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AI Governance and Leadership in Healthcare with Dr. Viv Babber of Lean Six Intelligence Group 1-16-26
00:11:00
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and the Becker Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to feature Dr. Vivian Baber. Dr. Baber. Dr. Viv Baber has built a company called Lean Six Intelligence, where she focuses a lot on AI and AI governance in healthcare and in business in general. A brilliant physician who turned into a business person. Dr. Baber, can you take a second and introduce yourself?
- [00:26]
B
Sure. I'm Dr. Viv and I'm a physician and an AI governance educator and advisor. What I do is I work with executive boards, leadership teams to help them build clarity, control, and also confidence around AI as a core business capability. What I mean by that is my focus is not really on tools, but on how leaders make decisions with AI and whether those decisions can withstand the scale, the scrutiny, and the changes. As you know, with AI, there's a lot of regulation frameworks coming into play, and my work centers strongly on governance, education and leadership, fluency and operational alignment. So basically what I do is I help organizations design AI by sort of defining the different escalation paths, the human oversight. And also when leaders understand how AI decisions flow through the organization, they also stop feeling like AI is very risky and starts becoming more of a stabilizing force for execution and growth of both the team and the entire organization.
- [01:34]
A
Thank you so much. And talk a little bit about Dr. Baber. How did you transition from physician to what you do today? I mean, you'll always be a physician. How did you transition out of practice and into doing what you do today? How did that evolve?
- [01:47]
B
Sure, what has happened was, as I was in my own clinical experience, I got interested in learning more about sort of innovation, you know, what kind of things are out there, healthcare innovation. So that took me to starting to attend some pitch events, and from this pitch event came into innovation, learned about investing in new products, new services that led to AI. And from there I started doing a little more research into how AI affects as sort of the healthcare space. And I got certified by the American Board of Artificial Intelligence Medicine. I went beyond that because I wanted to learn not just from the medical perspective, but also from the IT perspective. And I got certified through the International association of Privacy Professionals with my certification in Artificial Intelligence Governance professional. Then I took it one step further this past month, and I got certified and in one of the ISO standards, which is the 42,000, which is, as most people that are familiar with international standards, that's the first global framework for artificial intelligence. So that's kind of how my path went. It was more curiosity about innovation and took me down the path of artificial intelligence.
- [03:05]
A
Thank you very, very much. And talk for a second about you work with a lot of leadership teams on AI and talk a little bit about where do people sort of underestimate the impact of AI or the blind spots in AI and the challenges.
- [03:20]
B
I love this question. I'd love to give my answer and my feedback on this because this is very important to talk about those blind spots because these are the areas that get people in trouble. Right. So most of these blind spots for leadership teams are going to be around decision ownership, data assumptions and what I say, downstream impact. And so many still assume AI risk fits the technology or the external partners and vendors when it actually the responsibility sits with those leadership choices, what gets automated, what data is trusted and where the human judgment still applies. So if you think about it, what happens is these blind spots persist because the boards lack AI literacy and structured reporting mechanisms. And so what I mean by that is we need to work on AI literacy and AI fluency of the leadership team. And another one I'd like to mention, of course is the structural delegation. So what I mean by that is that AI again is often assumed that the technical teams or the innovation groups will take care of it and then the board's focus on strategy and results. So what AI is now doing, it's actually interconnecting leadership with the tech teams and it's also allowing the leadership to participate in the day to day AI decisions because it's an interdisciplinary sort of now AI governance framework we're dealing with in organizations.
- [04:52]
A
Thank you. When AI initiatives don't work out, what stalls them? What fails? Why do they fail? Why don't they work out?
- [05:00]
B
In my opinion, most of the AI initiatives stall not because they're was a failure somewhere in technology, but because people just don't know where AI fits into their authority and accountability. So basically, when teams don't know when to trust AI, when to override it, or who owns that final call, they're going to be a little hesitant about it. And so what's often labeled as resistance actually really is the uncertainty created by leadership design gaps. And so again, it goes back to the AI fluency and AI literacy. If the leaders don't understand AI, they can't expect the workforce to understand it. So for the readers listening, the signal is that resistance is rarely a people problem. It's actually a clarity problem. So if you fix that structure, the behavior follows and then people resist AI not because it's new, but because leadership hasn't made it Safe. And what I mean by that is safety comes from clarity. And when they see the leadership understanding AI, teaching AI, encouraging it, feeling comfortable with it, so will their team.
- [06:08]
A
Thank you very, very much. And when, when things are going well, what are leaders doing when it's going well? When AI implementation is going well, how do you increase confidence? How do things go well? What does, what can go well as opposed to increasing organizational risk?
- [06:26]
B
First of all, it's that knowledge base, you know, and people's comfort level. They're gonna, they're gonna want to participate in learning AI, how it affects their role, when they feel confident about it. And confident comes with confidence, comes with education, it comes with upskilling. So not only for the, the workforce, but the leadership also needs to make sure they're getting trained in AI technology, understand, understanding the rules and regulations out there, understanding the framework, that's what really builds the confidence, is that knowledge base to feel comfortable. So you're not playing a guessing game or experimenting with AI.
- [07:03]
A
Dr. Baber, Viv, talk for a moment about what are some of the current trends you're watching in artificial intelligence right now, in its evolution in healthcare?
- [07:13]
B
So the first trend I've been seeing is initially it's that novelty with AI. People were experimenting with it, they were excited about it, trying out different tools. And now what we're seeing is AI is now entering the operational space, it's moving into the core workflows that affect the revenue cost strategy. And what it's doing is actually forcing the leadership teams to confront whether their decision structure is really ready for scale. And the second trend I see is fragmented AI adoption across organizations. And what I mean by that is that it seems like teams are independently adopting AI in their own way. And what we really need is a unified leadership framework where there's an oversight team or an AI governance team that oversees all the different domains or departments in a company and helps centralize that AI decision ownership. And I would say another trend is the recognition that AI somehow is amplifying leadership quality. And what I mean by that, it's the good leaders are getting better with AI, but the weaker leaders are breaking down faster. It's like AI is almost expanding, exposing more of the gaps. And so I would say to your listeners, the next competitive edge isn't smarter AI, it's actually steadier leadership. And as AI scales, the consistency and control outperform the novelty.
- [08:40]
A
And let's take a follow up on that piece. What advice would you give to evolving leaders, firms as boards and boards as they Prepare to operate and compete in the new AI era.
- [08:52]
B
Sure. First of all, leaders need to recognize, again, I'm going to point out, the AI literacy at the leadership level is now a core requirement. And this doesn't mean becoming technical experts. It means understanding how AI decisions are made, where judgment still matters, and how that leadership intent is translated into the system and into the organization. So what you need to do is that firms should really treat AI governance basically as a foundational business infrastructure, not a side function. And boards really need to start now asking, you know, whether AI is used from going from there to how it is governed. And the quality of those answers really become a proxy for leadership maturity. And that's one of the things I believe businesses are looking more towards from the perspective of supporting or investing is that governance maturity. So ultimately leaders should expect, expect AI to test them under pressure and then the governance is really what becomes a stabilizing force that allows them the credible responses instead of those defensive reactions that come later once the rules, regulations are in place. And so I believe most successful leaders see governance not really as a restriction, but sort of a permission to lead decisively. And I always say AI will shape the future, but it's only the leaders who govern it will be trusted to lead it.
- [10:16]
A
Thank you so much. And doctor, take a moment and tell people where they can learn more about your company and about you.
- [10:23]
B
Sure. They can visit our website at Lean Six AI and the other website I have is AISync training that's more toward educating individuals on healthcare AI governance as well. And they can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn and I do post a newsletter there called AI on Call.
- [10:45]
A
Dr. Baber, what a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you for joining us today on the Becker Private Equity in the Becker Business podcast. What a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [10:55]
B
Thank you.
- [11:01]
C
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