What's Up with Tech?

40 Episodes
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By: Evan Kirstel

Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like...

How Enterprises Turn AI Agents Into Real Value With Modern Observability
Today at 5:00 PM

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AI is moving faster than any wave we’ve seen—and the hidden cost is complexity. We sit down with New Relic’s leadership to unpack how observability must evolve to keep up with agents, vibe coding, and probabilistic systems that don’t fail like traditional software. From the early SaaS days to hyperscale cloud and now AI-native architectures, we connect the dots on where value breaks, why pilots get stuck, and what changes when real users meet real AI in production.

We challenge the head...


From IVR To AI: How Teneo 8 Scales Multilingual Contact Centers And Revenue
Yesterday at 4:00 PM

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What if your contact center could speak 46 languages, automate millions of calls, and still hand tricky moments to the right human in seconds? We dig into the launch of Teneo 8 with CEO Per Ottosson and reveal how a hybrid AI approach—combining LLM-powered conversation with deterministic logic—delivers scale, governance, and measurable results without sacrificing warmth or control.

We walk through the architecture that makes this possible: long-form, human-style dialogue guided by LLMs, paired with rules and business processes that capture facts, validate entities, and...


Why Modern Buyers Hold The Power And What Marketers Must Change
Last Tuesday at 3:00 PM

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Tired of chasing downloads that never turn into deals? We sat down with Refine Labs’ CEO Megan Bowen to unpack why so many B2B playbooks still assume the seller holds the power—and how to rebuild your go-to-market around the way buyers actually make decisions today. From redefining MQLs to recognizing meaningful intent, this conversation is a straight path from vanity metrics to qualified pipeline.

We break down the Brand–Demand–Expand model in practical terms. Brand ensures you land on the day-one consider...


From Ransomware To Resilience: Unifying Data Security And AI
Last Monday at 5:00 PM

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We’re joined by **Anand Eswaran**, CEO of **Veeam Software**, and **Rehan Jalil**, CEO of **Securiti AI**, following Veeam’s bold acquisition of Securiti—a move that fuses data protection, security, and AI governance into one platform. Together, they unpack why GPUs alone can’t fix untrusted data and why 80–90% of enterprise AI projects fail, exploring how unifying data security and resilience lays the groundwork for AI that’s safe, compliant, and genuinely useful.

GPUs don’t fix untrusted data. We dig into why 80–90% of enterprise AI...


How Agentic AI Turns Fleets Of Macs Into Enterprise Muscle
Last Friday at 3:00 PM

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What if your next high-performing hire never sleeps, knows your stack, and ships secure environments in hours? We dive deep with Chris Chapman CTO of MacStadium to map the shift from brittle automation to agentic AI running on fleets of Macs, where outcomes replace step-by-step scripts and digital employees take on repeatable, high-value work. Chris opens the hood on Orca, their software-defined Mac platform, and shares how customers virtualize thousands of machines to train agents, spin up secure developer workspaces, and deploy specialized small language models t...


Crypto Safety, Finally
10/30/2025

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What if your crypto wallet felt as safe as your bank account? We sit down with Crypto Insurer BDIC Insurance Founder and CEO Jeffrey Glusman to unpack a bold plan to bring deposit insurance to digital assets and unlock mainstream confidence. Instead of chasing whales, the model targets the everyday holder with clear, affordable coverage tiers, vetted wallets, and a focused list of insurable coins. The goal is to turn fear, uncertainty, and doubt into transparent rules and reliable protection that stands up when it counts.<...


From Hype To ROI: Making Enterprise AI Work
10/29/2025

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Most AI pilots impress in a demo and stall in production. We wanted to unpack why. Joseph Kim is the President and CEO of Druid AI joins us to break down the real blockers to AI readiness and the playbook that moves teams from wow to working systems. We talk candidly about market hype, sobering stats on failed deployments, and the ingredients that make enterprise agents safe, accurate, and compliant at scale.

We start with first principles: define the business case, choose the right...


Building An Open Agent Mesh For Real Enterprise Workflows
10/28/2025

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What happens when agents can talk to agents—securely, asynchronously, and at scale? We sit down with Edward Funnekotter Chief Architect and AI Officer from Solace to unpack the architecture behind an open agent mesh and why event-driven design is the key to turning AI hype into dependable workflows. Instead of a single chatbot, imagine a network of specialized agents that advertise their skills, discover each other, and coordinate like a high-functioning team. They fetch data from Salesforce and support systems, compile a customer health report, ra...


How AI Is Changing Cyberattacks And How Enterprises Can Proactively Test Defenses To Stay Ahead
10/27/2025

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The fastest way to lose a security battle is to wait for it to start. We pull back the curtain on a proactive strategy to break the attack chain—disrupting reconnaissance, lateral movement, and exfiltration—by uniting offensive testing with integrated blue team defenses that actually prove what works. John Grancarich Chief Strategy Officer Fortra, joins us to explain how red and blue can operate on a single vision that prioritizes the real prize: protecting data wherever it lives.

We dig into the AI-fueled thre...


From Cyber Trenches To Trusted Voices
10/24/2025

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What makes a brand unforgettable in a world drowning in content? We sit down with cybersecurity veteran and writer Tony Bradley to unpack how thoughtful analysis, consistent execution, and credible placements can move a company from invisible to influential. Tony traces his path from IT and security operations to bylines at PCWorld, TechTarget, TechSpective, and Forbes, explaining why he stopped chasing the news hype cycle and instead built a reputation around “day-two” insights that endure beyond the headline.

We dig into the most common visi...


From Threat Intel To Unified Cyber Risk Intelligence
10/23/2025

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Noise is the enemy of good defense. We sit down with Jawahar Sivasankaran President of Cyware to unpack how a threat-centered architecture, powered by agentic AI and rich collaboration, can turn scattered data into clear, prioritized action. Rather than adding yet another dashboard, the strategy puts high-fidelity intelligence at the core of the SOC so every control—detection, response, and exposure management—makes smarter moves, faster.

We trace the evolution from a classic TIP to unified cyber risk intelligence, where enrichment, STIX-based normalization, and cont...


From Telemetry To Time Saved: How Lakeside Cuts Help Desk Costs
10/22/2025

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Want proof that better IT experience can be engineered, not wished into existence? From the floor at Gartner, we sit down with Lakeside to explore how a lightweight, 29‑year-old agent design built for scarcity is suddenly perfect for today’s edge. When compute, memory, and network were expensive, the team designed a platform that sips resources, keeps data close to the device, and structures it cleanly. That constraint-driven approach unlocks speed, privacy, and resilience for modern fleets spread across remote and hybrid work.

We dig...


From PKI To Post-Quantum: Building Digital Trust That Scales
10/22/2025

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The lock icon is not a comfort blanket. It’s a contract. We sit down with Chris Hickman, Chief Security Officer at Keyfactor, to unpack what digital trust really means when every person, device, app, and service needs a verifiable identity. From the browser to the factory floor, PKI and certificate management quietly power secure connections, and when they fail, the business feels it fast. Chris pulls back the curtain on the policies, processes, and automation that keep identities reliable at scale—and why “crypto agility” is no lo...


Speed, Clarity, And Trust In Modern IT Ops
10/21/2025

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Patch Tuesday shouldn’t feel like roulette. We sat down at Gartner Symposium with Egan from NinjaOne to explore a simple, disciplined idea: beat IT misery with speed, clarity, and trustworthy automation. Guided by decades in the DoD and intelligence community, Egan frames endpoint management as an operational craft where time-to-value, clean data, and risk-aware decisions matter more than shiny features. That lens drives concrete outcomes—deployments that go live in days, ROI signals within 24 hours, and onboarding that turns new admins productive in days instead of m...


Unifying Teams And Mobility For Business
10/21/2025

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What if your mobile number became the single identity that powers every call, text, and meeting—on your smartphone, your desk phone, and your laptop? We sat down at the T-Mobile for Business booth to unpack a 5G connected workplace that unifies communications inside Microsoft Teams while retiring the patchwork of SIP trunks and over-the-top apps that never quite played nicely together.

We walk through how Teams Phone Mobile and Operator Connect extend a SIM-based number into Teams so users keep one identity across de...


5G On Demand, Anywhere
10/21/2025

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Ever wished you could roll into a venue and flip on flawless connectivity like a light switch? We sit down with T-Mobile for Business at their booth to unpack a portable private 5G kit built for speed, security, and control—ready to power live broadcasts, pop-up events, and mission-critical enterprise workflows in a matter of hours.

We walk through how a compact setup supports roughly a thousand authenticated users with private SIMs and delivers low, predictable latency around 10 ms. On the media side, we sh...


Flying Cell Sites Keep Communities Connected
10/21/2025

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Picture a cell tower that takes to the sky when the ground route is blocked. We sit with Chris, senior disaster recovery manager at T‑Mobile for Business, to unpack how a tethered drone becomes a flying cell site—rising to 400 feet, running 24/7, and restoring coverage where trucks can’t reach. From islands off Puerto Rico to rugged stretches near Hawaii, this portable system can ride on a boat or UTV, spin up quickly, and hold the network steady until permanent infrastructure is back online.

Ch...


Supermobile For Business
10/21/2025

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When communication becomes mission critical, “good enough” isn’t good enough. We sit down at the T-Mobile for Business booth to unpack Supermobile, a bundled plan built for reliability under pressure. Instead of stitching together a dozen add-ons, Supermobile brings unlimited talk, text, and data together with satellite backup via SpaceX Starlink and a priority slice on the network during congestion and disasters. The result: simpler procurement, fewer gaps, and a stronger safety net for teams that can’t afford downtime.

We walk through why unli...


How Megaport Built A Thousand-Data-Center Backbone In Seconds-Driven Software
10/20/2025

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What if spinning up a 100G connection took less time than making coffee? We sit down with Megaport’s CEO Michael Reid and technical evangelist Alexis Bertholf to explore how a fully automated, software-defined backbone turns global networking into a click-and-go experience across 1,000+ data centers.

We trace their unconventional paths from aerospace to IT, then dive into the engine room: why no one logs into devices, how code drives every change, and how that design makes it possible to provision cloud on-ramps, private VXCs, an...


From Factory Floor To Frontline: Why Mission-Critical Communications Matter
10/17/2025

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What if customer communications weren’t an island, but the heartbeat of your business? We dive into how we’re unifying contact center and collaboration with an AI-powered CX platform designed for end-to-end automation, tight integrations, and real-world reliability. The goal: make every interaction faster, smarter, and easier to act on—without forcing a rip-and-replace.

We unpack why hybrid UC is accelerating w/ Martin Bitzinger
Senior Vice President, Product Management Mitel, especially for teams that need security, sovereignty, and uptime across regulated industries. You’ll...


Autonomous networks begin where predictive AI meets agents
10/16/2025

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What if AI in telecom had to earn its keep from day one? We sit down with Petri, CEO of Tupl, to unpack a no-nonsense approach to automation where every workflow ties back to a clear business case. From shrinking customer care handle times to orchestrating energy savings that don’t dent performance, this conversation shows how practical AI reshapes the daily work of carriers—and why adoption by 30,000+ frontline users is the metric that matters.

We start with the fundamentals: technical customer care that...


Empowering Experts: Tupl’s Path to Scalable, Agentic AI in Telecom
10/16/2025

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Stuck with slow processes, rising OPEX, and customers who expect fixes in seconds, not hours? We sit down with Hector Montes from Tupl to unpack a pragmatic blueprint for telecom automation that starts with the people who know the work best—domain experts—and turns their know‑how into solutions that scale. From first-contact technical support that slashes escalations to smarter energy management across the network, this conversation explores how to improve experience and cost at the same time.

We trace Hector’s path from dee...


From Courses To Enablement: Reinventing Corporate Learning With AI
10/16/2025

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What if your best coach was available at any moment you needed help on the job? We sit down with industry analyst Josh Bersin to unpack how generative AI is replacing one-size-fits-all courses with real-time, conversational enablement that helps people perform, learn, and grow in the flow of work. Instead of chasing completion rates, teams can tap living knowledge: the latest field fixes, sales plays that actually worked, leadership tips rooted in company context, and multilingual guidance that meets employees where they are.

Josh...


Automation grows, humans stay: the real shape of AI in customer experience
10/15/2025

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The most natural way to ask for help is to speak—and that’s exactly why voice CX is so hard to get right. We sit down with Babelforce CEO & Co-Founder Pierce Buckley to unpack why the real challenge isn’t the AI model at the front, but the orchestration behind it: identity, contracts, logistics, field service, and payments spanning a dozen-plus systems that must work in lockstep to deliver a short, sweet resolution. From “my fridge smells burnt” to warranty confirmation and pickup scheduling, we map the un...


What happens when a $70 phone meets smart financing and trust tech
10/14/2025

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A billion smartphones ship every year, yet billions of people still can’t get online. The barrier isn’t coverage—or even a $70 device—it’s trust, credit, and the lack of banking rails in places where daily income leaves no room for upfront purchases. We sit down with Trustonic CEO Dion Price to unpack a counterintuitive solution: secure device locking that makes micro‑installments viable, protects lenders, and teaches first-time buyers how financing works without requiring bank accounts, addresses, or formal credit histories.

Dion explain...


We started fresh in Bermuda to prove a faster, open, cloud-native network that turns telcos from black boxes into agile platforms
10/13/2025

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What happens when a carrier starts fresh, ditches the black boxes, and treats a nation like a living lab? We sat down with the CEO of Paradise Mobile to unpack how Bermuda—just 21 square miles and 65,000 people—became a launchpad for cloud-native, OpenRAN telecom that ships features in weeks, not years. The story begins with a team that cut its teeth solving “hairy, scary” projects for tier-one operators and now builds a modular, software-first network that can adapt fast, integrate with hyperscalers, and deliver real outcomes for cust...


How a Small Team Rewrote Mobile for Billions
10/10/2025

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Your phone’s most magical moments—messages turning blue, a watch pairing in seconds, an eSIM activating from Settings, a text sent from the middle of nowhere—don’t happen by accident. They ride on a quiet protocol called entitlements, and today we sit down with Emir Aboulhosn, CEO of NetLync to unpack how this invisible layer is being rebuilt for speed, security, and scale.

We start with Emir’s path from MVNO experiments to collaborating with Apple and Google on Apple SIM, eSIM orchestrat...


How AI-Driven Resilience Fixes Firewall Misconfigurations and Closes Security Gaps
10/09/2025

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A single unchecked setting can hand your network to an attacker—and it happens more often than most teams admit. We sit down with Adam BennettCo-Founder and CEO from SureStack to unpack how “resilient intelligence” marries standards, deep practitioner experience, and AI to find misconfigurations fast and guide clear, step-by-step fixes. From the jaw-dropping story of a default admin credential on a major firewall to the subtle ways “any/any” rules and exposed management interfaces creep into production, we break down why configuration management is the real front...


How AI Maps the Earth Beneath Our Feet to De-Risk Megaprojects
10/08/2025

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What if the riskiest part of a megaproject is the part you can’t see? We sit down with Jeremy Suard CEO and co-founder of Exodigo, to unpack how multi-sensor scanning and decision-support AI reveal the utilities and soil conditions that make or break billion-dollar timelines. Instead of relying on incomplete as-builts and sparse borings, Jeremy’s team stitches together an MRI/CT/ultrasound-style approach for the ground beneath our feet—then pairs it with human-in-the-loop engineering so owners get confident maps and actionable choices.

We...


Edge-Ready Connectivity, No Compromises
10/07/2025

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What if the most transformative leap in connectivity isn’t another wireless upgrade, but a smarter wire? We sit down with Valens Semiconductor’s Gili Friedman to explore how high‑bandwidth, zero‑latency, and EMI‑resilient links are quietly powering the systems we can’t afford to fail—cars, factories, clinics, and the collaboration rooms where work actually happens.

Gili walks us through Valens’ journey from co‑creating HDBaseT with industry giants to winning MIPI’s AFI standard for automotive. We break down why reliability and dete...


Inside Trua: Fixing Hiring, Privacy, and Digital Identity with a Trust Credential for Life
10/06/2025

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Hiring moved online, but trust didn’t keep up. We sat down with Raj from Trua to explore how HR can stop chasing documents and start consuming reusable, high-assurance credentials that protect privacy, block bots and deepfakes, and get qualified people to work faster. If you’ve felt the friction of delayed background checks, remote onboarding headaches, or the constant fear of data breaches, this conversation offers a practical blueprint to do more with less PII.

Raj breaks down Trua’s “TSA PreCheck for digital...


Why phishing still leads ransomware—and what we can actually do about it
10/03/2025

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Phishing didn’t fade—it evolved. We sit down with Trevor Hilligoss, SVP of SpyCloud Labs and former Army CID/FBI cyber agent, to map how identity has become the criminal world’s most tradable commodity, why phishing-as-a-service keeps gaining ground, and how adversary-in-the-middle kits are turning session cookies into skeleton keys. From ransomware’s favorite entry point to the rise of deepfake-enabled voice scams, we unpack what’s changing, what isn’t, and how to actually close the gaps that matter.

Trevor explains what 64 bill...


From Shadow AI to Safe Adoption: Guardrails for Enterprise AI
10/02/2025

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Your chatbot just recommended a competitor. Your interns pasted sensitive research into a public model. And your developers fed entire mobile codebases to a chatbot for “optimization.” We’ve seen it all—and we’re turning those hard lessons into a practical, repeatable playbook for safe AI at scale.

We sit down with Rick Caccia CEO and co‑founder of WitnessAI, to unpack how large organizations move from “Doctor No” to “Doctor Yes.” Rick explains what a confidence layer for enterprise AI looks like: full observability a...


From Reactive to Proactive: Inside Microsoft’s Agentic Security Revolution
10/01/2025

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Cybercrime now rivals the GDP of major nations, and the pressure on defenders is relentless. We sit down with Microsoft’s CVP Security Vasu Jakkal to explore how AI is becoming the operating system of defense—turning 84 trillion daily signals into clear decisions, faster action, and a truly proactive posture. If you’ve felt stuck in alert fatigue or trapped by tool sprawl, this conversation offers a practical blueprint to simplify your stack, sharpen your visibility, and reclaim time.

We break down the core pillar...


How Teletracking Uses AI to cut delays, free capacity, and keep patients moving safely
09/30/2025

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Waiting in a hospital is not just frustrating—it’s costly, risky, and fixable. We sit down with Michael Guidry from Teletracking to unpack how smart operations, grounded in AI and clear workflow design, can turn stalled discharge lists into steady movement, open beds sooner, and get patients to the right place without the usual maze of phone calls and guesswork. Think “air traffic control” applied to care access and bed turnover, with a practical lens on what actually works on the floor.

We dive int...


Broadcasting the Ryder Cup: Private 5G, Slicing, and Real-Time Media
09/30/2025

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A golf course shouldn’t have to choose between great shots and great signal. From the first tee to the grandstands, we show how a portable private 5G network turned Bethpage Black into a live broadcast studio, a responsive venue, and a real-time storytelling machine for the Ryder Cup. With Scott Jacka, Senior Director of Technology Development Strategy at T-Mobile, we unpack the decisions that make roaming rigs reliable, explain why uplink capacity is the unsung hero of live production, and map how network slicing keeps cr...


What if energy transition is evolutionary, not ideological?
09/29/2025

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AI’s rise isn’t just a software story—it’s an energy story. We sit down with Dynamix CEO Andrejka Bernatova to map the hard tradeoffs behind powering data centers, blockchain networks, and onshored manufacturing, and why the smartest path forward treats the grid as “one energy” rather than a fight between fossils and renewables. Andrejka brings two decades across banking, private equity, and operating roles to unpack how real assets get built, funded, and run when demand is surging and patience is scarce.

We dig i...


Behind the Scenes: How Galileo Helps Companies Make AI Trustworthy
09/26/2025

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Ensuring AI systems actually work as intended might be the most crucial challenge facing developers and enterprises today. As these powerful tools become more embedded in our daily workflows and critical business processes, their non-deterministic nature presents unique reliability challenges unlike anything we've faced with traditional software.

Conor Bronsdon from Galileo.ai offers a compelling framework for understanding and addressing these challenges. The fundamental issue? LLMs don't follow the predictable input-output relationships we've come to expect from software. "They have this massive amount of...


Unlocking Enterprise Value: AI-Powered Document Management
09/24/2025

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Imagine your organization's most valuable information locked away in digital filing cabinets, scattered across departmental silos, and buried in decades of accumulated documents. What competitive advantages could you gain if all that knowledge became instantly accessible and actionable?

Dr. John Bates, CEO of SER Group and former Cambridge computer science professor, takes us beyond the AI hype cycle to reveal where the real business value lies - in applying artificial intelligence to the massive document ecosystems that power every enterprise. Drawing from his experience...


Why AI Needs Empathy: Healthcare's Human-Technology Balance
09/24/2025

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What happens when you apply four decades of customer experience expertise to healthcare's most pressing challenges? David Shapiro, COO of Premier Annex, offers a masterclass in transforming patient experiences through what he calls "tech-enabled human in the loop" solutions.

Healthcare providers excel at medical care but often struggle with patient experience – those crucial moments when patients schedule appointments, seek information, or navigate the healthcare system while already feeling vulnerable. Shapiro's revolutionary approach doesn't force a choice between technology and human touch; instead, it harmonizes bo...