Boardrooms, technology vendors, and executive leadership teams have spent the past several years saturated with artificial intelligence hype. From conversational bots to multi-modal generative tools, the directive from above has almost universally been: “We need an AI strategy.”
However, adopting AI for AI’s sake without tying it directly to underlying operational friction, clear unit economics, and data readiness rarely moves the commercial needle. In mission-critical and highly regulated sectors like healthcare, speculative implementations can create substantial business risk rather than return on investment.
In an in-depth conversation on the AIScento Podcast, host John Okoro sat down with Suniti Ponkshe, Managing Director at Newport LLC.
Bringing a multi-decade perspective across healthcare systems (including serving as CIO for major health systems such as Georgetown University Medical Center), federal health policy initiatives (CMS and ONC under the HITECH Act / ACA rollout), payer enterprises, and middle-market board advisory, Suniti broke down how executives can cut through the noise, build responsible governance guardrails, and tie AI initiatives directly to enterprise value creation.
