across six states with 150,000+ employees and 17,300+ physicians, generating $27+ billion in annual revenue.

Andy Crowder oversees a strategic pivot toward AI-assisted clinical care. In October 2024, Advocate Health began piloting Aidoc, an imaging AI platform designed to identify incidental pulmonary embolisms on routine outpatient imaging. A patient arriving for a chest X-ray ordered to evaluate pneumonia might receive earlier detection of PE.

"Advocate Health's radiology teams use AI to identify and flag incidental pulmonary embolisms on routine outpatient imaging, generally ordered for other reasons," Crowder said to AIM Media House. "What once could have taken a day or more is now completed in 30 minutes or less, allowing care teams to act on potentially life-saving treatment. Pulmonary embolism is the third most common cardiovascular disease and is a major contributor to mortality and morbidity in the U.S." The pilot across 22 sites in Wisconsin and North Carolina showed strong results. Advocate Health projects that 63,000 patients annually will benefit from faster prioritization at full scale.

Dr. Ashis Barad, Chief Digital & Technology Officer

Hospital for Special Surgery

Hospital for Special Surgery on Manhattan's Upper East Side is the nation's oldest orthopedic hospital, founded in 1863. With 215 beds and 58 operating rooms, HSS ranks #1 in orthopedics globally and performs over 30,000 surgeries annually.

Dr. Ashis Barad, a pediatric gastroenterologist who still practices clinically, became HSS's first Chief Digital and Technology Officer in 2024. Rather than impose technology top-down, he established the AI L.A.B. program, inviting 750+ employees across 45 departments to identify where AI could genuinely improve their work. When the organization deployed ambient documentation tools, note-writing time dropped by 86%.

"We didn't start with the technology," Barad said to AIM Media House. "We started with the people and worked backwards from there." The adoption metrics validate the approach: 96% of clinicians who try the documentation tool continue to use it, indicating genuine workflow improvements. HSS is piloting markerless computer vision gait analysis, 3D printing with AI for personalized implants, and agentic AI systems orchestrating care across specialties.

Amy Feaster, SVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer

Children's Hospital Colorado

Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora ranks among the nation's top 10 children's hospitals, with all 11 specialties ranked among the best. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Colorado School of Medicine and serves as a teaching and research hub for the region.

Amy Feaster leads the deployment of an AI documentation solution across the hospital's provider network. Over 500 providers now use the technology to generate more than 6,000 clinical notes each week. Industry benchmarks from KLAS research indicate similar tools produce a 26% reduction in provider time spent on documentation.

"Early momentum shows 500+ providers generating 6,000+ clinical notes per week," Feaster said to AIM Media House. "Industry benchmarks indicate 26% reduction in documentation time, which highlights AI's potential to alleviate administrative burden." The deployment reflects a strategy to use data to measure impact and drive expansion decisions. Burnout linked to administrative work ranks among the top drivers of clinician dissatisfaction, making documentation burden reduction a strategic priority for the organization.

Nasim Eftekhari, System VP & Chief AI and Analytics Officer

City of Hope is one of the nation's largest cancer research and treatment organizations, headquartered in Duarte, California on a 100+ acre campus. A NCI-Designated Cancer Center, City of Hope has ranked among the nation's top hospitals for cancer care for over a decade and is ranked in the top 5 for adult oncology.

Nasim Eftekhari led development of HopeLLM, a proprietary generative AI platform trained on City of Hope's extensive oncology data. The system addresses new patient onboarding, better matches patients to clinical trials, and accelerates research. "HopeLLM [is] our proprietary generative AI platform that leverages our extensive oncology data and expertise to reduce the administrative burden of new patient onboarding, better match patients to clinical trials, and accelerate research," Eftekhari said to AIM Media House.

"HopeLLM delivers day-to-day impact by generating clinician-ready summaries for referred patients, significantly reducing after-hours administrative work, with record review time reduced from hours to minutes," Eftekhari continued. "Adoption has been strong, with HopeLLM used in 50 to 60% of new patient visits." The platform maintains human-in-the-loop clinical oversight to ensure safety and reliability throughout deployment.

Dr. Michael Hasselberg, Chief Transformation and Digital Officer

Nebraska Medicine is an academic health system centered in Omaha, affiliated with the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Michael Hasselberg, the first to hold the Chief Transformation and Digital Officer title, brings dual expertise as a clinician and technologist with a PhD in health practice research.

When Nebraska Medicine deployed AI applications to identify patients eligible for earlier discharge, the impact was substantial. The system flags individuals whose care is essentially complete but who remain in the hospital awaiting final steps. By surfacing these patients earlier, clinical teams can move them to the discharge lounge, freeing beds for incoming admissions.

"[We have] implemented AI-powered capacity management applications that identify avoidable discharge delays and proactively manage patient flow," Hasselberg said to AIM Media House. "As a result, we have effectively created the equivalent of dozens of net-new hospital beds while improving the experience for both patients and care teams." Nebraska Medicine effectively created 50+ net-new bed equivalents per month. The organization operates over 4,000 RPA-based automation bots and is piloting AI agents for surgical scheduling, staffing optimization, and clinical coding automation.

Dr. Tom C. Nguyen, System Chief Executive

Baptist Health operates a 12-hospital network serving South Florida anchored by the Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute and the Christine E. Lynn Heart and Vascular Institute.

Dr. Tom C. Nguyen, System Chief Medical Executive for Baptist Health Heart and Vascular Care, partnered with FIU researchers to develop an AI-enabled digital stethoscope that detects early signs of cardiovascular disease before symptoms appear.

The technology analyzes heart sounds to identify subtle acoustic signatures indicating dysfunction.

"In early testing, the algorithm correctly identified healthy heart sounds with 95% accuracy and diseased heart sounds with 85% accuracy, showing its potential to improve earlier screening and follow-up for heart patients," Nguyen said to AIM Media House. Baptist Health is transitioning this work from the laboratory into clinical trials.

Dr. Marcus Speaker, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer

Carilion Clinic is a community hospital and clinic system based in Roanoke, Virginia, integrating academic partnerships with community-based care delivery and serving as a regional medical center for the surrounding area.

Dr. Marcus Speaker, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer and family physician, leads Carilion's digital health transformation.

When the organization deployed Microsoft's Dragon Ambient Experience (DAX), an ambient listening technology that passively captures patient encounters and auto-generates clinical notes, the impact on daily practice became immediately apparent. Clinicians reported freed time from constant note-writing. "DAX deployment has been a game changer," Speaker said to AIM Media House. "We've reduced documentation burden, given clinicians meaningful time back, supported more focused patient interactions, improved note quality, and reduced work outside work hours."

The ambient documentation approach allows DAX to learn individual clinician habits and preferences, adapt its output to match their style, and generate summaries during or immediately after encounters.