Since its discovery, cloud technology has expanded its horizons across sectors. With its far-reaching potential, cloud technology has emerged as a driving force for the healthcare industry to do good. Healthcare and life science organizations seeking opportunities to enhance patient care, clinical outcomes, and operational efficiency are increasingly adopting Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud solutions.
AWS leads the healthcare cloud transformation as the world’s most comprehensive and trusted cloud infrastructure provider, empowering healthcare and life sciences organizations to innovate with purpose. From major health systems and pharmaceutical companies to digital health startups, AWS helps healthcare leaders reduce IT costs, accelerate research discoveries, enhance patient care delivery, and drive clinical innovation at scale while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance. Dr. Myriam Fernández embraced new challenges. By honoring Myriam with “The Thought Leadership Award 2025,” The CEO Views celebrates the indomitable growth and success of AWS EMEA under her visionary leadership.
Journey of a Thousand Miles
Dr. Myriam Fernández’s journey into healthcare innovation is deeply rooted in her clinical foundation. Her academic excellence includes a PhD in Health Sciences, a Master in Science of Nursing from the University of Alicante, and an Executive Certificate in Healthcare Leadership from the University of Missouri. As a registered nurse, she has always been interested in transforming healthcare delivery. Myriam shares, “My passion for healthcare transformation was ignited during my years as a frontline nurse in Spanish hospitals.”
Recognizing the power of technology to be the catalyst for positive change, she pioneered the intersection of healthcare and IT with IT Deusto in Spain. Her success in leading strategic clinical initiatives in Europe empowered her to establish Cerner’s Value Advisory Team in the USA as the Senior Director in 2013. In 2022, Myriam joined AWS EMEA as the Head of Health Innovation, where her belief aligned perfectly with AWS’s mission to revolutionize healthcare delivery through cloud innovation.
She believes the healthcare industry can enhance patient care, operational efficiency, and financial sustainability with generative AI and cloud technologies. Her clinical background helps keep these innovations grounded in real-world healthcare needs, putting patients and healthcare professionals at the center of everything she does.
An Evolution
AWS powers digital transformation with the industry’s most comprehensive cloud capabilities, trusted security, and proven expertise. With over 200 fully featured services, unmatched operational experience, and continuous innovation, AWS helps organizations of all sizes accelerate their journey to the cloud. AWS global infrastructure, combined with the largest partner ecosystem of over 100,000 partners and millions of active customers worldwide, provides organizations the flexibility, reliability, and scalability they need to innovate faster and drive business growth.
AWS sets the global standard for cloud security and reliability, with an infrastructure trusted by the most security-sensitive organizations worldwide. Operating across 108 availability zones in 34 geographic regions, AWS’s proven track record spans nearly two decades, enabling organizations like research institutions, all top medical device organizations, and four of the top five genomic sequencing companies globally to use AWS. Hospitals like Clinic Barcelona and national health services like the NHS trust AWS to accelerate innovation, unlock data insights, and transform operations while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance. Industry leaders trust AWS’s comprehensive services and deep expertise to drive digital transformation at scale while optimizing costs.
Reshaping the Generative AI
AWS has invested in Machine Learning (ML) purposebuilt services development for healthcare and life sciences, such as Amazon HealthLake, Amazon HealthOmics, and Amazon HealthScribe.
Nine of the top ten pharmaceutical companies globally use AWS for genAI and ML, hospitals are rapidly adopting genAI innovations, like Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona, Spain, who uses generative AI on Amazon Bedrock to accelerate pediatric patient diagnostics procedures with suspected rare diseases and enable clinicians to determine proactive treatment and follow-up. Also, Duke University is using deep learning in the early detection of autism in children, and the NHS Business Services Authority is improving customer experience through natural language.
An Exemplary Leadership: Transforming Healthcare
Dr. Myriam Fernández recognizes empathy and compassion as the foundational elements of thought leadership. In her view, true thought leaders dare to challenge the status quo while honoring compassionate healthcare, creating efficiency-driving solutions and combining data driven decisions with emotional intelligence. Myriam’s thought leadership is reflected in two of her key initiatives-
1. Healthcare Data Transformation with Purpose: AWS empowers healthcare innovation by providing the secure, scalable infrastructure needed to analyze billions of genomes and process vast amounts of healthcare data. Our customers are achieving breakthrough results: accelerating CT scan analysis from hours to seconds, reducing molecular diagnostic processing time to just minutes, improving electronic health record performance by 40%, and rapidly deploying public health dashboards. With AWS’s comprehensive suite of cloud services, healthcare organizations can harness their data to improve patient outcomes, accelerate research, and transform care delivery at scale.
2. Human Touch Amplified: Leveraging Generative AI to Scale Personalized Care: “With the Quintuple Aim as a guiding principle, we work across the whole value chain to drive better patient experience, improve clinician experience, lower costs, advance population health, and increase health equity,” shares Myriam. The aim is to amplify healthcare professionals’ capabilities, allowing them to focus on what matters most – delivering personalized, high-quality patient care.
A Tale of Experience and Expertise
Myriam recognized the importance of empathy in effective leadership. Passion combined with integrity is another leadership element that is essential for trust building. Myriam’s decisiveness is driven by her clinical experience as a registered nurse, where wellinformed choices are made to save lives.
Success in Innovation
Amazon´s Culture of Innovation is foundational to driving decision making when working with healthcare organizations and partners. These principles guide our work to transform patient care and advance clinical innovation. Through these principles, AWS helps healthcare organizations accelerate innovation, improve patient outcomes, and reduce costs while maintaining the highest standards of excellence.
The True Essence of Innovation
“As an innovator, I drive change by maintaining a patient-centric focus and fostering a collaborative ecosystem that brings together diverse perspectives from healthcare providers, technologists, researchers, and policymakers,” articulates Myriam. She encourages a culture of experimentation to balance immediate needs with long-term visions for healthcare transformation.
Eliminating Industry Gaps
The power of technology in enabling healthcare providers and teams to improve health outcomes may seem self-evident but is not universally accepted. To bridge this awareness gap, Myriam finds trust building as the most critical opportunity to facilitate data-driven approaches alongside technological advancements.
A Manifestation
Myriam envisions a healthcare landscape where technology is seamlessly integrated into care delivery. As for her personal trajectory, her goal is to contribute to a connected, intelligent, and human-centric healthcare ecosystem by fostering partnerships among healthcare technology companies, healthcare and research institutions, healthcare organizations, and healthcare agencies.
In her words, “ I strive to revolutionize global healthcare by championing groundbreaking innovations while safeguarding humanity’s ethical values—creating a future where cutting-edge technology, health and care unite to transform lives across every corner of the world.”
The Torch-bearer
“Embrace customer obsession” is Myriam’s advice for emerging thought leaders. She encourages them to understand customer needs and work backwards. Some of her best advice includes being transparent, staying curious and adaptable, focusing on tangible impacts, fostering collaboration, embracing innovation, and honing communication skills.
At AWS, we are revolutionizing healthcare by empowering organizations of all sizes to harness the full potential of technology for the greater good. Together, we’re building a future where innovation drives better health outcomes, resilient health systems, and more equitable healthcare worldwide.
