In Conversation: Sameer Sethi
SVP, Chief AI & Insights Officer, Hackensack Meridian Health - on why the health system raised its AI budget, its shift from experimentation to a mature AI strategy, and the governance guardrails managing bias, privacy, and workforce anxiety
Few voices in healthcare technology carry as much practical weight right now as Sameer Sethi, SVP, Chief AI & Insights Officer, Hackensack Meridian Health. In a wide-ranging conversation conducted by MobiHealthNews, Sameer 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
Why the health system raised its AI budget, its shift from experimentation to a mature AI strategy, and the governance guardrails managing bias, privacy, and workforce anxiety.
“AI will replace physicians that do not use AI.”
- Sameer Sethi, in conversation with MobiHealthNews
Conversation highlights
Why the health system raised its AI budget
Its shift from experimentation to a mature AI strategy
And the governance guardrails managing bias
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.
The capital context matters here. US digital health raised $7.4 billion in H1 2026 with 45% of it concentrated in $100M+ megadeals, and 115 acquisitions made it the busiest M&A run since 2021 (our analysis). In a market this concentrated, the strategies described in this conversation - defensible data, measurable outcomes, disciplined growth - are precisely what separates the funded from the folded.
The conversation is a study in how theory meets the operating reality of healthcare. At Hackensack Meridian Health, 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
For HealthTech Cube readers, the takeaway is less about any single tool and more about the operating discipline behind it: technology follows strategy, never the reverse.