Reimagining Work at HealthEdge: How AI is Transforming the Way We Build, Support, and Deliver
At HealthEdge, AI is becoming a foundational capability that’s changing how we operate from the inside out.
In this fireside chat, I had the opportunity to sit down with Andrew Witkowski, who leads our AI Team, to discuss what it truly means to become an AI-first enterprise. We explored how this shift goes beyond tooling to change the shape of work, the speed of innovation, and the experience of every team member and customer.
Let’s start with the big picture. What does it mean for HealthEdge to become an AI-first company?
Andrew: For us, AI-first means rethinking work at every level, not just layering automation onto existing processes. We’re using AI to fundamentally redesign how teams operate, where time is spent, and how decisions get made. It’s not about replacing people. It’s about empowering them. If AI can handle repetitive or manual work, our teams can spend more time solving complex problems, collaborating, and delivering value to customers faster.
We’re treating AI with the same seriousness we applied to our cloud transformation, which is full governance, intentional design, and alignment with our business strategy.
You’ve built a new program to support this transformation called the Workforce Transformation Lab. What does that team do, and how does it work?
Andrew: Think of the Lab as a hands-on innovation partner. We embed ourselves with teams across the company, from engineering and customer support to product and finance, to help them rethink their workflows. We partner with teams in one week long intensive Idea-to-Impact sprint, in which we systematically evaluate all the work they’re doing and prototype an AI solution that addresses their repeated, routine work. We ask: What should be done entirely by humans? What can be accelerated by AI? And what can be fully replaced? These experiments let us validate before we scale.
This isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about enabling team members to focus on higher-value tasks while building the literacy necessary for broader success.
We use a framework we call the “4 Rs”:
- Retain work where human judgment is critical
- Reassign work to more strategic roles
- Refactor processes to make them more AI-compatible
- Replace work entirely where AI can do it faster, with clear SLAs and fallback options
Refactoring, in particular, is where we see the biggest opportunity. This is where AI delivers the most value, not by removing humans from the loop, but by redesigning workflows so people stay in control while AI handles the repetitive heavy lifting. In healthcare technology, this balance is critical. And it fundamentally changes how people approach their work, freeing them to focus on judgment calls and edge cases while maintaining the oversight our industry demands.
How has this shift changed the way we develop software?
Andrew: The difference is night and day. We’re building what we call an “agentic factory,” a development environment where AI agents assist throughout the lifecycle: requirements gathering, test generation, documentation, and even deployment validation.
Where Agile was about delivering in two-week increments, AI enables us to prototype, test, and refine in hours or even minutes. It’s a shift in the constraint from execution to creativity and quality of judgment.
And it helps resolve one of developers’ biggest frustrations: blockers. AI reduces wait time for everything, including access, reviews, and approvals. That frees people up to focus on the creative and satisfying parts of the job.
What does this mean for HealthEdge customers?
Andrew: A lot. Our internal transformation directly benefits the plans we serve. Faster release cycles, smarter product features, and more aligned solutions across HealthRules® Payer, GuidingCare®, and HealthEdge Source™. The same AI-powered tools that help us internally are showing up in our products, with things like natural language understanding, enhanced analytics, and adaptive workflows.
It’s more than an efficiency play. It’s about creating solutions that are more intelligent, more responsive, and more tailored to how health plans actually operate.
AI can sometimes feel like it’s all about the tech. But you’ve emphasized the people side of this transformation. Can you talk more about that?
Andrew: Cultural transformation is one of the hardest parts of AI adoption. Our early success came from creating a space of psychological safety where people felt free to question the status quo and experiment.
We’re hiring people who can collaborate with AI, and we’re ensuring teams use AI before opening new roles. We’re also evolving our development standards and using AI support at every stage: testing, code reviews, and documentation.
At the role level, we’re seeing developers become AI-enabled problem solvers. QA professionals are becoming quality strategists. AI is changing how we work, and we’re helping people define their next chapter.
That can be scary for some, especially if you’re comfortable and confident in a particular workflow. That’s why transparency and trust are essential. We want people to feel supported, not sidelined. We’re making big investments in upskilling and development to ensure every employee becomes an AI-augmented contributor.
What’s next on the horizon?
Andrew: We’re focused on three things for the second half of 2025:
- Scaling pilot success. We’ve seen great results, and now we’re formalizing strategy across the business.
- Launching our internal AI platform. This suite of tools will integrate with the toolkits employees already use, meeting them where they are.
- Embedding AI into our customer products. We’re actively running workshops with customers to understand what they want from AI. There’s a lot of excitement, and we want to deliver real value in the HealthEdge portfolio.
Closing Thoughts
Spending time with Andrew reinforces what makes HealthEdge different: a deep commitment to innovation, paired with a people-first mindset. We’re not chasing AI for hype. We’re building it into the way we work, which is thoughtfully, pragmatically, and in service of better outcomes for our customers and their members.
