Abi Sriharan advises the boards, CEOs, and governments who are deciding right now whether AI transforms healthcare for better — or simply faster. Her work spans hospitals, pharma, insurers, long-term care, and government — wherever the decisions about people, power, and technology converge.
"Most health organizations are treating AI as a procurement decision. It's actually a governance decision — and the window to get it right is closing."
Abi Sriharan is one of the most distinctive strategic voices at the intersection of healthcare, artificial intelligence, and executive leadership. With a DPhil from Oxford University and over 25 years of experience across six continents, she brings a rare combination of intellectual rigour, global perspective, and practical authority to the most complex transformation challenges facing healthcare organizations today.
Her work spans the full breadth of the sector — hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, long-term care networks, and government health bodies — advising boards and C-suites on AI governance, organizational strategy, and the leadership decisions that will define the next decade.
A published researcher and recognized expert, Abi has secured over $7 million in research funding to study how healthcare organizations actually change — and why so much transformation fails. Her current research, including Project LENS on AI governance in Canadian healthcare, sits at the frontier of evidence-based thinking on how health organizations adopt intelligent technologies responsibly.
Through AxyOhm, her executive coaching practice, she works with a select number of senior leaders each year — those navigating the most consequential transitions of their careers and serious about the depth of work required to lead well.
Researching how healthcare organizations make — and govern — decisions about AI implementation, and advising the leaders responsible for getting those decisions right.
Abi's advice is grounded in a set of convictions about how change actually happens in healthcare organizations — and why so much of it fails.
Every failed AI implementation in healthcare has a technology story. But if you look underneath, there's always a leadership story — unclear accountability, misaligned incentives, a culture that punishes failure. Whether you're a hospital, an insurer, or a pharma company, the tech is never the hard part.
Clinical AI, algorithmic underwriting, automated care pathways — across every sector of healthcare, technology is being deployed faster than the governance structures to oversee it. The organizations building those structures now — carefully, deliberately, with real accountability — will be the ones still standing when the first wave of failures arrives.
Health systems wait for a C-suite transition to think about leadership development. By then it's too late. The organizations navigating AI transformation well have invested in their leaders' capacity to hold uncertainty, make decisions with incomplete information, and bring people through change.
Working directly with boards, C-suites, and government health bodies on AI governance, organizational strategy, and the decisions that will define the next five years of healthcare. Hospitals, pharma companies, insurers, long-term care — the sector changes, the challenge doesn't. Not a consultant who delivers a report — a trusted voice in the room when it matters.
Intensive, private coaching for senior health executives navigating the most consequential transitions of their careers. Through AxyOhm, Abi works with a select number of leaders each year — those who are serious about the work and ready for the conversation.
Keynote addresses and strategic foresight sessions that go well beyond trend-listing. Abi brings a genuine point of view — on where healthcare AI is heading across every sector, what organizations are getting wrong, and what leadership in uncertainty actually looks like.
A structured diagnostic of an organization's AI readiness, governance maturity, and leadership capacity — delivered before deeper advisory or transformation work begins. Gives boards and C-suites an honest, evidence-based picture of where they are, what's at risk, and what needs to happen first.
Healthcare AI isn't a technology story. It's a governance story, a power story, a human story — playing out differently in hospitals, pharma boardrooms, insurance companies, and long-term care. Most leaders in every sector are still reading the wrong script.
These are the signals Abi tracks most closely — the fault lines where decisions made now will determine outcomes a decade from now, regardless of which part of healthcare you're in.
Abi delivers private foresight sessions for boards and executive teams.
Abi's advisory work is grounded in original frameworks — not borrowed models. These are the ideas that shape how she sees healthcare organizations, leadership, and transformation across every sector.
A strategic framework for understanding the forces that shape — and often undermine — governance effectiveness across healthcare organizations. Where Porter's Five Forces reveals competitive dynamics in markets, the Six Forces reveals the structural pressures on healthcare governance and how leaders can work with them rather than against them. Applicable across hospitals, insurers, pharma, and long-term care.
"Whether it's a hospital deploying diagnostic AI, an insurer automating claims decisions, or a pharma company using algorithms in drug development — governance isn't a compliance exercise. It's the mechanism by which organizations decide who bears risk, who holds accountability, and who is protected when the algorithm is wrong."
A structured approach to the governance decisions that precede AI deployment — moving organizations from "should we adopt this?" to "how do we govern what we've adopted?" Applied across hospitals, long-term care networks, and insurance organizations navigating algorithmic decision-making.
A model for understanding why some leaders energize organizations through change while others exhaust them. Developed through executive coaching practice and organizational research, and the conceptual foundation for The High Performance Leader.
What separates leaders who flourish through transformation from those who are consumed by it — a framework drawn from 25 years of global practice, executive coaching, and organizational research across six continents.
If you're leading a hospital, pharma company, insurer, or long-term care organization through AI transformation, shaping governance policy, looking for a keynote that will genuinely challenge your audience, or a senior executive ready for serious coaching work — Abi would like to hear from you.