Interview with Vincent Turgis - CIO at WS Audiology

Deloitte: How has your role as a tech leader evolved from the late 90s to today, and what qualifications do you think are essential for CIOs today?

Vincent Turgis: There are two things that really strike me when I reflect on this evolution:

The first is the fundamental shift in what it means to be a CIO or IT leader. At the start of my career, the role was very much that of a technologist—focused on infrastructure operations and technology management. IT was largely disconnected from the business, functioning more as an add-on rather than an integral part of it. At that time, IT was not pervasive across all business processes.

Today, that has changed dramatically. There is not a single process in companies that is not supported by IT in some way. The role of the CIO has evolved from being purely a technologist to becoming a business partner and a transformation leader. IT is now critical to all activities within the company. We've seen CIOs become much more strategic and genuinely part of the business agenda—at least in the pharma and medical device industries, which I know well. Increasingly, CIOs are also heading transformation initiatives or driving digital activities. You now see roles like Chief Business Information Officer that are fundamentally business-oriented, quite different from what existed before.

The second major change is the dramatic acceleration in the pace of transformation. Since the late 90s, we've witnessed successive waves of disruption—the internet, mobility, cloud computing, big data, and now artificial intelligence. The cycle of the CIO role has accelerated significantly. Today, if we want to have impact, we need to deliver results within months. Previously, major implementations would take years. That acceleration in pace is perhaps the most fundamental shift in how the role operates.

As for qualifications, looking at my network, most CIOs I know have both a business background and a technology background. It's dual competency. Within CIO circles, we tend to say it's easier to teach business to a technologist than to teach technology to a business person. But our real value lies in being able to bridge technology and business. That requires understanding business processes and knowing how to leverage technology to drive business outcomes. It's not simply about managing demands or waiting for someone to come to us and ask what we can do. It's about partnering with the business to stimulate improvement, efficiencies, and innovation through the use of technology.

I think increasingly, CIOs have MBAs and business backgrounds. You're also seeing more dedicated educational pathways. In Denmark, for instance, Copenhagen Business School offers a Bachelor of Business and Digital that leads to IT roles but is very much business-driven. That said, there are still leadership positions in IT that are very much technology-focused—infrastructure operations, cloud operations, and similar areas. But even in those technology-driven roles, I believe a deep business understanding is essential.

Deloitte: How do you balance the need to innovate and adopt new technologies with the risk of pursuing initiatives that are driven more by hype than by genuine business value?

Vincent Turgis: For me, the first priority is really a business-driven IT organisation. The second part is that you need to have governance where, at the end of any initiative, you verify that you have actually delivered the benefits you intended to harvest. If you just start activities and never look back, you can have investments that are not bringing any value and are driven only by hype or IT trends. So, there is work to be done internally in companies to manage their IT project portfolio, focus on value, and prioritise the right things.

Now, if I look at what's happening with AI and having been part of the internet bubble at the end of the 90s, I feel younger now because it brings me back 25 years ago in many ways. What we saw at the time was a lot of innovation, a lot of startups, and the world was going to be different—everything was changing radically. We thought we could finally get rid of our ERPs and all that legacy because the web was going to replace everything. Of course, a lot of things failed, a lot of things did not materialise, and a lot of the hype faded after a few years. But if you look back and compare 2004 to 1998, the world looked extremely different. A lot of change happened anyway.

I think AI is exactly the same. A lot of the things we are seeing today is not going to happen. A lot of things will fail. A lot of startups will disappear. But in five years, if we look back, the world is going to look radically different compared to what it is today. As with anything that's totally hype, you need to be extremely selective in what you're doing with it, but you cannot stand still. You need to balance the need for innovation and to leverage new technologies with the risk of going all in and wasting a lot of time and resources into something that doesn't bring value. It's more complex in those hype times because you need to be selective in what you're doing, but there is no magic recipe. There is no one who can tell you where to go and where not to go. That's where it becomes really important that you are business-driven.

Deloitte: Where do you see AI playing a role in the audiology solutions in your company?

Vincent Turgis: AI has been part of our products for some time now. We recently launched Signia MaX, which is an AI hearing aid platform with four DNNs (Deep Neural Networks) and we are also rolling out the Widex Allure AI RIC - an AI-powered hearing aid with an AI chip, which gives wearers direct access to added clarity in noise when they choose it. This offers users real added value, as it helps them achieve better sound quality and optimal results from their devices. For outsiders, this may be hard to grasp: you have a tiny device with an AI chip in your ear that processes the signal in real time so you can respond better.

This is an example of a technology that is not hype—it's there. A lot of medical devices in the future will embed AI in their products because it's going to bring value across the industry.

The second aspect is that we are the first in the world to have a cloud-based fitting software. When you receive a hearing aid, your audiologist needs to work with you to configure it based on your lifestyle and sound preference. If you spend your time in a restaurant with 25 people, you need to adjust the device so you can hear well in noisy environments. If you spend all your time walking alone in nature, your hearing aid will be configured differently. The audiologist can work on many parameters, and we provide the software to enable them to configure the devices. Now we have a cloud platform for that, which means hearing care professionals have access to the latest software updates anytime. We are the first to launch a cloud fitting software for the audiologist, and eventually AI will play a role in this. We'll be able to process data better, get insights from the work done by the audiologist, and eventually provide better products for people who need support for hearing.

Deloitte: How do you see the CIO role evolving in the future, and what are the key challenges you anticipate?

Vincent Turgis: I think the trend we've seen in the past will carry on. I don't see that role going back to being just a provider of technology. I think more and more, with AI, IT will play a role in terms of being part of the product. For me, that trend is not going to change.

However, in the healthcare industry, there is a big impact on data privacy and regulation, and AI is actually making it even more complex. More and more countries impose that data is stored in the countries. For instance, in Australia or in Europe, there is a complexity in the regulation that makes our role actually encompass things that are close to data privacy and regulation. So, the complexity is actually increasing.

When we say that the pace is accelerating and that we need to go faster, we have to acknowledge as well that over the last 25 or 30 years, we have actually built a lot of legacy. We are still navigating in an environment where we still have ERPs that are not harmonised. We still have technology from the 2000s. We don't have our data flowing across all the platforms. All that complexity we've built over time is still there, and of course, it limits our ability to accelerate.

That's also one of the factors that hopefully AI will be able to support—getting rid of those barriers that come in the way of agility and speed.