Stop Building That. A CIO's Test for Buy, Build, or Partner with Edmund Siy

When Edmund Siy became chief information and technology officer at Bon Secours Mercy Health in May 2025, he told Becker's his opening move was cybersecurity and infrastructure, with AI to follow. Plenty of systems were pointing at pilots that year. He pointed at the plumbing.

Fifteen months later the foundation is largely built and AI has stopped being a differentiator. Ambient documentation, governance committees, an AI officer on the org chart. Table stakes. Which means the hard call is no longer whether to adopt. It is where a forty seven hospital system spends its own engineering hours, where it co-develops with somebody else, and where it should admit a capability has gone commodity and just buy the thing. This is Edmund's actual test for making that call.

• Audit your build list. Anything three vendors already do well is payroll, not strategy.
• Fix the foundation before you scale AI. Infrastructure sets the ceiling on what you can safely deploy.
• Before signing a co-development deal, write down what you do when their roadmap slips.
• Put a review date on the three-year roadmap and name who is allowed to break it.

Edmund Siy, FHIMSS, FCHIME, CHCIO, CDH-E, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Bon Secours Mercy Health

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

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