Digital Health Talks - Changemakers Focused on Fixing Healthcare

Megan Antonelli and Janae Sharp are back with another round of Five Good Things — and this one covers a lot of ground. From standout moments at ViVE to the two-week sprint leading into HIMSS, they're cutting through the noise to spotlight what actually mattered, what surprised them, and what they're most excited to see in Las Vegas.

Megan Antonelli, Founder & CEO, HealthIMPACT Live

Janae Sharp. Founder, The Sharp Index

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

With the administration signing the Consolidated Appropriations Act on February 3, 2026, extending Medicare telehealth flexibilities through December 2027, and patient demand driving unprecedented adoption, virtual care has moved from emergency response to fundamental transformation of clinical practice. Dr. Brandon Welch, founder and CEO of doxy.me, a platform facilitating 8 billion+ minutes of care across 1 million providers in 176 countries, examines how the proliferation of telehealth is reshaping medicine itself: clinical workflows, patient-provider relationships, access equity, and sustainable practice models. Drawing from his book Telehealth Success, Brandon delivers actionable strategies for healthcare leaders navigating the five pillars determining telehealth ROI: patient engagement, clinician efficiency, technology scalability, financial viability, and regulatory compliance in an era where patients expect care everywhere.

Brandon Welch, MS, PhD, Executive Director, Telehealth.org, Founder & CEO of Doxy.me

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

Five Good Things with Janae Sharp and Megan Antonelli: A rapid-fire segment highlighting positive developments in digital health. Janae and Megan share insights on recent innovations, successful implementations, and emerging trends that are driving progress in healthcare technology.

Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

Join us as Megan Antonelli sits down with Nayan Patel, a former hospital CIO now leading healthcare innovation at Neteera, to unpack what's shaping the digital health landscape heading into VivVE and HIMSS. They explore how the CIO role is evolving from technology manager to "curator of information and outcomes," and why AI governance, cybersecurity, and platform consolidation are dominating the conversation on the conference floor.

Nayan shares insights from Neeera's contactless patient monitoring technology, using radar to track vital signs and ease the burden on nursing staff, and reflects on what meaningful AI adoption actually looks like in clinical settings. The conversation also covers the enduring value of in-person connections, how to maximize your time at industry events, and why some old debates like shadow IT and build vs. buy are making a comeback with fresh perspective.

Plus, Nayan shares his weekly newsletter TGIF , offering bite-sized insights for healthcare leaders on the go.

Nayan Patel, SVP/GM, Transformation & Digital Health, Neteera

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

One week until ViVE 2026 in Los Angeles. Join Megan Antonelli, John Lynn, Shereese Maynard, and Janae Sharp as they preview what matters for the 9,000 healthcare technology executives heading to the premier digital health event.

We're breaking down the sessions positioning real dollars: the $50 billion rural health fund, AI governance becoming board-level priority, cybersecurity shifting to enterprise risk, and interoperability moving from advantage to table stakes. Which technologies are moving from pilot to procurement? Which partnerships signal strategic shifts? What should CIOs, CMIOs, and CDIOs prioritize?

Strategic insights that turn conference attendance into a competitive advantage. Your ViVE briefing starts here.

John Lynn, Founder, Healthcare IT Today

Shereese Maynard, MS, MBA, askshereese.tech

Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

FHIR-Native by Design: Why Legacy System Conversions Can't Compete with Purpose-Built Interoperability

As healthcare systems race to meet 21st Century Cures Act mandates, a critical question emerges: retrofit or rebuild? Mike O'Neill, CEO of MedicaSoft, explains why FHIR-native architecture delivers fundamentally different interoperability outcomes than legacy systems with API layers bolted on. This conversation cuts through vendor marketing to examine the structural, semantic, and operational advantages of building healthcare IT from the ground up on HL7 FHIR standards.

O'Neill draws on extensive experience leading P&L, engineering, and operations across healthcare IT startups and public companies to explain what "FHIR-native" actually means in practice—and why it matters for CIOs evaluating vendor claims. Learn how purpose-built FHIR architecture eliminates middleware complexity, reduces integration costs, and enables real-time clinical data exchange that retrofitted systems struggle to deliver.

• Technical and operational differences between FHIR-native systems and legacy platforms with FHIR APIs
• Cost implications of middleware elimination versus ongoing translation layer maintenance
• How FHIR-native architecture impacts system performance, vendor lock-in, and future scalability
• Regulatory compliance advantages under 21st Century Cures Act requirements

Mike O'Neill, CEO, MedicaSoft

Megan Antonelli, Founder & CEO, HealthIMPACT Live

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

As AI systems increasingly influence clinical decisions—from risk stratification to treatment recommendations—healthcare leaders face a critical question: When can we safely rely on AI, and when must human judgment remain in the loop?

Professor Vasant Dhar, NYU Stern professor, veteran AI researcher, and author of the newly released Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI, joins Digital Health Talks to deliver what healthcare executives urgently need: a practical framework for evaluating AI reliability, recognizing model blind spots, and designing guardrails that actually work.

With decades of experience bringing machine learning to high-stakes environments and over one million downloads of his Brave New World podcast, Professor Dhar offers rare clarity on the mounting tension between rapidly advancing AI capabilities and our ability to evaluate their trustworthiness. Healthcare CIOs, CMIOs, and technology leaders will walk away with actionable insights for governing AI deployment—not just soundbites.

Vasant Dhar, Author, Thinking With Machines: The Brave New World of AI

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

Healthcare administrative costs consume 25-30% of total spending, yet most AI investments focus on clinical applications rather than operational efficiency. Dr. Yan Chow of Automation Anywhere discusses proven AI use cases delivering measurable ROI today, from revenue cycle management and EOB processing to automated clinical documentation while exploring emerging conversational AI capabilities reshaping patient and provider interactions. As health systems face continued margin pressure, Chow examines where automation investments generate immediate returns versus longer-term strategic value. He addresses the “art of the possible” in administrative AI, implementation realities for enterprise deployments, and why the next wave of healthcare AI may be less about diagnosis and more about eliminating the administrative burden strangling clinical workflows.

Yan Chow, MD, MBAGlobal Healthcare Leader, Automation Anywhere

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

Nearly half of Americans would accept 24/7 AI monitoring of their facial expressions, voice patterns, and typing behaviors for early mental health intervention—a striking finding that challenges assumptions about privacy in behavioral healthcare. Andy Flanagan, CEO of Iris Telehealth, discusses groundbreaking consumer research revealing the complex relationship between AI acceptance and human oversight in mental health care. With 73% demanding humans make final emergency decisions, the data exposes a critical gap between consumer readiness, regulatory frameworks, and provider capabilities. Flanagan explores what this means for healthcare technology investment strategies as behavioral health AI moves from pilot to production.

Andy Flanagan, CEO, Iris Telehealth

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.

Five Good Things with Janae Sharp and Megan Antonelli: A rapid-fire segment highlighting positive developments in digital health. Janae and Megan share insights on recent innovations, successful implementations, and emerging trends that are driving progress in healthcare technology.

• Learn about cutting-edge solutions improving patient outcomes
• Discover how technology is enhancing healthcare accessibility
• Gain insight into successful digital health implementations
• Stay informed about positive industry trends shaping the future of care

Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index

Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live

Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Learn more about HealthIMPACT Live events, virtual forums, and healthcare leader conversations at healthimpactlive.com.

Interested in being a guest, sponsoring, or joining the HealthIMPACT community? Visit healthimpactlive.com/digital-health-talks.