Health systems need an "Application Undertaker" — a dedicated leader who retires applications continuously, not as a one-off project, but as an ongoing discipline. As AI raises the stakes for clean, accessible data, the organizations ready to capitalize will be the ones who already have someone whose job is to keep the portfolio that way.
"Application Undertaker" — that's the term Gartner coined for a role most organizations haven't formally created: someone accountable for retiring applications continuously, not as a one-off project, but as an ongoing operating discipline.
For 30 years, healthcare IT has rewarded implementation. New platforms, EHR migrations, cloud moves — that's where the funding and executive attention go. Meanwhile, portfolios keep growing more tangled, and retiring the old stuff never quite makes it to the top of the list.
AI is what finally forces the issue. AI needs reliable data, accessible in consistent formats across the enterprise. That's nearly impossible when information is locked in disconnected legacy systems and departmental silos. Rationalization isn't just cost discipline anymore — it's the prerequisite for AI actually working.
The role requires ownership across three things:
→ Portfolio governance — a living view of every system's cost, usage, risk, and dependencies, used to decide what stays, consolidates, or retires
→ Financial execution — connecting capital investment to real, verified reductions in operating spend
→ Data preservation — extracting and validating historical data before systems go dark, so it becomes a strategic asset instead of a liability
Gartner projects AI-driven data archives will grow fivefold by 2030 — from 8% of organizations to 40%. The health systems positioned to capture that aren't the ones bolting AI onto a cluttered portfolio. They're the ones who already have someone whose job is to keep it clean.
The title is optional. The mandate isn't.
Read the full article on Forbes.
