How Boston Scientific's digital and IT boss upgraded her team from order takers to strategic thinkers

Throughout Eddy’s 18-year run at GE, she rotated through nearly every job in IT one could have, ranging from engineering to cybersecurity. And GE saw great potential in her too. Only six months after joining the company, Eddy was approached to join a management leadership program, setting her on the path that would eventually see her become commercial chief information officer of two different GE business units.

But when Eddy was recruited to join medical-device maker Boston Scientific in 2013, she “had a vision that we could transform the IT organization,” says Eddy, who became CIO in 2015 and since 2020, has served as SVP and chief information and digital officer.

When Eddy joined the Massachusetts-based medical-technology company, it was worth about $17 billion and while digital investments were a core focus, the folks in IT were there primarily as order takers. Eddy quickly overhauled IT, completing multiple rounds of restructuring and empowering the team to show that technology should be more critically deployed to address a complex healthcare system.

Eddy says there is now a digital leader who sits on the executive management board of every division, every region, and every business function, so they can work together to deploy tech, rather than being told, “I want this software package. Go implement it for me.”

Today, Boston Scientific is valued at around $110 billion and “treats” over 75 patients globally every minute through its assortment of medical devices such ad pacemakers, catheters, stents, and pain management products. Digital teams have had greater oversight in the development of key projects including an Amazon-ish e-commerce site that’s currently being rolled out. While larger hospital systems are fairly easy for Boston Scientific to sell to, smaller lab offices often lack a fully dedicated IT team. A direct sales channel helps Boston Scientific book more sales.

“We’re listening to the strategies of the company and we are thinking of ways that technology can help solve our strategic priorities,” says Eddy.

Along with nearly all her peers, Eddy is keeping a very close eye on generative AI, though she thinks that “it is evolving slower than initially expected.” Eddy cites a recent survey by consulting firm McKinsey that found only 15% of companies see the technology having a meaningful impact on their bottom line. “But there’s such a huge inflow of money that we know the transformation will continue,” she adds. 

With an aging population, staffing shortages, and “too much data,” according to Eddy, practitioners are overwhelmed. Generative AI can help consolidate and summarize large medical data sets to make them more productive and spend more time treating patients. AI models are also being used to detect abnormalities like tumors.

Boston Scientific is also bullish about the use of AI to scan and detect cyber incidents and for marketing use cases, helping create assets in mere hours rather than weeks.

But while Boston Scientific experiments with generative AI pilots within the organization, it isn’t putting the technology in patient-facing applications. And every decision that does receive input from AI today won’t rely on machines for the final say.

“We’re very cautious,” says Eddy. The rule of thumb, she adds, is that AI “never replaces the human. It supports the decision.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

The bill may soon come for CrowdStrike. Less than two weeks after a CrowdStrike outage took down millions of Microsoft systems and set off the world’s largest IT failure, projected financial losses to Fortune 500 companies may exceed $5 billion.  Delta Air Lines, in particular, was stung badly by the outage and has reportedly hired a prominent attorney to seek damages from CrowdStrike and Microsoft. The outages cost Delta an estimated $350 million to $500 million, CNBC has reported.

Morgan Stanley opts for “build” over “buy” for generative AI. Financial firms have long opted to build their own customized tech systems rather than buy off the shelf, partly due to the highly regulated nature of the industry. The trend may be continuing with generative AI, as Morgan Stanley launches a new in-house tool using OpenAI’s GPT model that summarizes video meetings and generates drafts of follow-up emails based on them, the Wall Street Journal reports. The firm has been working with OpenAI since the companies signed a strategic partnership late in 2022. It is a similar strategy to what’s recently been deployed by BNP Paribas and TD Bank.

Apply to delay rollout of AI features. While Apple previewed a new suite of AI features to software developers this week, Bloomberg is reporting that the rollout this fall will arrive later than expected, missing the initial September launch of the tech giant’s iPhone and iPad software overhauls. Stakes are high for Apple to get AI right, as it is seen as a laggard to rivals like Microsoft. Meanwhile, in Washington, Apple signed on to the Biden administration’s voluntary AI guidelines, joining 15 other major tech companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft in committing to responsible AI development and testing.

ADOPTION CURVE

The ROI from AI. An inaugural survey by cloud-based software seller ServiceNow and Oxford Economics found that nearly four out of five respondents have increased their AI investments since 2023, with an average increase of 8.7%. But is that spending paying off? Yes and no, according to ServiceNow’s AI Maturity Index, which surveyed 4,470 executives globally at organizations where AI capabilities are in use.  

Two-thirds of respondents say they are achieving positive returns on investment but only 23% say the gains are significant (15% or more). One in four say they are breaking even and 7% are losing money. The “Pacesetters” are further along and tend to be in tech, manufacturing, and banking; all more likely to score a 50 or higher out of 100 based on five pillars including AI strategy, governance, and workflow integration. “Others” are more often to be laggards and to operate in the nonprofit, telecom, and the public sectors.

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– Kayak, part of Booking Holdings, is seeking a chief technology officer based in Boston. Posted salary range: $275K-$350K/year.

– Citigroup is seeking a global head of wealth technology based in New York City. Posted salary range: $250K-$500K/year.

– U.S. Small Business Administration is seeking a deputy chief information officer based in Washington. Posted salary range: $147.6K-$221.9K/year.

Hired:

– Nike named Cheryan Jacob, a former Salesforce executive, to the sportswear giant’s CIO role, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. Under Nike CEO John Donahoe, the company’s global technology division has undergone a few changes, including the exit of Chief Digital Information Officer Ratnakar Lavu last year and the appointment of former Amazon executive Muge Erdirik Dogan to the CTO role in November.

– ING appointed Daniele Tonella as CTO to succeed Marnix van Stiphout, who had held the role on an interim basis since November, in addition to his roles as chief operations and chief transformation officer. Tonella, who will ascend to the role effective August 5, has over 20 years of technology leadership experience in the financial industry including at UniCredit, AXA Group, and Swiss Life.

– Lenovo appointed Dr. Tolga Kurtoglu as CTO, succeeding Dr. Yong Rui to further accelerate the PC maker’s technology vision and AI strategy. Kurtoglu has held various leadership roles, including as CTO of HP and CEO of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Rui, meanwhile, will become president of the newly formed emerging technology group.

– Fanatics has hired Parag Agrawal to the newly created CIO role, leading internal digital systems and to create a dedicated IT infrastructure for the sports apparel company’s corporate entity. Agrawal previously spent 9 years at Chobani, where he most recently served as CIO.

– Attentive announced the appointment of Antonio Silveira as CTO to lead the technology development of the email marketing company’s products. Most recently, Silveira served as CTO at Nextdoor and also previously worked at GoDaddy and Yahoo.

– UserTesting named David P. Smith as CTO where he will lead the engineering team and scale technology infrastructure. Current CTO Kaj van de Loo will transition to the newly created role of chief innovation officer at the software company.

– Slope appointed Jim Munz to the role of chief product and technology officer, joining the clinical trial software company after most recently serving as CTO at Veeva.