Lessons from a Physician-CIO on AI Governance with Dr. Stacey Johnston
From AI Explained by Fiddler AI
April 23, 2026 · 52 min · Episode 20
About this episode
Dr. Stacey Johnston discusses AI governance in healthcare, sharing insights from her dual perspective as a physician and a health informatics leader.
In this episode of AI Explained, we are joined by Stacey Johnston, MD, Chief Information and Digital Execution Officer at Beacon Health System. Dr. Johnston brings a rare dual perspective to healthcare AI. She trained as a physician and hospitalist before moving into health informatics, giving her firsthand insight into where technology helps clinicians and where it gets in the way. She discusses how Beacon built its AI governance council from scratch, the policies and vendor risk assessments that gate every new tool, and why requiring a defined ROI before approval has become a forcing function for disciplined adoption. She also shares how agentic AI is already delivering results in scheduling, autonomous benefits verification, and colon cancer screening, why ambient listening drove $10,000 in additional per-physician revenue over 12 months, how clinician trust is earned incrementally through seamless workflow fit and real time savings, and what a federated but centrally monitored AI model could look like as health systems scale.
People in this episode
Host: Fiddler AI
Guest: Stacey Johnston
Topics covered
- AI governance
- healthcare technology
- physician insights
- digital execution
- vendor risk assessments
- clinician trust
- agentic AI
Keywords
- AI governance
- healthcare AI
- physician CIO
- digital health
- vendor risk
- ROI in healthcare
- ambient listening
- autonomous benefits verification
- colon cancer screening
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Beacon Health System, AI Explained, Fiddler AI
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