The 229 Podcast

June 18, 2026: Shiv Rao, Co-founder and CEO of Abridge, has spent eight years building the company into something most people didn't see coming. Now live in 300+ health systems, touching 250 million patients and processing over 100 million clinical conversations a year. But Shiv isn't just a technologist. He still rounds at UPMC as a practicing cardiologist, and that dual lens shapes everything about how he thinks. In this conversation with Bill Russell, Shiv reframes what Abridge actually is: not an AI scribe, but computable infrastructure. The clinical conversation sits upstream of every workflow in healthcare, and what Abridge is building is the platform that proves it.
Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/
Key Points:
01:41 Big Announcement Beyond Notes

06:29 Unified Patient Intelligence

10:52 Enterprise AI and Trust

15:59 Coalition With Payers and NVIDIA

35:27 So What and Closing Bets

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Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

A dormant Instagram account tied to the Obama White House started posting pro-Iranian content. No hacked password. No malware. No phishing email. Just a polite conversation with Meta's AI support agent.
Researchers are calling it out plainly: AI agents are built to be helpful, and that eagerness is exactly what attackers are starting to exploit. The attack surface isn't the password anymore -- it's the agent.
Health systems are deploying AI right now for scheduling, intake, and benefit verification. Has anyone on your team actually tried to socially engineer yours?
Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid
Thanks to Cyderes for sponsoring this episode: https://thisweekhealth.com/partners/cyderes/

June 15, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson sit down to work through the question sitting at the top of every health system's agenda: what has AI actually done for us? Personal productivity gains are real. Meeting counts are dropping, hours are being saved, and individual leaders feel the difference. But the enterprise ROI case is proving harder to make. With Dave Lundahl's three-era framework for healthcare IT adding historical weight and the ambient listening wave cresting, the industry may be entering its accountability phase.
Key Points:
04:22 Governance Five Questions

08:08 Cost ROI And Licenses

10:04 Third Era Of Health IT

17:49 Patient Companion Future

23:47 Wrap Up And Next Week

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

June 10, 2026: In healthcare where downtime means lives, identity security is no longer just about who logs in. Bill Russell sits down with Peter Barker, Chief Product Officer at Ping Identity, to unpack why the agentic AI era demands a fundamental rethinking of identity. From giving AI agents first-class credentials to shifting the security boundary from login to the point of action. If your health system is deploying AI and you have not addressed non-human identity, this conversation is where to start.
Keep up to date on the latest in health IT:
https://thisweekhealth.com/news/
Key Points:
01:18 Why Agents Change Identity

07:43 Runtime Identity And Authorization

15:00 Healthcare Passwordless Trust

20:11 CISO Playbook And Wrap Up

X: This Week Health
LinkedIn: This Week Health
Donate: Alex’s Lemonade Stand: Foundation for Childhood Cancer

That UAC prompt -- the little shield asking you to approve a publisher -- is one of the most foundational trust signals in Windows security. Your tools rely on it. Your team relies on it.
Two people figured out how to sell it. What they built, and which ransomware gangs bought access, has a direct line to at least one recent health system breach. Drex breaks it down.
Remember, Stay a Little Paranoid