The Beat

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.

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.

In this episode, host Sandy Vance chats with Matthew Stern, the CEO at MyStart Health, and

Nick Mortek, Strategic Consultant at Vouched. They have a practical and energizing conversation about one of the most underestimated problems in telehealth: patient identity verification. Matt built MyStart Health to help patients access GLP-1 medications and other telehealth services, only to discover that a clunky ID upload process was costing him nearly 28% of his patients before they ever got started. Nick and the Vouched team solved that problem in under a month and delivered a 40% net impact to the business. If you are building or running a telehealth product and wondering why your funnel is leaking, this episode has the answer.

Telehealth funnels bleed revenue at identity verification. Telehealth provider MyStart Health boosted patient intake through passive identity checks with Vouched identity verification, keeping high-intent buyers on their platform.

Matthew Stern is the CEO and founder of MyStart Health, a rapidly growing telehealth company focused on improving patient access, engagement, and long-term health outcomes. A seasoned entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building and scaling businesses across multiple industries, Matthew brings deep expertise in customer acquisition, brand growth, and digital marketing. At MyStart Health, he is pioneering a more personalized, data-driven healthcare experience—leveraging technology, telehealth, and emerging treatments to help patients take greater control of their health and longevity.

Nick Mortek is a Strategic Consultant at Vouched, where he helps healthcare and digital health organizations implement secure, low-friction identity verification solutions. With a background rooted in financial services and identity technology, Nick specializes in helping companies streamline patient onboarding, reduce fraud, and improve conversion across digital experiences. At Vouched, he works closely with founders and product teams to build trust-driven, HIPAA-compliant verification systems that enhance both security and user experience in the evolving telehealth landscape.

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.

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.

What does it really take to get a healthcare AI product past the proof-of-concept stage and into production? In this episode of the AI at ViVE series on the BEAT Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Tushar Puri, CEO of Pegasus One, and Sebastian Ouslis, Co-Founder of ChartR Health, to find out. Together, they pull back the curtain on how ChartR is building an autonomous analytics platform that lets hospitals interrogate their own data across silos in real time, and how Pegasus One's SONG framework is the foundation making it possible. From managing agent drift to the very real stakes of lagging data in sepsis care, this conversation is a masterclass in building healthcare AI that can actually go from pie-in-the-sky to impact you can quantify. 

Tushar Puri is the Founder and CEO of Pegasus One, where he helps organizations build scalable AI and software products that actually make it to production. With more than 15 years in product engineering, he specializes in bridging the gap between technical innovation and real-world implementation, especially in healthcare.

Sebastian Ouslis

 is the Co-Founder of ChartR, an AI-driven healthcare analytics platform focused on turning complex clinical data into real-time insights. His work centers on using AI to help hospitals continuously learn, adapt, and improve patient outcomes.

What if the biggest barrier to better healthcare outcomes is… the blood draw itself?

In this episode, Web Golinkin, President at Babson Diagnostics, discusses how his company is reinventing blood testing with a patient-friendly, fingertip-based system. He explains why traditional venipuncture drives anxiety and non-adherence, and how BetterWay improves both experience and outcomes. He also shares how automation and simplified workflows reduce operational burden and expand access points for care. Finally, he explores why patient experience is becoming the key competitive differentiator in ambulatory healthcare.

Tune in to learn how rethinking a decades-old process could unlock better care, better business, and better patient engagement.

About Web Golinkin:

Web Golinkin has focused his career on making health information and care more accessible and affordable. He has done this as CEO of five companies over the past 35 years, including three he co-founded.

These companies include the largest cable TV network devoted to health (America’s Health Network), one of the nation’s largest operators of retail-based clinics (RediClinic), a leading population health management company (Health Dialog), and one of the nation’s largest operators of urgent care clinics (FastMed). Web also co- founded the Convenient Care Association and served as its Chair for many years. He has been widely covered in the national media and has spoken at numerous healthcare conferences.

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The network is no longer just a hidden utility. It is becoming an intelligent engine for safer, smarter healthcare operations.

In this episode, Matt Roberts, Healthcare Business Lead at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, discusses how AI-native networking is changing the role of infrastructure in healthcare. He explains why traditional networks have created operational blind spots, how self-driving network capabilities can improve user experience and security, and why modernizing infrastructure is no longer just about keeping systems running. Matt also shares how the Juniper acquisition expands HPE’s ability to support healthcare providers across data center networking, AI-ready environments, and built-in security, while also opening new possibilities for asset tracking, wayfinding, staff safety, and more proactive IT operations.

Tune in to learn how smarter networking could help healthcare organizations modernize infrastructure without compromising care delivery.

About Matt Roberts:

Before his current role, Matt served in healthcare leadership positions at Juniper Networks, Brocade, and Cerner, where he helped shape go-to-market strategies, lead healthcare business development, support large-scale implementations, and build strategic partner ecosystems across the industry. His work has consistently centered on helping healthcare organizations reduce complexity while improving performance, security, and infrastructure readiness.

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In this episode of the AI at Health series on The Beat Podcast, host Sandy Vance sits down with Vadiraj Guttal, VP and Business Head for Infosys Helix, for a thoughtful and candid conversation about why health plans are still stuck in batch processing, what it actually means to be cloud native versus just cloud hosted, and how a platform-centric approach is delivering two to three times the improvement that incremental fixes never could. With Helix now six-plus years in the making, Vadiraj brings a grounded, practitioner's perspective to one of the most complex transformation challenges in healthcare today. If you are a health plan executive trying to reduce administrative costs, modernize operations, and prepare for an AI-driven future, this episode is essential listening.

Senior Health-tech and IT Consulting professional with 23+ years of experience in software development, project management, sales, and delivery of strategic consulting engagements, product and solution development for the payer segment of US healthcare. He partners with senior executives to address their business and technology needs through innovative solutions, resulting in IT efficiencies and business outcomes.

As Business Head of Platforms at Infosys Healthcare, he is responsible for ideating and developing digital-native, AI- and cloud-run business applications. In this role, he also partners with other healthcare start-ups and academic institutions to industrialize their research and solve problems for large healthcare payers.

Healthcare doesn’t have a technology problem; it has a workflow problem.

In this episode, Kshitij Jaggi discusses why healthcare’s digital tools have failed to improve efficiency and how agentic AI can transform operations by completing work rather than creating more of it. He explains the critical difference between task automation and system-level orchestration, and why administrative bottlenecks, such as prior authorizations, delay care. He also explores how governance, traceability, and new oversight roles are essential for responsible AI adoption. Finally, he shares how throughput should define ROI and unlock better outcomes across the healthcare system.

Tune in to learn how AI can eliminate friction, improve access to care, and reshape the future of healthcare operations. 

About Kshitij Jaggi:

Co-founder and CEO of RISA Labs, Kshitij (KJ) leads the company’s mission to accelerate oncology innovation through data-driven collaboration and transformative technology.

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Simplifying the complex world of healthcare reimbursement.

In this episode, Jason Considine, President of Experian Health, discusses shifting the industry's focus from denial management to denial prevention by leveraging AI at the point of registration. He discusses the implementation of the Patient Access Curator, a tool that automates insurance discovery and validation to reduce human error and administrative costs. He also explains how Experian leverages rich data assets, such as employment data, to help providers navigate new regulatory requirements, such as the OBBA. This episode explores the mission of leveraging advanced technology to eliminate administrative waste, enabling resources to be redeployed into direct patient care.

Tune in to start from the start with denial prevention. 

About Jason Considine:

Jason Considine is the President of Experian Health, having taken the helm in April 2025. He previously served as the Chief Commercial Officer for more than 3 years, leading sales, marketing, and business development. With nearly 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Jason is dedicated to using data analytics and software solutions to simplify administrative processes for hospitals and medical practices.

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AI is advancing rapidly in healthcare, but speed without governance can create serious clinical, legal, and enterprise-level risks.

In this episode, Peter Bonis, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Wolters Kluwer Health, explores how his team is developing reliable, evidence-based AI tools to support frontline clinicians without compromising trust or safety. He explains why clinicians are adopting AI faster than health systems can govern it, creating risks like the rise of “shadow AI.” Peter highlights the importance of transparency, human oversight, and trusted source material in ensuring safe clinical decision support. He also discusses how even experts can be influenced by faulty AI output and why governance models must evolve with frontline input to keep pace.

Tune in and learn how healthcare leaders can approach AI governance more responsibly while still supporting innovation at the point of care.

About Peter Bonis:

Peter A.L. Bonis, MD, is Chief Medical Officer at Wolters Kluwer Health, where he serves on the executive leadership team and oversees content, informatics, and industry partnerships. He was also part of the founding group at UpToDate, which grew into one of the world’s leading evidence-based clinical knowledge resources. 

Dr. Bonis is a physician entrepreneur and academic leader with more than 25 years of experience in healthcare. At Wolters Kluwer Health, he leads teams spanning physicians, pharmacists, engineers, informaticists, and business development professionals focused on clinical content, drug information, and patient engagement solutions. He is also an adjunct professor of medicine in the division of gastroenterology at Tufts University School of Medicine and previously served on the faculty at Yale University School of Medicine.

His background also includes healthcare investing, advisory work with venture capital and private equity firms, more than 70 published research articles, and the co-founding of the UpToDate donations program in partnership with Ariadne Labs to expand access in low- and middle-income countries. He earned his AB from Harvard University and his MD from New York University. 

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