WellSpan Health is positioning itself as a leader in scalable healthcare innovation, with a systemwide strategy built on integrating technology, human-centered design, and corporate venture capital. Under the leadership of newly promoted Chief Innovation Officer Mark Kandrysawtz, the organization has embedded innovation into its strategic priorities through 2030, focusing on solving systemic healthcare challenges like workforce shortages and aging patient populations. WellSpan defines innovation broadly, spanning internal R&D, digital experience design, and early-stage investment partnerships. Its approach emphasizes solving multiple problems at once – such as improving efficiency, personalization, and clinical quality – with each new initiative.
A standout example of this strategy is WellSpan’s collaboration with Hippocratic AI. Their joint project, Ana, is a conversational AI care team assistant designed to guide patients through complex, high-touch experiences like colorectal cancer screening prep. Ana uses advanced AI to inform, support, and engage patients where traditional human outreach would be unsustainable. Kandrysawtz highlights Hippocratic AI as an ideal partner – one that benefits from WellSpan’s real-world deployment knowledge while providing innovative solutions that scale across the system. These kinds of partnerships exemplify WellSpan’s model of mutual value creation, and the organization’s ability to pilot, evaluate, and scale innovation is rooted in a culture of change readiness and rigorous outcome tracking.