The future of healthcare won’t be determined by how quickly we adopt AI, but by how effectively we implement it, moving it from concept to clinical reality.
In this episode of Leadership Rounds, Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc and former President of the American Medical Association, offers a rare, end-to-end perspective on what it takes to move AI from concept to clinical reality.
His career spans clinical practice, national policy, military leadership, and now, frontline innovation.
After years of shaping national healthcare priorities, Jesse made a deliberate shift into an operating role.
As he puts it, policy allows you to influence the “what.” But operating roles allow you to execute the “how.” That distinction is critical in today’s AI moment because healthcare doesn’t lack ideas. It lacks systems that can translate those ideas into workflows clinicians actually use.
For years, we’ve been layering technology onto healthcare. EHRs, alerts, dashboards, systems stacked on systems. Each one promising efficiency. Each one, in practice, asking clinicians to do more.
More clicks.
More documentation.
More cognitive load at 3:00 a.m. in the ICU.
So when we talk about AI now, there’s an understandable skepticism. The biggest barrier to AI in healthcare isn’t technical capability. It’s execution. Not speed. Not scale. Not even the technology itself.
It’s about whether clinicians can finally get back to being human.
Jesse has seen the system from every angle, but what he envisions us stepping into now isn’t just another iteration of health tech. It’s a fundamental shift in how care gets delivered, because the most meaningful AI in healthcare isn’t the kind you notice.
It’s the kind that works quietly in the background, surfacing what matters, removing friction, and then getting out of the way.
Not another layer. A subtraction.
One of the most important distinctions Jesse makes is between two categories often conflated:
The difference isn’t just functional. It’s foundational.
Clinical AI carries a fundamentally different risk profile, trust requirement, and level of integration into care delivery. It must operate within clinical workflows, not alongside them. And that changes everything.
Imagine this:
A patient arrives in the emergency department in the middle of the night.
They’re scanned. The images upload.
Within minutes (not hours) the system flags a critical finding.
The right people are alerted.
The care team is already moving before anyone has to ask.
No extra clicks.
No additional burden.
No “new workflow” to learn.
Just faster care.
That’s the version of AI Jesse is building toward.
Not AI that asks more of clinicians, but AI that gives something back.
Time. Focus. Presence.
One of the most striking parts of this conversation is how clearly Jesse names the real failure point in healthcare AI. It’s not that the tools don’t work. It’s that they collect dust.
Health systems are buying dozens of solutions at a time, but they aren’t getting used. At least, not to their full potential. Pilots drag on for months, sometimes years. And even when tools are deployed, they often sit just outside the workflow, never fully integrated.
What looks like innovation from the outside often feels like noise from the inside. And clinicians, understandably, tune it out.
Not better algorithms alone.
Alignment.
In the organizations getting this right, implementation isn’t an afterthought.
It’s the whole game.
There’s a moment of honesty in the conversation where Jesse shares a story about building a tool early in his career. It was technically sound, well-researched, but ultimately, a failure.
Why?
Because it didn’t reflect the real workflow of the clinicians using it.
That lesson has stayed with him.
And it leads to a simple but critical truth: if clinicians aren’t shaping these tools, they won’t work.
Not in theory.
Not at scale.
Not where it matters most.
There’s one line from this episode that will likely follow the industry for years:
[pull] “AI won’t replace physicians, but physicians who use AI will replace those who don’t.”
It’s not a threat. It’s a shift.
Because this isn’t about competing with machines. It’s about whether we build systems that allow clinicians to do what only they can do: make complex decisions, build trust with patients, and see the whole person.
If we get this right, the future of healthcare won’t feel more digital. It will feel more human with fewer barriers between clinician and patient, boast faster decisions when time matters most, and hold more space for presence, judgment, and care.
AI will do the invisible work behind the scenes so clinicians can show up fully for their patients.
And for the first time in a long time, it feels like we might actually get there.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Related listening: If you’re interested in clinician operators shaping care delivery from the inside out, explore more episodes on Oxeon’s Leadership Rounds podcast here.
Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH is Chief Medical Officer of Aidoc and former President of the American Medical Association and a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of clinical care, health policy, and digital innovation.
He serves as Senior Associate Dean, tenured Professor of Anesthesiology, and Director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he leads a $560 million statewide health philanthropy focused on improving population health outcomes.
Dr. Ehrenfeld also holds adjunct faculty appointments at Vanderbilt University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization Digital Health Technical Advisory Group.
A board-certified anesthesiologist and clinical informaticist, his research focuses on leveraging information technology to improve surgical safety and patient outcomes. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, and the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research.
He has authored more than 275 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Systems.
Dr. Ehrenfeld is a combat veteran who served in the U.S. Navy, including deployments to Afghanistan. In 2023, he became the first openly gay president of the American Medical Association and has been a leading advocate for LGBTQ+ health equity for more than two decades.
