According to a recent article in Forbes, in “healthcare, the presence of AI is clearly evident. From optimizing data processing, enhancing patient experience and aiding in medical evaluation and diagnosing, the uses of AI are continuously being tested and expanded.”

At the forefront of AI’s revolution in healthcare is a new executive in the C-suite: the chief AI officer. As this role takes shape, healthcare leaders should be looking closely at the ways AI can be harnessed to responsibly drive patient satisfaction and business objectives.

From saving time to minimizing errors and staying on top of patient communication – a key element of patient satisfaction – chief AI officers should be guiding the ways technology can streamline and automate routine tasks. Through harnessing robotic process automation (RPA), organizations can see significant cost-savings, increases in claims processing, decreases in process times and more. Opportunities to incorporate AI into daily administrative tasks include:

– – Processing insurance claims.
– – Assigning medical and billing codes.
– – Scheduling appointments and coordinating patient reminders/follow-ups.
– – Streamlining employee scheduling.
– – Managing compliance regulation.

Healthcare systems are vast labyrinths that house the clues to how healthcare will continue to evolve. Similar to AI models used in diagnosing that comb through thousands of data sets to quickly identify abnormalities, this technology can also be used to pinpoint trends in how healthy patients are, the services they are utilizing, the ailments they suffer from and how they are interacting with medical professionals. With this data, healthcare executives can engage in forecasting and decision-making for the longevity of their operations and to proactively and holistically approach the healthcare system.

And an article in Modern Healthcare also claimed “As more healthcare organizations adopt artificial intelligence, there’s a newcomer in some C-suites: the chief AI officer.”

According to Becker’s Hospital Review, Cleveland Clinic is hiring for a chief artificial intelligence officer, hoping to harness the power of the growing technology for healthcare. The new chief AI officer will guide the integration of the technology across Cleveland Clinic, “ensuring AI innovations align with our vision and objectives,” according to a March job posting.

“Our ambition is to embrace and leverage AI to transform not just the Cleveland Clinic but the industry at large,” the health system wrote.

A handful of other health systems have named AI chiefs in recent months, including Mayo Clinic Arizona, UC San Diego Health and Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare.

At Cleveland Clinic, the chief AI officer will work closely with other C-suite executives, as well as IT, data science and clinical leaders and build a team of AI specialists, data scientists and analysts. The health system is looking for someone with a master’s or PhD in computer science, AI, data science or a related field. The hourly pay ranges from $125.61 to $257.52, or about $261,000 to $537,000 annually.

Despite fears that artificial intelligence would kill jobs, the technology has helped create the “hottest new role in corporate America”: the chief AI officer, The New York Times reported Jan. 29.

“It helps to have a coordinating function with the depth of expertise,” Richard Gray, MD, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Arizona, told the newspaper. “We’re really trying to foster some of these data and AI capabilities throughout every department, every division, every work group.”

In 2023, 122 chiefs or vice presidents of AI joined a forum on company review site Glassdoor, compared to 19 the year prior, The Times reported. However, a 2023 Harvard Business Review article contended that chief AI officers are “set up for failure” because of the risks of the new technology, while LinkedIn’s chief economist told the newspaper that AI-specific job titles will eventually go away because the technology will become so ubiquitous.