Loma Linda makes AI use a job requirement for its 400-person IT staff

Becker's Hospital Review: DP Harris, Loma Linda University Health's chief digital and information officer, told Becker's he began requiring his IT employees to use AI tools in their daily work late last year, telling teams the tools would be provided and learning them was no longer optional. Harris oversees more than 400 IT professionals and took the role formally in April after running it on an interim basis since January.

Uptake varied — some staff had used AI for years, others were experimenting outside work — but by March, Harris said, everyone on the team understood where the tools could help. The point wasn't blind adoption: Harris wanted staff to learn where AI works, where it doesn't, and where human judgment still rules. "You really can't be a skilled IT professional anymore without having clear AI skills," he said.

The mandate sits inside a broader strategy: rather than restricting AI, the system wrote role-specific policies for clinicians, finance staff and researchers, and is now pointing automation work at capacity planning, provider efficiency, revenue cycle and financial management over the next 18 months. For a workforce story, the structural read is that the region's biggest health system just made AI proficiency a baseline job skill for a 400-person technical operation — not a pilot, a requirement.