The 229 Podcast

March 12, 2026: Joseph Evans, CMIO for Sentara Healthcare, joins Bill Russell fresh off the VIVE event to unpack what's really happening on the front lines of healthcare AI adoption. From Epic's expanding generative AI catalog to the flood of point solutions promising to solve everything from length of stay to clinical summarization, Joseph shares how Sentara is staying disciplined, evaluating problems first. He also raises a provocative concern that's keeping him up at night: it's not AI hallucinations we should fear most, it's what the models are quietly leaving out.
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Key Points:
01:32 Vive Event Takeaways
06:33 Trust and Governance
10:53 Evaluating New AI Vendors
15:02 Patient AI and Access
21:42 Personal AI Wins and Wrap

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March 11, 2026: What if you could reclaim thousands of hours of IT staff time, without cutting corners on quality? Chris Paravate, CDIO at Northeast Georgia Health System, joins Phillip Furukawa, CRO at SureTest, to reveal how they achieved a 98% reduction in manual testing time across their Epic environment. From 161 regression incidents down to 45, the numbers tell a compelling story. Discover how testing automation is reshaping Epic upgrade cycles, freeing up nearly 10 FTEs worth of capacity, and unlocking a faster path to quarterly updates and meaningful clinical innovation.
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Key Points:
03:08 Epic Upgrades and Testing Pain
04:47 Why Automation Matters
07:20 SureTest Implementation Playbook
12:00 Results Time and FTE Savings
17:48 CIO Advice and Wrap Up

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March 9, 2026: What happens when well-meaning clinicians use AI tools that no one approved? Bill Russell and Drex Ford are joined by Dr. Holly Urban, Vice President of Business Development at Wolters Kluwer, to unpack a revealing new survey on shadow AI in healthcare. From radiologists sharing PHI over Dropbox to tumor board transcripts sent to unauthorized recipients, the risks are real and growing. With 57% of staff aware of unsanctioned AI use, the question isn't whether shadow AI exists in your health system. It's what you're going to do about it.
Key Points:
01:28 Shadow AI is everywhere (and why it’s familiar)
11:18 Governance in the AI era
18:41 Patients, liability, and the road ahead
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March 5, 2026: From EMR adoption to AI governance, the CMIO role has undergone three rapid transformations. Dr. Veena Lingam, ACMIO at Moffitt Cancer Center, has lived all of them. In this conversation with Bill Russell, Dr. Veena breaks down CMIO 1.0 (change management), 2.0 (data analytics), and the emerging 3.0 era: governing AI tools that health systems may have never paid close attention to. She also sounds the alarm on a growing informatics workforce shortage and the "informatics deserts" spreading across the country.

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Key Points:
04:43 CMIO 1.0 to 3.0
07:18 Skills for the AI Era
10:05 Veena’s Informatics Journey
18:24 AI Literacy and Workflow Fit


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March 4, 2026: What happens when AI stops being a buzzword and starts showing up in your bottom line? Kali Ihde, Director of Ventures and Innovation at Northwestern Medicine, joins Bill Russell to share how ambient AI has moved from pilot to proven. Reducing documentation time by 20-30%, generating nine additional patient visits per physician per month, and measurably easing clinician burnout. Kali also pulls back the curtain on Northwestern's disciplined approach to innovation: champion-first pilots and a startup accelerator designed to bridge the gap between great ideas and real-world healthcare operations.
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Key Points:
06:20 Innovation Focus Now: AI Myth-Busting
13:03 Scaling What Works and Adoption Barriers
20:39 Access, Startup Reality Checks, and What’s Next

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