InteropNow! at ViVE Podcast

As healthcare moves beyond hospital walls, reliable connectivity is becoming essential to patient care.

In this episode of The Beat's Interop Now at ViVE series, host Sandy Vance talks with Robin Goldsmith, Practice Leader of Healthcare at Verizon Business, about the networks powering modern healthcare delivery.

They explore remote patient monitoring, rural healthcare access, secure hospital connectivity, and business continuity. Robin also discusses how growing AI workloads are changing infrastructure demands and why health systems must plan for future data needs while balancing cost, security, and operational resilience.

Better connected healthcare starts with the infrastructure that makes it possible.

In this episode, they talk about:

• Why connectivity is becoming foundational to care delivery inside and outside hospitals

• How private networks and in-building cellular coverage support modern clinical environments

• Why mobile EHR workflows require reliable, secure connectivity

• How wireless backup solutions can help hospitals maintain operations during network disruptions

• How remote patient monitoring can expand access to care at home

• Why rural healthcare requires creative connectivity solutions and partnerships

• How growing AI workloads are increasing demand for network capacity and data transport

• What healthcare CIOs should consider when modernizing legacy infrastructure

• Why long-term network planning must balance performance, resilience, and ROI 

A Little About Robin:

Robin Goldsmith is Practice Leader of Healthcare at Verizon Business, where he helps healthcare, insurance, and life sciences organizations address connectivity challenges and support digital transformation. He works with industry leaders on secure network infrastructure, remote patient monitoring, rural healthcare access, and emerging technologies. Robin also hosts Verizon's Healthcare On Air podcast, featuring conversations about the future of healthcare.

Healthcare organizations are under increasing pressure to make better use of data, AI, and automation but none of those technologies can reach their full potential without reliable access to the right patient information. 

In this episode of Interop Now, host Sandy Vance chats with Dima Goncharov, co-founder & CEO of Metriport, about the evolving healthcare interoperability landscape, health information exchanges, FHIR, QHINs, and the challenge of bringing fragmented clinical data together. They discuss why interoperability is becoming table stakes in modern healthcare, the limits of building connections in-house, and how a stronger data foundation can help providers move from simply exchanging information to using it to improve care. They also explore how AI and large language models answer complex patient questions in real time when the underlying data is trustworthy, accessible, and properly organized.

In this episode, they talk about:

• Why healthcare interoperability continues to evolve and why connecting to a single network still isn't enough to create a complete patient picture.

• How health information exchanges, national networks, and emerging frameworks such as TEFCA fit into today's interoperability landscape.

• Why healthcare data transformation, patient matching, record location, and deduplication remain major challenges even after connectivity is established.

• Why Metriport believes interoperability should be treated as table-stakes infrastructure, rather than a project healthcare organizations have to continually build and maintain themselves.

• How clean, accessible longitudinal patient data creates the foundation for AI, automation, and modern care models.

• Why AI and LLMs could help providers synthesize complicated healthcare data and answer patient-specific questions in real time.

• Real-world examples of interoperability helping providers surface previously unavailable information, avoid unnecessary testing, and make faster treatment decisions.

  
  

  A Little About Dima:

Dima Goncharov is the Co-Founder and CEO of Metriport, an open-source platform transforming healthcare data exchange. With a background as a software engineer, Dima has built everything from aerospace and defense mission systems to highly available cloud database services at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Dima’s passion for transparent, secure, and accessible health data solutions is evident in Metriport’s mission and the APIs they’ve developed for seamless medical record retrieval. Dima is an alumnus of both British Columbia Institute of Technology and of Y Combinator’s S22 cohort. Now based in San Francisco, he leads Metriport’s efforts to modernize and open up healthcare interoperability for providers everywhere.

In this episode, host Sandy Vance chats with Timothy Bennett, the Director of Strategic Healthcare Initiatives at Drummond Group, LLC, for his second appearance on the show. With nearly 20 years at Drummond and deep roots in ONC certification testing dating back to 2010, Tim brings a rare long-view perspective to one of the most important questions facing healthcare interoperability today: how do you actually test whether FHIR works at scale in the real world, not just in a proof-of-concept connectathon? This episode introduces FHIRplace, Drummond's new community-driven testing ecosystem, and digs into why business process rules, not just technical standards, are the real challenge standing between FHIR's promise and its production reality. 

In this episode, they talk about:

• FHIRplace brings together providers, payers, technology vendors, and intermediaries to test FHIR implementations at real-world scale

• Testing conformance to a standard is not the same as proving true interoperability between systems

• Business process rules, like what documentation a health plan requires for prior authorization, sit outside the technical standards but are critical to real-world success

• Intermediaries are central to FHIRplace's testing model because point-to-point FHIR exchange is not feasible across millions of providers and thousands of health plans

• FHIRplace captures raw transaction data flowing through intermediaries to evaluate real-world interoperability issues, not just lab conditions

• HIPAA currently requires X12 for prior authorization, meaning a full replacement by FHIR will take years and likely result in a long-term hybrid approach

• FHIRplace plans to integrate with conformance tools like Inferno so members can get interoperability testing and standards validation in one place

• Drummond intends FHIRplace to be a 20-year testing ecosystem, not a short-term solution built around a single regulatory deadline

A Little About Timothy:

Timothy Bennett serves as Drummond’s Director of Strategic Healthcare Initiatives and leads the development of new testing and certification programs to benefit the national healthcare interoperability strategy. As the former director of the firm’s ONC Accredited Test Lab (ATL), he has been involved in testing electronic health records (EHR) systems since the ONC program's inception in September 2010 and has additionally served as the test lab’s lead technical adviser. Prior to healthcare compliance testing, Timothy facilitated numerous interoperability test programs, specifically the design of secure and private exchange of documents and information using internet and security standards. With a degree in nuclear engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, he has been instrumental in developing, architecting, and testing software systems for more than 30 years. 

Timothy is a governing board member of Shift, a task force of industry stakeholders working through the barriers of equitable interoperability by addressing the obstacles of privatized patient health data exchange. He is actively developing testing and certification protocols for the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard in order to provide the market with comprehensive FHIR certification across the healthcare ecosystem.

He also actively collaborates with industry leaders in the areas of testing and certifying healthcare compliance of pediatrics, patient safety and usability, FHIR and public health. Finally, Timothy was the principal author of the OASIS AS4 standard, a profile of the ebXML Messaging Services v3.0 specification for secure and private exchange of data using web services.

In this episode of the Interop Now at Vibe series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Joe Graw, Chief Growth Officer at ImageTrend, for a fascinating and deeply personal conversation about the data gap that exists between the ambulance and the emergency department. 

Joe has been at ImageTrend for nearly 25 years and brings both an engineer's precision and a genuine personal mission to a topic most health system leaders have never fully considered. With 70 million EMS encounters in ImageTrend's network annually and one in three ED patients arriving via EMS, the pre-hospital data source is too important to ignore. 

From an automated patient-matching algorithm to transport-pattern analytics that signal demand shifts before hospitals feel them operationally, this episode makes a compelling case that EMS data is the earliest and most underutilized demand signal in all of healthcare. 

In this episode, they talk about:

• One in three patients arriving in the emergency department comes from EMS, making pre-hospital data one of the most important upstream data sources in healthcare

• ImageTrend processes nearly 70 million EMS activations annually across its network

• The NEMSIS standard is used by 100% of EMS and fire departments that treat patients, making it a universal foundation for pre-hospital interoperability

• Most EMS to hospital data transfer still happens via PDFs, faxes, face sheets, or portal logins, none of which are usable at the point of care

• ImageTrend's proprietary patient matching algorithm eliminates the need for deterministic fields like MRN numbers, removing a major workflow barrier for paramedics

• EMS transport patterns are the earliest demand signal in healthcare, revealing referral leakage, access issues, and capacity problems before hospitals feel them operationally

• Virginia-based health care organization Carilion Clinic is automating 20,000 EMS transports annually into their EHR using ImageTrend, with outcomes data flowing back to EMS agencies to close the quality loop

• Health systems that treat EMS agencies as strategic data partners rather than just transport services are better positioned to keep care close to home

A Little About Joe:

Joe’s passion to learn and explore new ideas in the industry is about more than managing the growth of ImageTrend – it’s forward thinking. Engaging in many facets of ImageTrend is part of what drives Joe. He is dedicated to our community, clients, and their use of data to drive results, implement change, and drive improvement in their industries.

In this episode of the Interop Now at Vibe series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Niall O'Neill, Chief Product Officer at Oneview Healthcare, for a warm and insightful conversation about what it actually means to transform the inpatient experience through technology. 

Niall shares the origin story of Oneview, from winning their first US contract against entrenched incumbents at UCSF's Mission Bay Hospital to the launch of Ovie, a digital care assistant that is redefining how patients, families, and care teams connect inside a hospital room.

From meal ordering to nurse escalation triage to natural language conversations about care plans, this episode paints a vivid picture of what a truly connected patient room looks and feels like and why the language we use to describe it matters more than most people realize.

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This episode reframes the idea of the “smart patient room” by introducing the Connected Patient Room – not as a product or trend, but as a way to think more clearly about how care actually happens in and around the room. We’ll explore how a digital Care Assistant - Ovie - brings that model to life by connecting patients, families, and care teams through shared, real‑time context. 

Episode Highlights:

• Oneview beat major incumbents to win their first US contract at UCSF Mission Bay in 2014, and the market is only now catching up to that original vision

• McKinsey found that a third of a nurse's day could realistically be saved through technology optimization and delegation

• Over 80% of patients with access to the Oneview system actively use it, and two-thirds use it beyond entertainment

• In 2025 alone, over 780,000 meals were ordered through Oneview's patient room tablets and TVs

• Ovie is the digital care assistant that serves as the brain of the connected patient room, with access to EHR data, care schedules, precautions, and patient interactions

• Ovie Voice handles natural language questions from patients and families, knowing when to answer and when to escalate to a nurse with full context

• Ovie Console gives nurses a real-time view of patient interactions embedded directly inside Epic

• The connected patient room is not about technology first; it is about five capabilities: monitoring, anticipating, connecting, personalizing, and orchestrating

• CIOs should define the capabilities they need before selecting vendors, not the other way around

A Little About Niall:

Niall O’Neill is Chief Product Officer at Oneview Healthcare, where he leads product innovation and AI transformation. Previously, as Chief Customer Officer, Niall has played a pivotal role in shaping Oneview’s growth through a blend of customer-centric leadership and technical insight. Before joining Oneview, Niall held consulting roles at Accenture and Deloitte. He holds a BA in English Studies and an MSc in Multimedia Systems. 

In this episode of the InteropNow! at ViVe series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Ray Sabourin, Healthcare Vertical Subject Matter Expert at Ericsson, for a fascinating and surprisingly accessible conversation about the connectivity infrastructure that will determine whether healthcare's AI ambitions actually succeed. Ray has spent 30 years in wireless technology and brings a clear-eyed, no-hype perspective to a topic most CIOs have not fully thought through yet. From autonomous vehicles in mines to HoloLens in operating theaters in Singapore to the simple frustration of losing a call in a hospital elevator, this episode makes the case that 5G is not a luxury upgrade for healthcare. It is the foundation that everything else depends on. 

In this episode, they talk about:

• Ericsson powers roughly half the world's cellular infrastructure and is now bringing enterprise-grade 5G directly to hospitals

• Wi-Fi was built for location-based general use; 5G is built for mission-critical, mobile, clinical performance

• Hospitals can now own their own private 5G network using CBRS spectrum without relying on carriers

• Private 5G is far more secure than Wi-Fi because SIM-based encryption protects both the device and the network simultaneously

• The neutral host approach, bringing the carrier signal indoors via distributed radio rather than a distributed antenna, is the recommended first step

• Cleveland Clinic and Tampa General are among the early US health systems building out private 5G infrastructure

• Deploying AI at scale in healthcare requires infrastructure that can handle massive, continuous data collection from sensors, cameras, and devices

• AI is a Ferrari on a gravel road: buying cutting-edge AI tools without upgrading connectivity infrastructure is a recipe for poor performance

• Physical AI, including autonomous nurse carts and hospital robots, is already on the horizon and requires mobile, seamless connectivity that Wi-Fi simply cannot guarantee

A Little About Ray:

Ray Sabourin is a healthcare technology strategist focused on helping hospitals and large health systems design wireless environments that can support the next decade of digital care delivery. At Ericsson, Ray works closely with provider organizations at the intersection of IT, clinical operations, and infrastructure to improve reliability, reduce operational risk, and prepare for AI‑driven workflows.

Ray’s background spans wireless infrastructure, healthcare operations, and large‑scale digital transformation in complex clinical environments. His work centers on helping health systems move from “good enough” connectivity to must‑not‑fail wireless performance that clinicians and care teams can depend on.

AI may be the hottest topic in healthcare, but most organizations still aren’t ready to use it at scale.  In this episode, host Sandy Vance chats with the CEO of Hart, Dominique Gross. Together, they break down the real barriers holding healthcare back: from fragmented data and legacy EHR systems to inconsistent standards and limited access. Dominique shares how building a semantic data layer is helping organizations unlock their data, scale innovation safely, and move from pilot projects to real enterprise impact.

In this episode, they talk about:

• Many healthcare organizations are eager to adopt AI, but they struggle to scale beyond pilot programs due to foundational data challenges.

• The most immediate barrier to innovation is simply gaining access to all relevant data across fragmented and legacy systems.

• Data quality is just as critical as access, as organizations must normalize and clean their data before it can be used effectively.

• Legacy electronic health records often contain valuable historical data, even if organizations are hesitant to use it due to inconsistencies.

• Patients ultimately benefit when their full medical history is accessible, rather than only recent encounters.

• HART has developed a semantic data layer that acts as a “translation system” across different EHRs, enabling consistent data use.

• This approach allows organizations to aggregate, migrate, and stream data more efficiently across dozens of systems.

• One health system successfully scaled from connecting a small number of affiliates to centralizing more than 60 data sources over time.

• The same organization was able to complete a major EHR migration in under 12 weeks by extracting, normalizing, and preparing data for a new system.

• Proprietary data models within EHR systems create significant barriers to interoperability and data portability.

• Despite increasing regulation and improved standards, accessing complete and meaningful data remains a challenge across vendors.

• Market consolidation is likely to continue, as organizations seek fewer vendors that can handle multiple data needs.

• Clinical research remains an underutilized opportunity, with many organizations still relying on manual processes to identify eligible patients.

• Improving data accessibility could dramatically accelerate patient recruitment and engagement in clinical trials.

• Simple improvements in data completeness and standardization can have immediate impacts on reimbursement, efficiency, and patient care.

A Little About Dominique:

As CEO of Hart since 2023, Dominique Gross provides healthcare data leadership, guiding the company’s mission to eliminate healthcare data fragmentation and empower organizations to achieve true interoperability. With more than two decades of experience driving health IT innovation and go-to-market strategies, Dominique has shaped Hart’s focus on making the impossible possible every day, ensuring that every innovation at Hart advances both operational efficiency and equitable patient care. 

Prior to joining Hart, Dominique led strategy and growth initiatives at multiple firms, working as one of the industry's prominent healthcare technology executives to launch connected care solutions for veterans and major health systems. Her leadership philosophy centers on collaboration and integrity, guiding Hart to serve as both a technology provider and a trusted partner for healthcare’s most complex data challenges. Dominique is a frequent speaker on the future of healthcare data ecosystems and a strong advocate for patient empowerment through healthcare data accessibility. 

In this episode, host Sandy Vance welcomes back Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser, Chief Strategy Officer at DirectTrust, for her third time on the show. This time the conversation goes deeper than ever, covering three major developments: DirectTrust's role in vetting apps for the new CMS Medicare App Library, the launch of a groundbreaking AI accreditation program built on the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and the urgent but widely misunderstood gap in HIPAA coverage that leaves millions of consumers thinking their health data is protected when it really isn’t. If you work anywhere in the health tech ecosystem, this episode is essential listening.

In this episode, they talk about:

• HIPAA only covers covered entities and business associates, meaning most consumer health apps have little obligation to protect your data

• The CMS Medicare App Library is a vetted directory of trusted digital health apps, and DirectTrust is helping validate which apps earn a spot in it

• When CMS moves, the rest of the industry follows, making this app library a trust signal far beyond Medicare beneficiaries

• DirectTrust's AI accreditation program is built on the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and assessed by independent third-party reviewers

• The program will offer two tiers: a foundational version for organizations early in their AI journey and a comprehensive version for those with greater maturity

• The four pillars of the AI accreditation program are governance, management, mapping, and measurement

• AI is unlike any other technology implementation because it touches every aspect of an organization simultaneously

• DirectTrust's annual conference is October 20th and 21st in Kansas City at the Oracle Innovations Campus

A Little About Kathryn:

Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser, MBA, FACHDM, CHPC, is Chief Strategy Officer at DirectTrust®, the national non-profit alliance and accreditor building trust in healthcare technology and secure information exchange. With nearly two decades of advancing interoperability, identity, privacy, and technical trust, she leads community engagement, communications, and strategic partnerships, shaping national standards and policy. Kathryn is a recognized thought leader featured in outlets like Healthcare IT Today and Health IT Answers, and under her leadership, DirectTrust has earned multiple HITMC awards, including Marketing Team of the Year in 2025. She has been named among the Top 50 Women Chief Strategy Officers and Becker’s 100 Women in Health IT to Know.

Healthcare has more data than any industry in the world—but without trust in that data, it’s almost useless. In this episode, Clay Ritchey, Chief Executive Officer of Verato, breaks down why identity is the missing foundation behind interoperability, AI, and better patient experiences. From fragmented records to failed digital transformation promises, Clay shares how solving “who is who” unlocks everything from improved clinical outcomes to lower costs—and why now is the moment healthcare can finally get it right.

In this episode, they talk about:

• Why healthcare generates massive amounts of data but struggles to use it effectively

• The core problem: lack of trust in data due to poor identity resolution

• What it means when one patient exists as 10 different records across systems

• How fragmented identity impacts patient experience and clinical outcomes

• The connection between clean data and successful AI adoption

• Why consumers are driving change with higher expectations for digital experiences

• The role of identity in enabling true interoperability across organizations

• How Verato creates a single longitudinal view of patients across thousands of data sources

• The impact of identity on reducing duplicate tests, costs, and delays in care

• Why this moment—AI + regulation + consumer demand—is a tipping point for healthcare

A Little About Clay:

Clay Ritchey is the Chief Executive Officer of Verato. Clay brings more than 20 years of experience driving growth and innovation in market-leading healthcare technology organizations to Verato. As CEO, Clay is passionate about working with healthcare, life science, and government organizations across the care continuum to transform the way that consumers and patients engage with them to build deeper relationships resulting in improved outcomes and sustainable growth for our customers.

In this episode of the Interop Now at Vibe series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Adam Luff, VP of Product Solutions at Infor, and Jesse Evans, Product Director for Infor FHIR Services, for a deep and practical conversation about why semantic interoperability is the make-or-break factor for AI in healthcare. 

With decades of experience between them, Adam and Jesse explain why organizations that skip the data normalization step are building on a foundation that will eventually collapse. From prior authorization workflows to longitudinal patient records, this episode is essential listening for any healthcare leader who wants to understand what AI-ready infrastructure actually looks like.

In this episode, they talk about:

• AI cannot make sense of data that is not semantically normalized

• Integration wires things up; interoperability makes the data actually usable

• A single patient can exist under multiple names and identifiers across dozens of systems

• FHIR is not a replacement for HL7, it is the latest version of the HL7 specification

• Poor data quality in EHRs is the rule, not the exception, even at well-resourced organizations

• Event-driven architecture enables prior authorization workflows to run with no human intervention

• Infor's longitudinal patient record viewer pulls data from up to 70 archival systems into one normalized view

• The FHIR server is becoming the source of truth, replacing the EHR as the authoritative record

• Bed turnover and discharge workflows are where providers are capturing real, measurable ROI right now

• A well-governed, normalized data platform unlocks an almost unlimited number of AI use cases

  
  

  A Little About Adam and Jesse:

Adam Luff has been with Infor for six years and has spent about 20 years in the provider space. Before Infor, he worked at a company that manufactures large MRI and CT machinery. He focuses on business impact with provider organizations.

Jesse Evans has been at Infor for about 10 years, first as a Principal Solutions Architect and now as Product Director for Infor FHIR Services. He has been in the healthcare enterprise industry for about 20 years, with deep expertise in integration engines, interoperability, and FHIR standards.