Episode 130: AI in Play: The Clinicians Shaping Healthcare Technology Part I

45 min listen • February, 27 2026

There is a palpable mix of excitement and anxiety about the latest impending wave of Artificial Intelligence. AI tools are being developed that will fundamentally impact our jobs, our relationships, our access to knowledge and creativity, our children's lives, and our planet. But for an industry like healthcare — where fax machines and pagers are common, where people struggle to find affordable care or adequate resources, and nurses are leaving the profession due to administrative burdens and moral distress — can AI be an answer?

In this two-part feature of our AI in Play series, where we explore AI's role in transforming healthcare, host Oriana Beaudet, Vice President of Innovation at the American Nurses Association, Credentialing Center, and Foundation, talks with a nurse and a clinician helping to shape the future of AI in healthcare for one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Episode 130 features nurse Mary Varghese-Presti, Corporate VP and COO of Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, whose team built Dragon Copilot, the first commercially available ambient AI solution purpose-built for nursing workflows. We learn how Microsoft co-designed this tool directly with staff nurses, nurse managers, and nurse executives across more than 10 health systems,  and why that collaboration is essential. We’ll learn about Microsoft’s vision for a three-stage AI future, from co-pilots to agents to a true hybrid workforce, and what it would mean for nurses to have the ability to delegate tasks the way physicians have long been able to do. Finally, we hear the deeply personal story behind Mary's mission,  from growing up in an immigrant household surrounded by nurse "aunties," to advocating for a voiceless patient at 4 am as a young nurse at Johns Hopkins, to now leading the technology that she believes will restore humanity and dignity to the very profession that shaped her.

About See You Now Podcast

See You Now is a podcast highlighting the innovative and human centered solutions that nurses are coming up with to solve for today’s most challenging, healthcare problems, created in collaboration with Johnson and Johnson and the American Nurses Association and hosted by nurse, economist and health tech specialist, Shawna Butler.

For more information on the podcast bundles, visit ANA's Innovation Website at https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/innovation/education.

Have questions or feedback for the SEE YOU NOW team? Future episode ideas? Contact us at hello@seeyounowpodcast.com.

Resources

• American Nurses Association, Code of Ethics, Provision Seven
• Microsoft AI blog co-authored by Dominic King
• Official October 2025 announcement confirming Dragon Copilot as the first commercially available ambient AI solution for nursing
• Transforming the Nursing Workflow with Ambient Voice and AI
• Financial Times Article: "Mustafa Suleyman plots AI 'self-sufficiency' as Microsoft loosens OpenAI ties"
• Documentation Burden in Nursing and Its Role in Clinician Burnout Syndrome
• Measurement of Clinical Documentation Burden Among Physicians and Nurses Using EHRs: A Scoping Review
• Charting the Path Forward: Nursing Perspectives on Documentation and Change
• Nursing Moral Distress and Intent to Leave Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Estimation of Moral Distress Among Nurses: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
• Does Moral Distress in Emergency Department Nurses Contribute to Intentions to Leave?
• Paying for It: Costs, Debt, and Americans Getting Sicker and Poorer — 2023 Affordability Survey
• Americans’ Challenges with Health Care Costs
• Inability to Pay for Care, Medicine Hits New High
• The Fax Is Still King in Healthcare