“This is our moment,” Srinath Adusumalli, MD, MSHP, MBMI, Vice President and Chief Health Information Office for Penn Medicine, told the Master of Health Care Innovation (MHCI) Class of ’26. He joined faculty member Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD in a commencement fireside chat. Their conversation spanned the future of AI and the power of partnerships to move the needle on patient care. One theme—and urgent opportunity—loomed large: innovation in health care must leverage human empathy to unlock the full potential of new technology.

While serving as Deputy Director of Penn Medicine’s Nudge Unit and as a practicing cardiologist-informaticist, Adusumalli used clinical observations to identify areas for improvement. He saw an opportunity to reduce post-cardiac event mortality and hospital readmissions by referring patients to cardiac rehab. Working with the Nudge Unit, he helped increase cardiac rehab utilization from 15% to 80% of eligible patients. Understanding behavioral science to create default pathways was key to the initiative’s success. So was aligning the interests of patients with those of the hospital system.

Building bridges is essential for innovating in health care, Adusumalli said. As Senior Medical Director of Health Informatics at CVS Health, he led enterprise initiatives, including national virtual care and clinical aspects of CVS’s digital consumer and patient experience. He found common ground with payors. Trading perspectives across the ecosystem made it possible to build digital tools that improve the human experience of health care. Doing so, Adusumalli told Volpp and the MHCI graduates, requires empathy for patients, clinicians, and administrators.

“It’s easier than ever to build anything, technology-wise,” he shared. “But I think it's just as hard, if not harder, to build something good.”

Adusumalli, who returned to Penn Medicine in 2025 to lead health informatics, urged the audience to be “activists” as AI reshapes health care delivery. Question the status quo. Deeply understand the problem and then rethink what’s possible by deeply understanding technology. While AI is democratizing medical knowledge, Adusumalli sees that as merely a starting point. Insights from AI need to be embedded into care delivery to personalize it.

Five years from now, he predicts, Electronic Health Record systems will be overhauled entirely to streamline access to information. The patient journey will no longer begin in the waiting room. It will start with exploring medical information through AI at home, and health care innovators will close the gap between that experience and contact with a provider. Virtual care and AI will be a force multiplier, with human understanding of pain points as the bedrock.

“Technology is 20%. The rest is people, process, workflow, and partnerships,” Adusumalli told graduates. “This is our moment to engage and shape the future, because it's not shaped yet. The art of what’s possible is very different than it was even 1 or 2 years ago.”