Abbott's 10-year AI strategy centers on trust, mission alignment

Abbott, a multinational healthcare company, has built a decade-long track record of using AI to support its mission of helping people live life to the fullest. Long before generative AI became an enterprise priority, Abbott was deploying algorithmic AI in FreeStyle Libre, a glucose monitoring sensor that delivers continuous glucose readings to diabetics and in some cases connects to insulin pump applications. In medical devices, the company launched Ultreon in 2021, an imaging AI system that guides surgeons during cardiovascular procedures by supporting optimal stent placement in real time.

In late 2025, Abbott introduced Libre Assist, a generative AI feature that allows FreeStyle Libre users to photograph their food and receive personalized guidance on how that meal will affect their glucose levels, including recommendations on when and what to eat—accounting for the sequence in which food is consumed, which affects how the body processes glucose. This latest capability reflects Abbott's principle of intentionally matching technological capability to therapeutic need, whether that capability is algorithmic, generative, or agentic.

Abott's AI strategy is grounded in four guiding principles: fairness, safety, quality, and transparency. According to Sabina Ewing, Abbott's CIO, trust is central—it is earned in drops and lost in buckets—and maintaining trust with customers and employees requires deliberate governance. Ewing emphasized that the modern CIO must combine conviction, credibility, and communication with technical expertise. Critically, she stressed that if a CIO tells the business that AI can drive outcomes, the CIO must demonstrate it in IT operations first. She has committed to delivering measurable results in IT from new AI operational capabilities before scaling more broadly.

Abott's governance model includes an executive steering committee on generative AI, close partnerships with senior leaders in HR and finance to secure necessary investment while maintaining financial discipline, and traditional financial measures applied to all AI investments. The company looks for high-impact opportunities where new technology delivers quantifiable results, deliberately avoiding unfocused expansion (as Ewing put it, "we're not going out with a thousand flowers blooming"). Abbott has also embedded AI into its talent processes and established a continuous cycle of enterprise education—both in-person and virtual—to ensure employees are equipped to use new tools and technology. Ewing conveyed to her technical team that their role is not simply to deploy technology but to unlock what technology and people can do together in service of Abbott's mission, asking them to be bold and pursue excellence while keeping modernization, cybersecurity, digitization, and advanced analytics as core strategic pillars.