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The Nashville team who created an artificial intelligence program that predicts health care staffing needs has sold that business to a national company. The sale speaks to the kind of artificial intelligence and machine-learning bubbling up within the region’s business community.

SwitchPoint Ventures agrees to sell Polaris AI to Aya Healthcare, the largest healthcare talent software and staffing company in the U.S.

We recently spoke with Ardent CEO Marty Bonick and SwitchPoint CEO Ray Guzman to learn how they plan to identify solvable problems and how they’ll test them inside Ardent hospitals.

Ardent Health Services is bringing innovation in-house. The hospital operator has partnered with fellow Nashville-based SwitchPoint Ventures to launch an innovation studio focused on using data to create products that improve healthcare delivery and administration, according to a news release.

Using Winnow, a Nashville-based artificial intelligence company, hospitals do not wait for applicants. Instead – using National Provider Identifiers and data on job changes – the AI predicts who is most likely to leave their job, even though they are not actively looking for a new one.

“Winnow’s AI solution has never been more needed than now, as our industry faces nursing shortages and physician turnover rates that are at an all-time high,” said Ardent CEO Marty Bonick.

“We believe that innovation stems from a growth mindset,” said Ray Guzman, CEO of SwitchPoint. “Our successful exit from Scout Insight is meaningful to us because it signifies that we created something powerful for our partner.”