The 229 Podcast

May 20, 2026: Mark Ferrari, VP of Advisory Services at Fortified Health Security, joins Drex DeFord on UnHack for a candid conversation about the threat landscape keeping healthcare security leaders up at night. From asset inventory gaps to the explosion of identity-based attacks, Mark brings a rare perspective shaped by military service, 30 years as an EMT, and deep healthcare IT experience. He pulls no punches on why healthcare keeps buying tools before defining the problem, and what it actually takes to reduce risk rather than just measure it.

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Ransomware attacks don't always start with a ransomware gang. They start with someone who gets paid to find the door.

Aleksey Volkov, known online as ChewbaccaCore, was an initial access broker. His job was identifying vulnerable companies, exploiting their networks, establishing a foothold, and selling that access on dark web marketplaces. Over 16 months in 2021-2022, his work enabled attacks on seven confirmed US businesses, resulting in $9M in confirmed losses and $24M in intended ransom demands. In March 2026, he was sentenced to 81 months in federal prison.

For healthcare leaders, the takeaway is uncomfortable: healthcare organizations...

May 19, 2026: Three powerhouse executives tackle healthcare's most complex sourcing decisions in this essential conversation. Lisa Davis, Former CIO and Founder/CEO of Lisa Davis Advisory; Janet Malzone, Former CEO and Board Member; and Kristine Jarvis, Organizational Transformation Leader, reveal what leaders get wrong about offshore, nearshore, and automation strategies. From the pre-mortem technique that prevents million-dollar failures to the cultural metrics most organizations ignore, they expose why technical fluency without leadership maturity creates chaos. Discover how to rebuild trust after transformation missteps and why projects with the highest team disagreement deliver the strongest ROI.

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May 18, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into Stanford Health Care's bold agentic AI strategy, and what it means for every healthcare IT team right now. From naming the fear of job loss head-on to redefining what innovation actually means, the trio breaks down why standing still is the bigger risk. Drex reports from Utah on the Great Trust Recession and the deepfake dangers reshaping how we verify everything. Sarah brings leadership lessons from Nashville on EQ, distributed thinking, and leading through uncertainty. The analyst of the future is a workflow architect.

Key Points:

May 18, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into Stanford Health Care's bold agentic AI strategy, and what it means for every healthcare IT team right now. From naming the fear of job loss head-on to redefining what innovation actually means, the trio breaks down why standing still is the bigger risk. Drex reports from Utah on the Great Trust Recession and the deepfake dangers reshaping how we verify everything. Sarah brings leadership lessons from Nashville on EQ, distributed thinking, and leading through uncertainty. The analyst of the future is a workflow architect.

Key Points:

Tyler Buchanan grew up in Dundee, Scotland and became one of the most consequential cybercriminals in the English-speaking world. His method was almost insultingly simple: text messages. Posing as IT help desks, he sent phishing texts to employees at companies like Twilio, LastPass, Mailchimp, and DoorDash. Directing them to convincing fake login pages that captured credentials and 2FA codes in real time.

Find out how he got caught in this 2 Minute Drill

Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid

May 13, 2026: Jake Morrison, Global Healthcare Practice Head at Infinite Computer Solutions, joins Bill Russell for a candid executive conversation about what's really driving healthcare IT today. From the promise of AI to the surge in managed services demand, Jake shares why the old "outsource your mess for less" mindset is failing health systems. With 28 global delivery centers and half of Infinite's work in healthcare, Jake brings a uniquely global perspective on where the industry is headed.

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Key Points:

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...

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

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 — br...

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.

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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...

April 28, 2026: Female rivalry in the workplace is more than interpersonal drama — it's a culture problem with real consequences for teams, retention, and patient care. Dr. Amber Tichenor, organizational psychologist and author of “Behind Frenemy Lines”, joins Sarah Richardson to unpack the psychology behind workplace rivalry, why it's especially prevalent in nursing and other high-stakes environments, and what leaders can do to build cultures grounded in psychological safety, allyship, and mutual support.

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Key Points:

02:32 Why Women Rivalry Happens

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April 24, 2026: In this conversation, healthcare tech entrepreneur Kristen Schmidt and her 11-year-old daughter Harper explore what it means to prepare the next generation for a world shaped by AI. Harper's definition of AI — insightful beyond her years — anchors a candid discussion about the growing gap between AI's rapid advancement and youth readiness. For healthcare IT leaders, the episode raises an urgent question: are we building the right foundation for the leaders who will inherit these systems?

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Key Points:

01...

April 16, 2026: Something big is changing at This Week Health, and it starts with this episode. Bill Russell sits down with Sarah Richardson to announce that Flourish, the beloved show Sarah has helmed since joining TWH, is joining the 229 Podcast. But this isn't a step back; it's a consolidation of purpose. Bill and Sarah unpack why simplifying to a single channel better serves the healthcare IT community, what listeners can expect going forward, and why the conversations that happened on Flourish aren't going away, just coming home.

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April 3, 2026: Kory Hudson, Deputy CIO at University Health in San Antonio, Texas, and Lindsay Hudson, SVP of Client Partnerships at Nordic, join Bill Russell live from HIMSS to share how a candid assessment, a governance overhaul, and a return to scheduling best practice transformed patient access and unlocked millions in net revenue.

Key Points:

02:57 Back to Best Practice Scheduling

04:08 Nordic Assessment and Key Gaps

06:30 Foundation Rebuild and Change

09:53 Early Results and CIO Advice

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April 1, 2026: Healthcare fraud is a $300 billion problem, and the old rules-based approach isn't stopping it. In this Solution Showcase from the HIMSS floor, Tim McNamee, Enterprise Account Manager, and Mark Larochelle, Strategic Public Sector Account Executive, of Cloudera explore how agentic AI is transforming fraud detection, clinical decision support, and data governance in healthcare. From enabling human-in-the-loop workflows to bringing AI directly to protected data inside your own environment, Cloudera is redefining what private AI looks like at scale.

Key Points:

01:12 Cloudera Origins And AI Shift

03:30 Fraud Detection With Agentic AI

07:17...

March 27, 2026: Most healthcare organizations see legacy systems as technical debt—costly to maintain, risky to secure, and difficult to access. But what if that same data could become the foundation for your AI strategy?

From the HIMSS floor, Bill Russell sits down with Jason Rose (CEO) and Jonathan Cook (CTO) of Clearsense to explore how health systems can rapidly retire legacy applications while transforming decades of archived data into actionable intelligence.

With hundreds—even thousands—of systems sitting idle across clinical, financial, and operational domains, Clearsense is rethinking archiving as more than storage. By applying AI acr...

March 25, 2026: What happens when a health system is juggling over 100 active IT projects with a workforce that can never be 100% allocated to any single one? Joe Longo, SVP and CDIO at Parkland Health, and Eric Utzinger, Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer at Revuud, join Bill Russell to expose the hidden dysfunction inside traditional healthcare IT staffing — and what a transparent, direct-access platform model is doing to fix it. If your hiring managers are still waiting weeks for a resume that three other firms already sent you, this one is worth your time.

Key Points:

01:14 Traditional St...

March 20, 2026: Healthcare leaders have been talking about the “smart hospital room” for years. Now it is starting to become real. In this live conversation from the floor of HIMSS 2026, Bill Russell speaks with Adam McMullin, CEO of AvaSure, about how virtual care platforms are evolving beyond patient monitoring into a foundation for the hospital room of the future.

With deployments across more than 1,200 hospitals, AvaSure built its footprint through virtual safety monitoring, helping health systems reduce fall risks while dramatically lowering costs. Now that same infrastructure is expanding into physician access, computer vision, and AI driven pati...

March 18, 2026: Most health systems treat EHR migrations as a checkbox, finish the project, move on. James Hammer, COO of Harmony Healthcare IT, says that mindset is costing organizations their most valuable future asset. With 19 years of experience and 715+ unique source applications migrated or archived, James reveals why legacy data is no longer just a compliance burden; it's an emerging source of AI fuel. From ambulatory practices to the nation's largest IDNs, Harmony is helping healthcare leaders rethink data not as a sunk cost, but as a strategic foundation for research, analytics, and AI. Don't let your past data become...

March 17, 2026: Blake Sallé, Chief Revenue Officer at Proofpoint, joins us live from the HIMSS conference floor to break down why agentic AI may be healthcare's next great security vulnerability. With 91% of breaches still entering through email and AI systems proving just as susceptible to manipulation as humans, Blake makes the case for why healthcare organizations need to rethink their entire security architecture, starting well before threats reach the inbox. 

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Key Points:

00:20 Proofpoint Beyond Email

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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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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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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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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 C...

February 26, 2026: What does it actually take to govern AI across a major health system without losing speed or safety? Bill Russell sits down with Dr. James McCabe, CMIO at Jefferson Health, Dr. Benjamin Hohmuth, CMIO at Geisinger, and Kristin Myers, Chief Digital Officer at Northwell Health, for a candid conversation on managing enterprise-wide AI implementation. From building governance engines and risk-tiering intake processes, to measuring ROI and preparing for agentic AI, these three leaders pull back the curtain on what's working, what's not, and what's coming next in healthcare AI governance.

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February 25, 2026: The nursing crisis is real, and the solutions may be closer than we think. In this executive Interview, Bill Russell sits down with Allison Morin, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Symplr, to explore what's burning nurses out and what technology can actually do about it. From staffing automation and ambient listening to AI-powered scheduling, Allison paints a compelling picture of a smarter, more humane future for bedside care. But first, the hard truth: nurses still aren't at the table when technology decisions are made — and that has to change now.

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February 23, 2026: Scott Gildea, EVP of Global Delivery at Optimum Healthcare IT, reveals why major healthcare organizations are turning to Costa Rica for managed services. With Epic support now approved, time zone alignment with the US, and massive investments from ServiceNow, Workday, and Amazon creating a skilled talent pool, Costa Rica offers the full-suite IT services healthcare desperately needs. Gildea explains Optimum's strategic expansion, their innovative Career Path training program, and how CIOs can selectively outsource everything from security to EHR support while maintaining quality and reducing costs.

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February 19, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord dive deep into the explosive growth of AI agents in healthcare - and the controversial pricing models that could reshape your IT budget. From OpenAI's acquisition of OpenClaw's founder to Epic's agent factory launch, the agentic revolution is here. But there's a catch: VCs now want to charge you based on the labor their AI replaces, not just software licenses. Drex breaks down why agents with "limitless memory" and autonomous problem-solving are both powerful and terrifying, while Bill explores whether CIOs should start building their own solutions instead of drowning in fixed software...

May 4, 2026: Lisbeth Votruba, Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill Russell and Drex DeFord on Newsday to celebrate Nurses Week with a fascinating look at where nursing has been, and where it's going. From Florence's data-driven legacy to today's AI-powered virtual care, Lisbeth shares why nursing turnover is declining, why certification rates are rising, and why she sees technology not as a threat but as a path back to old-fashioned, human-centered nursing care. 

Key Points:

K...

April 27, 2026: Drex DeFord and Bill Russell are back on Newsday, and fresh off the 229 Summit, they're not pulling punches. Healthcare IT has a demand problem. Too many projects, not enough capacity, and an industry that's chronically bad at saying no. From the 229 Summit's sharpest takeaways to the Salesforce headless CRM announcement, the vl.js hack, and why Bill thinks Claude Code's "genesis key" is about to change everything, this episode covers the stories that matter most right now. If your project list is longer than your resources, this one is for you.

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April 20, 2026: What happens when you layer AI onto broken processes without fixing them first? Angel Mena, MD, CMO of Symplr, joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson on Newsday to answer that question with the kind of clinical candor only a practicing physician can bring. From ambient documentation to quality metrics to the credentialing chaos hiding inside every health system, this conversation exposes the gap between AI's promise and what healthcare leaders must do to close it before the opportunity slips away.

Key Points:

00:37 Clinicians and Tech Today

07:44 Beyond the AI Hype<...

April 13, 2026: Jacob Hansen, Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure, joins Bill, Drex, and Sarah on Newsday for a conversation about the data governance battles quietly reshaping AI. From who owns AI model improvements derived from a health system's environment to whether EHRs should have control over how that data is used, Jacob pulls no punches. The conversation also tackles the evolving CIO title, the future of computer science careers in an AI-driven world, and why nursing may be one of the most AI-resilient roles in healthcare.

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March 30, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord dig into three of the biggest stories shaping healthcare IT right now. From the seismic Sutter Health and Allina Health merger, the Stryker cyberattack carried out by an Iranian-linked group Handala, and the sobering reality that threat actors like Tycoon 2FA are back online within 15 days of being taken down, this episode covers the frontlines of healthcare IT.

Key Points:

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March 23, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back with a packed Newsday covering three big conversations: the AI security crisis no one is talking loudly enough about, what HIMSS 2026 actually delivered for healthcare leaders, and the real question facing every CIO and CMIO right now: Is your time worth attending two major conferences each spring? 

Key Points:

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March 19, 2026: What does it take to open an 850-bed, 2-million-square-foot hospital? Thomas Bentley, Chief Information and Digital Transformation Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, joins Bill Russell to pull back the curtain on one of healthcare's most complex technology challenges. From over 100 delivery robots to virtual nursing cameras and a fully integrated RFID-enabled nurse call system, Bentley breaks down what went right and what kept him up at night. A candid conversation every health system CIO needs to hear.

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March 16: What are healthcare leaders really talking about at HIMSS? Bill Russell sits down with Sarah Richardson and Drex DeFord to share insights from the executive and cybersecurity forums—and the hallway conversations in between. AI dominates the discussion, but not just in clinical care. The hosts highlight the overlooked opportunities in operational workflows, patient outreach, and administrative efficiency. They also confront uncomfortable realities around workforce displacement, escalating infrastructure costs, and whether large technology vendors can maintain their value as AI lowers the barrier to building solutions internally. For CIOs, the challenge is clear: manage today’s operations while prep...

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...

March 2, 2026: Is the CIO role evolving? Or is it quietly being replaced? Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into the emerging CITO trend, the rise of citizen developers, and what AI-powered platforms like Epic's Agent Factory actually mean for healthcare IT leadership. The CIO of the future isn't a gatekeeper; they're the "architect of safe velocity." With 32 years in the industry, they’re also sounding the alarm on executive burnout in an era where the pace of change never lets up. 

Key Points:

03:31 CIO vs CTO explained 

07:10 From gatekeeper to “Chief Intell...