AI for Patient Critical Uptime in a Shrinking Technician Workforce - with Michael Goldman

Medical device services face urgent operational pressures driven by increasing equipment complexity and a shrinking, aging technician workforce. Michael Goldman, Senior Director of Business Operations and Transformation at Patterson Dental, highlights that harvesting institutional knowledge through AI-driven audio and video capture is essential for training new talent and maintaining patient-critical uptime. Unlike other enterprise functions, service workflows provide a high-stakes environment where agentic AI directly influences patient care, making it a prime candidate for successful integration. Scaling these initiatives requires moving beyond theoretical pilots to a value-centric strategy that prioritizes clear operational outcomes and builds trust among clinicians and technicians. Ultimately, successful AI adoption depends on solving specific, well-defined problems rather than pursuing technological novelty, ensuring that tools directly support the human-centric goal of consistent, reliable patient care.