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/

One of the biggest challenges that healthcare faces with heart failure patients is the high number of hospital readmissions that occur. These readmissions are expensive to healthcare organizations, a bad experience for patients, and many of them are completely avoidable. This is according to Spencer H. Kubo, MD, Chief Medical Officer at CareCognitics and Shahid Shah, Member, Board of Directors at CareCognitcs who sat down to talk with me about their innovative VIP reward solution that’s help heart failure patients avoid being readmitted to the hospital.Learn more about CareCognitics: https://carecognitics.com/Health IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/Learn more about VIP Care: https://www.vipcarehealth.com/

If you’ve ever felt like “one big AI” can’t possibly handle the complexity of healthcare, you’re not alone. Clinical work moves in too many directions for a single model to reliably keep up.In this interview, Jacob Sims, Chief Technology Officer at NextGen Healthcare, explains why they have taken the approach of coordinated teams of specialized AI agents and what that means for clinicians, IT teams, and product leaders. Sims breaks down the thinking behind Nia™, how fairness shapes their AI design, and why everyday experimentation drives more progress than any formal training program. He also shares real examples like a 40 percent reduction in case resolution time thanks to AI-assisted log analysis 🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders.Learn more about NextGen Healthcare at https://www.nextgen.comFind more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

The common, classic fax is a fascinating case study in the difficulties of automation. Watch this video as Jess Czelusniak, Associate Vice President of Applications and CNIO at VHC Health, and Tim Hoskins, Vice President of Solutions Architecture at Vyne Medical, discuss the challenges of classifying and sorting incoming fax documents. Through machine learning, automation, and staff training, they reduced the process from 10-15 minutes (described in a 29-page document) to less than 3 minutes per fax, and are reducing the burden even further.Learn more about VHC Health: https://www.vhchealth.org/Learn more about Vyne Medical: https://vynemedical.com/Healthcare IT Today: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Every clinic wants a simple recipe for digital health adoption. The problem is that most recipes fall apart the moment real-world workflows enter the picture.In this conversation, Dr. Chandi Chandrasena, Chief Medical Officer at OntarioMD, lays out why the province is shifting toward a flexible digital health toolkit instead of a rigid playbook. She explains why “technology is an enabler to the problems you have,” why standardization still matters, and why uniformity misses the mark.She also digs into AI scribes, the rise of AI inbox tools, how bandwidth gaps drive inequity, and why digital literacy needs to start long before medical school.What do you think clinics need most right now: structure, flexibility, or better guardrails? Drop your thoughts in the comments.🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with Health IT leaders.Learn more about OntarioMD at https://www.ontariomd.caFind more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

As those who read Healthcare IT Today regularly know, we attend a lot of healthcare IT conferences throughout the year. One of the newest conferences we attend that has grown to be one of the most influential is the ViVE conference that is co-organized by HLTH and CHIME. As ViVE is just around the corner, we thought it would be valuable for healthcare IT leaders that are attending or still considering whether they should attend to get a preview of the event from the organizers.In our interview below, we sat down with Alifya Parekh, Senior Content Manager and Leah Callahan, Senior Content Manager at HLTH. We kick off our discussion by asking them what the business case is for a CIO or healthcare IT leader at a hospital or health sysetm to attend ViVE 2026 happening Feb 22-25, 2026 in LA.Learn more about ViVE: https://hlth.com/events/vive/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Healthcare IT leaders are finding innovative ways to address one of medicine’s challenges: the exponential growth of clinical knowledge that physicians must navigate daily. In our recent interview, we hear from Julia Vu, Pharm.D., Vice President, GTM North America at Elsevier and Colin Banas, MD, MHA, Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst about their partnership to integrate AI-powered clinical decision support directly into e-prescribing workflows.Both leaders bring extensive backgrounds in clinical informatics, having worked through the Meaningful Use era and witnessed firsthand the challenges of fragmented systems and information overload. Their collaboration addresses a critical gap: providing physicians with trusted, evidence-based content at the moment they need it, without adding to alert fatigue.Learn more about ELSEVIER: https://www.elsevier.com/Learn more about DrFirst: https://drfirst.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Ben Beadle-Ryby, Senior Vice President and Co-founder at AKASA, says that a typical patient record contains 50,000 words spread across 59 clinical documents. Trying to code a single patient's conditions is comparable to reading The Great Gatsby and extracting key facts.Historically, he says, organizations "have thrown armies of people at the problem." Not only is that unfeasible; these people are not as accurate they need to be. Due to this and other reasons, claim denials have increased from 9.8% in 2019 to 12.7% now. Other revenue cycle measures have also gone in the wrong direction: for instance, cost to collect has gone from 2.7% in 2019 to 3.7% today.This video at the AHIMA Annual Conference interviews Beadle-Ryby along with two clients: Nick Judd, Senior Director, Revenue Cycle and Health Information Management at Cleveland Clinic, and Jennifer Nicholson, Assistant Vice President, Revenue Cycle and Health Information Management at Duke University Health System. They talk about leveraging generative AI solutions for coding and the benefits of leveraging this technology.Learn more about Cleveland Clinic: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/Learn more about Duke University Health System: https://www.dukehealth.org/Learn more about Akasa: https://akasa.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Just as Internet providers and transportation companies often struggle with the "last mile" of reaching the customer at the end of the chain, hospitals are too often blind to what's happening in the patient's room. This problem drives the recent acquisition of eVideon, smart room solution provider, by TigerConnect, a unified communication platform. In this video we hear about the goals of the combined companies from Sean O’Neal, CEO of TigerConnect, and Jeff Fallon, General Manager of eVideon, a TigerConnect Company.Learn more about TigerConnect: https://tigerconnect.com/Learn more about eVideon: https://www.evideon.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

If you’ve ever watched a clinician dig through an EHR for a single piece of information, you know the look. The pause. The sigh. The slow click-through of screens that feel like they were designed for someone else.This conversation starts with the moment that broke that pattern.In this interview, Dr. Max Solano, hospitalist and clinical informatics advisor at Ascension, explains how a workflow burden he had simply accepted for years disappeared the moment Wellsheet went live. He shares what it meant to see an echocardiogram that once required 12 clicks appear instantly on the screen.Joining him is Craig Limoli, CEO and Co-Founder of Wellsheet, who talks about clinician-led design, rapid customization, and what it takes to gain the trust of an entire care team. You’ll hear real examples of AI-driven summarization, collaborative workflows, and what happens when a vendor actually responds to feedback the next day.What “12-click problem” are your clinicians living with right now? Drop your thoughts below.🔔 Subscribe for more great interviews with health IT leaders.Learn more about Wellsheet at https://www.wellsheet.comFind more great health IT content at https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Shawn Fichter, CEO and Head of Product at Legacy Data Access, believes that archived clinical, financial, and operational data represents an untapped resource for health systems. However, access to legacy data must be done in a way that doesn’t increase the risk of a breach. The balance between these needs – along with the financial and operational benefits of archiving legacy applications – is at the core of our discussion with Fichter at the AHIMA conference.Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT TodayHealthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/

Hospitals and clinics in some areas see enormous numbers of people who don't speak the local language well. While human interpreters have been common in exam rooms during patient care, it turns out that interpretation is beneficial throughout many areas of healthcare that previously haven't had easy access to interpretation. That's the problem Pocketalk addresses with technology that provides secure language translation throughout a healthcare organization.Pocketalk is differentiated from consumer translation services by prioritizing security and providing technology that’s optimized for healthcare, which is both HIPAA and GDPR compliant. By default, Pocketalk has translation history turned off, preventing conversations from being stored and guaranteeing privacy. For hospital systems that require reporting for compliance, transcripts can be saved in the history settings. However, transcripts aren’t displayed on the home screen, which prevents visitors from reviewing what has been said to previous patients. Transcripts can also be deleted and the device can be set to automatically delete conversations after a specified amount of time.Pocketalk offers an accurate and secure machine translation service in over 92 languages. Jeff Burrow, Pocketalk's National Healthcare Director, says that in addition to medical discussions (for which it offers a large medical terminology directory), clinical sites use it for patient transport, wayfinding, parking lots, gift shops, food services, environmental services, and more. The device takes only about 10 minutes or less to learn and little to no formal training required, making deployment efficient and easy.Learn more about Pocketalk: https://pocketalk.com/Learn more about Augusta Health: https://www.augustahealth.com/Healthcare IT Community: https://www.healthcareittoday.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/