Leadership Spotlight - August 2026 - Congratulations to the Academy AWS Technology Fellows Program Class of 2026!

CIO Action Project: Remember The Joy of Medicine

CIO Fellow: Danielle Wilson, MS, VP, Transformation and Innovation, Virtua Health

Leading Health System Mentor: Michael Capriotti, SVP, President Advanced Care Operations and Logistics, Virtua Health

Opportunity & Problem Statement:

Ambulatory clinicians at Virtua Health face growing workload pressures driven by high volumes of electronic messages, many of which do not require direct clinical intervention. Approximately 40% of messages originate from patients, while 60% relate to issues outside clinicians' control, including administrative, technical, or non-urgent requests. This imbalance contributes to excessive time spent managing the EMR InBasket and significant work performed outside scheduled hours (TOSH), negatively impacting clinician satisfaction, efficiency, and burnout.

Traditional solutions continue to rely heavily on manual processes, leading to inefficiencies and underutilization of care teams. Workforce management for clinicians, despite being a critical factor to optimizing the organization's most expensive resource, has historically been overlooked. The opportunity exists to leverage technology, automation, and team-based workflows to reduce task burden, restore joy in clinical practice, and improve patient-centered care.

Methods:

Virtua Health implemented a phased, multi-pronged approach combining technology optimization, generative AI, and team-based workflow redesign:

• Phase 1 focused on "Taming the InBasket" by identifying message bottlenecks, simplifying routing, reducing non-actionable messages, and deploying AI-driven tools to triage patient communications and automate routine responses. Parallel to this effort, an Inboxologist pilot provided personalized workflow analysis, training, and support to clinicians with high after-hours EMR usage.

• Phase 2 expanded the model to include ambulatory nurses and medical assistants, standardized messaging expectations, categorized InBasket messages using Epic AI, and shifted appropriate tasks away from clinicians.

• Ongoing efforts include automated message routing, role-based AI prompts, and future exploration of overnight triage and mobile integrated health support to further reduce clinician burden.

Results & Conclusions:

Implementation of technology-enabled workflow changes and team-based message management resulted in substantial and sustained improvements:

• Average daily InBasket messages decreased from 52 in 2022 to 22 by February 2026.

• Time Outside Scheduled Hours declined from 39.2 minutes per day in 2023 to 26.7 minutes.

• Primary care clinician burnout rates improved year-over-year, decreasing from 42% to 30%.

Inboxologist-supported clinicians demonstrated meaningful reductions in both InBasket time and after-hours work, particularly when clinicians embraced delegation and standardized workflows.

These results indicate that combining AI-driven automation with workforce redesign can significantly reduce administrative burden and burnout. The initiative highlights that technology alone is insufficient; aligning tools with care team roles and operational processes is essential. Continued scaling of automation and team-based models offers a clear path to achieve further gains in clinician well-being and care efficiency.

CMIO Action Project: Reimagined Duke Health Performance Data Management System

CMIO Fellow: Armando Bedoya, MD, MMCi, Chief Analytics and Medical Informatics Officer, Duke Health

Leading Health System Mentor: Eric Poon, MD, MPH, Chief Health Information Officer, Duke Health

Opportunity & Problem Statement:

A significant opportunity has been identified to strengthen performance management across Duke Health. As resources within our Analytics Organization became decentralized, alignment on goals, metrics, and accountability became more difficult, and a consistent process for translating organizational strategy into shared performance indicators was not maintained. As a result, duplicative metrics, conflicting answers, and uneven ownership have been experienced across the system.

Methods:

A comprehensive redesign of the performance data management approach was initiated, with a coordinated focus on governance, reporting, and operational integration:

• Standardized definitions, benchmarking methods, and performance data standards were developed to support consistency and trust in the metrics used across the enterprise.

• Integrated reporting was being designed to bring together quality, safety, financial, labor, staffing, and growth measures across business units, while a structured management process was being implemented to connect leadership strategy with targets at the system, entity, service line, and unit levels.

• Through a franchise-style enterprise analytics model, central standards were balanced with local ownership to guide decisions both consistently and effectively.

Results & Conclusions:

As these changes were implemented, a more transparent, scalable, and actionable performance management system was realized:

• Clearer decision rights, more consistent KPI definitions, and better visibility into priorities and tradeoffs were created to support more confident leadership action.

• Greater speed to insight, stronger accountability for improvement, and more effective alignment of analytics resources were also enabled.

• At the same time, a governed, reusable, and AI-ready analytics platform was being established to create a more reliable enterprise source of truth.

CNIO Action Project: Enhancing Nurse Leaders' Utilization of Electronic Medical Record (EHR) Data Through Asynchronous Training and Streamlined Processes

CNIO Fellow: Sarah Carpino-Tyson, RN, MS, NI-BC, Assistant CNIO, University of Rochester Medical Center

Leading Health System Mentor: Rosemary Ventura, DNP, CNIO, University of Rochester Medical Center

Opportunity & Problem Statement:

While awareness of EMR-based analytic tools is high among nursing leaders, inconsistent utilization and varying levels of comfort hinder the ability to fully leverage data for informed decision-making.

This presents an opportunity to shift from data availability to meaningful data utilization by equipping nursing leaders with the skills, resources, and streamlined processes needed to confidently access, interpret, and apply real-time data within their roles.

By leveraging centralized resources, concept-based training, and simplified access to analytics, this initiative is designed to reduce administrative burden, enhance operational efficiency, and enable more proactive, data-informed decision-making that ultimately improves patient outcomes.

Methods:

Guided by findings from the 2024 environmental scan, a multi-faceted approach was implemented to improve nursing leaders' use of EMR data:

• A centralized Nursing Analytics Resource Hub was developed to provide easy access to training materials, tools, and reporting resources organized by role and workflow.

• Targeted education sessions were delivered across leadership groups, shifting from tool-based instruction to concept-based training focused on real-time, actionable data.

• In parallel, efforts were made to streamline access to analytics by simplifying request processes and aligning key dashboards with nursing workflows.

This approach prioritized reducing variation, improving data literacy, and embedding data use into daily operations—enabling nursing leaders to more confidently access, interpret, and apply data in practice.

Results & Conclusions:

Results demonstrate strong momentum in advancing nursing data utilization. By late 2025, when nursing leaders were asked their first step when seeking data, EMR-based tools were the most frequently selected options—reflecting increased awareness and adoption of available analytics.

In parallel, there has been a notable increase in requests for data-focused education sessions and nursing data consults, indicating growing engagement and demand for deeper understanding. The centralized Nursing Analytics Resource Hub has also become a key entry point, helping to direct users to appropriate tools, training, and resources.

Together, these trends suggest a meaningful shift toward integrating data into nursing workflows, with early evidence that efforts to improve access, literacy, and usability are driving increased utilization.