SmartSense Healthcare Advisory Board Member, Atn
Search every verified Joel Vengco interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Joel Vengco, Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer at Hartford Healthcare, has spoken extensively about the organization’s focus on leveraging generative AI and data to improve healthcare operations and patient engagement. In late 2024, he discussed the potential of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to create AI agents that help colleagues quickly find information, such as clinical procedures or HR policies, which he said are often difficult to locate. He noted that while high-risk AI applications may offer the highest value, lower-risk uses, such as making existing content searchable, also provide significant benefits. Vengco described the next one to two years as a period of focusing on how to truly leverage AI in healthcare. Vengco has also detailed structural changes at Hartford Healthcare, including the creation of new leadership roles such as a VP of IT Operations and Technology Platforms and a VP of Enterprise Applications and Products, to support a product-oriented mindset and digital transformation. He highlighted the development of the Hartford Healthcare Data and Digital Platform (H2D2) to centralize data and enable advanced analytics. Vengco emphasized that workforce development is a key challenge as the organization shifts from an EHR-focused model to one centered on cloud, DevSecOps, and agile methodologies, and noted that people who understand how to use AI in their jobs will replace those who do not.
“Everybody's talking about AI and gen AI. I do believe that's like the our next one to two years that we're going to be focusing on — how do we truly leverage this.”
“There are a lot of things that are risky in healthcare, and the challenge that we have is I think that the things that are the riskiest are probably the ones that have the highest value.”
“There are things that are low risk and probably have some decent — some good value, right; like for example, healthcare.”
“Everybody's talking about AI and gen AI — I do believe that's our next one to two years that we're going to be focusing on.”
“How do we truly leverage this — there are a lot of things that are risky in healthcare and the challenge that we have is...”
“The things that are the riskiest are probably the ones that have the highest value.”
“There are things that are low risk and probably have some decent value, some good value — for example, healthcare.”
“When I think about our colleagues at the health system a lot of it is searching, hunting and pecking and looking for things like how do you order a medication or can I wear on Fridays open toed shoes — those are things that you can't really easily find.”
“Lots of knowledge, lots of content — that's one of the things that generative models can be really good at.”
“Retrieval‑to‑generation, RAG — that approach, using generative models focused on a specific set of data that you could train on, is safe and I think could be very useful in creating an agent for our colleagues.”
“It's unknown whether or not that's going to make them more efficient or effective, but you're spending maybe a couple hours searching for stuff — what if you could ask your agent to give you something you're looking for very quickly?”
“When I think about our colleagues at the health system a lot of it is searching, hunting and pecking and looking for things... lots of knowledge, lots of content — that's one of the things that gen can be really good at.”
“Retrieval to generation, RAG — that approach using gen focused on a specific set of data that you could train on is safe and I think could be very useful creating an agent for our colleagues.”
“It's unknown whether or not that's going to make them more efficient or effective but I feel like there's at least for me personally and some of my teammates it's like you're spending maybe a couple hours searching for stuff often times.”
“But what if you could ask the agent, the J agent, to give you something that you're looking for very quickly?”
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