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Award-winning innovation keeps making us better

April 18, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

Innovation is the engine that allows us to be The Best at Getting Better. When we see problems as opportunities, when we relentlessly seek new ideas and put them into action, when we collaborate with the world’s best and brightest partners — this is when we get better.

It’s also why Modern Healthcare has honored Hartford HealthCare with its Innovators Award for 2025. We are one of only six health systems nationwide to earn this designation. And we are in good company with the likes of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Baylor Scott & White in Dallas and Banner Health in Phoenix.

For us, innovation is in our DNA. It is a way of thinking and acting and happens here every day. Work on large-scale breakthroughs for trustworthy AI exists alongside enhancements that incrementally improve patient care. All creative change is welcome.

Last year’s launch of our Center for AI Innovation in Healthcare was a signal moment, one that harnesses our clinical and technological skills and leans into collaboration with worldwide leaders like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Holistic AI in Medicine (HAIM) is a groundbreaking initiative where HHC clinicians work side-by-side with PhD students from MIT’s Sloan School of Management to leverage AI and machine learning to create new solutions to benefit patients. Better patient flow, health quality prediction tools, more efficient clinical scheduling and better outcomes for complex surgery are just some of the benefits of this amazing work.

Our innovation work is not isolated to a few specialized instances. Today, everyone can experience how AI and other tech tools — combined with our own expert clinicians — are revolutionizing primary care access with our unique HHC 24/7 program.

Innovation here attracts partners across the state and around the globe. We are working with Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco, the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, universities throughout the Northeast, as well as startup sourcing partners. In fact, one of our startup partners, Aidoc, also earned Modern Healthcare’s Innovators Award this year.

I am immensely proud of the special culture — the teamwork, leadership and brainpower — that makes HHC an epicenter of innovation. As author and leadership expert Simon Sinek said, “To be innovative, we can’t look to what others have done. The whole idea of blazing a path is that there was no path there before.”

Thank you for creating this new and better path, every day in ways large and small.

Jeffrey A. Flaks

President and Chief Executive Officer