Strategic credibility is what turns a strong health tech product into a clear yes for buyers, investors, and health systems.

In this episode, Sabrina Runbeck, a healthcare media strategist, explores why innovative founders often remain invisible and how to become an obvious choice in a crowded market. She explains how many leaders mistake credentials for credibility, getting stuck in a “hyper-achiever” loop of collecting titles instead of demonstrating real market impact. Sabrina also highlights common startup gaps, including weak go-to-market focus, unclear positioning, and teams strong in science and tech but light on business execution.

She introduces an inside-out model for visibility and growth that begins with product strength, then builds human capital and culture, followed by social capital and consistent messaging. This includes alignment across decks, LinkedIn, websites, and outreach, with a focus on signals over noise, because impressions only matter if they lead to conversations and conversions. The discussion also addresses additional barriers faced by women founders and founders of color, emphasizing self-awareness, authentic leadership, and choosing the right arenas for visibility.

Sabrina shares how initiatives like the Health Tech Impact Awards provide third-party validation, coaching, and structured visibility that help accelerate trust. She closes with practical steps founders can take now, such as running an AI reputation check and prioritizing sellability, sustainability, and scalability as core growth drivers.

Tune in and learn how to build credibility that gets you chosen!

Resources

• Connect with and follow Sabrina Runbeck on LinkedIn.

• Follow PulsePoint Path on LinkedIn and explore their website!

• Submit your Health Tech Impact Awards nomination here!

AI in healthcare has moved past the hype, and leaders are now demanding real value, accountability, and global perspective.

In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Jeffery Heenan-Jalil, CEO of hunterAI, talks about the global evolution of AI analytics in healthcare and what it takes to move from experimentation to real impact. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience leading analytics and technology initiatives across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America, Jeffery explains why healthcare organizations are now at a maturity inflection point. He emphasizes the shift from AI hype and “AI-washing” to disciplined, ROI-driven adoption. The conversation highlights why responsible, scalable analytics will define the next phase of healthcare transformation.

Jeffery shares his professional journey from leading billion-dollar global teams at companies like Wipro, Cognizant, Unisys, and EDS to becoming a healthcare AI entrepreneur. His experience working directly within healthcare delivery systems, including Southern Cross Healthcare in New Zealand, shaped his practical view of technology’s role in real-world operations. Rather than focusing solely on innovation, he stresses the importance of execution, governance, and alignment with clinical and administrative realities. This background informs hunterAI’s mission to deliver analytics that healthcare leaders can trust and operationalize.

The discussion also explores how AI is gaining early traction in administrative areas such as prior authorization, claims processing, and clinical documentation, where friction reduction is delivering measurable wins. Jeffery and host Christopher Kunney discuss why these use cases are building confidence for broader clinical adoption. They examine the global differences in AI readiness and regulation, underscoring why lessons from international health systems matter. Ultimately, the episode reinforces that AI’s future in healthcare depends on thoughtful deployment, transparency, and outcomes that genuinely improve performance and care.

Tune in to hear how global experience, disciplined execution, and responsible analytics are shaping the next chapter of healthcare AI!

Resources

• Connect with Jeffery Heenan-Jalil on LinkedIn here or reach out to him via email.

• Follow hunterAI on LinkedIn here and visit their website here.

• Check out his podcast as well as his company’s podcast, The Health Intelligence Pitch

Dementia is both a growing national crisis and a profound health equity issue, with African Americans facing nearly double the risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to white Americans.

In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Chuck Brown, founder of Expose Dementia, shares how his personal journey caring for his aunt with dementia led him to confront his own lack of awareness and ultimately to found Expose Dementia, an organization that uses the arts, media, and storytelling to educate, reduce stigma, and spark dialogue, especially within the African American community. Through projects like the documentary Remember Me: Dementia in the African American Community, Expose Dementia addresses mistrust in healthcare, the need for inclusive research, and the power of representation.

Chuck explains how Expose Dementia leverages creative expression, film, books, visual arts, and live experiences to humanize dementia, uplift caregivers’ voices, and change the narrative around the disease, while also identifying structural gaps in care. While the organization centers African American experiences, Chuck emphasizes the importance of cross-community collaboration, exemplified by their annual conference, which brings diverse groups together through a shared commitment to brain health and the arts. He also explores the emerging role of technology and AI in education, advocacy, and awareness, and his belief in amplifying innovative tools as they arise.

Cuck offers guidance for caregivers and individuals concerned about brain health, stressing honesty, early action, and self-care. He highlights the “six pillars of brain health”: mental stimulation, exercise, diet, sleep, stress reduction, and social connection, and underscores that prioritizing quality of life and personal well-being is essential for sustaining both caregivers and communities.

Tune in for a powerful conversation with Chuck Brown on how storytelling, art, and community can change the way we understand dementia and care for one another!

Resources

• Connect with Chuck Brown on LinkedIn here.

• Visit the Expose Dementia website here.

Rare diseases like renal medullary carcinoma demand earlier awareness, stronger advocacy, and faster specialist-driven care because delays can be deadly.

In this episode, Tanisha Washington, the mother of Jelani Washington and a family advocate, shares her son’s sudden diagnosis and passing from renal medullary carcinoma (RMC), a rare and highly aggressive kidney cancer strongly linked to sickle cell trait. She recounts his first symptoms, abdominal pain and severe blood in the urine, and how imaging revealed a kidney mass that set off a rapid and overwhelming medical journey.

Tanisha describes the urgency of Jelani’s treatment, which included kidney removal and intensive chemotherapy, and reflects on how little clinical familiarity exists with RMC. She highlights the critical role played by MD Anderson specialists and explains how limited research, scarce awareness, and delayed recognition worsen outcomes, particularly in Black communities.

She also discusses warning signs families may dismiss, the importance of second opinions and self-advocacy, and the need for greater education about sickle cell trait–related risks. The episode closes with the family’s creation of the Jelani Washington Seeds of Hope Foundation, which offers grief support and promotes healing initiatives centered on hope, remembrance, and growth.

Tune in and learn how awareness, early detection, and insistence on care can save lives.

Resources

• Connect with Tanisha Washington on LinkedIn here.

• Visit the Jelani Washington Seeds of Hope Foundation website.

• Learn more about Jelani’s story in the news here.

• Watch Jelani’s testimony video here.

AI is revolutionizing healthcare, but it’s also giving cybercriminals unprecedented speed, scale, and precision.

In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Ali Pabrai, Chief Executive Officer at ecfirst, explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing cybersecurity risk management in healthcare. While AI is accelerating innovation in diagnostics, workflows, and operations, it is also expanding attack surfaces through new data flows, third-party tools, and global supply chains. Despite updated guidance from HHS, NIST, and HIPAA-aligned frameworks, the healthcare sector remains under intense pressure from threats. Ransomware attacks and large-scale breaches continue to disrupt clinical operations and expose patient data, underscoring the stakes for healthcare organizations.

Ali stresses that cybersecurity can no longer be treated as a compliance checkbox but must be approached as an enterprise-wide resilience strategy. Attackers are using AI to launch faster, more personalized, and more targeted attacks, exploiting vulnerabilities in devices, cloud systems, and human behavior. At the same time, healthcare organizations face growing financial exposure through class-action lawsuits, regulatory settlements, and long-term corrective action plans. Persistent gaps in configuration management, patching, and workforce awareness leave many organizations vulnerable, despite lessons learned from prior breaches.

The conversation underscores the importance of robust AI governance, grounded in HIPAA security programs, NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, state-level AI mandates, and integrated standards, such as HITRUST. Ali emphasizes the importance of conducting AI-focused risk assessments, improving ransomware readiness, and establishing clear AI risk management policies. He also underscores the importance of building AI literacy across the workforce to reduce social engineering and insider risk. Ultimately, the discussion frames AI as both a threat and an opportunity, with resilience depending on leadership, knowledge, and proactive governance.

Tune in to hear how healthcare leaders can turn AI from a growing liability into a powerful tool for resilience and trust!

Resources

• Connect with Ali Pabrai on LinkedIn here.

• Follow ecfirst on LinkedIn here and visit their website here.

• Check out the ecfirst AICRP program here!

• Read the NIST AI Risk Management Framework here!

Healthcare startups don’t fail because their tech isn’t cool, they fail because they don’t understand how healthcare actually buys, governs, and deploys change.

In this episode, Sohail Azeem, principal consultant at South Star Consulting, discusses his path from Texas Children’s Hospital operations and NICU leadership to COO/CEO roles, then into entrepreneurship supporting telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and chronic care programs. He explains the most common startup pitfall he sees: obsessing over fundraising before building a real business development engine, a credible pipeline, and a revenue trajectory that meets investor expectations.

Tom Leary, SVP of Government Affairs at HIMSS, breaks down the policy landscape shaping digital health. He discusses the debate around the “One Big Beautiful Act,” concerns about Medicaid impacts, and a major rural health transformation push that states are responding to—often by leveraging digital health.

Grant McGaugh, CEO of Five Star BDM, shares how building an authentic personal brand can become a growth engine. He explains why “search and social” now determine credibility, how podcasting became his platform for social selling, and why your online narrative must match your real skills to avoid an authenticity gap.

Lou Mendez, president of the South Florida HIMSS chapter, outlines the chapter’s “three C’s” focus: community, collaboration, and communication; and the conference theme of “Bold Moves.” He highlights how CEOs are now confidently bringing AI strategy to their boards, with repeated emphasis on efficiency, accuracy, and especially patient experience.

Tune in and learn how to build health tech growth that survives the realities of healthcare!

Resources

• Connect with Sohail Azeem on LinkedIn here.

• Visit South Star Consulting’s website here.

• Follow and connect with Tom Leary on LinkedIn.

• Email Tom directly here.

• To learn more about HIMSS’ policies, email them here or visit their website here.

• Connect with Grant McGaugh on LinkedIn.

• Explore 5 Star BDM’s website.

• Listen to the Follow the Brand podcast here.

• Follow and connect with Lucianil Mendez on LinkedIn.

• Find out more about the HIMSS South Florida Chapter on LinkedIn and their website.

AI, interoperability, and real-world readiness are converging to define the next era of healthcare IT.

In this episode, Shaman Akhtar, Mike Costa, and Tom Stafford break down the challenges and opportunities shaping healthcare IT, as well as the growing need for true downtime resilience.

Shaman Akhtar, senior leader at ELLKAY, discusses how interoperability remains a “data plumbing” problem, warning that even with HL7 and FHIR, vendors still “speak different dialects,” creating ongoing challenges in exchanging patient information and even between emerging AI tools and agents.

Next, Mike Costa, Client Relationship Executive at Impact Advisors, reflects on the journey from EHR implementation to true optimization, arguing that many organizations have barely unlocked the value of their systems and that AI and ambient technologies could finally help harvest that potential while addressing persistent adoption and operational challenges.

Finally, Tom Stafford, Healthcare Strategist at CDW and a recovering CIO, explains how CDW evolved from a logistics company into a turnkey healthcare partner, helping systems with security, cloud, and, especially, downtime resilience so they can safely operate when core systems fail.

Together, they highlight common themes from the South Florida HIMSS Integrate Conference, ranging from regulatory and political pressures to the promise of AI, demonstrating that leaders across payers, providers, and vendors are grappling with similar issues.

Tune in and learn how interoperability, optimization, and resilience are reshaping healthcare’s digital future!

Resources

• Connect with Shaman Akhtar on LinkedIn.
• Follow ELLKAY on LinkedIn here and explore their website.
• Connect with and follow Mike Costa on LinkedIn.
• Learn more about Impact Advisors on LinkedIn and visit their website.
• Email Mike directly here.
• Follow and connect with Tom Stafford on LinkedIn.
• Discover more about CDW•G on LinkedIn and their website.
• Email Tom directly here.

What if the key to curing today’s most complex diseases has been hiding in plain sight inside electronic health records all along?

In this episode of Straight Out of Health IT, Vish Srivastava, CEO of Century Health, explores how artificial intelligence can unlock the vast potential of real-world healthcare data that has long been trapped inside electronic health records. He explains why traditional clinical trials, although essential, often fail to accurately reflect how treatments perform across diverse, real-world patient populations, and how this gap hinders innovation. Drawing from both his professional journey and the personal experience of losing his grandfather to Alzheimer’s, Vish shares what motivates his mission to better understand disease progression and accelerate breakthrough treatments.

Vish breaks down what real-world data actually is, why more than 80% of it remains unstructured, and how fragmented EHR systems have made research slow, expensive, and inaccessible. He describes how observational studies and patient registries can take years and cost millions due to manual chart abstraction, and how carefully validated AI can now automate this process, turning clinical notes, PDFs, and imaging data into high-quality research-ready insights. The conversation also highlights how this approach can broaden research beyond historically narrow clinical trial populations.

Ultimately, the episode addresses the crucial issues of trust, bias, and patient privacy. Vish discusses how AI can either perpetuate or correct historical biases in healthcare data, why transparency and published validation are essential, and how strict de-identification and governance frameworks protect patient privacy. Together, these advances point toward a future where real-world data fuels faster, more inclusive, and more impactful medical research.

Tune in to hear how AI is reshaping clinical research and bringing us closer to treatments that truly work for real patients in the real world!

Resources

• Connect with Vish Srivastava on LinkedIn here.

• Follow Century Health on LinkedIn here and visit their website here.