The 229 Podcast

July 6, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back from four executive summits in Napa, covering CIOs, Chief Application Officers, Chief Analytics Officers, and CNIOs. The through-line across every room? AI pressure is intense, budget cuts are real, and a clear leadership vision is nearly impossible to find. From nurses being left out of decisions they should be driving, to analytics leaders managing a shadow IT explosion, to health systems already quietly building agents for referrals and claims, this is an unfiltered read on where health IT actually stands right now.

Key Points:
01:05 Napa Summit Themes
04:55 Nursing Wins and Workflow
07:22 IT Demand and AI Vision
13:20 Bright Spots and Agent Builds

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

Why the Browser Is Your Health System's Biggest Security Gap | Google Fridays with Andrew Rollo
July 3, 2026: Andrew Rollo, Sales Engineer at Google, has led browser deployments for organizations with 10,000-plus endpoints, with a dedicated focus on healthcare. Drex DeFord sits down with Andrew to unpack why the browser has become the most vulnerable and most overlooked tool in a health system's security stack. They cover how identity, update cadence, and extension governance define whether a deployment succeeds or fails, what a seamless day-one rollout looks like for clinical staff, and why blocking AI tools entirely is a losing strategy. Practical, specific, and built for CIOs who need answers, not theory.
Key Points:
01:54 Browser Security and Updates

05:25 Day One Success for Clinicians

07:23 CIO Checklist Identity EHR Network

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

Jul 2, 2026:
Sarah Richardson, Lisa Johnson, and Tamara Havenhill-Jacobs spent thirteen weeks completing an MIT AI strategy course on planes, evenings, and what Tamarah calls her "AI Sundays." What they brought back wasn't hype. It was clear. In this conversation with Sarah Richardson, recorded live from a 229 CIO Summit in Napa, the two leaders get honest about what actually changed: how one built the confidence to defend AI's role to her board through a theological lens, why "can AI fix that" is the wrong first question, and the real difficulty of proving ROI on work that doesn't show up as hard dollars. A candid look at what intentional AI adoption actually requires.
Key Points:
00:29 Podcast Welcome From Napa

01:09 MIT AI Course Takeaways

08:24 Intentional AI And Governance

15:47 Culture Shift And Safe Sandboxes

20:29 Future Of AI In Healthcare

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

June 23, 2026: Jason Elrod, CISO at MultiCare, unpacks why traditional identity and access management doesn't map to AI agents, what happens when an employee leaves and their agents keep running with no one accountable, and why exploitability management is replacing vulnerability management as the right frame for security leadership. They also get into social engineering of AI models, the Harvard degree story, and what walk-up song Jason would pick for a 25,000-person keynote.
Key Points:
09:03 Managing Agents Like Employees

15:48 Agents Getting Phished

22:30 Exploitability Management Mindset

29:55 Speed Round

Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/

June 29, 2026: Scott D'Entremont, CEO of Parlance, joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson to unpack the week's most pressing health IT headlines. The panel covers Mythos, the AI model just pulled offline after social engineering exposed its guardrail vulnerabilities. Then Scott brings 30 years of conversational AI experience to a sharper conversation: AI is flooding healthcare systems with auto-generated RFPs, turning serious vendor evaluation into a demo derby. Who's liable when clinical AI gets it wrong? And is the procurement process hurting buyers as much as vendors?
Key Points:
04:14 Clinician ROI and Patients

09:48 Liability and Governance

13:34 RFPs Demo Derby

19:06 Pricing Tokens Outcomes

29:33 Commencement AI Debate

Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/
X: This Week Health
LinkedIn: This Week Health
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer