AI is finally mature enough to move out of the way so nurses and clinicians can put humans back at the center of care. In this episode, Mary Varghese Presti, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, discusses how global clinician shortages and rising acuity are colliding with an “AI frontier” that can reshape documentation, workflows, and patient outcomes. She shares her personal story as the daughter and former nurse who saw workforce gaps firsthand, then explains why Dragon Copilot for nurses was built to relieve documentation overload and capture the “invisible” work nurses do at the bedside. Mary breaks down the leap from copilots to agentic services, where digital colleagues take on predictable, nonclinical tasks and surface patterns clinicians would miss, as in Stanford’s AI-enabled tumor boards. Finally, she paints a future of hybrid human–digital teams and ambient, background technology that restores time, presence, and dignity to care. Tune in and learn how AI can truly serve caregivers.
About Mary Varghese Presti:
Mary Varghese Presti is a transformational healthcare leader with over two decades of experience spanning clinical care, federal reform, biopharma, and health technology. As Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Health & Life Sciences, she drives growth in complex environments by creating clear strategy, aligning organizations, and operationalizing execution with discipline. Her prior roles include leading Nuance’s Dragon Medical business, overseeing IBM Watson Health’s Life Sciences portfolio, incubating new ventures at athenahealth, and driving digital-health transformation at Pfizer. She began her career as a pediatric nurse at Johns Hopkins and later helped shape national health IT and payment reforms at Booz Allen. Known for navigating complexity with optimism and rigor, she consistently turns ambiguity into strategy and strategy into measurable results.
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