Headline Partner

Ajai Sehgal, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Mayo Clinic

Describe your career to date

I have been Mayo Clinic’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer since December 2020 with a focus on enabling the ethical use of Mayo Clinic’s 150+ years of data to inform the evolution of medicine and the development of future cures for the benefit of all of humanity. I have extensive experience in data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) based product and technology with global scale. I served as CTO/CIO for Eagleview from December 2017 until September 2020 and as CTO/CIO for Chemistry Group from January to December 2017. I worked at Hootsuite as CTO/CIO from 2014 to 2017, leading Data and Analytics, Software Engineering, IT, Security, and Operations.

Prior to Hootsuite, I spent 16 years with the Royal Canadian Airforce before joining Microsoft in Redmond WA. While at Microsoft, I helped found and scale Expedia from a small group of 40 people within Microsoft into a new public company that became the world’s largest travel agency.

How are you developing the data literacy of your organization, including the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders?

Developing organizational data literacy is an integral part of our data governance and enablement program. Data literacy is about comfort and confidence using data. Our approach to data literacy is one that weaves the program into other work and encompasses focus on building a growth mindset, common language and enhancing data and analytics skill sets.

We advocate and provide education and resources that enable transformation into a data-centric organization, one in which data is a key strategic asset, where we all understand and speak the language of data. We advance data literacy through a shift in mindset, a shared language and new ways of working.

What role do you play in building and delivering conventional AI solutions, including machine learning models? Are you involved in your organization’s adoptions of generative AI?

Predictive artificial intelligence (AI) model development and the adoption of generative AI is very democratized within our organization, largely driven by physician scientist who are experts in their fields. My team plays an enablement role for AI development and the adoption of generative AI, providing automated tools and consulting resources for the governance of AI and approval for Software as a Medical Device. We also provide engineering resources to departments who need them.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organization, particularly with regard to data quality?

With an outstanding data governance program, close partnership with our IT department, and a strategic partnership with Google, we have built a cloud-based data foundation that is high quality and accessible at scale. The data foundation comes with full context for a variety of hospital use cases including medical, administrative, and financial.

Ajai Sehgal
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