April 2025
The Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT) team hosted another engaging edition of our Digital Health Happy Hour series at American Underground, a premier coworking and entrepreneurship community for innovators, creators, and changemakers in the heart of downtown Durham, NC. The evening was sponsored by the North Carolina Health Innovation District (NCHID), a statewide collaboration that unites leading healthcare providers, innovators, and centers of excellence. We were joined by an engaged audience of digital health enthusiasts, AI champions, and next-gen technologists to convene around another pressing topic in the buzzworthy world of AI. The highlight of the evening was a fireside chat between emcee Michael Levy, DHIT Chief Executive Officer, and our featured speaker, Jason O’Meara, the Vice President of Digital Strategic Initiatives at Pfizer. Their conversation provided firsthand insight into a major pharma company’s digital transformation journey through Pfizer’s application of AI to drive real-world impact and how their response to COVID-19 marked an inflection point for the company.
Check out the highlights below!
Michael: What drives your interest in technology, and what advice would you give to someone advancing in their journey, especially when faced with the uncertainty of the unknown?
Jason: My interest in technology has always been anchored in relentless learning, a mindset that not only drives my growth but also shapes how I help organizations evolve into learning entities themselves. The journey through uncertainty and the unknown is inevitable, but embracing it with a commitment to constant improvement allows you to thrive. It’s essential to stay humble and recognize that there’s always more to learn, especially when developing solutions for customers. We must never forget that we aren’t the customer; understanding their world and their goals helps us create solutions that genuinely serve their needs. My career reflects this path of discovery, starting with a strong foundation at Duke University, exploring consulting in life sciences and finance, and ultimately finding my passion in healthcare. Healthcare offers a vast, complex landscape with boundless opportunities to drive meaningful change, and that’s where I’ve focused my efforts, continually learning and adapting along the way.
Michael: You started at Capgemini, worked at Quest, and are now leading a team at Pfizer. You’ve gained a diverse range of perspectives through consulting and refined that knowledge over time. As you reflect on your journey, what recurring barriers have you encountered in terms of technical feasibility, implementation, and the overall impact of these initiatives?
Jason: I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the years is that technology is just a tool – a powerful one, yes – but ultimately, it’s only as effective as the problem it’s being used to solve. The real key is to fall in love with the problem, not the technology. When you truly understand the use case, you can then identify the right set of technologies that will best support the solution. Early in my career, it was tempting to get excited about the latest tools and assume they were the answer to everything. But over time, I realized that taking a product management mindset, getting deep into the user’s pain points, and combining that with an architectural mindset – understanding how to design scalable, sustainable solutions – is where true digital transformation happens. It’s that blend of empathy and structure that drives meaningful impact.
Michael: Can you share an example of how Pfizer has applied AI to drive real-world impact? How did those experiences shape your approach to scaling AI and digital innovation across the organization?
Jason: Over the past five years, much of my focus has been on applying AI to solve meaningful business challenges. While we are now deep into a company-wide transformation to embed AI across the organization, the journey began back in 2019 with foundational efforts to prove the value of data, analytics, and AI. A pivotal moment came during the COVID-19 response, when we had to unlock previously inaccessible clinical trial data and rapidly scale both systems and processes. For example, we expanded trials from hundreds to tens of thousands of participants and partnered with a digital health company to streamline data queries, something that would have otherwise required thousands of additional personnel. AI also played a crucial role in optimizing vaccine design to minimize side effects through extensive simulations. Our challenge now is scaling that capability to every corner of the business and our customers.
Michael: During COVID, the urgency created a clear “have-to” moment that drove rapid innovation and adoption. Now that the crisis has passed, how do you distinguish between “have-to” and “want-to” initiatives – and how do you sustain that same level of focus, speed, and impact across the organization?
Jason: During COVID, there was a “have-to” mindset. We didn’t have the luxury of debating priorities, we had to act fast and deliver. What we’ve learned since then is that not everything can be a priority. At Pfizer, we now approach each year by identifying 15–20 top initiatives, and from those, we define the core “have-to” list, the few high-impact programs that demand excellence. This shared understanding allows us to align, focus, and execute with urgency, even outside a crisis. We have applied this model to everything – from oncology to digital health – channeling that same “lightspeed” mindset toward solving big problems with clarity and purpose.
Michael: Now that you are several years into scaling digital transformation and AI across Pfizer, how does the role of community, both internally and externally, start to play a part in sustaining that momentum and embedding innovation into the fabric of the organization?
Jason: Before we even looked outward, we focused heavily on internal education and adoption. Back in early 2022, during the early days of generative AI, we spent six to eight weeks bringing in experts to help our executive leadership team better understand the technology. From there, each of our leaders selected a use case within their function to bring to production by year’s end. This included everything from commercial and R&D to HR, compliance, and legal. We set the bar high, expecting at least a 20% improvement over baseline performance, and pushed through real operational barriers, especially on the legal side, where generative AI agreements didn’t even exist yet. That early investment paid off. Not only were we ahead of the curve, even before GPT models were widely available, but we also developed deep internal expertise and a culture of experimentation that now empowers broader, community-driven innovation, both within Pfizer and with external partners like Meta.
Michael: How does Pfizer’s culture support long-term innovation and responsible AI development, and was that culture always there?
Jason: The culture of innovation and responsible technology adoption at Pfizer has been cultivated intentionally over time. What we have now is the result of a strong cultural mandate – a commitment to empowered teams and cross-functional collaboration. There’s a deliberate focus on team design, pushing accountability and decision-making down to where expertise resides. That culture has been instrumental in developing tools like Health Answers, Pfizer’s AI-powered health information platform, which grew from lessons learned during COVID-19. Beyond technology, Pfizer has instilled a disciplined approach to identifying and mitigating bias in AI systems through a digital suite, which surfaces and vets potential bias in data with medical experts before it can be scaled. With dedicated training initiatives like an internal AI committee, Pfizer is ensuring ethical AI adoption is paired with education, ultimately to foster a deeply human-centered approach to digital transformation.
DHIT would like to personally thank Jason for such an engaging and enlightening conversation, our evening’s attendees for galvanizing around the now and future of AI innovation, and our community-at-large for believing in the process of leading communities, organizations, and individuals through the process of digital transformation in service of the greater good.
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Talk soon!