Rockin' HIT Sales

David Hacker

Rockin' HIT Sales is the show for founders, sales leaders, and investors who care about selling Health IT the way hospitals actually buy. Host David Hacker, CPHIMS and MEDDPICC® Certified Trainer, sits down with the people on the other side of the deal table—CMIOs, CNIOs, CFOs, innovation leaders, GPO executives, and federal policy and standards leads—to unpack: How health systems really evaluate digital health and AI solutions What separates "interesting pilot" from scaled enterprise deployment How MEDDPICC®, AI risk, and interoperability policy show up in real deals What risk, finance, and clinical leaders listen for in vendor conversations Guests include health system executives, innovators, and policymakers such as: Chief Medical Innovation Officers, CFOs of major health systems, technology leaders from national GPOs, and federal Health IT and AI standards leaders. New episodes drop every other week, with short, practical conversations designed to help you qualify better, de-risk deals, and align your go-to-market with the way hospitals make decisions. If you're building or selling Health IT or healthcare AI—and you want fewer stalled pilots and more scalable wins—this is your front-row seat.

  1. 25 Sept ·  Bonus Video

    Bonus Episode: Whose Lens Is Your Health IT Go-to-Market Strategy Built Through?

    Health IT companies naturally build go-to-market strategies around their products, sales processes, pipelines, and growth goals. Hospitals and health systems experience that same commercial process through a very different lens. In this bonus episode of Rockin' HIT Sales, David Hacker, CPHIMS, looks at 10 questions provider buyers need answered before they can evaluate, fund, adopt, and scale new technology. David explores questions including: Is the problem important enough for the provider to act? Does a successful pilot actually prove the solution can scale? When will the provider recover its investment? Can the technology be adopted into real clinical and operational workflows? Can the provider trust both the technology and the vendor? Who needs to become confident enough to approve the purchase? Can the organization actually procure and contract for the solution? Will the technology work inside the provider's environment? Does the vendor understand how health systems actually buy? Is the opportunity genuinely moving toward a decision? The episode is based on Elevate HIT Sales' new provider-informed Field Guide, Whose Lens Is Your Health IT Go-to-Market Strategy Built Through? The central premise is simple: The strongest Health IT go-to-market strategies are not built around how the vendor wants to sell. They are built around how the provider needs to buy. Explore the complete Field Guide: https://elevate-hit-sales.com/health-it-go-to-market-strategy/ Rockin' HIT Sales — where provider reality meets Health IT go-to-market.

    Bonus Episode: Whose Lens Is Your Health IT Go-to-Market Strategy Built Through?
  2. 22 Sept ·  Video

    Healthcare Cybersecurity, Vendor Trust & Security Review with Gary S. Chan

    In this episode of Rockin' HIT Sales, David Hacker is joined by Gary S. Chan, System Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at SSM Health, for a practical discussion on what Health IT companies need to understand about cybersecurity, vendor trust, and provider security review. Gary explains why security review is not simply a late-stage technical checkpoint. It is part of how health systems evaluate trust, patient safety, operational continuity, regulatory exposure, and whether a vendor is prepared to operate inside a provider environment. They discuss: When security should enter the Health IT sales process Why operational approval does not mean the deal is done What provider security teams are really evaluating What makes a vendor easier — or harder — to assess Why documentation, third-party validation, and dedicated security ownership matter How AI is changing security questionnaires and vendor assessments Why honesty and transparency build long-term provider trust Why vendors need to tailor their message to security, operations, clinical, financial, and executive audiences Gary also brings his unique perspective as the Security Mentalist, combining cybersecurity, psychology, and mentalism to make security lessons more memorable. He closes the episode with a live mentalism demonstration that reinforces one of the key themes of the conversation: information is only valuable if people remember it and act on it. For Health IT founders, product leaders, GTM teams, and investors, this episode offers a provider-side lens on why security readiness is part of product readiness, implementation readiness, and go-to-market readiness. Learn more about Gary's Security Mentalist work: https://www.securitymentalist.com/ Episode page: https://elevate-hit-sales.com/healthcare-cybersecurity-vendor-trust-gary-s-chan/ #HealthcareCybersecurity #HealthIT #SecurityMentalist #VendorRiskManagement #GarySChan

  3. 16 Jun ·  Video

    AI Governance in the Real World: What Vendors Need Before Provider Review with Dr. Yasir Tarabichi

    In this episode of Rockin' HIT Sales, David Hacker sits down with Dr. Yasir Tarabichi, Head of Digital & CMIO at Ovatient and Chief Health AI Officer at MetroHealth, for a practical conversation on AI governance in the real world. This episode focuses on the questions AI-enabled Health IT companies need to be ready for before they enter provider review: What does AI governance actually mean inside a health system? How does an AI product, internal use case, or vendor solution enter the "front door" for evaluation? How do health systems balance innovation speed with safety, discipline, and operational control? What separates a low-risk AI use case from one that requires deeper governance review? What do mature vendors do differently when explaining implementation, monitoring, risk, and workflow impact? At what point in the sales process should companies start addressing AI readiness, especially when early conversations may be with operational or clinical leaders rather than AI experts? And one of the most important questions from the episode: What is one thing AI companies should just stop saying or doing when talking to a health system? For founders, product leaders, GTM teams, and investors, this episode is a practical look at what provider organizations need to understand before AI-enabled solutions can be approved, trusted, implemented, monitored, and scaled.

    AI Governance in the Real World: What Vendors Need Before Provider Review with Dr. Yasir Tarabichi
  4. 19 May ·  Video

    Why Clinical AI Dies in Pilot: From Impressive Demo to Hospital-Ready with Sam Morhaim

    In this episode of Rockin' HIT Sales, David Hacker sits down with Sam Morhaim, CEO of Vantage IO, to explore why clinical AI pilots often fail after a strong demo — and what separates an impressive prototype from a hospital-ready system. Sam explains why the problem is rarely the model alone. Clinical AI often breaks in the surrounding architecture: evidence grounding, audit trails, failure handling, PHI data flow, workflow fit, compliance, and the safeguards needed to survive real-world provider review. A major focus of the conversation is RAG — retrieval-augmented generation — and why HealthTech teams need to understand how data is indexed, retrieved, separated, and exposed before bringing AI into clinical environments. Sam highlights how poorly designed RAG workflows can create risks around PHI leakage, evidence grounding, patient-level separation, and trust. In this episode: Why clinical AI pilots fail after a strong demo What separates "works on GPT" from "hospital-ready" Why model accuracy alone is not enough for clinical trust How RAG / retrieval-augmented generation can create PHI and evidence-grounding risks What hospital reviewers look for around traceability, auditability, and failure handling Why clinical AI companies should stop saying "hallucination-free" How architecture has become part of go-to-market readiness for healthcare AI 3 Brief Takeaways: Clinical AI rarely fails because of the model alone. RAG is becoming a major clinical AI risk area. Architecture is now part of go-to-market readiness. Related Resource: Download the AI Risk Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://elevate-hit-sales.com/mc-ai-risk-toolkit/

    Why Clinical AI Dies in Pilot: From Impressive Demo to Hospital-Ready with Sam Morhaim
  5. 5 May ·  Video

    Designing With Nurses, Not For Them: A Playbook for Health IT Founders — with Hiyam Nadel

    In this episode of Rockin' HIT Sales, David Hacker sits down with Hiyam M. Nadel, MBA, RN, Director, Center for Innovations in Care Delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital, to give Health IT founders and investors an unfiltered, nurse-led view of why "great" technology still fails on the floor—and what it takes to earn real adoption. Hiyam works at the intersection of bedside reality, nursing leadership, and innovation. She makes a clear case that nurses can't be treated as "end users" who get trained at the end—they need to be co-designers from day one. If your product touches workflows, staffing, safety, documentation, or patient experience, this episode is a practical playbook for how to build with nurses, not for them. You'll hear what strong vendor partnerships look like—and what immediately breaks trust. Hiyam breaks down the signals that tell her a team has done its homework (and the red flags that say they haven't). She also explains how innovation programs and nurse-led initiatives evaluate outside partners: what gets attention, what gets stalled in governance, and what it takes to move from an "interesting pilot" to something worth scaling. The conversation also tackles the current wave of AI in nursing: where she's optimistic, where she sees risk, and what founders should be prepared to answer before they show a demo—especially around safety, workflow impact, and equity. If you're building automation or "AI copilots" for frontline teams, Hiyam offers a grounded way to talk about change that feels supportive rather than threatening. What you'll take away: How frontline clinicians actually experience new tools (and why adoption fails before rollout) What makes a vendor easy—or painful—to work with during pilots and co-development How to co-design workflows that nurses will actually adopt and sustain How to engage innovation centers and nurse leaders in a way that builds trust and momentum What it takes to move from pilot to scale without running over governance, change management, and the people doing the work If you're building for care delivery, this is the episode that helps you "get out of the boardroom" and design for reality.

    Designing With Nurses, Not For Them: A Playbook for Health IT Founders — with Hiyam Nadel

About

Rockin' HIT Sales is the show for founders, sales leaders, and investors who care about selling Health IT the way hospitals actually buy. Host David Hacker, CPHIMS and MEDDPICC® Certified Trainer, sits down with the people on the other side of the deal table—CMIOs, CNIOs, CFOs, innovation leaders, GPO executives, and federal policy and standards leads—to unpack: How health systems really evaluate digital health and AI solutions What separates "interesting pilot" from scaled enterprise deployment How MEDDPICC®, AI risk, and interoperability policy show up in real deals What risk, finance, and clinical leaders listen for in vendor conversations Guests include health system executives, innovators, and policymakers such as: Chief Medical Innovation Officers, CFOs of major health systems, technology leaders from national GPOs, and federal Health IT and AI standards leaders. New episodes drop every other week, with short, practical conversations designed to help you qualify better, de-risk deals, and align your go-to-market with the way hospitals make decisions. If you're building or selling Health IT or healthcare AI—and you want fewer stalled pilots and more scalable wins—this is your front-row seat.