The Beat

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The Beat, powered by HLTH, is a weekly interview series dedicated to paving a better path forward for the future of health. Each week a variety of hosts bring you authentic conversations with prominent thought leaders. Through these interviews with people at the forefront of change in healthcare, we hope to spark new ideas and encourage new collaborations among listeners.

  1. 1 HR AGO

    How Embedded Evidence Is Reducing Clinician Burnout with Christopher Sullivan of Wolters Kluwer

    About Christopher Sullivan: Christopher Sullivan is a senior executive with deep leadership experience across health, legal, and regulatory technology, currently serving as Vice President & General Manager of Pharmacy & Health Technology Solutions at Wolters Kluwer Health in New York. He brings over a decade of progressive responsibility within Wolters Kluwer, where he has led large commercial and product portfolios spanning pharmacy, healthcare, legal, transactional, and retirement solutions. His background is heavily strategy-driven, with prior roles overseeing partnerships, pricing, business intelligence, and corporate development, translating data and market insight into scalable growth. Before transitioning fully into executive leadership, he built a strong foundation in operations and logistics at DHL and gained strategic consulting experience at GE Capital. Christopher is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he studied international relations and systems engineering, and holds an MBA in finance and management from Fordham Gabelli, with additional studies at ESADE Business School. Things You’ll Learn: Clinicians face up to 20 complex clinical questions daily, making fast access to trusted evidence essential. Embedding insight directly into workflow reduces delays and decision fatigue.Context switching across platforms significantly contributes to clinician burnout. Keeping evidence inside the tools clinicians already use improves efficiency and satisfaction.Trusted, expert-reviewed content is becoming more valuable as AI-generated information increases. Confidence in the source has a direct impact on clinical adoption.API-based delivery allows evidence to reach clinicians beyond traditional EMR systems. This supports modern, flexible workflows across digital health platforms.Partnerships between content experts and technology vendors accelerate innovation. Collaboration keeps solutions aligned with real clinical needs.Resources: Connect with and follow Christopher Sullivan on LinkedIn.Follow Wolters Kluwer Health on LinkedIn  and visit their website.

    12 min
  2. AI @ HLTH: Inside Solventum’s AI Healthcare Strategy

    2 DAYS AGO

    AI @ HLTH: Inside Solventum’s AI Healthcare Strategy

    In this episode, host Sandy Vance and Hari Balasubramanian, the Chief Technology Officer, Health Information Systems at Solventum, sit down for a deep dive into how AI-driven healthcare technology is reshaping the industry. Together, they explore how Solventum is building innovative products and services that streamline documentation, billing, and coding while improving the patient experience and saving valuable time for healthcare professionals.  From what’s happening at Solventum right now to the company’s move toward fully autonomous coding, this conversation unpacks how healthcare payers and providers can rethink financial performance in the age of artificial intelligence. Hari also shares practical insights for CIOs evaluating these systems and explains how Solventum measures real-world improvements driven by AI.  If you’re interested in healthcare innovation, revenue cycle transformation, or the future of AI in health information systems, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Check out Solventum’s Education Session and Case Study Session that was presented in the AI Zone at HLTH 2025. In this episode, they talk about:What’s going on with Solventum right nowHow Solventum is serving healthcare payersSolventum’s move toward complete autonomous codingThe common misconceptions about improving financial performance for providersHow CIOs should evaluate their work when engaging with these systemsMeasuring the improvements produced by AI with Solventum’s systemsA Little About Hari:Hari Bala joined Solventum as Chief Technology Officer, Health Information Systems, in May 2025, bringing more than 25 years of experience building large-scale, distributed systems across healthcare, cloud, and security, with deep expertise in GenAI, data science, analytics, and machine learning. Previously, he led AI, data, analytics, and cloud transformation efforts at GE Healthcare and Oracle Cerner, where he helped establish Oracle’s AI Services organization and later led the Health Data Intelligence and Analytics platform following the Cerner acquisition. Earlier, Hari spent nearly 19 years at Microsoft in leadership roles spanning Azure, Search, Cosmos DB, Windows, Office 365, and mobile and browser technologies.

    21 min

  3. 22/12/2025

    How Bari Kowal and Regeneron Are Redesigning Clinical Trials for Speed, Access, and Impact

    About Bari Kowal: Bari Kowal is a senior biopharmaceutical executive with over 30 years of experience leading global operations, clinical development, and strategic portfolio management. As Senior Vice President at Regeneron, she oversees development operations, enterprise-wide portfolio strategy, risk management, and major technology initiatives, helping guide the company’s continued growth and innovation. Her career spans leadership roles at Pfizer, ICON Clinical Research, Valera Pharmaceuticals, PDL BioPharma, GenVec, and Covance, where she built high-performing teams and drove operational excellence across clinical operations and strategic programs. Bari also serves on the Board of Directors of TransCelerate BioPharma Inc., contributing to industry-wide efforts to streamline and strengthen clinical trial execution. She is known for her governance expertise, collaborative leadership style, and ability to deliver organizational transformation at scale. Bari holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from New York University, with additional academic training from the University of Pennsylvania and Binghamton University. Things You’ll Learn: Expanding access to clinical trials requires educating both patients and physicians, many of whom are unfamiliar with how to engage in research. Better awareness can dramatically increase participation and diversify trial populations.Technology alone will not speed up drug development unless systems are connected end-to-end. Interoperability is the real catalyst for reducing inefficiencies across discovery, development, and regulatory submission.Clean, structured data is the foundation of meaningful AI adoption in healthcare. Without it, predictive models and trial optimization tools cannot reach their potential.Trial complexity is one of the most significant barriers to faster development timelines. Streamlining procedures, reducing unnecessary tests, and learning from regulatory feedback can significantly accelerate progress.Sustainable clinical research requires equipping trial sites with greater capacity and support. Even when the right patients are identified, sites must be capable of enrolling and managing them effectively.Resources: Connect with and follow Bari Kowal on LinkedIn.Follow Regeneron on LinkedIn and visit their website.

    16 min

  4. 19/12/2025

    How Optum Is Using Real-Time Intelligence to Eliminate Avoidable Claim Denials

    About Madhu Pawar: Madhu Pawar is a board director and cross-disciplinary technology leader operating at the intersection of healthcare, data, and product innovation. She serves on the Board of Directors at Talkspace (NASDAQ: TALK) and is the Chief Product Officer for Optum Insight, where she drives product strategy and platform innovation across UnitedHealth Group’s most critical assets. Prior to Optum, she spent over six years at Google leading the global SMB Ads product ecosystem—overseeing AI-driven insights platforms, multi-billion-dollar revenue lines, and large-scale engineering, product, and operations teams across multiple continents. Madhu also teaches consumer analytics in healthcare as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Earlier in her career, she was a partner in McKinsey’s Global Healthcare Practice, where she built and scaled technology and services businesses for payers, providers, and fast-growth health companies. She began her career in software engineering at Hewlett-Packard Labs, earning patents in authentication and location-aware computing, followed by roles at PwC in security and technology. Madhu holds graduate degrees from Stanford School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University. Things You’ll Learn: Real-time data exchange between payers and providers can significantly reduce the confusion, delays, and costs associated with today’s claims processes. AI-enabled reasoning over contracts and encounters improves accuracy from the start.Optum Real aims to bridge the transparency gap by connecting stakeholders through a multi-party hub, enabling real-time understanding of coverage and reimbursement. Early pilots show tangible reductions in denials and improved patient clarity.The majority of first-time denied claims are avoidable, signaling an industry-wide opportunity to remove unnecessary rework. Solving this problem increases efficiency for providers, payers, and patients.Real-time intelligence opens the door for more effective value-based care arrangements. When providers can see financial implications instantly, incentives align more naturally.The long-term vision includes real-time payment flows, AI-driven clinical decision support, and improved patient engagement. Breaking down paper-based silos will unlock entirely new use cases at scale.Resources: Connect with and follow Madhu Pawar on LinkedIn.Follow Optum on LinkedIn and visit their website.

    11 min
  5. AI @ HLTH : Responsible AI in the Clinic: Insights from Microsoft’s Hadas Bitran

    18/12/2025

    AI @ HLTH : Responsible AI in the Clinic: Insights from Microsoft’s Hadas Bitran

    In this episode, host Sandy Vance sits down with Hadas Bitran, Partner General Manager of Health AI at Microsoft Health & Life Sciences, for a deep dive into the rapidly evolving world of healthcare agents. Together, they explore how agentic technologies are being used across clinical settings, where they’re creating value, and why tailoring these tools to the specific needs of users and audiences is essential for safety and effectiveness. Well-designed healthcare agents can reinforce responsible AI practices (like transparency, accountability, and patient safety) while also helping organizations evaluate emerging solutions with greater clarity and confidence.  In this episode, they talk about:How agents are used in healthcare and use casesThe risks if a healthcare agent is not tailored to the needs of users and audiencesHow healthcare agents support responsible AI practices, such as safety, transparency, and accountability, in clinical settingsHealthcare organizations should look to evaluate healthcare agent solutionsBridging the gaps in access, equity, and health literacy; empowering underserved populations and democratizing expertiseThe impact of AI on medical professionals and the healthcare staff, and how they should prepare for the change?A Little About Hadas:Hadas Bitran is Partner General Manager, Health AI, at Microsoft Health & Life Sciences. Hadas and her multi-disciplinary R&D organization build AI technologies for health & life sciences, focusing on Generative AI-based services, Agentic AI, and healthcare-adapted safeguards. They shipped multiple products and cloud services for the healthcare industry, which were adopted by thousands of customers worldwide. In addition to her work at Microsoft, Hadas previously served as a Board Member at SNOMED International, a not-for-profit organization that drives clinical terminology worldwide. Before Microsoft, Hadas held senior leadership positions managing R&D and Product groups in tech corporations and in start-up companies. Hadas has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Chicago.

    26 min

  6. 18/12/2025

    How Mary Varghese Presti and Microsoft Are Using AI Agents to Give Nurses Their Time Back

    About Mary Varghese Presti: Mary Varghese Presti is a transformational healthcare leader with over two decades of experience spanning clinical care, federal reform, biopharma, and health technology. As Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Health & Life Sciences, she drives growth in complex environments by creating clear strategy, aligning organizations, and operationalizing execution with discipline. Her prior roles include leading Nuance’s Dragon Medical business, overseeing IBM Watson Health’s Life Sciences portfolio, incubating new ventures at athenahealth, and driving digital-health transformation at Pfizer. She began her career as a pediatric nurse at Johns Hopkins and later helped shape national health IT and payment reforms at Booz Allen. Known for navigating complexity with optimism and rigor, she consistently turns ambiguity into strategy and strategy into measurable results. Things You’ll Learn: AI in healthcare is evolving from simple assistants to agentic services that can independently execute predictable workflows, allowing clinicians to regain time and focus. This shift enables a hybrid workforce where human and digital colleagues work side by side.Dragon Copilot for nurses was designed specifically to support the way nurses document care, capturing structured inputs such as vitals, intake/output, and observations through natural speech. By reducing EHR time and ambiently recording bedside interactions, it helps turn “caring out loud” into complete documentation.Nurses spend more than a quarter of their 12-hour shifts documenting in the EHR, often feeling emotionally torn between screens and patients. AI that listens in the background can significantly reduce this burden while allowing for more presence at the bedside.New tools are starting to expose the “invisible work” nurses perform, from constant micro-assessments to coordination with ancillary departments. Making this work visible is a critical step toward properly valuing nursing labor and improving workforce planning.Real-world use cases, such as AI agents assembling data for tumor boards at academic centers, show that agentic workflows can compress decision timelines from weeks to days. These same principles can be extended to many clinical and non-clinical tasks, accelerating care while preserving clinician judgment.Resources: Connect with and follow Mary Varghese Presti on LinkedIn.Follow Microsoft on LinkedIn.Visit the Microsoft and Life Sciences website.Listen to Mary’s previous interview on our podcast here.Watch Mary’s keynote presentation at the HLTH conference here.

    16 min

  7. 17/12/2025

    Why Clinical Trials Fail Even When the Science Is Strong with Heather Grey of Omega Healthcare

    About Heather Grey: Heather Grey is a healthcare operator and commercial leader who has spent two decades inside the machinery of pharma, life sciences, and clinical research—seeing firsthand where trials break down and why execution matters more than ideas. As SVP and General Manager of Real-World Data and Clinical Trials at Omega Healthcare, she leads CurateIQ, which focuses on transforming messy, fragmented clinical data into FDA-grade assets that accelerate trials, support AI, and expand research beyond academic centers. Before Omega, she held senior leadership roles at Tempus AI, where she built and scaled clinical trial and RWD commercial operations, and at Optum Life Sciences, driving sales and client development across pharma and health systems. Her career spans everything from operating room work to frontline pharma sales to executive leadership, giving her a rare, end-to-end view of how science, data, and operations collide in the real world, and why clean data and operational discipline, not hype, determine whether innovation actually reaches patients. Things You’ll Learn:  Clinical trials fail primarily due to operational breakdowns, such as delayed data entry, poor site readiness, and missed timelines, rather than flawed science.Most healthcare data exists in an unstructured and unusable state, making human-led curation essential for generating regulatory-grade insights and training AI.AI should amplify clinical expertise, not replace it, because accuracy and trust depend on continuous human quality assurance.The lack of infrastructure prevents 88% of health systems and most community centers from offering clinical trials.Expanding trials into community settings is crucial for enhancing access, diversity, and the real-world relevance of research.Resources: Connect with and follow Heather Grey on LinkedIn.Follow Omega Healthcare on LinkedIn and visit their website.Email Heather directly here.

    14 min

  8. 16/12/2025

    How James York Is Redesigning Diagnostics to Make Testing Accessible for Everyone

    About James York: James York serves as the Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Government Affairs at Molecular Testing Labs, where he leads the company’s mission to expand access to diagnostics and transform patient engagement with their health. With over a decade of leadership experience at the organization, James drives commercial strategy, strategic partnerships, business development, and market education, championing a consumer-centric approach to laboratory medicine. His work focuses on advancing transparency, affordability, and proactive health management by ensuring that individuals, regardless of their circumstances or geography, can benefit from timely diagnostic insights. James’ career spans executive roles across healthcare, including CEO and president positions, as well as senior leadership in sales and business development, providing him with a deep understanding of both clinical and commercial landscapes. Guided by a commitment to equitable access and meaningful innovation, he continues to influence how advanced diagnostics are delivered and adopted across the healthcare ecosystem. Things You’ll Learn: Making diagnostics accessible requires removing economic, geographic, and emotional friction so patients can participate in their own care. At-home self-collection solves barriers that traditional labs cannot.Affordability is inseparable from access, and transparent low-cost testing is critical for supporting large populations who are “functionally uninsured.” Most patients avoid care because they cannot predict the financial burden.Virtual care has accelerated the need for decentralized diagnostics, as patients who seek care online are unlikely to travel to a physical laboratory. Without accessible testing, virtual clinical pathways break.Pioneering new diagnostic models is challenging, costly, and often met with resistance from incumbents and regulators. Yet these challenges highlight the significance of the innovation.The greatest opportunity in diagnostics lies not in high-tech breakthroughs but in improving everyday tests that influence most clinical decisions. Access, not technology, is the true innovation.Resources: Connect with and follow James York on LinkedIn.Follow Molecular Testing Labs on LinkedIn and visit their website.

    16 min
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About

The Beat, powered by HLTH, is a weekly interview series dedicated to paving a better path forward for the future of health. Each week a variety of hosts bring you authentic conversations with prominent thought leaders. Through these interviews with people at the forefront of change in healthcare, we hope to spark new ideas and encourage new collaborations among listeners.

Information

  • Creator
    HLTH
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    380
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020 The Beat
  • Show Website
    The Beat