Deepesh Chandra, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Montefiori Einstein, shares profound insights on leading technology transformation in healthcare. He argues that the most significant challenges in technology aren’t technical, but organizational—centered on culture, incentives, and human behavior. Drawing from early experiences in healthcare technology implementation, he emphasizes that successful change begins with understanding human constraints and friction points, not just technological capabilities. He highlights that high-performing teams thrive on trust, psychological safety, and shared ownership, which are built through collaborative experiences and consistent, constructive engagement. Deepesh stresses that resistance to change is not a problem to be avoided, but a signal for deeper dialogue. He critiques the outdated notion of "human in the loop," advocating instead for "human in control" where humans make accountable decisions in high-risk areas like healthcare. Trust in AI is not automatic but is developed through transparency, clear governance, and transparency in outcomes, such as Vemo’s open data sharing. He recommends starting AI adoption with small, real-world workflows, fostering learning through pilot projects, and scaling based on measurable impact. A core theme is agency—people must be involved in shaping solutions to feel ownership and drive adoption. Deepesh concludes with a personal commitment to self-education, creating a "second brain" using AI tools to manage knowledge, reflecting how individuals and organizations can evolve with technology while staying grounded in human values, empathy, and mission-driven purpose.
And that is where I think the leadership challenge is,
is creating enough agency that people
can help shape transformation.
(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, welcome to Catalyst,
the launch by NCT Data Podcast.
I'm your host, Tammy Soars.
At launch we get to work with some of the most incredible
companies and organizations to create digital products
and experiences that improve lives, solve problems,
and make a difference.
But our show isn't about what we do, it's about people.
The leaders who are making it happen and shaping the future.
So each week I dig deep to find out what makes them tick,
what drives and motivates them,
and of course what they're most excited about right now
in the world of technology.
Joining me today is Deepesh Chandra,
the senior vice president and chief digital
and information officer Amanafiori Einstein,
one of New York's most premier and mission-driven health systems.
Deepesh has spent over 20 years
in the healthcare and technology world,
with stops at McKinsey, Mount Sinai,
and Bonsa Core, Mercy Health.
I've been really excited for this conversation
because of the passion Deepesh has,
when he talks about the work that he does,
everything his team does is aimed at helping people
at their most vulnerable moments
and leveraging technology to improve healthcare
for patients, consumers, and communities.
So Deepesh, thank you so much for joining me on Catalyst today.
How are you doing?
- I'm doing quite well, Tammy.
Thank you for having me here.
- Absolutely, so let's start with your story.
Tell us a little bit about who you are
and how you got to where you are today.
- I started my career believing that technology
was primarily an engineering problem.
But over time, I learned that the hardest problem
are rarely technical in nature.
They're often very organizational
where incentives and cultures and decision making
and how we spend money on technology matter more.
And more so, people who are involved in that process
matter the most.
So this has been an incredible journey for me
and healthcare from being focused
on the most core engineering problem
in terms of how technology drive day-to-day healthcare
to now coming to a point where the job is not
to run about technology,
but it is to help the institution navigate
the consequential changes that technology is bringing.
And I am always very, very excited
to help my team to help my organization
in making the best out of technology.
- Early on, you would say?
You made that realization?
- Yeah, very early on.
In fact, my first job as an intern,
I was placed at a cancer center hospital
with a company that was deploying
an electronic medical record.
And I learned very first hand the human nature
and adopting technology.
As we were changing the system,
it was going from an MS-DOS-based application
to a more Windows-based application.
And it involved using mouse in addition to a keyboard.
And it was a brand new interface.
The monitors were going from black and white
to colored screen and all those kind of changes
for an everyday user was a big leap.
How they interacted with machine,
how they interacted with software
was a massive change management.
So while there was an interesting engineering problem
to solve to create these large electronic medical record,
there was a human side of it.
And working on that project taught me so much
about change management in technology
that I carry those lessons even today.
- So your background is engineering.
Was there anything that you did early on
in an education perspective around the human
and the human side of things?
Or was that just developed over time
as you rolled out more and more of these
kinds of transformational applications and things?
- So my education background was largely engineering-driven
and computer science and engineering,
how to build applications and systems
that are more scalable in nature.
And that was core of my study.
But as my interest evolved and as I saw the interaction
between the system and human and change management,
I picked up a lot of learning both going back
to the college, picking up some certificates,
going into some training programs,
or even just speaking to experts throughout my career
as I have seen technology evolve
and it's an option involved.
And that has allowed me to understand
the human center design part of it,
how the interface needs to be built,
but also how the system needs to build
and how it needs to respond to how human wants
the machine to work.
So it has been a deep curiosity for me for several years
and I continue to re-treat that as artificial intelligence
is becoming a new reality for us.
- How do you think about leadership?
Because like I said, I think that,
especially on the engineering or more technology side,
sometimes it is a little bit more difficult
to put the people front and center.
So how do you think about that from a leadership perspective
as your leading teams who maybe don't think about it
the same way that you do?
- Leadership to me belongs in,
I would say two or three dimensions.
One aspect is definitely helping the organization
achieve its mission, achieve its goal.
And if technology has to play a very big role in it,
we have to make sure as a leader,
we are setting the right strategy,
we're giving them the right direction,
especially when there is an advent of a very new technology
that comes into our ecosystem.
Because if you get it wrong,
the damages are consequentially nature.
The organization may get left behind from there here
or they may completely bet on a wrong thing
that may be quite expensive for them down the line to change.
And so there is an element of leadership
that is just associated to an organization
and what do you do to help them.
But then there is a very critical part of leading the team
and the people to whom you are leader too.
And for them, there is an extreme amount of clarity
around what is our strategy
where we would want to collectively go.
And at the same time, where we should apply
all our human workforce
toward achieving the ambition of the organization,
what are the right bets we need to make?
And how do we need to take care of each other
during that process?
Because the best output that I believe
are generated from high performing team
and the high performing teams are the ones
that have solved the aspect of how to work together
and how to work with their leader to their advantage
to achieving those ambitions together.
- I would love to hear from you about high performing teams
before AI and high performing teams after AI.
I mean, I've certainly seen a change in the way
that people collaborate, I've seen people use AI
potentially to replace someone that's on their team
that they used to work with before.
So I'm just curious about how are you seeing
how high performance teams are working
through the current world and landscape
that we're all living through?
- I think the core tenets of a high performance team
hasn't really changed just because
we have a new technology in the mix.
One of the biggest component of a high performance team
that I have picked up has been around trust,
the trust that people have in their leader
and the leaders have in their people.
And if that trust is not well established,
it's not that well understood.
I think the team cannot make one plus one equal to three.
And a very big part of that challenge is
if you're constantly judging,
if someone is equally committed to your team,
if you're constantly judging that
if the individuals on your team are up to the mark or not,
if you're constantly judging the work output
of those individuals and you're not giving them
a constructive feedback,
those are all our elements that don't allow
the multiplying effect of that team to come together.
So to me, trust is the biggest part of it.
I've seen teams with far less technical capabilities
be able to move massive change management
through an organization
while I have seen high performance individuals
with a very, very strong IQ
but their EQs are not matching to each other
and they just don't work.
So to me, that is the core tenet of a high performance team.
- What do you think shape that point of view?
Is it experience?
Is it just something that you and Aitli know?
- It would be definitely an opportunity
to work together through different scenarios.
It is just one of those aspects of human experience
that you cannot fast track.
You cannot instantaneously trust someone on Devon.
You do have to go to battles together.
You do have to solve critical client problems together.
You do have to be in the trenches
when you had to stack hand and trust each other
to get something done.
I think those experiences do build over a period of time
and this is one of those things that you just have to
force yourself to work together to build that comfort.
- I love that.
I mean, I think that trust and building
in psychological safety for people to work
in an environment that allows them to bring their full selves.
and create space to build that trust is really incredible.
You know, when you look at Montefiori Einstein's mission to heal and teach,
discover, and advance the health of the communities it serves,
and it goes back more than I think 125 years.
What does it mean to lead technology transformation inside an organization
with that kind of history and community trust?
The mission of the organization has stood decades if not over a century,
and I don't think that any new wave of technology is going to change that mission.
I think technology is a means to an end, and in the last 30, 40, 50 years,
it has become a critical part of how do we deliver to that mission.
And so like other services across our health system that are constantly working
towards the same mission, technology is one of those.
So I don't think of technology as a standout.
I just see that as another force that you use to your benefit to deliver that mission.
And to me, having that mission alignment is really important.
My team has hundreds of people who have worked their entire career at Montefiori.
They work in New York, they have choice to go work with any other health system.
They are technologists, which means that their skills are equally applicable
to finance and retail and media and every other industry that exists in New York.
Their skills are transferable, yet they choose to work at Montefiori's time.
And so to me, that is a grounding thing that there are people who simply just want to work
for this organization and the foundation for which this organization stands for
is the reason why they want to belong here.
And so to me, that is just our not-stop.
So very mission-driven people I would have to imagine.
I mean, I think it makes work so much better
when you believe the things that you're doing are making an impact or a change in someone's life.
And I would have to imagine that healthcare is one of those places where
it's a make or break for people. You're seeing people in their most vulnerable
situations in their lives for themselves or for their families.
So I could imagine how that can bleed through into the work culture and the environment
that you're working in, which is really incredible.
When you think about technology, you've said technology can't occur in silos
that patients are key stakeholders. What does it look like when you involve patients and clinicians
from day one? So those are the humans that you're building the technology for.
One sort of receives the experience, one is using the experience to deliver.
How do you do that? How do you bring them in?
How do you make sure that they stay front and center?
I think a core tenet of leading anything related to a human center technology
doesn't mean that we preserve the work and the workflow as it is and just simply introduce
technology in the middle of the current situation.
Sometimes the most human centered thing is for us to think about how do we redesign the workflow
entirely. One of the core tenets that we have seen and observe is we have to start with where
the human constraint is and not where the technology capability is.
Often people think that here's a technology. Here's what is capable of and let's force
this technology on to people. We saw this with the internet where we saw this with mobile
resolution, we saw this with social media and we are seeing that now with AI as well.
We know what the potential is and we just want to begin to quote and quote sell them into our
user base and that to me is always the challenge. If we flip the equation and we said that here's
where our workflows are constrained, here's where our patients are finding friction with the
system. Here's where the clinicians are getting burnt out by administrative burden and if we
identify those choke points, those friction points, then we can reverse track what are the
technology solutions that are available to us today in that current capability that can help solve
those problems and that just changes how we approach technology, how do we bring them in and
how do we bring the stakeholder in solving that problem together. Do you run into any issues or
concerns in your past where you've brought that point of view and it's been met with resistance
and you've had to overcome it? I think we would be surprised if there was no resistance to the
idea that we brought to the table. I think resistance is a start to the conversation, to a collective
problem solving together and arriving to a conclusion. To me, someone's opinion is not a resistance.
It is that they have a point of view because they are living in day in day out and they may have
a counterpoint to my one-dimensional thinking about a solution and as technologist as engineers,
we often think about a solution in somewhat of a unique dimensional way. Sometimes we fail to
understand that what the implication of this technology could be, what the implication could be
to their change management, to their day-to-day job, to their own livelihood and other aspects.
There are cross-gating impacts of bringing in this level of change in any situation. Hearing
those opinions, those counterbalances, those counterpoints allows us an opportunity to sit down and
find what would work and maybe there is an opportunity to create a version two, a version three,
a version four of that solution and to me that is the right way to do it. I recently was working
with a client who we were helping to reimagine an end-to-end vendor operating model and what I
loved about the client was we didn't start with how can technology improve this operating model,
how can it make things faster, what can we automate and it started with this is an old model,
we need to create the model for the future and I bring it up because we did our normal design
process of stakeholder interviews across all the touch points, what's the current process,
what are the current friction points in the process and brought it all together for this group
that was cross-functional from legal, HR procurement, finance, all the different parts of the IT
organization and just watching humans behave on day one where they're defending the friction point
they're responsible for potentially the policy they have or the tool they've put in place or the
reporting mechanism and so this just speaks to your resistance idea right the very first day
there's a little bit of defensiveness people are explaining why that exists, why we still have to
have it and then as you continue to move towards what's possible that defensiveness goes down
and then by the end of day two you've got the same person who was defending this piece very adamantly
completely on the team that reimagined it and what's possible and so it is really incredible to
see it's like natural what you just described as sort of natural human behavior of I'm coming at it
from my point of view and if you create space for them to hear other points of views you can start
building upon the ideas and then you created something it's gonna work for more than just the one
user group or that's gonna work for more than just one department or function and it's just really
incredible to see that happen and it's almost every time like you can pick whether it's a new digital
product or are coming up with something completely different you just get people coming at it
from their worldview and their mindset and then over time you can watch that shift. I recently heard
on a podcast that how human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth it is the reason why we
are who we are is because we have adapted to all the changing conditions of the planet
yet when we talk about change management and we talk about change being done in the moment
we are the most resisting ones and so that that paradox of us just as a human being is just
fascinating to hear but we do adopt with time it's just what's required there is time and sometimes
that's what we need to keep in mind. There's an agency component as well if I think about the person
who was resisting on day one if she hadn't been in the room for day one and day two and by the
end of day two was part of the idea if that would have just been handed to her it would have been
weeks or months of resistant no this isn't gonna work no it's not possible I'm not going to adopt it
but I think by bringing her into the process it I think it sped up the change management piece
it's the adoption piece because she was a part of making sure that this future solution met the
previous needs and understood how it was arrived to was a part of it and we're publishing some
research here pretty quick at our event that's coming up in November called nexus we've funded
some proprietary research on the humans as we think about all the AI around them and one of the
things that came out of it that was super interesting was that there's a direct correlation between
the more agency someone has in defining what happens next what their role becomes what judgment
they need to retain in their role where they want to keep creativity where their craft lies
if they're a part of decision
deciding that, then the adoption around that tool goes up dramatically.
And it seems so obvious, but it's true.
So I think there's a component of that as well.
Are we handing someone a reimagined workflow
that they've not been a part of or no one
or their team's been a part of?
Or have we brought them into the reimagination?
Hi, Agria.
I think your observation around when people generally
resist transformation that is done to them far more
than the transformation that has been designed with them.
But at the same time, to your point about agency,
transformation just cannot become consensus driven.
It's just way too many voices.
And that's where agency matters.
I think this is where leadership still
has to choose a direction.
They still have to put their weight around.
This is the direction we as an organization
has to go. And that is where I think the leadership challenge
is, is creating enough agency that people
can help shape the transformation.
While maintaining enough conviction
that we are actually transforming
and everyone's voices are being heard,
but that is where your agency concept is so, so important,
at least on large moves that we have to do as an organization.
You just recently published on your sub-stack
an article about human and the loop
and human loop not being a control.
I read it and it was just, it was really fascinating to me.
So do you want to kind of describe it to the audience
and then we can dig into it a little bit?
Yes, I have been interviewing a lot of people
to understand what is the role that the human plays
when AI can begin to do very high speed transactions
faster than human can do.
And we have been hearing all the terms,
autonomous agents can do this, can do that.
And that is all great, but that is where the governance
question comes in.
And often we hear the term human in the loop.
It is like if I'm driving an autonomous car
that can sell drive, but I'm still a driver sitting
on my seat holding the steering wheel
and just watching so that the car doesn't make a mistake
and I can take over in the moment.
And there are a lot of research being published
around these autonomous systems.
They're having the human in the loop
doesn't help the benefit of safety.
And sometimes that safety is merely an illusion
point being in an autonomous driving.
If the driver who is sitting simply putting their hand
on this steering wheel, if they cannot respond in the same
moment as fast as AI can, they won't be able to save
an accident.
And there are more and more research coming in from
autonomous vehicle and what VEMO has been doing
versus Uber has done and other companies have done
is to understand really putting human in the loop.
What does it do?
And so in my conversation with a lot of folks,
that's where I have been trying to draw some conclusion
is where does it make sense to keep human in the loop?
And one of the drawing conclusions that I've been hearing
more and more is the aspect of when the cost of being wrong
is too high, human always has to remain in the loop.
Use cases like healthcare and making care decision always,
always has to have a human judgment involved.
I don't think so.
We as a society will in near term be ready when AI can make
healthcare related decision by itself.
However, there are use cases that are in banking
and in retail and many others where we can allow to a good
extent AI to make autonomous decision.
And I quoted an example on credit card fraud
where AI can detect and it can decline a transaction.
And the cost of being wrong is fairly lower.
It is inconvenience to the consumer.
However, it is very easy to fix and recover from that.
And so that becomes a very critical part of where
that needs to be.
The other research around all of this
is as well is if simply placing a human in the loop
involves someone to just constantly click
an approved button almost without giving it
a second thought, that doesn't help in so many ways.
And so that has been putting some perspective together
on where we are as technologists, as society.
And as these systems are becoming more autonomous,
does human in the loop really make sense for us
in certain workflows versus the others?
I was at a conference last week and we decided to start calling
it human in control instead of human in the loop.
I sort of have that vision and picture in my mind as well
as the person who's just sitting there going,
green, approve, approve, approve
versus really being accountable and responsible
and using human judgment around what's being needed.
There's a risk component, like you said.
I also think that there's a brand differentiation component.
So you could choose to keep a human more involved
at a critical moment because it's going to drive growth
or it's an opportunity to increase customer satisfaction.
So there's also a way to differentiate
your brand in the future by keeping humans
to engage with other humans in moments where
that's going to drive a material impact
either to your customer or to your organization
around that growth metric.
And I think we've spent a lot of time
over the last couple of years talking about productivity
and efficiency and automation.
And I'm starting to see the conversation start
to shift more towards growth and brand and differentiation
and the other kinds of value that it can bring
to an organization, which is exciting.
And I think that is where the question about whether
AI is delivering a value or not comes into the mix,
whether it is truly working or not comes in question.
- I'm frequently in conversations
where people will talk about how important it is
to retain human judgment and human creativity and empathy.
But they have a very difficult time in saying
how they're going to do that.
And I think it's something you said in your article
about how you're engineering mindset.
You will ask how or an engineering mindset will ask how
until there's a plan for how it's to be built.
And I really love that because if you can't describe
within your own industry, not you,
but the audience as a whole,
what the human judgment is that is critical in that moment
and what does it drive?
It's gonna be very difficult for you to design the technology
that keeps humans in the loop delivering that bit of judgment.
- It comes back to the question of trust.
What AI has to do today to have you trust it?
And the only way you can arrive to those
is to understand some of those how question,
how are you doing it?
What is the governance?
Walk me through it.
What happens when something goes wrong?
Where is the accountability?
How we will recover from all these things?
And that is all the core tenets of building a trust
with a new system that is very nascent and scary
and revolutionary in so many ways.
So the gap that we have,
which we always present that as a governance
is actually a question of trust.
And while it will take time for us to trust it,
there are foundational questions in building that trust
that is really important for us to ask
and be given the evidence for.
And again, one of the examples that I shared
in my blog post was around Vemo.
They made their entire evidence data opened
and available to everyone.
And of course, Vemo has gone in the direction
of fully autonomous human less driving.
And they have been publishing a lot of results around it
for everyone to see their evidence.
And are they making mistakes?
Yes, but at the same time, it is also showing
and building the trust that how these autonomous driving
are far more safer than a human driver.
Thinking about the trust,
I mean, we're definitely moving from individual productivity
where employees have been given these tools
like the LLMs, whether it's quad or chat GPT or co-pilot.
They get to decide what tasks they're gonna use it on
and how they're gonna make themselves more efficient
and what they're gonna do with that time that they get back.
But as we move towards the agentic workflows
and the autonomy that we're just talking about
in the enterprise, that's when I think the trust needs
to really be starting to be built.
And you said it, it starts with the leadership,
what are we going to be?
Who are we going to become?
What are the tenets of how we're gonna be using AI
as a grounding point?
Because I think that there is a lot more fear
in this technology than any technology
that I've seen before for a variety of reasons.
And so I think that building that trust
in that sort of environment is absolutely critical.
And whether a company brings those folks in
in order to design the future operating model
and workflows that they'll contribute to or not,
it's recognizing that that is the current environment.
And I think we are seeing a lack of adoption
and a lack of change because people are genuinely afraid.
When you think about as individuals so much of your identity
and who you are is about the experience
the knowledge what you've contributed to your job, and so when that's threatened by anything,
much less a technology, it is very difficult environment to create trust around. So I think that's
a key to and I think of recognizing trust is required, but what is it going to take to build trust
in that sort of environment? And I think the one part that I would add to what you just said,
what makes this moment different from the previous technology revolution is the very fact of the
speed of this technology. Internet and computers took three or four decades to become mainstream.
It took mobile-based technologies almost two decades to become mainstream that every generation
and across the world people could benefit from the advent of mobile technologies. It took us
20 plus years to get there. And I think what AI is showing is how fast it can get there in a matter
of a few months. And that's the part that is scary. We have not been able to trust enough,
and the evolution of it is just way too fast than anything that we have seen in our lifetime.
And that is the part that is very, that is the part where people are not able to estimate
what is going to be the outcome of this, how we will drive the right type of adoption,
how we will prepare our society and our current generation and upcoming generation
to live with this technology. Those questions are not yet answered. Policies way behind on
these topics. So, combined all of that, the anxiety just around this is overly heightened just
because of the speed of this change. How do you talk about this with your team? How do you inspire
them to want to create with it, to want to imagine what's possible for patients, clinicians,
and sort of leave the fear behind? I think the number one thing for us and everyone
is to begin to understand this technology really well, not at the surface level,
not at the level where we are using the consumer side of AI, which is mostly using it as a search
engine that gives us one answer versus redoing a research. And I think understanding this to
a few levels below is really important. It helps us really wrap our head around in terms of what's
possible and what's not possible. It separates the high from the reality of the situation. And I think
that's the number one thing is to truly understand investing time, becoming a practitioner yourself,
whether at work, whether in your personal life is really important. See what can it really do?
What is the hype about it in becoming a true personal assistant to what level that is true for
us? And that is the number one thing. Number two is preparing ourselves and our organizations and
our team around setting the guide rails. I think trust can be solved to an extent when we know where
the guide rails are. What are the do's and don'ts? What is my safety infrastructure behind it?
It's really really important to make sure that we are putting the right guide rail for us to establish
our trust with the system. And lastly, I would say starting the change at the smallest level,
pick up a workflow and make it AI assisted, whether it is your own workflow or your team's workflow
and see what it does to you. Does it really bring the productivity that you are looking for?
And from there, begin to scale it up. Take from trying to assist a workflow,
to trying to change a given workflow, and then trying to see whether that can help change
the operating model of a given work entirely or not. And that will take time. But to me,
that is the progression that we all have to with that safety net underneath us.
So let's talk about like how you've applied this. Tell me some exciting innovations that you've
done a month fewer. One of the ways that we started on this journey was to take an enterprise
version of chat GPT and open it up to a lot of leaders within our organization. And these are not
the most senior level individuals. These are the folks who run big enough team across different
departments across Montevere and think of these tools as much more of a co-pilot. Think of these
tools as how you would use chat GPT and the guide rails around it was it is enterprise software
and all our data is safe within a sandbox. So we ensured that everybody understood and we made
sure that everyone also understand that even if it is safe, do not put any patient specific
information in these environments, but still use it for your day-to-day work whether you're summarizing
a document, you're trying to trigger a workflow, you're trying to create a PowerPoint or draft an
email, begin to use it on a regular basis. And we saw a significant uptick in the practitioner
side of AI. We immediately started having people who truly begin to understand what AI can do in
their day-to-day life at work. And of course many of them carried those learnings into their
personal life and into their personal chat parts and tried applying it everywhere they could.
So over a period of time I heard great anecdotes coming in from these individuals to whom we have
done this control release. We also gave chat GPT and education version on our college side where
the students can interact with chat GPT and use it as a one-to-one tutoring for medical education.
And some of these examples you will see it where chat GPT can present themselves as a patient
with certain conditions to a first-year resident. And it allows the resident to train
themselves while chat GPT is giving them the feedback that I was suffering with this and you
could have asked me this question and that question just to dig into my condition a bit more.
And it is amazing to see how we can bring something like a one-to-one tutoring capability at scale
to all the students. And technology like that are really, really exciting for me. So these are just
very crown-level, very basic cases that we have been beginning to do with. And of course there are
several point solutions and other things where we have done some great work. But you know how
individuals are changing their behavior with the technology, something that excites me the most.
Was it voice or was it typing or both? Combination of both.
Okay, you know we're seeing this. Where do people build their domain expertise and their knowledge
if they're not apprentice in the same way that they were? And so there's this finding that
the interns and the people that are coming into the workforce are using AI in the way that you
described to apprentice themselves to look from because they can get access to it 24/7. Whereas
if you use your boss or someone that you're apprenticing under, they're not available at the same
time. It's really interesting to hear you're really leaning into that.
The opportunity that is in front of us isn't to put AI everywhere, at least not in our industry.
That's possible because the work we do is on bedside. But we are not going into this with an
ambition that AI will be there everywhere. It is that we use AI wherever we are removing a
constraint that is going to materially change the system. So to my earlier point around removing
a constraint, removing a friction point into a workflow where we may have excessive administrative
burden where we are not finding enough people or we are simply constraining the system in typing
document or summarizing document where we can accelerate those aspects of the workflow. And the
idea is to begin to again have right guidelines in the mix understand what that system could do,
understand its full implication, bring the stakeholders into the conversation and then begin
to call these win use cases that we go around and start building over and over again.
How are you as an organization identifying those high value constraints or those high value
use cases where if you fix it, it's going to have a material impact. Did you do that at the
leadership level? I do it within your organization or so that is something that we are on a continuous
journey to evolve. Where our current state is we do have cross functional teams that sit across
technology team, our business operation, our clinical operation. And what we have started to
do is to begin to catalog the ideas that people have. Either they have seen it at a peer organization,
they have heard about it in a conference or they simply just have a great idea that what if
AI could do this. And remember these are practitioners who are beginning to use co-pilot and
chat GPT in our organization right. So they are beginning to extend the possibility of what these
technologies can do. Further in the pipeline, we do start applying certain financial constraints
around those ideas. As you can imagine, not everything is doable for us. We are always constrained
by our ability to deploy capital or ability to invest behind those ideas. So there is always a
make sure you're done.
that we put together to truly understand,
is it going to generate right kind of an ROI?
And sometimes those ROI could be financial in nature,
and some could be patient safety related,
some could be great patient outcome,
some could be just simply great employee experience,
and reducing burnout,
doesn't have to be a financial ROI.
And we've taken to apply that matrix and begin to see,
what is it that we can afford today,
where the technology is already mature,
and we can bring that technology to bear today.
What says in some cases, we should just wait out a little bit more,
because we don't feel confident that the technology is just there,
or we haven't been able to establish the right level of safeguard
in those areas,
or we have been able to pull the stakeholders just in there yet.
So those are, I would say, constraint that applies
to qualifies certain ideas to go become a reality by my team.
What are you personally most excited about?
Is there like a use case you've used in your personal life,
or is there something that you're thinking about
that just gets you really excited about where things are going?
I have been really trying to learn this technology myself,
outside my work environment,
and I have been playing a lot understanding from others,
how they are using that technology, what kind of services they are bringing together.
So I have been on this quest of creating a second brain for myself,
which is a very common concept in the industry right now,
and this is all about our ability to create a knowledge layer
for everything that we know as an individual.
So of course, I have so many things that I do on a personal basis.
I read things, I have so many things on the family front,
I put some ideas together, I have things on the financial journey,
I have my travel thing, and so how do we create a knowledge layer
that is a manifestation of our brain, and how do we organize that information?
So I've been learning a lot of that from many of my peers,
I've been trying to use the tools and services that are of label right now,
and I've been tweaking some of those things as an engineer myself to Benta.
All right, well, Deepesh, thank you so much for joining me today.
I've absolutely loved our conversation.
Thanks so much for having me.
To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
We'll see you all back here next week,
but until then, be bold, take risks, and shine bright.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Deepesh Chandra emphasizes that leadership in technology must balance strategic direction with people-centered agency, ensuring individuals can shape transformation while maintaining organizational conviction.
High-performing teams are built on trust, not technical skill, where psychological safety, mutual respect, and shared ownership enable teams to achieve more than the sum of their parts.
The most effective technology adoption begins by identifying workflow friction points—human constraints—rather than pushing technology into existing processes.
Resistance to change is a natural human response, but it signals a necessary conversation; involving stakeholders early fosters ownership, reduces defensiveness, and leads to more sustainable solutions.
Agency—giving people a role in defining outcomes and decisions—is critical for adoption, especially in complex transformations like AI integration.
The concept of "human in the loop" is outdated; true value lies in "human in control," where humans make accountable, judgmental decisions in high-risk scenarios like healthcare.
Trust in AI is built through transparency, clear governance, and understanding of how systems operate, including accountability and recovery mechanisms.
Successful AI adoption starts small, with pilot workflows, and evolves through continuous learning, stakeholder engagement, and a focus on measurable, human-centered impact.
Summary:
Deepesh Chandra, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Montefiori Einstein, shares profound insights on leading technology transformation in healthcare. He argues that the most significant challenges in technology aren’t technical, but organizational—centered on culture, incentives, and human behavior. Drawing from early experiences in healthcare technology implementation, he emphasizes that successful change begins with understanding human constraints and friction points, not just technological capabilities.
He highlights that high-performing teams thrive on trust, psychological safety, and shared ownership, which are built through collaborative experiences and consistent, constructive engagement. Deepesh stresses that resistance to change is not a problem to be avoided, but a signal for deeper dialogue. He critiques the outdated notion of "human in the loop," advocating instead for "human in control" where humans make accountable decisions in high-risk areas like healthcare.
Trust in AI is not automatic but is developed through transparency, clear governance, and transparency in outcomes, such as Vemo’s open data sharing. He recommends starting AI adoption with small, real-world workflows, fostering learning through pilot projects, and scaling based on measurable impact. A core theme is agency—people must be involved in shaping solutions to feel ownership and drive adoption.
Deepesh concludes with a personal commitment to self-education, creating a "second brain" using AI tools to manage knowledge, reflecting how individuals and organizations can evolve with technology while staying grounded in human values, empathy, and mission-driven purpose.
FAQs
The core leadership challenge is creating enough agency for people to help shape transformation, while maintaining conviction in the direction of change.
Humans should remain central in high-stakes decisions where the cost of error is high, such as healthcare, ensuring human judgment and accountability.
Because 'human in the loop' can create an illusion of safety; 'human in control' emphasizes active responsibility, judgment, and accountability in decision-making.
Trust builds through transparency, clear governance, understanding of how systems work, accountability, and evidence of safety and reliability.
Start with identifying friction points and constraints in workflows, then redesign around those pain points using AI to remove barriers, not just add technology.
The core principles—like trust and psychological safety—remain the same; success depends on team members' emotional intelligence and mutual trust, not just technical skills.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.