Creating Clinical Value with AI: Upleveling, Not Replacing

Sumi Cady, MPH, has built an impressive career in health care spanning cancer research, health policy, practice transformation, and population health strategy, with healthcare operations as a consistent through-line. Currently, she leads operations at RubiconMD, a digital health company that expands access to specialty care by connecting primary care physicians with specialists through asynchronous e-consults. Throughout her career, Cady has been passionate about aligning clinical expertise with the incentive structures needed to improve population health outcomes.

As an operations leader, Cady noticed that conversations around artificial intelligence were gaining momentum within her organization and across the health care industry more broadly. In her search for continuing education opportunities, she discovered the Emerging Tech Venture Creation in Health Care: AI and Beyond program.

“I didn’t want to just gravitate toward the loudest voices or a lot of hype around AI. I wanted to understand where we are seeing true clinical and operational impact, and where that is really creating value,” she explains.

Going into the program, Cady wanted to learn how organizations like hers could augment and increase the value of human intervention with the help of AI while automating lower-value work. In her current role, understanding where AI can optimize—rather than replace—is especially important in clinical care. 

Innovative Learning Outside the Classroom

The experiential learning aspect of the program was a highlight for Cady, who describes exploring live AI applications outside the traditional classroom as extremely impactful.

“I was really appreciative of the fact that the program included more application-based learning. Getting to see it, feel it, and meet the people behind it—rather than sitting in a classroom—was refreshing,” she notes. 

Participating in MESH Core 2026, a two-day health care innovation boot camp, was another unique learning experience that Cady felt set the program apart from other postgraduate learning experiences. Not only were the sessions informative and thought-provoking, but the conference also provided the opportunity to network with a diverse group of health care and technology professionals beyond the program cohort.

For Cady, the case study featuring Brice Challamel, head of AI strategy and adoption at OpenAI, was a top takeaway from the program. His philosophy of using AI to augment human capabilities rather than replace them and his framing of AI as "upleveling versus replacing" provided a practical framework that Cady has since brought back to her team and organization. Challamel's concept of the "evolution of knowledge work to intelligence work" through the intentional use of AI has influenced how Cady thinks about applying AI in her own role. As she manages a vast network of specialty physicians, she is exploring how a human-in-the-loop AI model could enhance health care operations while keeping clinical expertise at the center of decision-making.

"What does it look like to take that knowledge network and transform it into an intelligence network with the use of AI?" she asks. 

The diverse backgrounds within Cady’s cohort also added a unique layer to the program experience. Collaborating with professors, physicians, and health care operators exposed her to a wide range of perspectives from across the industry, enriching classroom discussions and broadening her understanding of AI's potential applications. 

“I really enjoyed working with such a multidisciplinary group of folks, especially on the capstone. You don’t get opportunities like that very often.”

Reimagining the Annual Wellness Visit

For their final capstone project, Cady’s group focused on a persistent challenge in the American health care system: fragmented data.

“One thing we wanted to rally around is how fragmented health care data is and the real cost of that fragmentation. When information is scattered across systems, it creates inefficiencies, and more importantly, missed opportunities for early intervention. For vulnerable populations, that’s exactly where the most impactful care can slip through the cracks,” she says.

This data challenge directly impacts the effectiveness of the Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) for the senior Medicare population in the United States. Many older adults miss their AWV due to limited awareness, scheduling challenges, and care coordination barriers, reducing opportunities for preventive care and early intervention.

Cady and her group created NAINAI, a conversational AI tool designed to support the full AWV lifecycle. The platform begins with appointment-scheduling outreach, assists patients in completing the appropriate pre-visit assessments, schedules ancillary services with the doctor’s approval, and generates a concise pre-visit summary.

This electronic health record-integrated conversational workflow is designed to maximize doctor-patient interaction time, improve AWV completion rates, and reduce preventable health complications among the senior population.

Turning Insights into Action

Cady regularly evaluates the application of AI tools within her organization. After completing the program, she adopted a new strategic framework for assessing the human-AI partnership.

“The program gave me a strong framework for how to think about that type of evaluation model—how to cut through the noise and ask whether a tool really creates clinical and operational value,” she notes.

Beyond the classroom, Cady has maintained connections with several AI founders who presented during the program. She has since begun exploring potential partnerships to advance AI initiatives within her organization.

Looking ahead, insights from the Emerging Tech Venture Creation in Health Care: AI and Beyond program are helping Cady reshape her team's perspective on AI and its role within the broader organization.

“It’s helped me foster this culture of curiosity and interest in using AI in my team’s day-to-day. So, folks don’t see it as an opposing force, but rather as a way to go from knowledge to intelligence and uplevel their skills.”