Steven McWilliams

Steven McWilliams (CHCIO, CDH-E, FHIMSS) is the vice president and chief information officer of the Georgia Hospital Association, the largest healthcare trade association in the state, where he leads IT strategy and operations in service of the association’s mission to advocate, educate, and shape a healthier Georgia. He also serves on the board of the Georgia chapter of HIMSS (GAHIMSS).

McWilliams appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Richard Hicks, president and CEO of the digital-inclusion nonprofit Inspiredu, for a conversation on technology, patient access, and the digital divide. Speaking from the hospital-systems vantage point, McWilliams argued that the gap between hospitals’ rapid technology adoption and patients’ real-world access is fundamentally about trust and human connection, not just tools.

On cybersecurity, he was blunt about the stakes: hospitals hit by ransomware are now closing, and a metric is emerging that ties ransomware events to patient deaths, which he called mission-critical. He described leading tabletop drills across the state so hospitals can rehearse their response, while acknowledging that an organization can do everything right and still be breached.

On artificial intelligence, McWilliams pushed back on the hype. AI, he argued, is augmentation, not a shortcut: it can make good work faster and more efficient, but it will not let the system cut corners on the care patients deserve. His vision is a shift from reactive, fee-for-service medicine toward proactive, value-based care, reached through partnership rather than any single technology.