As a main data officer and AI in the Ann & Robert H. Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Rajiv Kolagani builds the most contemporary data platform that uses artificial intelligence to improve clinical quality, boost operational excellence and improve the experience of suppliers, patients and families.
The 20-year career collagans offers key leadership roles in organizations, including hearty health and care, Davita and Centene, where Medicare Advantage programs have successfully scaled, implemented risks reimbursement models based on risk and implemented health analyzes of AI population population, which clearly improved patients’ results.
Now he has one of the latest and fastest growing titles in healthcare: the main officer of AI.
“A few years ago, Lurie Children’s Hospital was looking for someone who could enter and transform the data and analysis program and AI,” says Kolaans. “He realized the need to transform in the data space, mainly because the technology and operating model were old-fashioned.
“There was problems with trust in data and adoption,” he continued. “So then they knocked my arm to say:” Hey, do you want to examine this opportunity to really transform data, artificial intelligence and analysis? ” Over the past two and a half years, there has been a significant number of investments into the transformation of people, processes and technology in Lurie, with Data and analysis perspective. We modernized all our technological stack. “
Team building, finding values
From the perspective of people, the organization added several people who focus mainly on the best practices and services of data engineering. Colladans have a senior director who focuses on this area. He also has the director of AI, senior product director and senior Data Director and AI skills.
“And then on the side of the process we went away from the clean ticket and service model to products and internal delivery and agile models, which significantly increased the way we work with our clients and how they receive value in our program,” he explained.
“The last six to eight months was really focused on obtaining artificial intelligence and AI strategy and AI management,” he continued. “We noticed that we needed a leader at the level of enterprises, which can organize all artificial intelligence in the organization, rule it centrally, but make it more locally.”
It was a mantra because there is no one person who should do all artificial intelligence, collagans In addition.
“AI should happen in the whole enterprise,” he noted. “So then they knocked me as a director of AI. I report to the main digital and information officer. I basically served as AI for about a year, but the official title came in March 2025.”
Technology and data, strategy
Colladans said he always had a talent for determining the strategy. He began in the technological space and that his development took place, for the first five years of his career. But after he won the MBA title from Duke, he embraced the roles in which he became a bridge between technology, strategy as well as data and analyzes. This prepared him for leading strategic roles.
“When you think about AI strategy and technological strategy really have to connect nicely into a business strategy – he said. “They should not exist separately from the business strategy. Understanding the supplier industry, understanding the research industry, understanding healthcare in general, I really prepared me to take the role of AI director.
“From the perspective of AI I have been doing AI for the last 10 years on the supplier’s side and on the side of the supplier,” he added. “When I worked with Press Gainy, we worked with large data sets. We introduced clinical quality, security and experience of patients and data on employee experience for 80% of healthcare in a very large comparative database.”
Then collagans They would find correlations using machine learning between all these data sets and come up with what results drive lead and delayed indicators, and what is the actual correlation between them.
“When I was from Davit, it was a few years ago, we predicted the progression of the disease from a chronic perspective of kidney disease,” he said. “It was only chronic kidney disease.
“Now generative artificial intelligence is newer, but AI discipline is much broader than generative AI,” he continued. “Aspect of machine learning and what we call classic artificial intelligence, I have been doing it for a long time in the healthcare space. I also did a lot of work in the payer’s space.”
Not a “one -man thing”
Colladans said that the management wants to become the director of AI, he must have technical AI chops to understand the basics of AI. But it is really about understanding the strategy – adaptation of artificial intelligence, and technology proceeds to the business strategy. And connecting people and cooperation on long -term goals.
“AI is a team sport, it really can’t be a one-man thing,” he said. “What would I recommend Leaders who want to make more artificial intelligence, they really understand the possibilities and technology, understand what they can do, understand their potential, understand the boundaries of this technology. You really have to come up with when you need to put a man in a loop, and when you let AI to start what he must do.
“It’s art and science,” he continued. “When you master it, when you really have to put a man in a loop, you will have a lot of benefits that will appear. I would say technical skills, but understanding what are the business problems that you really try to solve.”
He added that the director of AI must understand business problems and key challenges that should be solved and transformed the strategy to pass them.
What does Caio do
In general, the role of collagans as the director of AI is to organize AI for the Lurie children’s hospital. First, Activating artificial intelligence in the organization. What are the various activation options? How do leaders advise the appropriate apply of apply? Is it building or buying?
Then there is AI skills. How do leaders educate AI strength? Launted possibilities. The benefits of what opportunities will have in the organization.
“Now, what does it look like that we have Enterprise AI, which is everything that Microsoft and Workday and all these platforms,” he explained. “We have clinical artificial intelligence, which is epic and clinical systems and the functionality they have. Then we have something that we call special artificial AI or non -standard AI, which we do not anticipate, do not provide a enterprise and clinical AI.
“We must build these custom systems ourselves,” he continued. “In the case of enterprises and clinical, we cooperate with our corporate partners on the activation of these possibilities and the transfer of those by the AI management model and the approval process.”
Then the team develops all non -standard AI systems.
Will the model be effective?
“So, on a typical day, it may look as if we were conducting management in a subcommittee one day, one day we consult, which is essentially consuming all the possibilities of AI and understanding which of them will create,” said collagans. “And then we run them throughout the process of reviewing security, legal review, risk review, review of the AI model to really understand:” Will this model be effective? “
“And then a full roi model for every AI ability,” he continued. “And then, does it have to undergo a pilot process? Is it ready for production? How do we implement these possibilities AI?”
Collangies and a team must therefore overcome the entire AI life cycle. He has consulting teams and internal teams that meet with business owners and various interested parties to make this process work. They conduct management processes, consulting, reading and writing and adoption skills.
One AI project is proud, is a non -standard system built by him and his team, which understands hospital conditions such as blood infection, polar infection, surgical infection and others.
“It will understand how the infection has occurred using data,” he explained. “Typical infection preventing processes would change through the volume and volume of data. If we had a patient who has a length of one to three months, you talk about almost five to 10 medical documentation textbooks, you must go through.
“But we found it General LLM operate very effectively when we implement them while reading all knowledge, “he continued.” He can read the entire chart and we can ask questions. So we built an intelligent assistant agent who is at the top of the patient’s clinical record. And you can just ask questions. “
What is artificial intelligence looking for?
For example: when did this event of an infection occurred? What was the microorganism that you found on this particular day? What was the patient’s temperature in this particular event?
“And it all pulls”, collagans he said. “Some of the prevention of infections said that reviewing some of these intricate charts will take several hours to days, and are able to bring it from AI to just a minute. In less than an hour they can conduct a full analysis of the chart, asking questions.
“And here LLM power, the strength of artificial intelligence, really comes alive, because we found a real problem in which it is an administrative burden, in which their time can now be placed in doing other things,” he added. “They can effectively round, they can educate, they can be proactive for these infections.”
The collagans and his team developed all this in less than three months. He recognizes artificial intelligence and works before building this system.
“We pulled out all the data to the right place,” he explained. “We put it all on the appropriate platform, where it has both artificial intelligence and data capabilities. And guess what happened? We were able to simply build these LLM modules on this data, because we know that we have a good set of data, we have a trusted set of data and we can download this type or build this type of possibilities for our end users.
“And they couldn’t be more happy,” he continued. “Now they just want more. Now we have opened the flood gate. Can this product do it? Can it actually work on these other infections?
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