Artificial Intelligence Leadership Challenges in Healthcare

Scaling a business or organization takes many skills. Probably the most critical is building and leading diverse and inclusive high performance teaGms. Sick care is no exception, where medical care teams are increasingly being urged to work with patients and their support teams as part of engagement and patient centered care models.

As Thomas Friedman points out, scaling a country is even harder. You see, the digital divide is wider than we think.

Leading these teams is even more complicated in the 4th industrial revolution. As robots, 5G, AI and connected cyberintelligence diffuse into medicine and the future of work, the team dynamics change and leadership challenges increase, in some instances facing challenges we have not experienced before.

Some of these challenges are: 1. Being an ethical compass

2. Bringing context

3. Providing governance

4. Handling complexity

5. Preventing bias

6. Managing change

7. Connecting creativity and compassion

What should we do then, to supplement the skills of 21st Century sick care leaderpreneurs as they strive to change sick care to health care?

  1. Teach AI leaderpreneurship in medical schools, residency training programs and health administration programs

  2. Define data literacy competencies and measure them in the workforce and leadership ranks

  3. Resolve the ethics of medicine with the ethics of cyberbusiness

  4. Adopting a mindset that supports using AI to scale humans and high touch instead of replacing it

  5. Practicing strategic thinking instead of just strategic planning

  6. Holding leaders accountable to a moral compass and values

  7. Leading change, not managing it

  8. Leading innovators, not managing innovation

  9. Select leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset

  10. Rethink STEAMie education to teach students how to lead it


The major challenge of the future of work will be how to lead it and avoid the inevitable adverse consequences it will have on society and our standard of living. Cyberchange damage has already been done. It's time to take action to prevent more damage as the seas of disruption rise even further and threaten to destroy islands of complacency. The first casualties will be those with craniorectal inversion syndrome.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs.

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  • David Elliott

    Comprehensive post