The 229 Podcast

Ransomware attacks don't always start with a ransomware gang. They start with someone who gets paid to find the door. Aleksey Volkov, known online as ChewbaccaCore, was an initial access broker. His job was identifying vulnerable companies, exploiting their networks, establishing a foothold, and selling that access on dark web marketplaces. Over 16 months in 2021-2022, his work enabled attacks on...

May 19, 2026: Three powerhouse executives tackle healthcare's most complex sourcing decisions in this essential conversation. Lisa Davis , Former CIO and Founder/CEO of Lisa Davis Advisory ; Janet Malzone , Former CEO and Board Member; and Kristine Jarvis , Organizational Transformation Leader, reveal what leaders get wrong about offshore, nearshore, and automation strategies. From the pre-mortem...

May 18, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into Stanford Health Care's bold agentic AI strategy, and what it means for every healthcare IT team right now. From naming the fear of job loss head-on to redefining what innovation actually means, the trio breaks down why standing still is the bigger risk. Drex reports from Utah on the Great Trust Recession and the deepfake danger...

May 18, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson dig into Stanford Health Care's bold agentic AI strategy, and what it means for every healthcare IT team right now. From naming the fear of job loss head-on to redefining what innovation actually means, the trio breaks down why standing still is the bigger risk. Drex reports from Utah on the Great Trust Recession and the deepfake danger...

Tyler Buchanan grew up in Dundee, Scotland and became one of the most consequential cybercriminals in the English-speaking world. His method was almost insultingly simple: text messages. Posing as IT help desks, he sent phishing texts to employees at companies like Twilio, LastPass, Mailchimp, and DoorDash. Directing them to convincing fake login pages that captured credentials and 2FA codes in re...

January 22, 2026: Healthcare privacy laws just got flipped on their head, and most leaders don't realize it. Privacy Law Attorney Helen Oscislawski , Founder and Managing Partner at Attorneys at Oscislawski , reveals how information blocking rules fundamentally changed the game. But here's the twist: this shift is creating massive unintentional risks. Helen shares why even she had to escalate to l...

May 13, 2026: Jake Morrison , Global Healthcare Practice Head at Infinite Computer Solutions , joins Bill Russell for a candid executive conversation about what's really driving healthcare IT today. From the promise of AI to the surge in managed services demand, Jake shares why the old "outsource your mess for less" mindset is failing health systems. With 28 global delivery centers and half of Inf...

May 12, 2025: Ever wonder why empathy gets dismissed as a "soft skill" when it's actually your most powerful leadership tool? Eric Williamson went from being what he calls an expert jerk to becoming a jerk expert, and his transformation story will change how you think about workplace dynamics. From invisible disengagement in hybrid teams to managing star performers who steamroll everyone, Eric sha...

May 11, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back on Newsday, tackling the questions keeping healthcare IT leaders up at night. What happens when your own teams start building AI tools without permission, and why might that actually be a good thing? Plus, the big consulting firms have quietly gutted their old model and rebuilt around AI adoption. And as agents start doing the...

May 5, 2026: When healthcare executive Kim Garrett left corporate America to launch Northern Skye Consulting, she discovered something unexpected: "Growth doesn't happen in the easy times. It happens when you don't know where that next step is, but you press on." In this candid conversation, Kim reveals why the initial leap wasn't the scariest part of her journey, how her Scottish grandfather's le...

May 5, 2026: Pain is the number one reason patients access healthcare, yet objective pain data is virtually absent from claims systems and EHRs. Martha Lawrence , CEO and co-founder of AccendoWave , explores how her company is building benchmark databases that correlate brainwave activity with pain perception, addressing both the clinical and financial gaps that leave health systems exposed. They...

May 4, 2026: Lisbeth Votruba , Chief Clinical Officer at AvaSure , joins Bill Russell and Drex DeFord on Newsday to celebrate Nurses Week with a fascinating look at where nursing has been, and where it's going. From Florence's data-driven legacy to today's AI-powered virtual care, Lisbeth shares why nursing turnover is declining, why certification rates are rising, and why she sees technology not...

May 1, 2026: In this inaugural episode of Flourish Sound Bytes, Sarah Richardson sits down with Tyler Barhydt , a seasoned technology executive who led a remarkable cloud transformation journey. Tyler shares how his organization, Envision Healthcare , went from 11 data centers to nearly zero, the unexpected benefits of the Broadcom/VMware situation, and why he believes every cloud migration needs...

April 29, 2026: Bill Russell sits down with Jim Jacobs , President and CEO of MediQuant , to confront one of healthcare's most expensive and underappreciated problems: runaway application complexity. Jim makes the case that software rationalization isn't an IT to-do list item; it's a board-level imperative. With health systems carrying $60 million in unwanted software spend and cyber risks piling...

April 28, 2026: Female rivalry in the workplace is more than interpersonal drama — it's a culture problem with real consequences for teams, retention, and patient care. Dr. Amber Tichenor , organizational psychologist and author of “Behind Frenemy Lines”, joins Sarah Richardson to unpack the psychology behind workplace rivalry, why it's especially prevalent in nursing and other high-stakes environ...

April 27, 2026: Drex DeFord and Bill Russell are back on Newsday, and fresh off the 229 Summit, they're not pulling punches. Healthcare IT has a demand problem. Too many projects, not enough capacity, and an industry that's chronically bad at saying no. From the 229 Summit's sharpest takeaways to the Salesforce headless CRM announcement, the vl.js hack, and why Bill thinks Claude Code's "genesis k...

April 24, 2026: In this conversation, healthcare tech entrepreneur Kristen Schmidt and her 11-year-old daughter Harper explore what it means to prepare the next generation for a world shaped by AI. Harper's definition of AI — insightful beyond her years — anchors a candid discussion about the growing gap between AI's rapid advancement and youth readiness. For healthcare IT leaders, the episode rai...

April 20, 2026: What happens when you layer AI onto broken processes without fixing them first? Angel Mena , MD, CMO of Symplr , joins Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson on Newsday to answer that question with the kind of clinical candor only a practicing physician can bring. From ambient documentation to quality metrics to the credentialing chaos hiding inside every health system, th...

April 16, 2026: Something big is changing at This Week Health, and it starts with this episode. Bill Russell sits down with Sarah Richardson to announce that Flourish, the beloved show Sarah has helmed since joining TWH, is joining the 229 Podcast. But this isn't a step back; it's a consolidation of purpose. Bill and Sarah unpack why simplifying to a single channel better serves the healthcare IT...

April 13, 2026: Jacob Hansen , Chief Product and Technology Officer at AvaSure , joins Bill, Drex, and Sarah on Newsday for a conversation about the data governance battles quietly reshaping AI. From who owns AI model improvements derived from a health system's environment to whether EHRs should have control over how that data is used, Jacob pulls no punches. The conversation also tackles the evol...

April 3, 2026: Kory Hudson , Deputy CIO at University Health in San Antonio, Texas, and Lindsay Hudson , SVP of Client Partnerships at Nordic , join Bill Russell live from HIMSS to share how a candid assessment, a governance overhaul, and a return to scheduling best practice transformed patient access and unlocked millions in net revenue. Key Points: 02:57 Back to Best Practice Scheduling 04:08 No...

April 1, 2026: Healthcare fraud is a $300 billion problem, and the old rules-based approach isn't stopping it. In this Solution Showcase from the HIMSS floor, Tim McNamee , Enterprise Account Manager, and Mark Larochelle , Strategic Public Sector Account Executive, of Cloudera explore how agentic AI is transforming fraud detection, clinical decision support, and data governance in healthcare. From...

March 30, 2026: Bill Russell and Drex DeFord dig into three of the biggest stories shaping healthcare IT right now. From the seismic Sutter Health and Allina Health merger, the Stryker cyberattack carried out by an Iranian-linked group Handala, and the sobering reality that threat actors like Tycoon 2FA are back online within 15 days of being taken down, this episode covers the frontlines of healt...

March 27, 2026: Most healthcare organizations see legacy systems as technical debt—costly to maintain, risky to secure, and difficult to access. But what if that same data could become the foundation for your AI strategy? From the HIMSS floor, Bill Russell sits down with Jason Rose (CEO) and Jonathan Cook (CTO) of Clearsense to explore how health systems can rapidly retire legacy applications whil...

March 25, 2026: What happens when a health system is juggling over 100 active IT projects with a workforce that can never be 100% allocated to any single one? Joe Longo , SVP and CDIO at Parkland Health , and Eric Utzinger , Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer at Revuud , join Bill Russell to expose the hidden dysfunction inside traditional healthcare IT staffing — and what a transparent, direct-a...