The 229 Podcast

April 29, 2026: Bill Russell sits down with Jim Jacobs, President and CEO of MediQuant, to confront one of healthcare's most expensive and underappreciated problems: runaway application complexity. Jim makes the case that software rationalization isn't an IT to-do list item; it's a board-level imperative. With health systems carrying $60 million in unwanted software spend and cyber risks piling up in legacy systems that no one is maintaining, the urgency has never been higher. And with AI demanding clean, accessible data, the cost of delay is about to get a lot steeper.
Key Points:
03:01 Rationalization Playbook
07:14 Simplicity Security Resilience
11:02 Headless Software and Wrap Up

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April 28, 2026: Female rivalry in the workplace is more than interpersonal drama — it's a culture problem with real consequences for teams, retention, and patient care. Dr. Amber Tichenor, organizational psychologist and author of “Behind Frenemy Lines”, joins Sarah Richardson to unpack the psychology behind workplace rivalry, why it's especially prevalent in nursing and other high-stakes environments, and what leaders can do to build cultures grounded in psychological safety, allyship, and mutual support.
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Key Points:
02:32 Why Women Rivalry Happens
09:10 Self Love and Sisterhood Skills
11:32 Psych Safety and Leader Playbook
17:02 Brain Based Conflict and Closing

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April 27, 2026: Drex DeFord and Bill Russell are back on Newsday, and fresh off the 229 Summit, they're not pulling punches. Healthcare IT has a demand problem. Too many projects, not enough capacity, and an industry that's chronically bad at saying no. From the 229 Summit's sharpest takeaways to the Salesforce headless CRM announcement, the vl.js hack, and why Bill thinks Claude Code's "genesis key" is about to change everything, this episode covers the stories that matter most right now. If your project list is longer than your resources, this one is for you.
Key Points:
00:32 Summit takeaway priorities
06:41 Build vs buy with AI
10:49 Personal AI assistants speed
16:56 Headless CRM future UX
18:26 Security hacks fundamentals

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April 24, 2026: In this conversation, healthcare tech entrepreneur Kristen Schmidt and her 11-year-old daughter Harper explore what it means to prepare the next generation for a world shaped by AI. Harper's definition of AI — insightful beyond her years — anchors a candid discussion about the growing gap between AI's rapid advancement and youth readiness. For healthcare IT leaders, the episode raises an urgent question: are we building the right foundation for the leaders who will inherit these systems?
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Key Points:
01:07 Teaching AI At School
03:39 Raising Female AI Leaders
12:20 Harper On Hollow AI
17:36 Wrap Up And Call To Action

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April 20, 2026: What happens when you layer AI onto broken processes without fixing them first? Angel Mena, MD, CMO of Symplr, joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson on Newsday to answer that question with the kind of clinical candor only a practicing physician can bring. From ambient documentation to quality metrics to the credentialing chaos hiding inside every health system, this conversation exposes the gap between AI's promise and what healthcare leaders must do to close it before the opportunity slips away.
Key Points:
00:37 Clinicians and Tech Today
07:44 Beyond the AI Hype
14:49 Admin Burden Credentialing
18:44 Governance Change and Wrap
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