Most people would not expect one of the nation’s busiest orthopedic trauma surgeons to become a healthcare technology leader.
Mara Schenker, MD, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Emory University and associate chief medical information officer at Atlanta-based Grady Memorial Hospital, didn’t expect it either. She built her career caring for some of the nation’s most complex trauma patients at one of the country’s busiest level 1 trauma centers. For years, the appeal of trauma surgery was simple.
“You see a problem, you fix something and you immediately see the patient gets better,” Dr. Schenker said. “There’s a lot of before and after.”
What eventually drew her to informatics was the realization that the same principle could apply far beyond a single operating room. As she moved into leadership roles and helped oversee the growth of Grady’s orthopedic department, she began to see how technology could influence care at a much larger scale.
“In a system this high-volume and complex, the opportunity to improve care through technology felt very similar to trauma surgery,” Dr. Schenker said. “I liked the idea of implementing a solution and then being able to see its impact on a much larger scale.”
Today, Dr. Schenker remains clinically active while helping shape technology strategy across one of the nation’s most complex safety-net health systems. Her perspective sits at the intersection of orthopedic surgery, hospital operations and digital transformation, a vantage point that has given her a front-row seat to both the promise and limitations of healthcare technology.
The AI tool physicians actually want
Healthcare leaders have spent the last two years debating AI’s potential to transform medicine.
Dr. Schenker believes one of the most successful use cases is also one of the simplest. Ambient documentation technology. For the first time in years, she has watched physicians enthusiastically embrace a new technology rather than resist it.
At many organizations, physicians have historically viewed new technologies as disruptions to workflow. Ambient AI tools have been different because they solve one of medicine’s most persistent frustrations: documentation.
“We cannot get it fast enough,” Dr. Schenker said of physician demand for the technology. She believes documentation is only the beginning. The next opportunities will likely involve billing, coding and other administrative functions that consume physician time without directly contributing to patient care.
“I’m not a coding expert,” she said. “That is something we struggle with on a minute-by-minute basis.” The challenge, she said, is ensuring that technology reduces work rather than creating new layers of complexity.
Why most healthcare technology fails
For all the excitement surrounding AI, Dr. Schenker believes many healthcare technology companies overlook a fundamental reality. Physicians care about workflow. “It’s all about the workflow,” she said. Too often, vendors design products without fully understanding how clinicians actually work. A technology may look impressive in a demonstration but fail once it reaches a busy hospital floor.
“You have one try to get a physician to use your product,” she said. “If they don’t, you’re out.” That reality has shaped how she evaluates technology.
Rather than relying solely on executive presentations or product demonstrations, she believes leaders must observe how clinicians, residents, nurses and advanced practice providers actually use technology in real-world settings.
“I need to go and stand elbow to elbow with the people who are doing the work,” she said. The future of implementation, she believes, will increasingly involve human factors engineering and usability testing, disciplines focused on understanding how people interact with technology and how systems can be designed around real-world behavior.
“We really just need to understand how people work,” she said.
The governance challenge ahead
While administrative AI tools have gained traction, Dr. Schenker believes healthcare is entering more complicated territory, as vendors push deeper into clinical decision support. The question is no longer whether AI can summarize information or generate documentation. The question is how much responsibility physicians should delegate to it.
“If AI makes a decision for you, who’s ultimately responsible?” she said. That concern becomes particularly relevant as AI expands into diagnostic support, imaging interpretation and procedural planning.
Dr. Schenker sees significant potential in these tools, particularly when they help physicians identify findings they might otherwise miss. But she believes governance, oversight and accountability frameworks have not yet caught up with the pace of innovation.
“How are physicians supposed to partner with AI rather than being replaced by AI?” she said. For healthcare leaders, she believes answering that question will become increasingly important over the next several years.
What running a trauma center taught her about leadership
Despite her work in technology, one lesson continues to stand out from years spent helping lead a high-volume trauma service. Relationships matter. More than algorithms. More than software. More than operational dashboards.
Dr. Schenker recalled a recent period of exceptionally high trauma volume when her team was struggling to find operating room capacity for a growing list of patients requiring surgery. Rather than escalating the issue through formal channels, she walked directly to a vascular surgeon’s operating room and asked for help. Within minutes, the team had additional operating room access and several patients were able to receive care sooner.
Her chief resident was surprised by how quickly the problem was solved. For Dr. Schenker, the lesson was simple. “So much of it is relationships,” she said. Healthcare leaders often focus on systems, processes and infrastructure. Those things matter, she said. But during moments of crisis, personal trust and collaboration frequently determine whether a system succeeds or struggles.
“I think building relationships is really the core of how we function,” she added. That lesson has remained remarkably consistent throughout her career.
Whether treating a trauma patient, implementing AI or managing hospital capacity, success ultimately depends on people working together to solve problems. Technology may help. But relationships still do the heavy lifting.
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