Why Johns Hopkins Hospital’s new CMIO won’t chase tech ‘for novelty’s sake’

When Khyzer Aziz, MD, talks about his new job, he does not begin with AI, cloud platforms or the latest analytics tool. Instead, he talks about people.

“It really won’t be about machines or AI,” he told Becker’s. “It will be about the people and patients we care for. When health IT is done right, technology isn’t the star of the story. It’s the compass and the guiding light that helps us through difficult times, difficult situations and difficult cases.”

Dr. Aziz, an intensive care physician with a background in biomedical informatics, in August was appointed chief medical information officer of Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital. He steps into the role at a moment when health systems are under pressure from rising costs, clinician burnout and an influx of digital tools that promise a great deal and sometimes deliver little.

For him, the appeal of the position was less about prestige than responsibility. 

“It’s not a title,” he said. “It’s a duty we have to patients and to the people providing care.”

His first priorities are decidedly unflashy: clarifying the hospital’s governance structure, easing the documentation burden for front-line clinicians and building a cautious but steady foundation for AI and precision medicine. That measured approach, he said, will ultimately help technology restore trust rather than erode it.

Too often the promise of health IT has been undermined by fragmented data and tools that create more clicks than clarity, he said, adding that the real opportunity lies not in racing to adopt the newest innovations but in designing systems with “humility and purpose.”

“I don’t think innovation alone is the right answer,” Dr. Aziz said. “We need to balance every new tool with strengthening human judgment, compassion and fairness. Let’s not chase something just for novelty’s sake.”

He knows this tension well. At the bedside in the ICU, Dr. Aziz has seen electronic alerts fire in rapid succession and watched how patients and families experience the notes clinicians enter into the EHR. As an informatician, he has spent years wrestling with the architecture that makes those systems work — or fail.

That dual perspective has shaped his view that a CMIO must act as both translator and guardrail, balancing the zeal for innovation with the messy realities of medical practice. 

“People are tired and stressed,” he said. “If we anchor decisions in the needs of patients and the realities of the people serving them, then technology becomes less of a distraction and more of a handrail to steady us through uncertainty.”

Looking ahead, Dr. Aziz points to one area of opportunity he said the industry is finally ready to embrace: ensuring patient information transfers as seamlessly as the patients themselves. “Care should never be delayed because records can’t move as easily as people do,” he said.

At Johns Hopkins, where discovery and innovation can be synonymous with prestige, Dr. Aziz is intent on keeping the focus elsewhere. For him, the true measure of success is whether technology quietly recedes into the background, guiding clinicians and patients toward better outcomes without demanding the spotlight.

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