In Conversation: Lavonia Thomas
Nursing Informatics Officer, MD Anderson Cancer Center - on bringing frontline nurses into technology decisions
Among the leaders shaping how care and technology converge is Lavonia Thomas, Nursing Informatics Officer, MD Anderson Cancer Center. In a wide-ranging conversation conducted by MobiHealthNews, Lavonia laid out a view of the industry that is both candid and immediately useful to the executives, clinicians, and builders who read HealthTech Cube.
The conversation
Bringing frontline nurses into technology decisions - change management for new clinical tools, streamlining documentation, and nurse well-being during digital transformation.
“It is all about vetting it with nurses; it is the change management.”
- Lavonia Thomas, in conversation with MobiHealthNews
Conversation highlights
Bringing frontline nurses into technology decisions
Change management for new clinical tools
Streamlining documentation
And nurse well-being during digital transformation
The bigger picture
The AI adoption question runs through every executive conversation in 2026. The evidence base is finally arriving: the largest controlled study of ambient documentation, published in JAMA, found clinicians saved 16 minutes of documentation time per day - but only a third of users hit the usage threshold for maximum benefit (our coverage). Meanwhile Rock Health has stopped labeling AI as a differentiator at all, because every company claims it - which is exactly why operating discipline of the kind described here separates winners from demo-ware.
It is a conversation that rewards close reading by anyone building or buying in this market. At MD Anderson Cancer Center, that thinking translates into daily decisions about where technology genuinely earns its place in care delivery, and where discipline matters more than novelty.
The HTC take
It is a perspective we expect to age well, and one that connects directly to the trends HealthTech Cube tracks across all eight of our coverage categories.