Out of the FHIR Podcast

Today’s episode of Out of the FHIR brings a massive milestone: I’m thrilled to officially welcome my new co-host, Benji Graham , to the show. Benji is one of the few true, certified FHIR experts in the country, and he’s joining me to ensure we dive as deep into the technical weeds as humanly possible. To celebrate, we brought on a true legend in the health tech space: Dr. Don Rucker . Don has seen...

Gene Vestel sits down with Michelle Skinner , Chief Clinical Executive at TeleTracking, to unpack the operational side of healthcare execution. Michelle is a nurse by background with an MBA who spent decades running emergency departments and trauma centers before moving into health-tech leadership. In this episode, she breaks down how TeleTracking a rare, 35-year-old owner-operated pillar in a sea...

Ron Urwongse , co-founder of Defacto Health, and I sit down to break down the rapid shifts hitting CMS regulations, the transition from standard FHIR APIs to national bulk data datasets, and how agentic AI workflows are compressing engineering timelines from months to an afternoon. Listen now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. We discuss: * The Bulk Data Pivot: Why CMS is expanding beyond en...

Mark Fleming is Senior Director of Prior Authorization, Interoperability, and Portal Solutions at Availity, a leading healthcare clearinghouse and data network. With over 25 years of experience in healthcare IT and revenue cycle management starting back when Epic had only 500 employees Mark is one of the industry’s foremost experts on modernizing the administrative friction between payers and prov...

Ewout Kramer is the “head nerd” and founder of Firely , and one of the original architects of the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard. Ward Weistra leads data modeling tools at Firely and curates the content for FHIR DevDays. Together, they have spent over a decade transitioning healthcare from messy legacy standards to a modern, developer-friendly ecosystem. Listen on YouTu...

Ever wondered why security is key for FHIR interoperability? Here’s what you need to know! Tag someone who needs to understand this! In the healthcare world, we face an ongoing challenge: scaling security effectively. Fast security initiatives aim to solve this age-old problem by automating processes that once required human intervention. With dynamic client registration, organizations can connect...

I just got back from HIMSS 2026, and my ears are still ringing mostly from the sound of vendors pivoting to “AI-First” strategies overnight. In Episode 24 of Out of the FHIR , we’re skipping the press releases. I’m breaking down the three biggest lies being told on the conference floor and highlighting the few innovators who are actually using FHIR to move the needle. The “Spicy” Summary: * Stop c...

In this episode, I sat down with Max Nussbaumer to talk about why he founded Max Health , why he’s bringing his work from Europe into the U.S. market, and what he believes is about to change in healthcare faster than most people realize. Max has deep roots in the FHIR ecosystem from academia at the Technical University of Munich, to Firely , to years of consulting across Europe. Now he’s building...

Top 10 Takeaways: COVID, Data, and the Coming AI Reckoning in Healthcare 1) Healthcare didn’t lack data. It lacked urgency. The pandemic didn’t introduce new analytics capabilities. It changed the cost of being slow . When delay becomes lethal, organizations suddenly discover they can make decisions in hours instead of quarters. That tells you something uncomfortable: speed was optional until it w...

In Episode 21 of Out of the FHIR , I sat down with Pooja Babbrah , Executive Vice President of Strategy and Industry Alignment for NCPDP . We bonded over our shared history in the pharmacy world dating back to the rivalry between Medco and PCS and dug deep into why pharmacy is the sleeping giant of healthcare interoperability. Here are the key takeaways from our conversation: 1. Pharmacists Are Ca...

This episode of Out of the FHIR features Paulius Mui, MD , a family physician and entrepreneur, exploring the critical intersection of clinical medicine, technology, and data standards. Dr. Mui shares his journey from residency to becoming a tech-savvy clinician and advocate for primary care, discussing the challenges of quality measurement, the evolving healthcare workforce, and how technologies...

This week, I’m sharing a special conversation I had with Aaron Neiderhiser of Tuva Health and Phil Ballentine from Atropos Health ( together they host the High Dimensional Health Data Podcast) . We’ve been trying to schedule this for months, and I’m glad we finally hit record because we got right into the weeds of why healthcare analytics is still so painful and how we are fixing it. If you’ve fol...

In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, the integration of data between payers and providers has become crucial for delivering value-based care. In this episode of the out of the fhir podcast, FHIR Data guy sits down with Michael Westover , VP of Payer Partnerships and Informatics at Providence, to discuss his journey in healthcare, the challenges of data integration, and strategies for...

Welcome back to Out of the FHIR . This isn’t just any episode. This is a reunion . FHIR Data guy brings together two heavy-hitters from his past, Eric Melymuk Principal Engineer at Progyny and John Dobak Senior FHIR Analytics Engineer at b. Well a trio of veterans who all came up in the “bad old days” of HEDIS and traditional quality measurement. This is the story of a technology stack (and a mind...

In this episode, I speak with Mark Scrimshire, Chief Interoperability Officer at Onyx, about his extensive journey in healthcare interoperability, the evolution of data sharing standards, and the future impact of regulations and technology. Mark Scrimshire’s Journey to FHIR® Mark recounts his two-decade career, which provides a vivid history of modern interoperability. His journey began around 200...

In our latest episode of Out of the FHIR , I had a refreshingly candid conversation with Scott Rossignol of Farseen Advisors. With over 15 years in the trenches, including a formative period at Epic, Scott brings a dose of reality to the often-hyped world of FHIR and interoperability. We didn’t just talk about standards; we talked about strategy, pitfalls, and the hard-earned lessons from building...

In a new episode of the "Out of the FHIR" podcast, host Gene Vestel sits down with Mark Kramer PhD of MITRE, a pioneering force in both artificial intelligence and healthcare interoperability. Mark, an original AI innovator, offers a contrarian and thought-provoking take on the future of healthcare data. Don't miss this episode as they discuss: * The radical idea that human language might replace...

Guests: Bill Lakenan & Benji Graham – FHIR evangelists & innovators at Bellese Where We’re At * CQL maturity : Finally stable enough to calculate without different engines giving different answers. But DEQM (Data Exchange for Quality Measurement) is still a labyrinth powerful, but too flexible and waiting for industry alignment. * QI Core vs reality : Full QI Core adoption is a fantasy today. The...

Are you living in a world of broken dashboards and unreliable data pipelines? You're not alone. For too long, data has been treated as a downstream problem, an afterthought to be dealt with by overworked data teams. In this special deep dive, we're joined by Chad Sanderson and Mark Freeman of Gable AI to explore the solution: the Shift Left movement and Data Contracts . We break down how this new...

Get ready to geek out! This week on "Out of the FHIR," Gene Vestel sits down with the brilliant Kerry Weinberg, co-founder of Phenomenal and a true expert in the trenches of healthcare data and AI. Kerry and Gene jump right into the big questions: Can an AI really understand healthcare without deep medical knowledge? They explore the wild, unpredictable nature of human health data (it's not your a...

Welcome back to another episode of Out of the Fire Podcast , where we tackle the hottest topics at the intersection of healthcare, FHIR, interoperability, and technology. This week, I am thrilled to be joined by a true visionary and expert in the health-tech space, Jill DeGraff . If you follow the conversation around healthcare data and policy, you've undoubtedly come across Jill's insightful anal...

Welcome to Episode 9 of Out of the Fhir! This week, we're joined by a special guest, Eyal Dviri , Head of the Data Innovation team at Clalit Health Services the second-largest integrated payer-provider organization in the world. In this fascinating conversation, we travel to Israel to explore its unique and rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem. With a new law mandating nationwide, FHIR-based data...

🎙️ Episode 8 – Why Provider Data Is Still Broken (And How to Fix It) | Guest: Ron Urwongse In this episode of Out of the FHIR , Gene sits down with Ron Urwongse founder of Defacto Health, a self professed Provider Data Nerd, health tech strategist, and one of the sharpest minds in provider data infrastructure to unpack why provider data remains stubbornly inaccurate, fragmented, and operationally...

Out of the FHIR – Special Edition: Plaid for Healthcare, Part 2 Episode Title: The Infrastructure Awakens: From Interop Dreams to Data-Driven Reality In Part 2 of our special double-header episode, Eugene Vestel dives even deeper into the bold vision of a connected healthcare ecosystem with two of the industry's sharpest minds: * 🧠 Brendan Keeler – Interoperability Practice Lead at HTD Health *...

🎙️ Out of the FHIR: Deep Dive – Plaid in Healthcare with Brendan Keeler & Jason Kulatunga - Part 1 In this episode of Out of the FHIR , we go deep into the future of healthcare interoperability with two visionaries at the forefront of change: Brendan Keeler, Interoperability Practice Lead at HTD Health, and Jason Kulatunga, Founder of Fasten Health and Techstars NYC alum. We explore: * 🧩 What a "...