Healthcare IT Today Interviews

I love being around people that just ooze passion for the work they do.  You know the type of person I'm talking about.  The people who have dug so deeply into a subject that they can share every nook and cranny and when they do you know they understand that topic 1000 times better than you.  Often times, when they describe all the details, I realize that I'd seen or felt what they were talking about, but I hadn't studied it enough to realize that was why it mattered.  This is exactly how I felt when I sat down in this interview with Mike Cuesta, Partner at Atomic Health, to talk about design and branding.   Learn more about Atomic Health: https://www.atomic.health/  Healthcare Marketing: https://www.hitmc.com/

To get a look at what some of the leaders in healthcare are doing with IoT, we sat down with Dave Wilson, Managing Director of IoT Global Sales at Cisco, to talk about where IoT is really being used in healthcare and what value is being derived from their efforts.  Plus, we talk about how a healthcare organization needs to approach managing 1000s of devices and how they're going to pay for it.   Along with an IoT discussion, we also discuss the implications of 5G and learn more about the coming Wi-Fi 6 and how it will impact healthcare.  Then, we ask Wilson what is still holding back IoT in healthcare.  If you're interested in learning more about where IoT is working in healthcare now and where it is headed, you'll enjoy this interview.   Learn more about Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/industries/healthcare.html

As part of our ongoing series of telehealth interviews with EHR vendors, we're excited to share our interview with Tim Costantino, VP, Head of Product at AdvancedMD.  In this series, we talk with EHR vendors to better understand how they're approaching telehealth.  Are they developing telehealth in house or are they relying on partners?  If they have their own in-house telehealth solution, what features does it include?  How are they approaching integrating telehealth into their EHR and how will they handle this with partners?   Learn more about AdvancedMD: https://www.advancedmd.com/

For those involved in the 340B program, you know that there are some unique challenges associated with adding new locations.  In many cases, healthcare organizations have to wait years to start fully seeing the benefits of 340B for new locations.  The good news is that a new HRSA FAQ clarifies 340B Eligibility for new locations and it will make a big impact for healthcare organizations in this regard.   To learn more about these changes, we sat down with Lisa Scholz, PharmD, FACHE, Head of Industry Relations at Sentry Data Systems, to understand the clarifications HRSA provided and what healthcare organizations should know about the changes.   Learn more about Sentry Data Systems: https://www.sentryds.com/

When MedAllies was founded in 2001, the healthcare landscape looked vastly different from what it does today. Long before the HITECH Act spurred the widespread digitization of medical records, the company set out with an ambitious goal: using technology to enhance healthcare quality. Today, as a Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) at the forefront of implementing the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), MedAllies is poised to significantly expand its reach through its integration with Centauri Health Solutions.Learn more about MedAllies: https://www.medallies.com/Learn more about Centauri Health Solutions: https://www.centaurihs.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

InterSystems, a major data management and healthcare information systems vendor over many decades, has joined the AI rush and is working on a step-by-step approach to making data more useful to healthcare systems through AI. In this video, Don Woodlock, Head of Global Healthcare Solutions, explains the evolution he's seeing in the use of AI, and how AI providers can build trust.Interoperability, as provided by InterSystems, is key to going beyond use of the individual patient record. There are a lot of great things data can do in the aggregate for research, population health, and more: "taking it to the next level."Learn more about InterSystems: https://www.intersystems.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

A new program from CMS, the Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM), promises to shake up the industry in a fashion similar to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program in 2012. In a recent video interview, Robin Roberts, Director of Health IT Regulatory Affairs at PointClickCare, describes how hospitals can implement the program through technology, better coordination with post-acute facilities, and changes to incentives.Learn more about PointClickCare: https://pointclickcare.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

It’s easy to say that security is critical to healthcare operations, since breaches can force hospitals and clinics to cancel patient visits, damage their reputation, and even lead to fines. But how do security professionals get buy-in from board members and the executive-level suite? Some great answers are provided in this interview with two executives from First Health Advisory: Trish Alexander, Executive Vice President of Strategy, and Rick LeMay, Chief Delivery Officer.Learn more about First Health Advisory: https://firsthealthadvisory.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The Institute for Healthcare Advancement (IHA), a non-profit with the mission of helping individuals obtain and understand the health care information they need, found that some healthcare organizations were having trouble getting started with implementing effective, scalable health literacy solutions. But two months ago they released the AI-based HealthLiteracyCopilot, developed through a partnership with HealthcareGPS, to make health literacy scalable and available to all.Michael Villaire, Chief Executive Officer at IHA, says that in the United States, only one in ten people has the skills and ability to get the information that helps them manage their conditions—which includes getting resources, managing treatments, and reducing costs. Health literacy means "the ability of individuals to understand, find, and apply healthcare information in a way that's meaningful for them."Stan Hudson, Director of Professional Development and Training at IHA, says that their focus has evolved from empowering the individual to training organizations to support those individuals and provide the tools they need.Learn more about IHA: https://www.iha4health.org/Learn more about HealthcareGPS: https://healthcaregps.ai/Learn more about HealthLiteracyCopiloty: https://healthliteracycopilot.ai/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

CMS provides numerous avenues to implement value-based care. Dr. Farzad Mostashari, who was the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology during a critical period of EHR implementations in the U.S., co-founded Aledade 11 years ago to make value-based care feasible—or as he puts it in this interview, “make it more profitable to prevent a stroke than to treat a stroke.”Aledade now works with 2,400 practices and community health centers in 46 states and the District of Columbia. They have built their own technology to better facilitate value-based care, which includes interoperability, a prediction engine, user-friendly guided workflows and cutting-edge data analytics, all tied together to surface actionable insights at the point of care and drive/inform care coordination workflows.Learn more about Aledade: https://aledade.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Cloud imaging should feel like a clear next step, yet most teams still can’t agree on what “cloud strategy” actually means. In this interview, Monique Rasband, Vice President of Strategy & Research for Imaging and Oncology at KLAS Research, breaks down what she’s hearing directly from providers in the new KLAS Enterprise Imaging 2025 Report. We talk about why cloud adoption is speeding up, why some vendors are falling behind, and why the market is seeing one of the most active replacement cycles in years.Rasband discusses the choices CIOs are wrestling with, the pressure remote reading is putting on legacy systems, and the surprising trend of providers who thought they were “behind” but are actually moving faster than expected.What’s your cloud imaging experience been like? Are your systems aligned or still speaking different languages?🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders. Download the KLAS Enterprise Imaging 2025 Report at https://klasresearch.com/report/enterprise-imaging-2025-as-ei-continues-to-advance-which-vendors-are-improving-customer-experiences/3755 Learn more about KLAS Research at https://klasresearch.com/Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Rackspace is one of the world's most prominent hosting services, going back long before the term "cloud" was applied to these offerings. In our recent interview, Vice President of Healthcare Tim Lankes says that healthcare is the largest industry segment covered by Rackspace, and that it is the largest private cloud hoster of Epic outside of Epic itself.One of Rackspace's strengths, going back to its early days as a hosting service, is that it supports both public clouds (where clients lease temporary services on shared systems) and private clouds (where particular computers are devoted to a client). Lankes says that Rackspace helps healthcare systems decide how to cut costs and support their innovation by using the best combination of on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud systems.Learn more about Rackspace: https://rackspace.com/HealthcareHealthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Many companies promoting AI-driven medical scribe products boast that the physician doesn't have to change their behavior in order to use the product. In contrast, Skriber trains the physician how to use it well, and offers guidance as the physician goes along.The chief advice is to prime the scribe in advance of a medical session by telling it about the patient: just a few sentences about the patient's conditions and diagnoses, the purpose of the visit, and their complaints. Dr. Connor Yost, Chief Medical Officer at Skriber, claims that the quality of the note is "astronomically higher" if the physician prepares the scribe that way.Learn more about Skriber: https://skriber.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Millions of prescriptions go unfilled every year and until now, the system had no way to see them.In this interview, Dr. Lynne Nowak, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Surescripts, joins Healthcare IT Today to discuss how her team is surfacing invisible medication gaps and tackling healthcare’s biggest workflow frustrations: prior authorization and prescription abandonment. She explains how Surescripts’ new First Fill Abandonment tool and touchless prior authorization are turning real-time data into timely care—helping patients start and stay on therapy sooner.🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders.Learn more about Surescripts at https://surescripts.com/Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The vision for Optum Real is to create real-time transparency between payers and providers in the moments of care that matter. Current AI technology, according to Puneet Maheshwari, SVP, GM of Optum Real is making this possible now.Optum is a major force in health care, serving nine out of ten health care systems and four out of five payers in the U.S. Optum Real is in pilot now with a number of health care organizations. During the pilot, the platform has achieved a 25% reduction in call volume in the first two weeks with one health care provider, a 42% reduction at another, and a reduction in errors in reimbursement submissions of up to 75% with a large health system in Minnesota.Learn more about Optum Real: https://business.optum.com/en/operations-technology/optum-real.html Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

According to research by enGen, a healthtech company that serves payers and providers with automated solutions, they found that each error in member enrollment data costs an average of $172 in fixes and downstream problems. A new solution called enGen enRoll(TM), an AI-driven collaboration between enGen and IBM, was designed to address this problem. Maynd Jolly, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Client Partnership at enGen, and Matt Gierhart, Vice President of Product Management at IBM, discuss the implications and promise of the product in this interview at the recent HLTH Conference.Learn more about enGen: https://goengen.com/Learn more about IBM: https://www.ibm.com/industries/healthcareHealthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

What do you do when your EHR vendor suddenly shuts down and you only have months to find a replacement? For Sound Physicians, that deadline sparked a bold pivot - one that put APIs and collaboration at the center of their technology strategy.In this interview, Dria McCluskey, SVP of Innovation and Technology at Sound Physicians, and Venky Chellappa, VP of Sales and Business Development at CharmHealth, share how they tackled a high-stakes RFP and built a partnership that will help both organizations in the years ahead. What could have been a crisis, became a solid foundation through close collaboration, dedicated executive leaders, and a willingness to stretch in new directions. The lesson for all Health IT vendors: It’s not always about features. It’s about being easy to work with too. 🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders.Learn more about Sound Phyisicians at https://www.soundphysicians.com/ Learn more about CharmHealth at https://www.charmhealth.com/Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Everyone talks about AI fixing documentation. But the real story is whether patients and clinicians will trust it enough to use it every day.In this interview, Dr. Randy Thompson, Chief Health Analytics Officer at Billings Clinic, shares what it takes to bring Oracle Health’s AI tools into daily practice across Montana’s largest independent health system. From rethinking governance structures to gaining patient buy-in even during psychiatric visits. Thompson explains why adoption depends on building confidence first. Along the way, he also reveals an unexpected outcome: providers found the AI agent often produced better notes than they would have written on their own.How is your organization handling patient consent and governance for AI tools? Drop your thoughts in the comments.🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders.Learn more about Billings Clinic at https://www.billingsclinic.com/Learn more about Oracle Health at https://www.oracle.com/industries/healthcare/Find more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Few patients take a paper prescription down to the local pharmacy any more. The modern era of prescribing is shockingly complex and getting more so, according to Dr. Colin Banas, Chief Medical Officer, and Drew Hunsinger, Head of Growth, at DrFirst.Banas says that the goal at DrFirst, a 25-year-old company, has always been to provide an end-to-end medication journey: for patients, providers, payers, and pharmacies. Hunsinger points out that the prescribing workflow involves payers, PBMs, and even drug companies.Plus, they share how many of the EHR companies they work with are happy to offload all these medication management complexities to DrFirst so that as EHR product managers, they can focus on other EHR innovations. Not to mention EHR vendors can benefit from the innovations that DrFirst continues to implement since their major focus is medication management.Learn more about DrFirst: https://drfirst.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

emtelligent offers a variety of AI-based services in health care. In a recent interview at the HLTH conference with Tim O’Connell, MD, Co-Founder and CEO of emtelligent, explains how they ensure a good ROI, keep deployments affordable, and make each pilot a success.The three services offered by emtelligent are:* Medical Document AI: ingests documents such as faxes, splits them into separate documents, and categorizes them.* Medical language engine: interprets and structures the content* Chart review: offers a graphical user interface to make reviews more accurate and efficient for prior authorization, legal reviews, etc.Learn more about emtelligent: https://emtelligent.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/