Artificial Intelligence is transforming all industries. When used in healthcare, it requires a careful balance between human expertise and technological power, according to the experts who spoke at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business’s 2026 Impact Conference on AI and Health.
On Friday, February 27th, this conference, titled “Transforming Healthcare Management Through AI: Opportunities and Challenges,” brought together over 20 industry experts and over 180 attendees, all looking to learn how AI is currently being used and projections for future use to improve health outcomes.
Serif Health and Pitt Business’s Centers for Branding and Healthcare Management sponsored the event.
Humans at the Forefront of AI
Hooman Rashidi, associate dean of AI in Medicine at the Pitt School of Medicine and professor and endowed chair of Lombardi-Shinozuka Experimental Pathology Research and executive vice chair of Computational Pathology Executive Director at the CPACE AI Center, kicked off the event with a discussion about the transformative role of generative AI in research, education, and clinical care.
He discussed the differences between supervised and unsupervised machine learning and the benefits and challenges of real data, synthetic data and when to use a combination of the two types of data. He attested that cleaning data is the most time-consuming part of training an AI and then showed the audience that he helped to create a large language model (LLM) to speed up the data cleaning process. Rashidi and his colleagues at CPACE AI Center have developed tools that are helping to change healthcare today.
His talk reinforcing the need to keep a human-in-the-loop when implementing AI resonated in every session throughout the event. He hopes healthcare can strive to “implement AI in the most efficient and responsible way.”
AI Allows for Structural Acceleration
On average it takes 10 to 12 years for a drug to be created. With the help of AI, that timeframe can be greatly shortened.
Alan Russell, vice president of Research and Large Molecule Discovery and head of R&D Technology and Innovation at Amgen, called traditional drug discovery slow, linear, and a science of chance. He continued, “We need to de-risk the process. The power of AI for us is to accelerate the drug development process. Every day, every month matters.”
Through AI adaptation at Amgen, the drug creation pipeline is three times faster than it was three years ago. “Before it was like playing poker, now we are playing chess,” Russell said.
Industry Experts
“This conference highlights the tremendous value of AI in healthcare. It is clear that healthcare AI has moved beyond experimentation to execution,” says Associate Dean for Research and Strategic Initiatives and Thomas Marshall Professor of Marketing, Vanitha Swaminathan. “In this changing landscape, the winning organizations will be those who can execute, govern, and scale. Doing so will ensure that they maintain trust across all their stakeholders, while simultaneously leveraging AI to maximize innovation.”
Three panels discussed other aspects of AI in healthcare:
Transforming Healthcare Management Through AI: Opportunities and Challenges
This panel discussed how clinicians should balance the speed and results of AI with their own expertise and knowledge. Panelists said that the biggest barriers are change management and workflow integration, not algorithms. In addition, the panel discussed the importance of governance to ensure safety.
- Moderators: Narayan Ramasubbu and Jennifer Shang
- Panelists: Richard Clarke (A&S ‘06G), Joey Costa (MBA ’24), Suresh Mulukutla, Anjana Susrala, and Yanshan Wang
AI-Driven Healthcare Transformation: Strategies for Organizational Growth and Leadership
This panel discussed how AI adaptation is dependent upon company structure and culture. If users understand how using AI can be beneficial to them, but not something they should be fully reliant upon, they are more likely to buy in. Ankur Goel, healthcare technology leader at Microsoft, said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
- Moderators: Christopher Barlow
- Panelists: Rafiq Ahmed, Joanna Doven, Ankur Goel (MBA ’16), Albrecht Powell, and Hollie Vugrinovich (A&S ’05, BSBA ’05)
Six Pillars of Healthcare-AI Strategy That Could Drive Your Transformation
In this fireside chat, participants discussed the six pillars that help build a patient-centered healthcare brand: brand purpose, physical experiences, platform, personalization, participation, and partnerships. These pillars were adapted for healthcare from the book, “Hyper-Digital Marketing: Six Pillars of Strategic Brand Marketing in an AI-Powered World,” written by Vanitha Swaminathan.
Swaminathan emphasized the need to “think of the whole patient experience. Identify where there might be cracks and then make sure the care is integrated.”
- Moderator: Elena Rokou
- Speakers: Erik Abel and Vanitha Swaminathan
Entrepreneurship in the Health and AI Space
The final panel of the day discussed the four stages of problem-solving-entrepreneurship: ideation, development, deployment, and scaling beyond the pilot. To increase the adoption of new technologies, the panel recommended spending time with clinicians, so they understand the value in the decision.
- Moderators: Maria Abunto (MBA ‘24) and Pranav Balani (MBA ’27)
- Panelists: Utkars Jain (A&S ’16, ENGR ‘24G), Deepan Kamaraj (SHRS ’14G, ‘20G), Megan Shaw, and Eugene Vestel (MBA ’18)
Business for Good
At Pitt Business, our Business for Health Initiative unifies the University’s strengths in education, research, and innovation to improve health outcomes and economic vitality through business innovation and leadership. By leveraging Pittsburgh’s ecosystem and Pitt’s academic excellence, it redefines how business schools engage with the world of health—fostering innovation, advancing knowledge, transforming practice, and building a healthier, more prosperous future for all.
“Our aim is to be a global model for what it means for a business school to be truly essential to its home region and university — and our Business for Health Initiative is a primary means of making that a reality,” says Dean Gene Anderson.
He continues, “Conferences like this connect us more deeply to Pittsburgh’s extraordinary ecosystem of world-class health systems, leading health science schools, and thriving technology and startup sectors.”
The night before the conference, the Office of Strategic Partnerships hosted a reception for the Business for Health ambassadors, a group of industry leaders whose goal is to shape the School’s work in Business for Health.