The 229 Podcast

August 17, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson come off a road week and into Epic UGM. Ask a shop how many agents they have deployed. They might say 50. An audit turns up 76. Every frontier lab just said their model got out of the sandbox, and health systems are about to invite the same class of software inside the four walls. Pete Marks at Wake Med cut 20 applications, then the inventory went up. Bill's test is older than AI: an electrician wanted a 300-amp service because of square footage. Square footage uses zero amps. A CIO needs enough knowledge to catch a bad answer.
Key Points:
00:00 Welcome into the kingdom

05:54 Pete Marks cut 20. Then they went up.

08:08 Every frontier model got out of the lab

13:31 50 agents on paper, 76 on the audit

17:30 The electrician and the 300-amp lie

19:13 Enough knowledge to catch a bad answer

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 10, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord preview Epic UGM (Sarah is on a plane to Charlottesville). Bill opens with the reframe that sets the lens for the whole episode: don't mistake a single big announcement for the real pace of change — healthcare moves in months and years, not seconds. Then the preview itself: AI and Agent Factory framed around clinician experience, ambient documentation a year after the freeze, the Bridge/Epic interoperability standoff and the 3-year hedge, the entire state of Washington on Epic, pharmacy as Epic's next growth line, and the leadership exodus — including Bill's real odds on Judy Faulkner's succession at UGM.
Key Points:
0:00 Healthcare Doesn't Move in Seconds

5:23 Sponsor: Cloudticity

7:09 Epic vs the Federal Government

12:43 The 3-Year Hedge

20:32 Epic Leadership Exodus

22:48 Judy's Exit, on Bill's Terms

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 13, 2026: CT Lin, MD, spent 30 years at UC Health, the last stretch as Chief Medical Information Officer, before stepping into his next chapter as Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado and first-time author. His new book, “It’s Not About the Tech: From Potholes to Piglets, Real-Life Lessons in Health IT,” argues that health IT success is 80 percent people and 20 percent technology, a lesson he learned by failing loudly and often. Lin tells Sarah Richardson about the radiology order set that accidentally triggered a hospital-wide outbreak of "acromegaly," the identity crisis of losing a CMIO title after three decades, and why governing generative AI will be this era's tragedy of the commons.

Key Points:
01:06 Not About Tech

06:10 Sharing Failures

10:05 Life After CMIO

15:35 AI and Governance

18:34 PIGs and Farewell

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 12, 2026: Marguerite Cunningham, VP/CNIO & VP Nursing at Inova Health, and Allison Morin, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Symplr, join Sarah Richardson to unpack how workforce management stopped being a scheduling problem and became an executive one. Maggie shares how Inova's Smart Square rollout, born out of pandemic urgency, forced the system to build real governance around staffing instead of just automating a spreadsheet. Allison brings the national view: predictive accuracy up to 97.5 percent, contingency spend cut nearly in half, and a shift from descriptive to prescriptive workforce management.
Key Points:
01:22 Roles and Why It Matters

06:06 Governance Before Tech

13:08 Results and Future AI Staffing

19:42 Advice and Closing Thoughts

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

August 7, 2026: Bill Russell sits down with Eric Utzinger (Revuud) while Sarah and Drex are out. The H1 2026 Signal Index put competing priorities and not enough capacity at the top of the list for 54% of leaders — and 43% said budgets are flat or declining. On this Newsday they dig into why AI ROI still feels muddy: tools return hours, not line-item dollars, and the CFO still needs the exchange rate. Along the way: operational transformation with real proof points, growth without growing, and a hard look at who actually belongs at the strategic table — including Bill on why an outside-only CIO hire can be a mistake.
Key Points:
01:27 54% Competing Priorities

06:03 Dollars for Capacity

08:48 Tanya Townsend: Operational Transformation

15:08 Growth Without Growing

19:56 Mistake to Hire Me

22:12 Speak Business at the Table

LinkedIn: 229Project
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer