Five real-world examples. Four questions to guide your next technology decision. Explore the roundup
Written by: American Hospital Association • Created: Sep 17, 2026
A. Jenna Beckham, MD, MSPH, FACOG, FACS Associate Chief Medical Information Officer and OB-GYN WakeMed Health & Hospitals
a Beckham
OB-GYN clinical informatics, EHR workflow design and clinical decision support
Reducing clinician burden and improving patient safety through clinician-informed technology design
Dr. Beckham brings a rare dual lens to health system transformation. She is both a practicing OB-GYN and a clinical informaticist helping shape how technology is designed, implemented and improved across WakeMed Health & Hospitals.
Her work centers on a simple but powerful idea that health IT should reduce friction, not add to it. By translating frontline clinical experience into system-level design decisions, she helps ensure that digital tools support safer care, lighter cognitive load and more sustainable workflows for clinicians.
Her perspective brings an important reality to the Accelerator’s work. Choosing the right technology matters, but how an organization introduces, adapts and sustains it ultimately determines whether it delivers meaningful value.
I am a practicing OB-GYN with board certifications in obstetrics and gynecology, complex family planning, and clinical informatics. I also serve as Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, supporting informatics work across the health system while staying closely connected to frontline care.
My interest in informatics began in residency as an EHR super user. I was drawn to how system design shapes clinical workflows and patient care. At WakeMed, I became involved in EHR development and optimization committees, and that work evolved into a core part of my role.
I have always been interested in technology, but what motivates me most is improving how it supports clinicians and patients.
Some of the biggest opportunities are in small, practical improvements.
Clinicians did not go into medicine to spend time clicking through an EHR. Documentation and ordering create real cognitive burden. When we streamline those tasks, clinicians can focus more on patients, other critical work, or simply leaving on time.
That can mean surfacing key information in the note or refining order sets to support safer, more consistent care. Individually small, these changes add up to meaningful reductions in friction and “death by a thousand clicks.”
I am also excited by advances in robotic surgery, education, and remote collaboration. But the key question remains: does this meaningfully improve care or make it easier to deliver?
Even proven ideas can be difficult to adopt because they require workflow change.
Engaging trusted end users early is critical. It is one thing for informatics teams to support a tool. It’s far more powerful when a respected clinician says, “This made my work better.”
It is also essential to involve all impacted roles from the start. Changes to documentation or ordering affect physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others, and their input is key before rollout.
For new solutions, I recommend starting with a small pilot group, testing in real workflows, and building clear feedback loops. That strengthens trust and improves the solution before scaling.
Being early can be valuable, but not always when a solution will affect many users.
Hospitals should start by clearly defining the problem, assessing whether existing tools already address it, and understanding how a new solution fits into current workflows and priorities. It is also important to identify who will be affected and whose perspectives are missing.
Peer insight is equally important. Vendors offer one view, but hearing from a trusted clinician or health system leader who has already used a technology provides insight that a vendor presentation cannot. Those perspectives help organizations make more informed decisions and adapt proven approaches rather than starting from scratch.
Most health systems have more ideas than capacity. A structured evaluation process helps focus investment on solutions with real need and a realistic path to adoption.
Hospitals should not have to solve the same problems in isolation.
Peer learning provides real-world insight into how technologies perform in practice, where challenges emerge, and what changes are needed after implementation. These lessons help others avoid repeating the same missteps.
The Champion Network is especially valuable because it brings together clinicians, operational leaders, and informaticists across organizations in a vendor-neutral space. That enables honest, experience-based discussion.
It bridges innovation and implementation by connecting technical expertise with real clinical context.
Start small, bring people with you and keep improving. Successful technology adoption is not a single event. Hospitals can build a stronger foundation by clearly defining the problem, testing solutions with a focused group of invested users and involving every team affected by the change.
Implementation also cannot be treated as the finish line. Once a technology enters real patient care, teams will discover needs and scenarios they could not fully anticipate. Maintaining open communication, acting on feedback and continuing to optimize the solution are essential to sustaining adoption and realizing its value.
The technology may be the tool, but implementation is fundamentally about people.
Explore a proven approach from WakeMed Health & Hospitals for strengthening postpartum hemorrhage risk identification and response.
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