The Physician Champion
Apr 23, 2026
In a recent white paper entitled, “Enterprise-wide transformation: Boosting productivity with agentic automation,” published by UiPath in collaboration with Price, Waterhouse, Copper, authors Peyman Saatian, et al list the following key steps for success:
Champion leadership
Empowered and adaptive workforce
Data-driven decision making
Enterprise-wide scan for rapid wins
Start small, scale fast
Customer-centric design
Turbocharge productivity with agentic automation
Sprint to success and continuous improvement
Transparent performance measurement framework
Centralize excellence for transformation
The key steps they point out are remarkably similar to those I described in a white paper I wrote in 1991 explaining the steps to filmless automation at a time when less that 1% of imaging facilities had deployed a PACS. The key step of establishing leadership with a clear vision of the goals and roadmap perhaps seems obvious, but empowering a physician leader for your organization when you embark on the journey toward AI automation is both critical and often ignored. What does a physician champion do? Lead Your TeamThe key job qualifications include:
Excellent communication skills
A passion for teaching
A love of problem solving
Learn
Understand the AI options in the marketplace and how they can be integrated
Participate in training and encourage training of your staff
Coordinate and attend web-learning sessions
Carefully review the release notes prior to all new build upgrades
Try new technologies and workflows introduced with new products and upgrades
Teach
Communicate with physicians and non-physician users, especially your Administrative and Technical Champions
Inform your users how to take advantage of upgrades
Track the progress of your reading physician and technologist users. How many are in the beginner category? How many are advanced?
Supervise & Manage
Set goals and measures for each successive implementation
Set an integration standard so that your user do not need to open separate AI programs from each AI vendor. Instead, be sure you core reporting and image management platform can present AI results in a consistent manner.
Watch your colleague’s work and offer advice for improvement
Validate that templates, technologist forms, data compression are set up correctly
Ensure compliance with applicable quality standards, such as those related to the FDA and Joint Commission
Verify that recommended maintenance procedures are completed and documented
In your journey toward AI automation, I urge you not to ignore the critical step of finding and empower a physician champion.
Murray A. Reicher, MD, FACR
CEO Synthesis Health
