Digital Health Leaders Podcast

Could more AI ultimately create a more human healthcare experience? Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, explores that paradox with Donald Pollard, Field Chief Technology Officer at SHI International, examining what must happen for AI-driven efficiency to translate into meaningful time, attention, and connection for clinicians and patients.Their conversation looks beyond visible AI applications to the infrastructure, architecture, and trust required to scale intelligence responsibly. From deciding where human judgment must remain essential to defining what AI success should actually give back to healthcare, Donald offers a practical perspective on building technology around better experiences, not simply greater capability.Key Takeaways:What must change operationally for AI-generated efficiency to create more meaningful time for care.How leaders can determine when AI should act independently, recommend an action, or support human judgment.Where less-visible AI investments can deliver significant value across infrastructure, data, security, and operations.Which dimensions of trust leaders should evaluate before introducing AI into patient and clinician experiences.Why AI success should be measured by what improves for patients, clinicians, and staff, not adoption or productivity alone.

Moving AI from experimentation into day-to-day operations requires more than a successful use case. In this episode, CHIME President and CEO Russ Branzell speaks with Jiby Varghese, Senior Vice President of Data and AI at Rackspace Technology, about what healthcare organizations need to put enterprise AI to work across complex, highly regulated environments.Drawing on his experience leading data and AI inside a health system, Jiby examines the foundations that become critical as AI moves into production, from data readiness and architecture to governance and organizational ownership. The conversation also explores how leaders can preserve choice and control as their AI environments evolve, establish clearer accountability across technology and operational teams, and think more broadly about the value AI can return to the organization.Key Takeaways:What changes when healthcare AI moves from experimentation into enterprise-scale operations.How data readiness, ownership, and operating models can shape what organizations are realistically able to achieve with AI.Which architectural and governance decisions can give healthcare organizations the flexibility and control to advance enterprise AI responsibly.How leaders can establish ownership and accountability when AI becomes part of everyday clinical and operational workflows.Why the value of AI should account for not only productivity, efficiency, and financial return, but what becomes possible when people have meaningful time returned to their work.

Clinical AI is moving beyond capturing clinical conversations to ensuring clinicians can make sense of and utilize the information surrounding it. In this episode, Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, is joined by Dr. Nadim Ilbawi, Vice President of Clinical Success & Strategy at Abridge, to explore what this evolution means for clinicians, patients, and the health systems implementing these capabilities at scale.From surfacing relevant clinical context at the point of care to evaluating accuracy, performance, and measurable impact, the conversation examines what leaders should consider as AI becomes more deeply integrated into clinical workflows. Dr. Ilbawi also explores how EHR integration, data quality, organizational readiness, and governance can shape whether clinical AI delivers meaningful value across an enterprise.Key Takeaways:What healthcare leaders should evaluate as AI takes on a more consequential role in clinical workflows.Which integration, data quality, workflow, and organizational factors can determine whether clinical AI scales effectively across a health system.How leaders can measure clinical AI’s impact across clinician experience, patient experience, quality, and financial outcomes.Which priorities can help health systems build a clinical AI strategy that creates meaningful, sustainable value.

Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, is joined by Jim Stevens, Senior Director of Data Center and Hybrid/Multicloud Advanced Technology Solutions at Connection, to explore how leaders can build technology environments that remain resilient, adaptable, and ready for what comes next.From determining where critical workloads belong to managing the growing complexity of hybrid and multicloud environments, the conversation examines the tradeoffs behind modern infrastructure strategy. Jim also explores how decisions around compute, storage, networking, data, and architecture can shape a health system’s ability to scale AI without overbuilding for a future that is still taking shape.Key Takeaways:Why “cloud-first” may no longer be sufficient for determining where healthcare workloads belong.How leaders can evaluate the performance, security, integration, and economic consequences of workload placement.Which dependencies health systems should understand before disruption tests the resilience of their infrastructure.How to determine when hybrid and multicloud flexibility creates strategic value versus unnecessary complexity.

Scale can give healthcare organizations access to greater technology, talent, and capability, but only if growth preserves the specialized knowledge that makes those resources valuable. Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, welcomes Venky Ananth, Head of US Healthcare at Infosys, for a conversation on balancing global scale with the realities of individual health systems.Together, they explore what successful technology partnerships should deliver, how leaders can modernize critical environments without disrupting daily operations, and where standardization must give way to provider-specific context. Key Takeaways:How health systems can gain the advantages of scale without sacrificing healthcare expertise, responsiveness, and institutional knowledge.Which areas of technology operations lend themselves to standardization and which decisions should remain close to individual health systems.How leaders can balance modernization with the reliability of critical systems and day-to-day operations.What disciplined sequencing looks like when modernization and operational demands compete for the same resources.How CIOs can structure strategic technology partnerships around clear accountability, measurable performance, and long-term value.

What makes healthcare technology truly work is rarely captured on a feature list. Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, joins Scott Sbihli, Chief Product Officer at symplr, to examine how leaders can look beyond functionality to design technology around the realities of healthcare’s increasingly connected environment.From diagnosing why technology investments underperform to connecting workflows across organizational boundaries, they explore what creates meaningful product value in practice. Scott also shares his perspective on how AI is changing the way healthcare technology itself is built, and what leaders must consider as software gains greater autonomy in how it interprets intent and takes action.Key Takeaways:Why successful healthcare technology depends on more than features, functionality, and adoption.How leaders can determine whether an underperforming investment needs optimization, integration, process redesign, or replacement.Where connected workflows can create greater value than adding capabilities to individual applications.How AI is reshaping healthcare software development, from design and coding to testing and release.What product and digital health leaders must consider as agentic AI gains greater discretion across healthcare experiences.

In this episode, Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, and Sundar Subramanian, CEO of Zyter, examine why the next competitive advantage may lie not in accessing more AI, but in orchestrating technology, people, and processes around the work that matters.Their conversation moves beyond individual use cases to explore workflow redesign, cross-functional accountability, human oversight, and the foundations required to scale AI-enabled execution. They also consider how leaders can measure whether orchestration is actually improving clinical, operational, financial, and workforce outcomes rather than simply adding another layer of technology.Key Takeaways:What separates AI experimentation from a repeatable capability to deliver enterprise value.Why meaningful AI adoption may require redesigning workflows, not simply automating existing steps.How leaders can establish accountability when AI-enabled work crosses organizational and functional boundaries.Where human judgment and oversight must remain explicit as AI coordinates increasingly complex work.Which outcomes executives should measure when deciding whether an AI investment is ready to scale.

Complexity may be inherent to healthcare, but that doesn’t mean leaders have to accept it. Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, welcomes Venkat Kavarthapu, CEO of symplr, for a conversation about what it takes to make simplicity a strategic advantage across modern healthcare organizations.From listening more closely to the people experiencing operational challenges to using AI and data to rethink how technology is built and delivered, Venkat explores how leaders can reduce friction without sacrificing capability. He also shares perspectives on stepping into the CEO role, building trust across teams, and ensuring faster innovation ultimately translates into better experiences and outcomes for healthcare organizations, clinicians, and patients.Key Takeaways:Where AI and data-driven innovation can reduce complexity for healthcare organizations and their workforces.How technology leaders can use AI to accelerate development while keeping customer value and outcomes at the center.Why meaningful innovation begins with listening to the people experiencing healthcare’s most persistent pain points.How trust, culture, and decisive leadership enable sustained performance through growth and change.

Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, welcomes Christopher Logan, Healthcare CISO at Zscaler, to explore what it takes to build security architectures that protect care delivery when systems, users, data, vendors, and AI increasingly operate beyond traditional boundaries. From uncovering systemic risks that conventional assessments may miss to strengthening operational resilience and securing AI at the architectural layer, they examine how healthcare leaders can rethink Zero Trust, access, and cyber preparedness without creating new barriers to clinical care.Key Takeaways:What distinguishes cybersecurity investment from true operational resilience when critical systems or connections fail.How Zero Trust must evolve as identity, workloads, data, devices, and third parties move beyond the traditional network perimeter.How security leaders can strengthen segmentation and access controls without introducing unacceptable clinical friction.How security leaders can strengthen segmentation and access controls without introducing unacceptable clinical friction.

Russ Branzell, President and CEO of CHIME, sits down with Fran Rosch, President and CEO of Imprivata, to examine how agentic AI challenges long-standing assumptions about identity, access, authority, and accountability and what happens to healthcare identity and access management when the user is no longer human. As AI agents gain the ability to reason, delegate, and act across systems, traditional security controls may no longer be enough. Their conversation explores what healthcare leaders must reconsider about identity lineage, Zero Trust, human oversight, and governance as organizations prepare to secure a growing population of autonomous digital agents.Key Takeaways:Which assumptions behind traditional identity governance are challenged when AI agents can reason and act independently.How organizations can preserve identity lineage and accountability as AI agents delegate work across systems.How Zero Trust and authorization models may need to evolve for dynamic, agentic environments.Why governing an agent's access may be fundamentally different from governing its intent and actions.Where human authority should remain nondelegable as healthcare increasingly operates at machine speed.