The CEO of Advocate Health on Fostering Innovation Through Partnerships

Three years ago, two major health systems—one rooted in the Midwest, the other in the Southeast—came together to form the third-largest nonprofit care system in the nation, called Advocate Health. But that combination wasn’t a finish line. It was a launchpad. Our reason was clear: Healthcare was at an inflection point, and we believed that by joining forces, we could redefine it—for our patients, our teammates, and our communities. Today, Advocate Health spans 69 hospitals and 1,000 care sites, with about 170,000 teammates serving 6 million patients across two regions. Scale alone doesn’t transform, however. What matters is how you use it. We’ve chosen to leverage our size to drive innovation—through true collaboration that further expands the benefits to our patients. This means forging deep partnerships with leading technology companies, academic institutions, and medtech pioneers. In particular, we’re reshaping the future of care through three interconnected areas: artificial intelligence; our new innovation district in Charlotte, North Carolina, called The Pearl; and clinical trials. Together, they position us not only as a healthcare provider but as a living laboratory to advance bold new ideas, with the goal of reimagining a field in dire need of change. Taking AI from Buzzword to Bedside Artificial intelligence is poised to transform healthcare, but that will happen only if it is deployed as a core investment to help revive humanity in medicine. At Advocate Health we’ve embraced AI not as a hyped-up trend but as a strategic imperative. We are now the largest U.S. healthcare user of Microsoft’s Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot—an AI tool that turns audio from patient visits into clinical notes. This saves many of our 21,000 physicians up to an hour a day of administrative work—time they can instead spend with patients. Our 42,000 nurses are also helping to codevelop the use of a similar Microsoft tool. Beyond documentation, we’re partnering with medtech-imaging company Aidoc to help radiologists diagnose brain bleeds in under three minutes, down from 25—time savings that can mean the difference between a patient recovering or suffering long-term disability or death. We’re also working with Microsoft, Artisight, and other companies to build an AI-powered “hospital room of the future” that combines ambient listening, AI-enhanced cameras, and telehealth—used with patient consent. In one example, the system detected seizure-like movements before a patient fell. A remote nurse intervened within seconds via monitor while an on-site nurse arrived in time to prevent harm. Given that there are one million falls in hospitals each year, 30% of which result in injury, that kind of innovation is important. In that moment, technology became a guardian of patient safety, and that system is one we can scale. In the rural communities we serve, AI platforms also provide 24/7 virtual support, ensuring patients get timely consultations even if specialists don’t live nearby. Someone in rural Georgia with a rare cancer is no longer isolated from expertise that’s available in Winston-Salem or Milwaukee. Creating the Medici Effect for Medicine In Charlotte we’ve brought to life a vision inspired by what author Frans Johansson calls the Medici Effect—the recognition that breakthrough innovations often occur at the intersection of different disciplines and industries, and it therefore behooves us to design for such interactions. The Pearl, which we opened just this past summer, is a first-of-its-kind innovation district, designed to unite academic, industry, and clinical partners to accelerate the pace of progress. Its anchor is the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, which embeds AI, robotics, and advanced diagnostics into the curriculum. IRCAD—the global leader in minimally invasive surgical training—has also established its exclusive North American headquarters at The Pearl. And distinguishing the district even further, these institutions are colocated with medtech leaders including Siemens, Stryker, Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and Boston Scientific, whose professionals operate side by side with students, clinicians, and researchers. An engineer might observe a procedure in the morning, refine a prototype in the afternoon, and collaborate with a physician by evening. This is the Medici Effect in action—breakthroughs born from the collision of diverse expertise. And it’s a testament to the power we see in partnership to co-create a better future. Accelerating Clinical Trial Discovery Clinical research is the third area in which partnerships are helping us push boundaries. We are launching the Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials (NCCT)—the largest provider-based platform in the country—to enable industry partners to access, often with AI assistance, the right patients from our pool of millions, as well as relevant anonymized records from over 100 million encounters in our database, in order to move more quickly from the research “bench” to the bedside—and beyond. Part of the surgical ballroom of IRCAD North America, located at The Pearl (left); Eugene A. Woods officially opens the doors of The Pearl innovation district (right). Courtesy of Advocate Health The NCCT will create a more efficient path for partners to safely test their newest devices, technologies, drugs, and treatments—and for our patients, from rural Alabama to the South Side of Chicago, to enroll in these trials. For example, we treat approximately 50,000 new cancer patients annually, among the most in the nation for healthcare providers. Now they will have greater access to leading-edge cancer treatments and trials, regardless of geography. Taken together, these three efforts (AI partnerships, The Pearl, and the NCCT) reflect our vision of Advocate Health as a platform for transformation, and they underscore our core belief that solving healthcare’s toughest challenges demands radical collaboration. Advice for Innovators Beyond Healthcare While our journey is in healthcare, what we’ve learned should be universal and hopefully helpful for those in other fields seeking to innovate. Here are some of our key strategies and takeaways: Set a strong foundation so that you can build bridges with others. At Advocate we have worked hard to get our foundation right—an inspiring purpose, an open culture, and a solid infrastructure. And internal surveys show that our teammates, despite all the significant changes of the past few years, are with us. In fact, 85% say they feel proud to be part of Advocate Health. They believe in the direction we’re heading, and as a result, they’re willing to not just adapt to change but help lead it. Embrace the unknown. It wouldn’t be called “innovation” if the destination were known. To leap into uncertainty, organizations need more than strategy—they need a specific mindset. At Advocate Health we call it fearless curiosity and unshakable optimism. It’s the belief that the unknown isn’t something to fear—it’s something to explore. And it’s the conviction that progress is possible, even when the path isn’t yet visible. Seek to drive innovation through true collaboration. Co-create with external experts, design shared spaces for real-time teamwork, and treat partnerships as strategic assets. Too many companies want to sell their latest products and services and walk away. But, given our scale and the life-altering nature of our work, we partner with those willing to design, iterate, and build with us. Choose partners with whom you have alignment—on purpose as well as vision. For us that means companies and institutions that have a similar outlook on healthcare’s future and leaders who prioritize mutual learning coupled with a heavy dose of humility. Key questions include: Are potential partners here to build something better together, or are they taking a more transactional, win-lose approach? Do our values really align around caring for all, especially the most vulnerable—from patients in the most rural areas to those in the most urban communities we serve? Can we do things bigger, better, faster together than we could do alone? Innovation that doesn’t serve the underserved is incomplete. Real transformation begins when we ask harder questions: Who is this innovation for? Who might be left behind? AI, genomics, and digital therapeutics all hold promise—but only if we embed ethics and a commitment to access for all from the start. In fact, one key reason IRCAD chose to partner with us at The Pearl is because we both saw that alignment almost immediately. I traveled to France to sit down with Jacques Marescaux, IRCAD’s founder and president, to talk about what might be possible together—especially to democratize innovation. His goal of teaching a new generation of robot- and AI-assisted surgeons inspired me. Advocate’s commitment to creating new models to connect our large network of facilities and clinicians inspired him. We agreed that an IRCAD North America focusing on specialties like advanced brain, heart, and cancer interventions would help us both make faster progress on behalf of the patients we each serve—not just in well-heeled areas but also in the most challenged. That joint vision propelled us from an initial handshake to the opening of a shared facility in just a few years. Use scale strategically, not just operationally. Leverage data, reach, and size to create platforms for experimentation. And make sure the effect of your scale is that you can pilot, refine, and deploy solutions faster, rather than get held up in red tape. Any time two or more large organizations work together, there is a risk that new structures will stifle entrepreneurial spirit. That’s why it’s important to form empowered rapid-cycle decision-making groups for every workstream, with direct access to senior leaders who can remove barriers. On The Pearl project, for example, we had about 30 groups. I joke that The Pearl’s first phase was built faster than I could complete the renovation on my home, but it’s true. We had to open by June 2025 so that we could welcome our first class of medical students, and sometimes there is nothing more motivating than a deadline. Then, just three days after the ribbon cutting, our leadership team met to map out the next phase: new buildings for further innovation to complement our medtech hub. The Future On my desk sits a bright-red ink stamp that bears the phrase “The way things have always been done” boldly crossed out. It was a gift from Ed Brown, my mentor and our former board chair. He told me to use it often, and I do. That’s because we believe the future belongs not to those who preserve convention but to those who dare to reimagine it. No single organization can solve society’s most pressing challenges alone. Real, lasting change requires a movement—one rooted in deep collaboration across health systems, governments, businesses, nonprofits, and communities. At Advocate Health we see this kind of innovation as our responsibility. Our commitment is to translate visionary ideas into everyday impact for the millions we serve in a way that is widely accessible and deeply human. We invite others to walk this path with us and to help us shape it, because when we move from imagination to implementation together, we not only transform systems—we transform lives.

The CEO of Advocate Health on Fostering Innovation Through Partnerships

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