In healthcare, the evolving role of the Chief Data Officer is inseparable from questions of trust, responsible AI, and measurable value. Wendy S. Batchelder, Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer at Centene Corporation, brings these issues into sharp focus in this final installment of a three-part interview series with Sezin Palmer, Partner at EY. Here, she examines how organizations can strengthen trust in AI, define ROI in meaningful terms, and prepare data leadership for the future of care delivery.

Centene’s position as a Fortune 23 healthcare enterprise, serving more than 28 million members across all 50 states, makes it a compelling backdrop for this conversation. As the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care organization and a major player in the Medicare marketplace, with annual revenues exceeding $163 billion, Centene’s approach to data and AI carries weight across the industry.

The series began with a deep dive into Centene’s governance and AI ethics framework (Part One) and continued with a discussion on transparency and responsible AI practices (Part Two). This closing chapter extends that dialogue, exploring how data leadership in healthcare must adapt as AI adoption accelerates.

Rebuilding trust — by design

Batchelder makes it unequivocally clear that trust is the cornerstone of Centene’s approach to AI. “Trust is the biggest impact and concern I have around AI,” she says, pointing to the very real mistrust that still surrounds data and AI use in the healthcare space.

Further, Batchelder emphasizes the need to go beyond just ethical intent to embedding it in the very infrastructure of AI systems, what she calls “trust by design.” At the heart of this strategy is a commitment to patient-centered values and the principle that technology should enable care, not replace human judgment.

“We recognize that the issues around the use of data and AI in the healthcare space do have a lot of mistrust and that that is real,” she explains. This caution has translated into Centene’s deliberately measured approach to AI adoption.

While Batchelder acknowledges the organization’s long-standing use of AI in various forms, she notes that today’s focus is on ensuring that implementation is “intentional and necessary.”

Scrutiny over speed

Despite the urgency many feel in racing toward AI adoption, Centene is purposefully resisting the pressure to move fast without reflection. Batchelder advocates for a “measured and experimental mindset,” one that allows teams to continuously assess outcomes, revisit assumptions, and scale solutions responsibly.

She lays out a clear hierarchy of values: “We’re making sure that the complexity of our healthcare data and the decisions therein are high-stakes, and we need to treat them as such.” That means every use of AI undergoes rigorous scrutiny, particularly for bias, misuse, or errors. Equally important is ensuring that human expertise remains firmly in the loop. Batchelder’s vision is one of AI as an enabler, not a replacement.

“It’s not just about speed to market,” she says, “it’s really about making sure that we have the right tools to solve the right problems with the right efficiencies.”

Measuring impact and aligning on ROI from the start

Speaking of measuring impact, Batchelder shares from experience of leading multiple data teams: “Data teams are usually profoundly bad at measuring impact.” Ironically, she says, despite their expertise in helping others measure outcomes, data teams find it hard to sit back and reflect on that deeply for themselves.

To address that, Centene puts a strong emphasis on upfront collaboration. Before any project begins, Batchelder’s team works closely with business stakeholders to define objectives, set hypotheses, and agree on what success looks like. This shared alignment becomes the anchor point for measuring return on investment (ROI) throughout the lifecycle of a project.

“If we’re seeing a deviation, what is that telling us?” she asks. Whether outcomes exceed or fall short of expectations, the focus is on interrogating the solution, not each other. This approach builds trust not only in the systems but also among teams.

“We prioritize sitting down and making sure that we’re abundantly clear,” Batchelder explains. Clarity around goals also sharpens timelines and ensures efforts are business-enabling, not just technically impressive.

The CDO of tomorrow: Bilingual in tech and business

Looking ahead, Batchelder envisions a CDO role that is both more business-driven and technical than ever before.

“I would expect that the CDO continues to have to be more and more business savvy, more and more business oriented,” she predicts. It will no longer be enough to manage platforms or insights; CDOs must deeply understand business strategy to put data into the hands of decision-makers at the right time.

Batchelder anticipates a shift away from dashboards toward embedding insights directly into workflows, reducing the need for employees to switch contexts. “It comes down to being less about the report and more about the underlying data,” she says, noting that curated, fit-for-purpose datasets and models will define the future of analytics.  

The dual expectation of business fluency and technical mastery, Batchelder states, makes the modern CDO role uniquely demanding. “You’re seeing this evolution in the data officer needing to be super technical and super business savvy, and that skill set together is really hard.”

Therefore, she believes that data officers today must cultivate both business acumen and technical expertise to bridge the two domains. While this balance has always been valuable, Batchelder concludes that the scale and urgency required now and in the future make it more essential than ever.

CDO Magazine appreciates Wendy S. Batchelder for sharing her insights with the CDO Magazine Global community.