Dr. Dan Eduardo Gonzalez spent years managing the responsibilities that come with being a clinical pharmacist. On a typical day, he might oversee hundreds of medications while serving a steady stream of patients, each expecting accurate information and safe treatment.

That experience shaped how he thinks about healthcare technology. Decisions made in corporate offices or engineering departments eventually affect the people standing at a pharmacy counter, sitting in an examination room, or caring for a family member at home.

Yet Gonzalez repeatedly saw those decisions being made without meaningful involvement from frontline clinicians.

Today, as founder of ClarityRx Advisory, he helps healthcare organizations examine their processes, evaluate AI applications, and strengthen governance. His central argument is that technology works better when clinical expertise becomes part of its development rather than an afterthought.

The Missing Voice in Healthcare Innovation

Gonzalez graduated from Creighton University with a pharmacy degree in 2012. He initially expected to spend his career practicing pharmacy, but working inside large healthcare organizations exposed him to recurring problems in how decisions were made.

He had experience with three Fortune 500 corporations and noticed that technical teams often worked separately from the clinicians who would eventually use their products.

Developers might be asked to solve workflow problems without consulting pharmacists or physicians about what actually happens during a shift. Meanwhile, clinicians were expected to adopt new systems accompanied by promises of improved efficiency.

Gonzalez understood that engineers and healthcare professionals often shared the same goal of improving the end-user experience. The difficulty was that their work took place in different organizational environments.

He began wondering what might happen if those groups worked together earlier.

His experience also challenged the assumption that innovation always requires new outside expertise. Sometimes, he argues, the most useful person to consult is already working inside the organization and understands the problem firsthand.

Why Governance Begins With Listening

Gonzalez’s understanding of governance developed through patient care. Pharmacists must recognize errors, communicate clearly, and take responsibility when something needs correction.

Those habits became foundational to his advisory work.

When he begins working with an organization, Gonzalez conducts an assessment of its existing processes and internal relationships. He examines how departments communicate, where information becomes isolated, and what happens when something goes wrong.

He is particularly interested in whether organizations have created environments where employees can discuss problems openly.

In pharmacy practice, Gonzalez learned that acknowledging uncertainty was often the responsible response. If he didn’t know the answer to a patient’s question, he could explain that he needed to investigate and follow up.

He believes businesses should approach mistakes with similar transparency.

Organizations sometimes hesitate to acknowledge problems because they worry about appearing incompetent. Gonzalez argues that the resulting silence can undermine trust more severely than the original mistake.

He also wants leaders to recognize successful improvements alongside failures. Governance should become a continuous process of learning and adjustment rather than an exercise performed only when an audit approaches.

AI Needs Clinical Judgment Before Deployment

Gonzalez now applies this philosophy to healthcare AI development, including work as a clinical advisor who evaluates the outputs of AI models.

One example involves a software founder building an application for family caregivers. The product aims to help people suddenly responsible for supporting an aging or medically vulnerable relative.

Drawing on his experience working with Medicare patients, Gonzalez evaluates whether the application’s recommendations reflect the realities caregivers face.

The system might suggest transportation resources or ways to find more affordable prescription medications. During his review, however, Gonzalez noticed that over-the-counter medications were missing from its considerations.

For him, that omission mattered because nonprescription products can be a significant part of medication management for older adults.

He worked with the developer to address the gap, illustrating how clinical review can identify limitations that are not immediately apparent to a software engineer.

Gonzalez also advises medical technology companies on whether products fit existing clinical workflows and address genuine patient needs.

These assignments reflect his belief that AI governance must involve the people who understand how healthcare decisions are made in practice. Technical performance matters, but its usefulness also depends on whether the output makes sense in a real clinical setting.

Building Organizations That Prevent Problems

Gonzalez would like healthcare organizations to become more proactive about governance.

He points to the pressures facing hospitals and pharmacies, including staffing shortages, demanding workloads, and financial constraints. Under those conditions, responding to problems after they occur can become the default operating model.

His preferred alternative involves creating cross-functional governance councils with representatives from different departments.

These groups would meet regularly, share observations, review emerging risks, and discuss potential improvements. Gonzalez references the NIST framework’s emphasis on ongoing management and continuous improvement as a useful foundation for this approach.

He also believes organizations should consider incentives that encourage employees to participate in governance responsibilities.

The objective is to make communication routine rather than something that happens only when an incident demands immediate attention.

Throughout his conversation with Leonard Kim on Innovation Saves Lives, Gonzalez returns to the importance of people feeling heard.

He believes patients, clinicians, engineers, and executives all hold information that can improve healthcare decisions. The challenge is creating systems that allow those perspectives to influence one another.

For Gonzalez, responsible AI adoption begins there. When organizations bring clinical professionals into development conversations, examine their existing weaknesses, and remain open about what needs improvement, technology has a better chance of serving the people it was designed to help.

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