‘All In on AI’: A Conversation with the HealthEdge® Vice President of Product Management 

As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly transforms healthcare, many leaders are asking what it really means to go all in. For HealthEdge®, it means embedding practical, responsible, and transparent AI capabilities directly into the tools teams use every day—without compromising trust, quality, or compliance.

In a recent Q&A, Bobby Sherwood, Vice President of Product Management for the HealthEdge GuidingCare® care management solution, shared his perspective on:

• Common AI technology myths in healthcare
• What the future of automation in care management entails
• How HealthEdge is using AI to help customers unlock time savings, strengthen care coordination, and deliver more meaningful member experiences

“We’re all in. We believe AI is going to impact every corner of healthcare—and we’re embracing that head-on.”

Bobby Sherwood, Vice President of Product Management for HealthEdge GuidingCare®

Q: What are the biggest AI-related concerns or misconceptions you’re hearing from healthcare organizations today?

Sherwood: The two extremes I hear most often are, “AI is going to replace me” and “AI can’t be trusted.” Neither is true. We’re nowhere near a place where AI can—or should—replace everything a nurse does. But it can enhance them. Using AI to automate reviews and processes can free up teams to focus on more meaningful projects.

I often tell customers that you can use AI for what it does best and pair that with what you do best to improve how you work day-to-day and how you engage with members. That’s the real value: letting AI handle the heavily administrative and low-complexity tasks so care teams can focus on meaningful, human-centered interactions.

Security is the other big concern—and it’s valid. That’s why we spend a lot of time working with customers’ compliance, legal, and security teams to walk them through exactly how our solutions work. We’re very transparent about what we’re building and how it functions.

 "That means we’re designing our tools to be transparent, traceable, and auditable from day one. Customers always have control over what’s enabled and when."

Bobby Sherwood, Vice President of Product Management for HealthEdge GuidingCare®

Q: What’s different about the GuidingCare approach to AI compared to other healthcare organizations?

We’re all in. We believe AI is going to impact every corner of healthcare—and we’re embracing that head-on. We’re investing internally, hiring for the right skill sets, and accelerating our time to market. Whether it’s building solutions or forming smart partnerships, we’re prioritizing speed and adaptability. That lets us solve problems faster for our customers and helps them stay ahead, too.

Q: How does GuidingCare’s AI strategy support long-term compliance, ethical use, and internal governance?

Our team is adding AI features with future guidelines and regulations in mind. That means we’re designing our tools to be transparent, traceable, and auditable from day one. Customers always have control over what’s enabled and when. AI-generated content is clearly marked with visual cues, and nothing is auto-deployed without customer agreement. That level of openness is key to earning and keeping their trust.

We’ve also established a dedicated AI Governance Committee at HealthEdge. It includes leaders from product, engineering, compliance, and security, who are all focused on developing AI responsibly and in line with emerging frameworks, like the Cybersecurity Framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It’s all about protecting our customers and their members.

Q: What questions should healthcare leaders be asking before adopting AI tools?

Start with security, compliance, and transparency—if a tool can’t pass those checks, it shouldn’t be implemented. But beyond that, leaders should ask: How does this align with our business goals? Does it actually support the people doing the work?

Take nurses, for example. The goal isn’t to replace their expertise, it’s to give them more time back—time to truly understand each patient’s unique history, needs, and circumstances. AI can help by surfacing the right information faster, reducing the time spent digging through records or typing notes during appointments. In short, it should take the technology out of the way—not get in the way—so nurses can focus on the human connection that matters most.

Q: Can you give us an example of that in action?

Our Care Management Note Summarizer for care management is a great example. It drastically cuts the time it takes for a care manager to review historical notes and prepare for a call. Instead of spending an hour digging through a record, a care manager can quickly see a high-level summary and focus on the member. That’s huge.

We’re also working with vendor partners on documentation tools that transcribe and summarize conversations in real time—so care managers can focus on listening and supporting, not typing.

Q: Beyond care teams, how is HealthEdge thinking about AI from a member perspective?

There’s a big opportunity here, especially with younger generations. Many people don’t want to make a phone call or dig through a digital portal. We’re exploring how to make information like benefit coverage more accessible and personalized by using AI to surface the right content in the right channel at the right time.

We’ve even experimented with AI-generated podcasts from written materials—so someone could listen to smoking cessation tips in a conversational format instead of reading a PDF. It’s really about meeting members where they are.

Q: What does the future of AI look like across the broader HealthEdge ecosystem?

In addition to GuidingCare, we’re applying automation-first strategies across our operations solutions. One example is automating prior authorizations, making the workflow as seamless and accurate as claims processing. We want to reduce manual touches wherever we can and only route exceptions to staff. That means higher efficiency and faster turnaround for everyone involved.

Q: Bobby, do you have any final thoughts about developing AI tools?

We’re not building AI just for the sake of it. We’re building tools that solve real problems—tools that people can trust, that save time, and that make healthcare feel a little more human. That’s always the goal.

Learn more about HealthEdge’s enterprise approach to responsible, impactful AI. Read the data sheet.