Newsday: Epic Faces Lawsuits and the AI Proving Ground with This Week Health

Drex explores a fundamental shift in AI: agents that don't wait for prompts, persist indefinitely, and now learn from each other through social platforms. Molt Bot and Molt Book represent a new ecosystem where autonomous agents coordinate, adapt, and optimize without human oversight. This isn't about sentient AI—it's about delegation without governance. For healthcare leaders, the urgent question isn't whether this matters, but whether you know which agents are already operating in your environment. The shift from "human in the loop" to "human on the loop" is already happening.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer 

February 2, 2026: Are health systems being sidelined from healthcare's innovation revolution? Jason Rose, CEO of Clearsense, joins This Week Health fresh from the J.P. Morgan Conference to challenge the narrative that providers are absent from innovation discussions. Jason reveals what really happened inside JPM's exclusive health system presentations, from CEOs prioritizing AI transformation to CFOs rising as the new power players driving technology strategy. The conversation explores why app rationalization remains the unglamorous financial lever that unlocks innovation budgets, and why simplification might be healthcare's most underrated competitive advantage in 2026.Golf Tournament Registration:  https://carahevents.carahsoft.com/Event/Details/686801-ThisWeekHealthKey Points:02:20 JPM Conference Insights07:07 CEO and CFO Perspectives13:54 Application Rationalization Challenges22:40 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

On Data Privacy Day, Drexon challenges healthcare leaders to move beyond compliance checkboxes and recognize privacy as a core component of "do no harm." As patient data flows through EHRs, cloud platforms, and AI systems, the responsibility to protect that trust doesn't live in policies—it lives with leadership. When data is over-collected or loosely governed, patients start holding back, and the critical trust between medical teams and patients begins to fracture. This year, data privacy should be about ownership: who decides what data we truly need, and who's willing to say no even when technology makes it easy?Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer 

January 27, 2026: Jack Kufahl, CISO at Michigan Medicine, and Gregory Garneau, System VP and CISO at Hospital Sisters Health System, join Drex for an unfiltered conversation about building cybersecurity programs that outlast their founders. From hiring curious minds over credentialed experts to ditching traditional vulnerability management for threat-driven exposure strategies, these battle-tested CISOs reveal what actually works in healthcare security. They challenge conventional wisdom on staffing models, vendor relationships, and the real cost of forcing extraordinary people into ordinary roles. If you're tired of the same workforce shortage statistics and ready for actionable strategies, this conversation delivers.Key Points:05:09 Creating a World-Class Cybersecurity Team19:50 Disruptive Startups in Cybersecurity20:51 Importance of Vendor Partnerships22:48 Training and Career Development27:18 Leadership and Management InsightsGolf Tournament Registration:  https://carahevents.carahsoft.com/Event/Details/686801-ThisWeekHealthX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

January 26, 2026: Fresh from J.P. Morgan 2026, the This Week Health team joins Zahid Rathore, Senior Partner at Chartis, to dissect healthcare's new reality. With Epic and Microsoft topping CFO spend lists and unpredictability replacing planning cycles, one thing is clear: vendors must prove bankable ROI immediately or lose the deal. The conversation explores how healthcare leaders are protecting the core while navigating AI agents, third-party risks, and the compression of innovation timelines from three-year returns to prove-it-tomorrow expectations.Key Points:02:44 Hotel Experience and Healthcare Lessons04:13 JP Morgan Conference Highlights16:35 Operational Challenges in Healthcare22:11 Security Concerns and Future Outlook

In a stunning betrayal of trust, two cybersecurity professionals—an incident response manager and a ransomware negotiator—pled guilty to operating as affiliates of the AlphaV/BlackCat ransomware gang. Between May and November 2023, they attacked five U.S. companies, including healthcare organizations, while simultaneously working in roles designed to help ransomware victims recover. The FBI's seizure of the gang's infrastructure exposed chat logs and payment records that led to their arrests. Both face up to 20 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for March 12th. This case highlights the critical importance of vetting third-party incident response providers and understanding insider threats in cybersecurity.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

January 19, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson unpack OpenAI's two major healthcare announcements that could fundamentally reshape how patients interact with their health data—and how health systems govern AI. ChatGPT Health promises to finally deliver on the personal health record dream, letting patients aggregate everything from Apple Health to medical records in one secure place. Meanwhile, ChatGPT for Healthcare gives CIOs the governed sandbox they've been desperate for. Hear why patient data monetization, clinical trial recruitment, and the shift from provider liability to patient empowerment could make this time actually different.Golf Tournament Registration:  https://carahevents.carahsoft.com/Event/Details/686801-ThisWeekHealthKey Points:05:00 ChatGPT Health Announcement17:40 Personalized GPT and Analytics in Healthcare22:05 Wearable Health Tech and Personal Health Records25:35 Community Events and LinkedIn Series

As healthcare organizations deploy AI agents across clinical, business, and research operations, we're creating a new class of insider threat—one that works 24/7, follows instructions perfectly, and moves at machine speed. Drexel explores why AI agents with tool access become de facto insiders and why we need clear boundaries, tight access controls, and human approval workflows before these powerful assistants cause unintended damage. The key insight: the moment an AI agent gets tools, it becomes an insider that must be governed like one.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer 

January 12, 2026: Epic is defending three simultaneous lawsuits while CIOs grapple with vendors imposing staggering price increases—some as high as 600%. Bill, Sarah, and Drex tackle the uncomfortable truth about AI leadership: it's time to figure it out or risk getting left behind. They explore why AI with context is transformative while AI without it looks foolish, discuss whether board members know how to hire AI-savvy CIOs, and predict a major shift in how healthcare organizations approach their EHR relationships. Could we see a return to building custom solutions powered by modern AI?Key Points:02:44 Predictions for 202614:18 Staffing and Workforce Implications21:10 Epic's Legal TroublesX: This Week HealthLinkedIn: This Week HealthDonate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

Drex breaks down ISC2's 2025 cybersecurity workforce study and explains why healthcare's security staffing problem isn't about finding more people—it's about broken operating models and unrealistic expectations. He covers the critical skills gap in translating cyber risk to business risk, the burnout driving away mid-career talent, and why third-party risk management has become more complex than ever. Plus, practical solutions healthcare CISOs are using: growing security teams internally by hiring from other departments and strategically leveraging managed services. The workforce gap won't be fixed by traditional hiring—it requires designing better systems and building resilience instead of just buying more tools.Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid X: This Week Health LinkedIn: This Week Health Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer