From AI Enabled to AI Native in Healthcare with Sunil Dadlani

Summary

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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast: From AI Enabled to AI Native in Healthcare with Sunil Dadlani

Date: May 9, 2026
Guest: Sunil Dadlani, EVP, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer, Chief Cybersecurity Officer at Atlantic Health System
Host: Elizabeth Gregerson

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Episode Overview

In this insightful episode, Elizabeth Gregerson speaks with Sunil Dadlani about the healthcare sector’s ongoing transition from being AI-enabled to AI-native. Sunil shares his perspectives on the current paradigm shifts in artificial intelligence, leadership during times of technological acceleration, and practical advice for healthcare leaders facing digital transformation, operational resiliency, and workforce evolution.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The Rise of Agentic AI in Healthcare

• Agentic AI is creating a major shift: It’s not just about prediction or content generation anymore, but about AI systems that can take autonomous action, which brings both immense value and significant risk to healthcare.
  • “We are now at a stage where we are seeing a paradigm shift from AI that can predict to now generating content and summarization. And here we are with agentic AI which can actually take actions.” — Sunil Dadlani [01:27]

2. Governance vs. Momentum in Innovation

• Challenging Old Assumptions:
  • Sunil addresses a common misconception in digital transformation: that greater speed leads to scalability. In the context of AI, rapid but uncontrolled piloting creates fragmentation and chaos, not capability.
  • “Momentum without governance is chaos and fragmentation, whereas governance without momentum is stagnation.” — Sunil Dadlani [02:39]

3. From AI-Enabled to AI-Native: Building Foundations

• Conscious Pivot:
  • Atlantic Health System is intentionally moving away from fragmented pilots to a structured, foundational approach.
  • Key focus areas for becoming AI-native:
    • Strong governance
    • Robust digital infrastructure backbone
    • Single intake process for projects
    • Prioritization of use cases
    • SAFE AI framework: Secure, Accountable, Fair, Explainable
  • “What it means is saying no to fragmented pilots which create pilot paralysis.” — Sunil Dadlani [03:13]
  • “SAFE is essentially secure, accountable, fair and explainable framework.” — Sunil Dadlani [03:57]

4. Forces Disrupting Healthcare & A Systemic, Problem-First Approach

• Major disruptive factors include:
  • Aging populations
  • Rising costs and consumer expectations
  • Workforce shortages and margin pressures
  • Reimbursement and payment model changes
• Vision of Future Healthcare:
  • Real-time, always-on, predictive, prescriptive, preventive, precision-based, hyper-personalized
  • The fundamental approach: Start with organizational problems, not solutions or technology.
  • “We are starting from the problems. What are the problems that matter most… so that we are able to drive maximum impact or value.” — Sunil Dadlani [05:10]

5. Leadership in Uncertainty

• Reflective Over Reactive:
  • In the face of unpredictability, leaders must avoid a reactive mindset.
  • The focus should be on principle-based, transparent, and communicative leadership, remaining open and agile to feedback and pivoting as needed.
  • “Unpredictability and uncertainty is a norm. It is not an exception.” — Sunil Dadlani [06:03]
  • “Last thing organization or the people want is reactive leadership, which is reacting to every noise.” — Sunil Dadlani [06:13]
  • “The leadership mindset has to be more reflective—lead with values, principle and mission driven by the clarity where the organization is headed.” — Sunil Dadlani [06:22]

6. Digital and Operational Resilience in Healthcare

• Beyond System Uptime:
  • Digital and operational resiliency is a deeper concept than just maintaining high system performance.
  • True resilience is about ensuring the organization can reliably deliver uninterrupted care despite inevitable cyber events or disruptions.
  • “Disruption is going to happen. Cyber events are going to happen. They are inevitable. Resiliency is capability and capacity… to continue delivering on its mission.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:11]

7. Advice to Healthcare Leaders

• Continuous Learning and Transformation:
  • Don’t mistake activity for real transformation; the latter is an ongoing journey, not a single project.
  • AI will continually redefine work, roles, responsibilities, and skill sets; upskilling and curiosity are vital.
  • “Don’t confuse activity with transformation.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:54]
  • “Transformation is not a project or a one-time initiative. It’s a lifelong journey.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:57]
  • “Your current skill set will get obsolete very fast. So have upskilling. Continuously getting engaged in AI projects and learning and having a curious mindset is a key trait…” — Sunil Dadlani [08:19]

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Notable Quotes

• “Momentum without governance is chaos and fragmentation, whereas governance without momentum is stagnation.” — Sunil Dadlani [02:39]
• “Unpredictability and uncertainty is a norm. It is not an exception.” — Sunil Dadlani [06:03]
• “Disruption is going to happen. Cyber events are going to happen. They are inevitable. Resiliency is capability and capacity… to continue delivering on its mission.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:11]
• “Don’t confuse activity with transformation.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:54]
• “Transformation is not a project or a one-time initiative. It’s a lifelong journey.” — Sunil Dadlani [07:57]

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Important Timestamps

• Introduction & About Sunil Dadlani [00:47]
• Rise of Agentic AI [01:24]
• Governance vs. Momentum in AI Initiatives [02:15]
• Transition to AI-Native Organization [03:07]
• Forces Disrupting Healthcare & Shaping the Future [04:25]
• Leadership in Uncertainty [06:02]
• Digital & Operational Resilience Defined [07:09]
• Advice to Healthcare Leaders [07:52]

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Memorable Moments

• The “SAFE” framework for AI governance provides a clear, actionable structure for deploying responsible, trusted AI.
• The analogy of “pilot paralysis” as a trap that prevents genuine transformation.
• Highlighting AI as an inevitable changer of roles — not just improving what we do but requiring adaptation in how we do it.

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Summary:
This episode offers a detailed, pragmatic roadmap for healthcare leaders navigating AI-driven transformation. Sunil Dadlani emphasizes the necessity for strong governance, a problem-first (not technology-first) approach, agility in leadership, the adoption of robust digital resilience practices, and a lifelong learning mindset as AI continually reshapes every aspect of healthcare delivery and operation.

Transcript

[A]

At Insight Global Health, we are dedicated to helping you and improving healthcare for everyone. That means building stronger teams and delivering sustainable solutions that truly make a difference. We offer a full spectrum of talent and technical services and deliver cross industry expertise to bring you innovative best practices to solve the problems that we face in healthcare. We're not just promising you results, we are delivering them. Visit [e-mail] hello and thank you for listening to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Elizabeth Gregerson here recording live from our Beckers Annual meeting and I am excited to welcome Sunil Dadlani from Atlantic Health System to our podcast today. Thank you for joining me. Could you give us a brief introduction of yourself, your role and the scope of your organization?

[B]

Sure. Thank you for having me. I am Sunil Dadlani. I'm Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer and Chief Cybersecurity Officer at Atlantic Health System. Atlantic Health System is nationally recognized one of the leading integrated health care system with eight hospitals and more than 500 sites of care operating in the east coast on New Jersey, Pennsylvania and metropolitan areas of New York.

[A]

Thank you so much. To kick off our conversation today, I'd love to talk about what's currently commanding most of your attention as a leader at present.

[B]

What is getting my attention is the rise of agentek AI. With the capacity and capability of AI rising exponentially, we are now at a stage where we are seeing a paradigm shift from AI that can predict to now generating content and summarization. And here we are with agentic AI which can actually take actions. And in healthcare where you take actions, that's where the maximum value is driven. At the same time you have highest risk that rises up with the action, which is autonomous and automated, perfect.

[A]

And you know, in a year marked by such rapid change, has there been a recent decision or a pivot required that required the most leadership conviction from you, particularly when it came to aligning people, resources or capabilities?

[B]

That's a great question. And I'm now looking and challenging the decision or the direction where scale leads to leads to capabilities and speed leads to capabilities. And I'm really questioning that assumption because speed does not lead to scalability. What we have seen is when momentum is driven by uncontrolled and un uncontrolled pilots and AI, it creates fragmentation, it creates more chaos. In a nutshell, if I had to put momentum without governance is a chaos and fragmentation, whereas governance without momentum is stagnation.

[A]

Absolutely. And you talked about that moment kind of challenging your assumptions. What did it change about how you approach the decision making talent or maybe organizational readiness of today.

[B]

This is part of our journey as we navigate and transition from AI enabled company to being a AI native organization. What it means is saying no to fragmented pilots which create pilot paralysis. And we have seen over and over again that organizations struggle with pilots and they are never able to scale at the enterprise level. So this is the decision that we are pivoting very consciously where we are forming and doubling down in terms of creating a very structured, strong foundation. When I say about foundation, that means having a strong governance, having a very robust digital infrastructure backbone, having a single intake process, prioritizing use cases and data fabrics and artificial intelligence framework which is safe. Safe is essentially secure, accountable, fair and explainable framework.

[A]

I can see how that directly ties to kind of challenging the chaos, right. That you spoke about earlier. When you think about the forces that are reshaping healthcare right now, where do you believe leaders need to be more decisive? Especially when it comes to balancing speed, like you talked about risk and having those right teams in place.

[B]

So as I see, there are several forces that are creating disruptions in the healthcare, be it an aging population, demographic shift, cost of care going up, rising expectation from healthcare, consumerization, margin pressure, then we have a workforce shortages, then also reimbursement challenges. So all these forces are really disrupting the healthcare landscape. Let me talk about how the healthcare of the future will look like. Health care of the future will be first of all, real time, 24 7, always on. What does that mean? That means healthcare will be more predictive, more prescriptive, more preventive and more precision based. And it will be hyper personalized. And the way we are handling this change and navigating and reimagining the healthcare and realigning our workforce is again taking a very cognitive approach about what matters most to the organization. We are laser focused on looking at things, looking at the problems and not starting with algorithm or technology or vendors. We are starting from the problems. What are the problems that matters most to the organization? And we are taking it, looking at it from the system lens so that we are able to drive maximum impact or value to the organization.

[A]

Absolutely. And when we talk about those forces kind of reshaping the industry, I feel like uncertainty has become the norm. So what leadership habit or mindset has been most critical for you in keeping your organization and your people moving forward?

[B]

First of all, you stated it rightly. Unpredictability and uncertainty is a norm. It is not an exception. And when we operate in an environment where there is too Much change. Last thing organization or the people want is reactive leadership, which is reacting to every noise. It creates more confusion, it creates more chaos. More important is the leadership mindset has to be more reflective when where you can lead with values, principle and mission driven by the clarity where the organization is headed and make some decisions and operate with the utmost transparency and, and having that conversations with the entire organization and be ready to pivot. Yeah. With the continuous feedback and refinement and learning, we are able to make the organization very agile and we are not afraid to pivot.

[A]

Perfect. And I couldn't have you here without asking about your area of expertise. So, in a world of cyber threats and AI acceleration, what does digital and operational resilience truly mean for healthcare organizations?

[B]

First of all, when we talk about digital and operational resiliency for a healthcare system, it is more than keeping the systems up or keeping the performance high on the system point of view. Disruption is going to happen. Cyber events are going to happen. They are inevitable. Resiliency in terms of healthcare is capability and capacity of the organization to continue delivering on its mission. That is providing uninterrupted care to the, to the communities we serve. That's what we call resiliency as a healthcare system.

[A]

Absolutely. And for my last question, I'd love to hear what advice you would give to other health care leaders just based on your experience in the industry so far.

[B]

I would leave you with a few nuggets. First of all, for the leaders, don't confuse activity with transformation. Second, transformation is not a project or a one time initiative. It's a lifelong journey. It's a journey. I would also say that have a continuous learning mindset because your AI is really redefining the work. When I say work, it redefines the roles. When the roles get redefined, it redefines the responsibility and ultimately it redefines the skillset. So your current skill set will get obsolete very fast. So have upskilling. Continuously getting engaged in AI projects and learning and having a curious mindset is a key trait for, for not only surviving, but thriving in the era of AI.

[A]

Absolutely. And I think that ties right back to when you said pivoting. Right. You got to be able to pivot with that uncertainty. Well, that's all the time we have for today. But thank you so much for joining me.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

Perfect. And to all our listeners, you can hear more podcasts from Beckers at beckershealthcare. Com. Thank you.