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In a time where healthcare and technology are converging at an unprecedented pace, visionary leadership is essential to drive transformation that is not only innovative but also inclusive. Dr. Umbereen S. Nehal exemplifies this rare combination of clinical expertise and technological foresight. A seasoned physician executive and founder of a digital health venture incubated at MIT, Dr. Nehal has been at the forefront of aligning digital innovation with frontline realities, advancing personalized, equitable, and system-wide healthcare solutions.

World Future Awards is honored to feature Dr. Nehal in this exclusive interview exploring The Role of Physician Leaders in Accelerating Digital Transformation in Healthcare. With a unique perspective shaped by her leadership across government, industry, and care delivery, Dr. Nehal brings deep insight into how data-driven, human-centered innovation can reshape the future of global health, especially in the U.S., where she has had her greatest impact.

Questions:

World Future Awards: You bring a rare dual lens as both a physician and a tech executive. How has this combined perspective shaped your approach to digital transformation in healthcare?

Dr. Umbereen S. Nehal: When done right, both clinical care and digital innovation serve the human end user, either as patient-centered clinical care or user-centered design of tech. I am not trying to “disrupt” or add more fragmentation; mine is a systems thinking approach. As a frontline physician, I experienced cumbersome tech that turned me into a data entry clerk. Frustrated that it took my focus away from what my patient needed, I became a “super user” to improve my own work. Now I do that at scale as a digital health founder. We need more coordination and efficiency so that tech can do mundane tasks so we can reduce clinician burnout and bring humanity back into healthcare.

WFA: What are the most critical areas of opportunity for physician leaders to accelerate digital transformation while maintaining clinical integrity and improving outcomes?

USN: I would advise physicians to engage as advisors, co-designers, or even founders. No one knows the pain points, needs, or workflows of healthcare better than practicing clinicians like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. Physicians have been sold (or even mandated to buy) so much bad technology over the years that many are understandably sceptical of the latest promises on health tech. Sometimes doctors get described as “resistant” or “luddite.” I would take more of a driver’s seat. Learn some basics. Have the ability to ask smart, incisive, probing questions about tech. This is something that I have been developing a course on, in fact. Most conferences are now offering sessions on AI so any physicians can learn what is most critical for their field or clinical setting.

WFA: Your current venture, incubated at MIT, addresses a core pain point in clinical care—limited time during doctor visits. What inspired this focus, and how is your AI-enabled solution improving that experience for both patients and physicians?

USN:  While at MIT, I founded HER Heard based on my own patient experience of fragmented care, late diagnosis, and delays in getting care. I also saw how my stoic, dignified mother often got ignored by nurses and doctors compared to louder, more demanding patients. I do not think women need to “speak up” more; instead, the system needs to listen better. I think of it like how a queen is surrounded by those serving her, anticipating her needs. With AI agents, we can make that possible for the average woman, too.

Specifically, we have created a structured, pre-visit process that captures the nuance of the patient’s story and lived experience that fits into the healthcare system. We’re using AI as an interface and analysis tool for collecting, organizing, and synthesizing patient-reported data—symptoms, goals, concerns, and values. The system prepares the patient for the visit with education and prompts, while giving the clinician a summary that aligns both with their workflow and what insurance wants documented. Our platform and AI pre-visit medical assistant is built on best practices from AHRQ (Agency for Health Research and Quality), like Shared Decision Making (SDM). We’ve embedded patient-reported outcomes and quality-of-life measures because those are the metrics that matter for patients and are research-grade data.

WFA: You’ve played leadership roles in public health, Medicaid reform, and digital health innovation. How do you connect government, industry, and clinical practice to design inclusive, data-driven health systems?

USN: From my various roles, I see the importance of data portability, ownership, and control over one’s own health data as a patient. As an advisor to federal agencies like the NIH, I have been involved in the community recruitment for the All of Us database, for instance. I am excited by what researchers can do with that data. For the average woman, though, she still struggles to access her own data for her own health in a way that informs her day-to-day health. From my work at a state and local level, I know the health landscape well. I don’t duplicate what exists but build according to the unmet needs. That allows me to tap into underserviced markets to bring more people along for digital health, reducing the digital divide.

WFA: “Equity by design” is a central theme in your work. Can you share how you ensure that inclusivity and health equity are embedded into digital health solutions from the start?

USN: Most digital tools start by empathy mapping for a primary user, usually the most tech-savvy. Designing for the ideal user can be efficient from a product standpoint, but it completely misses the complexity of healthcare realities. At HER Heard, we apply principles from universal design. We intentionally design for people called “the extreme user” who experience more challenges. Consider the woman working two jobs who also cares for aging parents – she has limited time, energy, and attention span, so she needs highly engaging and tailored UI/UX. We also think of family systems and community supports, not just one individual user at a time. Because women make 80% of healthcare decisions for their families, it is often said that a woman is the “Chief Medical Officer” of her family. In this way, we also strengthen the business model. Where a woman seeks care, her children, spouse, and parents may also go.

WFA: As a former Chief Medical Officer for 14 centers and co-author of a $1.8B Medicaid reform initiative, what lessons have you learned about operationalizing innovation in large-scale systems?

USN: At the state level, that $1.8B Medicaid transformation required enabling data transfer between a range of hospitals and several government agencies (Medicaid, Department of Public Health, CMS, etc). From that, I got into the weeds of data infrastructure and definitions needed for interoperability. It was a crash course in how legacy systems were not built with a future focus. Then, as the Chief Medical Officer managing a $100 million budget, I found that many vendors wanted to sell to us, even though their products were not built for our population.

This is the classic “build versus buy” dilemma. I recommend a hybrid approach: be a pilot site to co-design the innovation to suit your organization’s unique needs. I learned this best when I had oversight of a $300 million research budget for PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), where all our studies were co-designed and co-administered with community partners for true grassroots innovation.

WFA: What role do you see human-centered design and personalized medicine playing in the future of healthcare, especially when powered by AI and big data analytics?

USN: Patient-generated data from wearables or symptom diaries may be able to fill in gaps in research and make personalized medicine more accessible. If genomics is added in, the precision increases. With HER Heard, for instance, the primary goal is to serve individual women with personalized health. In addition, by designing to record research-grade data, we will create a valuable data lake over the years. If patients opt in to participating in research, the pooled data can help us better understand women’s health overall.

In tech, the term “GIGO” or garbage in, garbage out is used to describe bad data giving bad analyses. We can only get personalized medicine that works for everyone if we have the right data. For instance, women were not included in clinical trials until 1993. That means the textbooks used to teach doctors and nurses are wrong. Even many of the so-called “evidence-based guidelines” are incorrect.

Once we have better data that is more representative across all of humanity, we can offer better personalized healthcare. In order to get there, we do need everyone engaged. Privacy, understandably, is a concern for many. I am hopeful that decentralized AI will allow more data to stay secure on individual devices while only the key insights are shared. Personalized medicine is not just the clinical care being personalized, but even the level of data privacy itself being personalized. We are moving away from centralized data on servers or a cloud and towards individual choice. 

Thank you, Dr. Nehal, for sharing your time, insights, and visionary perspective—your work at the intersection of medicine, technology, and equity is truly inspiring and essential to the future of healthcare.

Visit Dr. Nehal’s LinkedIn profile to learn more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usnehal/

In an age where digital transformation is redefining the global business landscape, visionary leaders are those who not only embrace change but actively shape it. Mohammad Arshad stands out as one such leader.

As the CEO of DecodingDataScience.com and a globally recognized AI community builder with over 150,000 members, Arshad has built a reputation as a strategic thinker and pioneer in applying artificial intelligence, data science, and generative AI to solve complex business challenges. With over two decades of experience spanning retail, digital, marketing, and tech across industry giants like MAF, Accenture, HP, and Dell, he brings a rare blend of deep technical expertise and strategic leadership.

Recognized by the World Future Awards in their thought leadership article, “How AI is Reshaping Industries,” Arshad continues to inspire the next generation of digital leaders through his global keynote sessions, mentorship, and hands-on innovation.

In this conversation, we dive into his perspectives on navigating organizational transformation, fostering innovation, and addressing global challenges in the ever-evolving digital era.

Questions:

World Future Awards: Mr. Arshad, you’ve led transformation initiatives across global enterprises—what do you see as the most critical qualities for leaders navigating digital disruption today?

Mohammad Arshad: In today’s digital age, I believe the most critical quality is the ability to stay adaptive while maintaining clarity of purpose. Digital disruption is not just about adopting new tools—it’s about rethinking how we create value. At every transformation initiative I’ve led—from retail to consulting to tech—I’ve realized that leadership requires a blend of vision, execution, and empathy.

You must inspire teams to embrace uncertainty, make data-driven decisions, and continuously reskill. I also believe in what I call “digital humility”—the idea that no leader can know it all, and the best ones build ecosystems of learning and collaboration around them. That’s what I’ve tried to do with Decoding Data Science.

WFA: How do you balance fostering innovation while maintaining operational stability in large, complex organizations?

MA: This is a challenge I’ve faced often, especially when working with legacy organizations trying to modernize. The key lies in creating parallel tracks: one for sustaining operations and another for accelerating innovation. You can’t let innovation threaten stability, and you can’t let stability block innovation.

At MAF, for example, I supported initiatives where the core business had strict SLAs and KPIs, but we also built sandboxes for data experimentation, launching pilots in retail analytics and customer personalization with clear exit criteria. It’s about structuring innovation like a startup within the enterprise, while aligning it with real business metrics.

WFA: In your experience, what are the most common pitfalls organizations face when implementing AI or digital transformation strategies, and how can leaders avoid them?

MA: The first pitfall is jumping to technology before aligning on the problem. Many leaders get excited about the latest models—LLMs, vision systems, recommender engines—but haven’t asked, “What business problem are we solving?”

The second is underestimating the cultural shift. AI is not just a tech upgrade—it requires rethinking workflows, roles, and how decisions are made. I’ve worked with companies that built great models but failed to drive adoption because the frontline teams weren’t involved early on.

Lastly, data readiness is often overlooked. Without good data practices, even the best algorithms fail. My advice: build the AI journey like a product—with a clear use case, MVP mindset, measurable ROI, and continuous learning.

WFA: With the rapid advancement of Generative AI, how do you see leadership roles evolving over the next five years?

MA: Leadership will evolve from being directive to being orchestrative. With GenAI, leaders don’t need to micromanage—they need to curate the right prompts, questions, and systems to drive outcomes.

For instance, in my AI Residency program, I train professionals to think with AI, not just use it. Future leaders must know how to integrate human judgment with machine intelligence. They’ll need to make ethical decisions fast, interpret outputs, and design workflows where humans and AI collaborate effectively.

Soft skills—empathy, storytelling, ethical reasoning—will become leadership differentiators in a world where AI handles the routine.

WFA: You’ve built a thriving AI community of over 150K people—how has community-building influenced your approach to leadership and business strategy?

MA: It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. When I started Decoding Data Science, it was a small group of passionate learners. Today, it’s a global ecosystem with over 150,000 members. Through this, I’ve learned that leadership is not about broadcasting—it’s about listening and co-creating.

Many of my product ideas, bootcamps, and challenges have emerged from conversations in the community. It’s helped me stay grounded, understand real-world struggles of learners and professionals, and stay agile in my offerings. This community-first mindset has also made my business resilient, because we evolve with the people we serve.

WFA: What are some emerging global business challenges you believe leaders must prepare for in the next decade, especially in relation to data ethics and responsible AI?

MA: We’re entering an era where trust will be the currency of digital leadership. AI can do amazing things—but if we can’t ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability, we risk backlash and missed opportunities.

Leaders must prepare for increased regulatory oversight, such as the EU AI Act, and also self-impose standards around bias detection, consent, and explainability. This is particularly critical in regions like the Middle East, where adoption is rising but local datasets and cultural nuances need more attention.

One major challenge is AI governance—how do we ensure AI decisions align with human values? I believe we need cross-functional AI ethics committees, and leaders must invest in training not just their engineers, but their policy and business teams.

WFA: Having worked across regions and industries, how do you tailor leadership and innovation strategies to different cultural and regulatory contexts?

MA: This is where empathy and observation come in. Working across the UAE, India, Europe, and with US clients, I’ve realized that no two markets are alike. Leadership in Dubai requires understanding regulatory frameworks and national visions like UAE Centennial 2071; in India, it’s about frugality, scale, and inclusivity.

I adapt by listening, partnering with local experts, and avoiding assumptions. For example, when deploying AI in healthcare or education, I align not just with laws, but with local values—what does fairness mean in that context? That’s how you lead with respect and relevance.

WFA: Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring leaders looking to make a meaningful impact in the digital era?

MA: Start where you are—don’t wait for the perfect title or permission. If you believe in something, build it. Use the tools around you—AI, communities, no-code platforms—to test ideas and learn fast.

Also, don’t just chase trends—solve real problems. Build a portfolio of meaningful work and let your values guide you. And finally, lift others as you grow. That’s how you create impact that lasts.

In my journey, every milestone—whether it was speaking at Gitex, mentoring over 1,000 professionals, or launching the AI Residency—was driven by a simple principle: teach what you learn, and learn as you teach.

Thank you, Mr. Arshad, for sharing your invaluable insights and inspiring perspective on leadership in the digital era—your vision and experience are truly shaping the future of global innovation.

To learn more about Mohammad and his inspiring work, visit his LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdarshad/