The 229 Podcast

May 11, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back on Newsday, tackling the questions keeping healthcare IT leaders up at night. What happens when your own teams start building AI tools without permission, and why might that actually be a good thing? Plus, the big consulting firms have quietly gutted their old model and rebuilt around AI adoption. And as agents start doing the work of analyst ones and analyst twos, is there still a path into this industry for new graduates?
Key Points:
04:21 Governance and Risk Guardrails

11:12 Consulting Firms Pivot to AI

15:52 Jobs and Adoption in the AI Era

23:11 Learning AI and Closing Banter

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May 5, 2026: When healthcare executive Kim Garrett left corporate America to launch Northern Skye Consulting, she discovered something unexpected: "Growth doesn't happen in the easy times. It happens when you don't know where that next step is, but you press on."
In this candid conversation, Kim reveals why the initial leap wasn't the scariest part of her journey, how her Scottish grandfather's legacy shaped her company vision, and why building websites became a source of unexpected joy. Her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? "Just do it."
Key Points:
00:00 Introduction: Stepping Away to Step Up

00:47 The Courage to Leave Corporate America

03:33 Northern Sky: A Scottish Legacy

05:15 First Clients and Making an Impact

07:28 Embracing the Beginner's Mindset

10:19 The Power of Your Professional Network

13:17 Just Do It: Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

14:45 Speed Round: Books, Resources, and Fiji

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May 5, 2026: Pain is the number one reason patients access healthcare, yet objective pain data is virtually absent from claims systems and EHRs. Martha Lawrence, CEO and co-founder of AccendoWave, explores how her company is building benchmark databases that correlate brainwave activity with pain perception, addressing both the clinical and financial gaps that leave health systems exposed. They also dig into the changing vendor-to-health-system sales landscape, de-risking innovation adoption, and how emerging CMS models like TEAM are creating new urgency around pain data.
Originally aired on Flourish, This Week Health's leadership-focused podcast. Flourish has joined The 229 Project Podcast — bringing these conversations to a wider audience of healthcare IT leaders.
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Key Points:
03:56 Objective Pain Data

08:44 Selling Innovation Today

13:43 UCLA Innovation Engine

22:25 CMS Models And Pain

30:13 De Risk And Wrap Up

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May 1, 2026: In this inaugural episode of Flourish Sound Bytes, Sarah Richardson sits down with Tyler Barhydt, a seasoned technology executive who led a remarkable cloud transformation journey. Tyler shares how his organization, Envision Healthcare, went from 11 data centers to nearly zero, the unexpected benefits of the Broadcom/VMware situation, and why he believes every cloud migration needs a dedicated FinOps team. Through candid discussion about getting board buy-in (spoiler: it took 12-20 rounds), building trust through transparency, and empowering teams, Tyler provides a roadmap for healthcare IT leaders considering their own cloud journey.
Subscribe to The 229 Project Podcast — [Apple Podcast] [Spotify] [YouTube] Leadership and culture conversations for healthcare IT leaders — new episodes every week.
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Key Points:
00:16 Meet Tyler Barhydt: Cloud Transformation Leader

01:03 Key Considerations for Cloud Strategy

01:49 Board Engagement and Cost Transparency

04:08 FinOps and Operational Readiness

06:41 Navigating Industry Challenges

15:33 Leadership Insights

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April 29, 2026: Bill Russell sits down with Jim Jacobs, President and CEO of MediQuant, to confront one of healthcare's most expensive and underappreciated problems: runaway application complexity. Jim makes the case that software rationalization isn't an IT to-do list item; it's a board-level imperative. With health systems carrying $60 million in unwanted software spend and cyber risks piling up in legacy systems that no one is maintaining, the urgency has never been higher. And with AI demanding clean, accessible data, the cost of delay is about to get a lot steeper.
Key Points:
03:01 Rationalization Playbook

07:14 Simplicity Security Resilience

11:02 Headless Software and Wrap Up

Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/
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