Ezzaddin Al Wahsh on Using Informatics and Field Experience to Rebuild Ineffective Clinical Systems

Despite his accomplishments in artificial intelligence and clinical informatics, Ezzaddin Al Wahsh didn’t go into medicine expecting to rebuild the systems behind it. His earliest work took place at the patient’s bedside, where he listened, responded, and adapted in real time. 

As a physician with Doctors Without Borders, he treated Syrian refugees in Jordan, followed up on surgical recoveries in field settings, and helped control infections in places where reliable infrastructure wasn’t always available. Those experiences shaped how he viewed clinical decision-making as something influenced by environment, communication, and workflow.

That perspective followed him to the Mayo Clinic, where he completed a fellowship in clinical informatics. In this role, he sought to make care safer, more efficient, and easier to deliver using tools like AI and decision support systems. With a deep understanding of how missed communication and alert fatigue can affect outcomes, he turned his focus to everyday friction points in care delivery. These included excessive notifications, outdated tools, and workflows that added more strain than support. 

Now, Al Wahsh leads efforts to address those challenges. By combining clinical insight with data-driven tools, he works to design systems that better support healthcare teams and improve care for the patients they serve.

Finding Solutions Where Others Only See Limitations

After earning his medical degree from the University of Jordan Faculty of Medicine, Al Wahsh became board-certified in internal medicine and later completed his MBA in Global Innovation from California State University, East Bay. 

He went on to earn additional certifications in Digital Health and Open Innovation from Harvard, No-Code AI and Machine Learning from MIT, and Entrepreneurship from Wharton. These programs strengthened his ability to critically analyze systems while keeping one guiding question at the center: Does this tool help people deliver better care? 

That mindset carried directly into his work at the Mayo Clinic, where he developed and evaluated clinical tools that directly affected how care teams worked. Al Wahsh focused on projects that supported existing workflows instead of replacing them, including initiatives to reduce alert fatigue and improve how clinical messages reached physicians. His work wasn’t based on theory but built through trial and error, conversations with care teams, and attention to real results. 

One of his most effective contributions came from narrowing the scope when others were aiming too wide. While his team worked on improving the patient discharge process, many pushed for large-scale changes, but Al Wahsh focused on a single point of failure instead. 

Within three months, the team had a working product in place—one that was soon adopted by both hospitals and client systems. It served as a clear reminder that meaningful progress often begins with solving one well-defined problem. 

Working Past Assumptions to Make Progress

When working through a problem, Ezzaddin Al Wahsh often starts by identifying what people believe they can’t change and what they’ve come to accept as fixed. These limitations are typically tied to time, staffing, or outdated processes—issues that teams have learned to work around rather than question and revisit head-on.

He helps teams take a second look at those assumptions and figure out what’s actually possible. From there, they prioritize ideas based on timing, urgency, and the resources available. Some can be implemented right away, while others require more time or need to be passed along to the right partner.

This process has helped him guide clinical teams through high-stakes decisions, especially when patients or families request something that isn’t medically possible. In those moments, he encourages open, honest conversations rather than rigid answers. The result is often a creative compromise that honors everyone’s needs while staying practical and retaining trust. 

That same balance between speed and strategy affects how he approaches innovation. When his team recently built a product that couldn’t be scaled internally, they chose to hand it off. Giving up equity allowed another organization to carry the tool forward, making it available to more patients than his team could reach on their own. 

Fixing the Alerts That Are Supposed to Help

In most clinical settings, digital systems send out far more alerts than physicians and nurses can reasonably process. Some are critical, but many are not. When too many appear, staff stop paying attention and sometimes miss critical updates. 

To help address this problem, Al Wahsh helped design a method to screen and remove malfunctioning alerts without disrupting the flow of care. The goal was to make sure each alert had a specific purpose, showed up at the right time, and was actually useful to the person receiving it. 

He later co-authored a paper titled “A Systematic Approach to Screen, Identify, and Fix Malfunctioning Interruptive Alerts,” scheduled for submission to “Applied Clinical Informatics” in 2024. The paper outlines a practical process for hospitals to improve alert performance while minimizing fatigue. This kind of work makes a real difference in settings where every decision counts and distractions are constant.

Giving Others the Tools to Build Their Own Solutions

Ezzaddin Al Wahsh doesn’t believe that innovation should stay in the hands of engineers or software developers alone. At Mayo Clinic, he trained care teams to use no-code AI tools that let them build their own digital systems. Since these platforms didn’t require a programming background, they allowed more people to create solutions that fit their specific needs. 

At the same time, he served as an Instructor in Medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. There, he taught students to think critically about system design and use clinical informatics to improve patient care. His published research includes articles for the Jordanian American Physicians Association (JAPA) Academy Journal, where he’s written about rural health and the role of informatics in underserved areas. 

Al Wahsh’s guidance also extended to AI hackathons in Palo Alto, where he advised multiple teams. Several of those teams went on to win, in part because they learned how to design tools with real clinical application in mind, not just technical promise. 

A Platform Designed for Patients Who Need More Than a Single Answer

Currently, Al Wahsh is building a platform that helps patients get second opinions and personalized guidance, whether they’re local or seeking care from another country. Many of these individuals have complex or highly specific health questions and don’t want to register for another portal or sift through generic advice. Instead, they want answers that make sense and someone who will take the time to listen.

Rather than launching a wide campaign, the platform is growing through personal connections and word-of-mouth. The goal is to keep access simple and supportive, especially for those who are already feeling overwhelmed, with every part designed around the patient’s experience.

The project brings together many parts of Al Wahsh’s background, addressing the breakdown that happens when patients don’t know where to turn. It also offers a way to deliver care that still feels human, even when the need is technical. 

Turning to Creative Outlets When the Work Gets Heavy

While some people cope with pressure by tuning everything out, Al Wahsh does the opposite. He spends more time listening, thinking things through, and choosing how to respond. That intentional process helps him cut through the noise and stay grounded, even when the work feels heavy.

When the next step isn’t obvious or the weight of a decision starts to build, Al Wahsh often turns to poetry or soccer, two hobbies that have helped him reset for years. Soccer has shown him the value of resilience, teamwork, and adjusting quickly when the pace changes. Poetry offers something different. It creates space for stillness and thought, allowing him to step back from logic and reconnect with the deeper reasons behind his work. 

A Consistent Presence in Clinical Innovation

Since 2014, Ezzaddin Al Wahsh has volunteered with HealthFinders in Minnesota, helping expand access to care for underserved communities. Alongside that work, he continues to mentor medical students around the world and remains active in professional leadership roles across the clinical informatics field. 

He’s also involved in key organizations, including the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). From 2023-2024, he served on the Executive Committee Board for the American Clinical Informatics Fellows. 

At the Mayo Clinic, his contributions to AI development were recognized with the MFA Small Grant Award. Among those efforts was the rollout of an AI triage tool for the ENT department, which helped improve workflow efficiency. His work has also been featured at national conferences, including the AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference and the Healthcare Analytics Summit. 

Across all of these efforts, the goal remains the same—build systems that function as they should and support the people who depend on them. For Al Wahsh, success isn’t about visibility or speed. It’s about staying committed, holding himself accountable to his core values, and showing up every day, even when results take time to appear.

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