Megan Antonelli and Janae Sharp are back with another round of Five Good Things — and this one covers a lot of ground. From standout moments at ViVE to the two-week sprint leading into HIMSS, they're cutting through the noise to spotlight what actually mattered, what surprised them, and what they're most excited to see in Las Vegas.
Yes, there's strategy. But there's also a Neil Diamond ukulele parody courtesy of Dr. CT Lin, a The Pitt's Dr. Robby sighting at a Brandi Carlile concert, and serious anticipation for The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere.
Because the best conversations in health IT happen in the hallways — and sometimes, down a rabbit hole.
Megan Antonelli, Founder & CEO, HealthIMPACT Live
Janae Sharp. Founder, The Sharp Index
00:00:00 Intro: Welcome to digital Health Talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't as we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Jenny Sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
00:00:30 Megan Antonelli: Hi everybody. Welcome to Digital Health Talks. This is Megan Antonelli and I am here with Janae Sharp. And we're going to talk about five good things five good things at five five good things that happened in between five and five things we're looking forward to at Hims next week at Las Vegas. Hi, Jenny. How are you?
00:00:47 Janae Sharp: I'm great. That's a lot of good things. I'm actually looking forward to everyone tagging me online with their good things. So everyone who sees this, you can like, follow, subscribe, share your good things. Tag us. Health impact live digital health talks and hashtag five good things. All right. What are we starting with? How was five? It was.
00:01:10 Megan Antonelli: Good. We missed you. We missed you a lot. They do such a great job.
00:01:15 Janae Sharp: It's good to know it was miserable without me.
00:01:17 Megan Antonelli: It was. It was so sad. I couldn't drive you to the beach. I couldn't take you around and show you L.A. Um, it was just me and Andrea and nine thousand of our favorite health, health, digital health leaders. Um, but it was good. It was great. Uh, I think they did a lot better job with the space. They had the convention center kind of set with tables in the front. So it was you could eat and and there was a big sort of kind of connecting space even before you got into the hall, which was really nice. Um, and, you know, one of my top five moments was actually sitting there having lunch with Cherise and a bunch of other people and, you know, kind of just sort of saying I kind of felt like a cafeteria lunch, like people were just like, hey, hey, jumping over. I saw, um, Johnny, you know, Johnny from Scale Health and all these folks. So it was fun. Um, and in general, I thought, uh, you know, it was just it was well attended. There were great people, there were great sessions. Um, you know, it felt a little smaller. But part of that, I think, was that they had condensed it to the floor and the space that they were in, because, you know, how last year you could go from it was actually in both of the both sides of that area. This was really all in just that one side. If there wasn't anything on the other side, I didn't go to it. So oops.
00:02:38 Janae Sharp: Nobody better spoiler it for us. Just say it was on one side, right? I'm sure you still got your step count in for the day.
00:02:48 Megan Antonelli: We for sure did. We sure did. But I did wear my comfortable shoes. Um, and, you know, it was, you know, I think the sessions were great. I think, um, you know, we saw I saw Amy Gleason's and, uh, Annie Chopra's talk, I think was sort of the highlight. That was sort of standing room only. And that was the first time I had actually seen her speak in public while I was.
00:03:15 Janae Sharp: Really.
00:03:15 Megan Antonelli: In the same room.
00:03:16 Janae Sharp: She was actually one of the first people I saw speak in healthcare, period a million years ago, like at a patient engagement summit. Oh, wow. Yeah. And she was great. Yeah.
00:03:28 Megan Antonelli: But so great. And and, you know, I had heard the story of her daughter and, and, um, what they've gone through with that, um, but it was, it was great to hear it in person and, um, you know, just have her tie that personal story to the work that she's doing, um, every day, uh, at Doge and across, you know, HHS. So, you know, and I think the audience response was really good. So it's exciting to see that. And certainly we'll have more of that at hims with, um, she's going to be there and, um, a few others from CMS and ASP as well as, of course, Doctor Oz.
00:04:05 Janae Sharp: So yeah, I think they do.
00:04:07 Megan Antonelli: They are on the circuit and they are talking about what they're doing.
00:04:11 Janae Sharp: So yeah, people do really impressive work with having technology help people access better services. And just hearing about it at scale is amazing.
00:04:22 Megan Antonelli: Um, yeah. For sure. Um, and then, of course, our dinner was a highlight. Uh, we had our health impact dinner at Javier's, which is a new restaurant downtown. It was super fun. Uh, my highlight of that, of course, was doctor C.T. Lin, who I've known for a few years, maybe a decade. Um, he was definitely an early health impact speaker. Uh, and he plays the ukulele, and that is one of his passions. And he has always done, uh, some parodies. So years ago I heard him and he did this at Health Impact. He did a parody of I Think It's Hospital Under the Rising Sun that's about epic. Also, now he's got an updated one that was the, uh, Sweet Caroline to ChatGPT. Uh, and it was awesome, although our room was incredibly crowded. One because of course, we, you know, we had a great group. Um, and then it was also quite loud. Louder than a private room should be. There was an anthropic reception that I think kind of dropped itself outside this area. That should have been dining room. You know, just plain dining room, and it wouldn't have been loud, but it was a very loud reception, a very loud, excited people that are obviously just dripping with money. No, I don't know what they were. They were great. They were fabulous, but they were loud. They were for sure loud. Um, and it was, um, but we had a great time and that was, you know, it was just nice to have that that group there. Uh, Tara, of course, as an underwriter. And Heidi and Sailpoint so great.
00:06:05 Janae Sharp: Oh, Heidi, I saw a lot of their stuff online, so I was watching from, you know, from North Carolina, and I loved it. I loved the pictures of, like, was it the buses or what was that was were those Uber's taxis?
00:06:19 Megan Antonelli: But I.
00:06:20 Janae Sharp: Think they both.
00:06:21 Megan Antonelli: Are. Are you wearing Heidi yellow. Your your Heidi yellow. Yes I'm wearing Heidi yellow. It was such a happy color. Yellow. Uh, you know, and it was great. It really the the branding they've done is fantastic. And they had their booth I think wins for the most beautiful designed booth. Um, I have to give honorable mention to the booth because they had espresso martinis at three p m, which is a good call.
00:06:48 Janae Sharp: Um, but, yeah, they were thinking of everyone. Someone on their team thought about the conference. Yes.
00:06:55 Megan Antonelli: They knew who their audience was. And then, um. But Heidi, not only inside with their booth, but outside in, it was really just an amazing takeover. They had, um, their branding on the screens, and it just popped really well. It was, um, you know, good job. Kudos to Leah and the team there.
00:07:12 Janae Sharp: Um, yeah.
00:07:13 Megan Antonelli: Good. Good work.
00:07:14 Janae Sharp: Uh, I do think vibe does a really good job with the visual aspects of an event. They haven't forgotten that things should look good.
00:07:24 Megan Antonelli: They haven't. And they. And they think about it a lot. Right. Because it's not easy to make an ugly convention center look good, you know, and and even just get the screens in the right place and do that. Um, there was an announcement this week that the LA Convention Center is redoing itself. So, you know, there we'll be watching that happen for the next thirty years. Maybe, maybe by the time the airport is done.
00:07:47 Janae Sharp: You'll be watching in the great weather. It'll be so hard for you. Go play pickleball. In the meantime, meet famous people at conferences, conferences and concerts. Maybe we should talk about this. This is a real good thing, right?
00:08:01 Megan Antonelli: Oh, yes. Are we moving from Vive? Wait. Okay.
00:08:04 Janae Sharp: Well, I might jump the gun if you want to wrap up Vive. I got a little excited.
00:08:09 Megan Antonelli: I think that's it. That's it. We can move to. We can move to my midweek. So between the Vive and Hims, I went to a concert.
00:08:19 Janae Sharp: You were like, I haven't seen enough people. I need to go to a concert.
00:08:25 Megan Antonelli: I only got nine thousand healthcare people. I would like to see ten thousand Brandi Carlile fans, uh, which I did. And newsflash, guess who isn't Brandi Carlile fan Jane Fonda? Noah Wylie from pit from the pit. Yes, that you still haven't watched, but you need to watch.
00:08:45 Janae Sharp: I still haven't watched, but I do want to have him on our podcast. So this is your official invitation. I'm going to tag, you know, Wiley, come on. Our thing. Let's talk about physician mental health, which is something that they talk about a lot on the show and one of the best depictions of healthcare according to healthcare physicians and practitioners. So that's a big deal.
00:09:10 Megan Antonelli: It is a big deal. And what's interesting, though, is this year, even though this season they are still focused very much on the physician and the physician's relationship with the healthcare system and the nurses and the clinician system and within the system operating. But a new character would definitely be AI. So they are now featuring and talking about the AI as there's a new attending who's going to be replacing Doctor Robbie while he's on leave riding a motorcycle without a helmet. All of these things leading to what will be, you know, an unbelievable cliffhanger of a last episode, which we are not at yet, but the.
00:09:51 Janae Sharp: You're predicting, you're making predictions.
00:09:54 Megan Antonelli: But the AI tool, you know, she is a big proponent of it and she is, you know, sort of telling the, uh, younger doctors to use it to help with their, um, their charting and, and of course, a mistake was made and one angry, uh, doctor from upstairs comes down and says, why does it say this and why does it say that? And we, uh, get the emphasis and the point that human in the loop is important. So I it was very much I don't like to sort of post personal stuff anywhere, let alone on LinkedIn. But it was such a coming home moment. For one, the fact that we talk about the show a lot to the show is very much healthcare. It focused, and three, if there ever were a doctor who, you know, someone who plays a doctor on TV who I would like to see as my doctor, it would be either Doctor Carter or Doctor Robbie. So we're good. Um.
00:10:51 Janae Sharp: You're like, I'd believe their medical advice.
00:10:53 Megan Antonelli: I would, I trust him, I do. Um, but he was super nice, and it was super fun. Um, and then, as an added bonus, Jane Fonda was there. So it was it was something to be seen. And she got a standing ovation in the audience as she was sitting down among, um, ten thousand people, which just was sort of impressive in and of itself. And of course, Brandi Carlile was also amazing, and the show was good, but it was also called The Human Tour, which, of course, as we're kind of grappling with all this AI stuff in healthcare and beyond, as we're.
00:11:27 Janae Sharp: Seeing, you know, everywhere.
00:11:28 Megan Antonelli: Anthropic and and OpenAI have their battles in the, in the news and behind the scenes. Um, the poignancy of the human tour certainly hit home. So and, you know, I take that and, you know, now we go to hymns where we've got, what, thirty thousand people? I don't know what what hymns is at and Hips is running at this year, but it certainly feels like a lot. Having strolled through the the app quite a bit myself, to see who's there and who's coming and I, I'm, I.
00:11:58 Janae Sharp: Love that you look you use every conferences app. This is something I don't know if everybody knows because I never always I never used them until like you'd be like, well, have you looked at the app yet? I'm like, what? People make these apps. They put so much effort into them and then nobody looks at them. I thought, but people do look at them. Turns out.
00:12:20 Megan Antonelli: Well, sometimes people go to the conference to go to the conference.
00:12:24 Janae Sharp: I go to the conference for the people.
00:12:26 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, well, it does help you find people and where they'll be. Um, other than, um, relying on chance and happenstance in the halls, which is also which also works.
00:12:36 Janae Sharp: But I'm like, I'm the conference personality hire for hymns because I love them. I have a lot of excitement. Yeah, I get to speak.
00:12:45 Megan Antonelli: And when you are there, it is like following, you know, a rock star around. So it's not.
00:12:50 Janae Sharp: I love it like I love everything.
00:12:52 Megan Antonelli: I love everything that magnetism. I need to know where people are going to be so I can stalk them outside their, their session. Maybe.
00:13:00 Janae Sharp: But I don't know if you fangirl is hard for him as I do. Like you know, I've served on the boards like we we decided we were going to make things happen when everyone was despairing. And I feel like so many people have been through it. You know, we we want this conference to be the best one.
00:13:19 Megan Antonelli: Well, I'll tell you, I really am impressed with the content that they have in there this year. Um, I, you know, all of these conference wars could have gone one way, could have gone two ways, could have gone sideways. I really think that it is apparent to me as a conference person who puts this stuff together all the time, that they are actually curating the content in a way that they haven't done that before. You know.
00:13:46 Janae Sharp: That's.
00:13:46 Megan Antonelli: Great. Um, yeah. And the sessions look good and the people on them are impressive. Um, you know, it might not be as. I don't know, keynote showy, although they have Jeremy Renner and Doctor Oz at the end, you know, on Thursday. So that's those are pretty impressive keynotes. But, you know, there's no, uh, I don't know, NFL player to cap it off or whatever. But, you know, I'm never looking for that. That doesn't get me in a room. Um, I think the, you know, Jeremy Renner has an incredible, patient story that is very poignant. Um, you know, who knows how he lived through that? So amazing. And so, you know, I would certainly stay to listen to that. And then, you know, I just think the the topics in general, you know, there's a lot of vendor talks and stuff, but they're, they're well balanced and they're, well represented with customers. And I think that's incredibly important. Um, so it'll be exciting to see, you know what? Oh, yeah.
00:14:46 Janae Sharp: What are you going to I mean, I think, you know, that relationship where you have to use different, different means to get your goals met in healthcare, like vendors are part of that. You know, they're always going to be great. And and I love some of the things that happen at hims. You're going to the InterSystems.
00:15:04 Megan Antonelli: Parties are fun, the Inter-system party. So that'll be my first time at The Sphere, so I'm very excited to go to that. I was very excited. We usually would have our dinner on Monday, but this year we're having it on Tuesday, and that means that we're free on Monday. So we are going to go to that, which is exciting.
00:15:20 Janae Sharp: Just for you. InterSystems because of the sphere.
00:15:24 Megan Antonelli: Um, I really love InterSystems. They've been a partner of Health Impact for a long time. And they do, you know, they're they're part of the the core of digital health. Right. So yeah.
00:15:36 Janae Sharp: They've they've built some great things too. And they always throw a good party. They always have good food.
00:15:42 Megan Antonelli: They do. And then, um, you know.
00:15:45 Janae Sharp: You can tell I care a lot about the food in an event like.
00:15:49 Megan Antonelli: The food is important. And, you know, I gotta go back to Vive. They did the trucks this time. They did it. Well, it was like, you go up, you get your food. Um, you know, there were enough. They were in the right place. They were all just like, right out front. And they were really good. I had a sushi burrito that, like, I still think.
00:16:09 Janae Sharp: Was good, even for LA.
00:16:11 Megan Antonelli: It was good. Well, it was LA and it was good. Yeah. So, um, kudos to them. That won't be the case at Hims. It's just not possible. You can't. Well, I suppose you could bring a food truck or two inside that hall, but they'd have to be unionized and.
00:16:28 Janae Sharp: Yeah, and the food trucks. I'm kind of more excited about a food truck situation in California than I am in Vegas, to be honest. But like, you know, everyone has different things.
00:16:38 Megan Antonelli: Yeah, that's not Vegas's thing. You know, you gotta look forward to dinner at Vegas and there will be fabulous dinners, including ours. Right. Right there. So it is, um, you know, there's always there's fun things to do inside and outside of the conference. I, you know, I think last year, I know last year they were using like the forum and there was a bit spread out. I think this year it's a bit more concentrated. So hopefully that will ease things for the exhibitors as well. Um, yeah. And I mean, I think in terms of sessions, the artificial intelligence conversations, you know, I think I did a search, there were like thirty two sessions, I mean, which really, frankly aren't that many. But of course I did. It spelled out. So there's probably another thirty two that just say AI, but you can't do AI because that exists everywhere, right? So, um, I was there's a lot on rural health, not, you know, there's like probably ten or fifteen sessions on that. Um, and I think I'll probably make it to two. But, you know, it's, um, I always I go through the app, I find twenty sessions I'm going to go to, and I go to, you know, a smaller portion, but really good talks and, and a lot on I think where we, where I'm looking at next in terms of coverage because there's a lot of discussion around, you know, everybody doesn't they all want they don't want point solutions. They want enterprise. They want platform. How these solutions are going to play into that, how the point solutions are going to respond. What that means, does it mean partnerships? Does it mean expansion of services. What is it? What is it that all going to look like? And um, you know, and I think ultimately that question of what does healthcare look like in twenty thirty at this point, I think I thought I knew what it was going to look like more than I know what it what I think it's going to look like now, you know, a year ago.
00:18:33 Janae Sharp: Yeah.
00:18:34 Megan Antonelli: And I guess that's, you know, not just health care. It's the whole world. But within health care, this question of which jobs stay and which jobs go and which jobs we need and what people are going to want is, is changing just as fast as it is, is outside of health care. Right. And so I think those conversations that maybe are a little bit theoretical, that don't necessarily impact people are are are becoming more important. You know, like there's always this like, oh, we want to do stuff that that's actionable now. But like if you don't figure out if we don't figure out what we want the system to look like, now, what are we doing? We're just hamsters in a wheel.
00:19:17 Janae Sharp: Right?
00:19:18 Megan Antonelli: Or batteries, which is what I think.
00:19:20 Janae Sharp: We don't need to plug everything in.
00:19:24 Megan Antonelli: But you're not coming. And I'm sad.
00:19:28 Janae Sharp: I just got a book. Fair notice for my kid. We Yeah. Make sure that's in there. It's books. Fair season. No I'm not. I have a family obligation, so I'll miss everyone so everyone can post about it for me.
00:19:40 Megan Antonelli: We will, we will. Um, why don't you talk a little bit about what you've been doing with the patient AI group? Do we talk about that last week?
00:19:51 Janae Sharp: We did. We talked about it already, but it's still exciting. Yeah, I think it's exciting, too, because we we have this patient AI collaborative where we're talking about, you know, what patient facing systems should look like that are using AI. And then every time you read the news you realize how relevant it is. You know, you read stories about people just plugging their health system, their health information into ChatGPT and getting results, but not really thinking about the long term implications for them and not really realizing just how much those types of systems can put them at risk.
00:20:32 Megan Antonelli: So I know every once in a while ChatGPT will respond to me with like a with a memory of something that I said to it months ago and I'm like, wait, they first of all, that wasn't about me. It was about, you know, my son or whatever. Um, or second of all, like, oh, it was about me. And that's scary that you're retaining all of that. So. Well, that's all the stuff that's happening in the conference world over the next over the last and next week. What's happening outside the conference world today?
00:21:04 Janae Sharp: Well, tons of things are happening. One of the things I was really excited about was the announcement that Annika Gardenhire is going to be the Michigan medicine's first chief digital and information officer, and I love to see how people in medicine are preparing more for the importance of digital in general, you know.
00:21:30 Megan Antonelli: Well, I think this transition from CIO to CDO is an interesting one that they're adding digital to the to the CIO title quite often. It's also interesting that, um, she's going to Michigan, if I recall, and I might be recalling incorrectly because I tend to do that. But Sue Schade was one of the first female CIOs, and she was at Michigan. Um, and that was in, I want to say, two nineteen ninety nine, two thousand and one, maybe it was two thousand and four, but it was a long time ago. Um, and she is amazing. Sue Schade uh, but that so but, uh, Annika is also amazing and she will do amazing things there, no doubt. It's nice. It'll be interesting to see she's coming back from. She was on the insurance side, right. She was at Centene for a bit and then.
00:22:22 Janae Sharp: Went to Ardent Health after that for.
00:22:24 Megan Antonelli: A bit.
00:22:24 Janae Sharp: To delivery. Yeah. And that's that's interesting to see someone who's had that depth of experience across the board.
00:22:31 Megan Antonelli: Yeah.
00:22:32 Janae Sharp: And also to see that they're going to be proactive about technology development with clinicians. So I would love to see that.
00:22:42 Megan Antonelli: Yes.
00:22:43 Janae Sharp: There's my good news. My flowers are blooming in my yard you know.
00:22:47 Megan Antonelli: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what what announcement. Come come out of of hims I think there were you know, there were various product announcements. Nothing that, like, was too earth shattering coming out of Vive. Um, things that we were excited to see, like Chatterjee, who we know when he was at Lifebridge, um, worked with us at Node Health. He's heading up the Houston Methodist Rice University Digital Health Institute. So, like, you know, a new kind of collaboration there. Lots sort of happening in Houston around digital innovation, which is is cool to see. We've done health impact there quite a bit. Um, and then, um, one that I'm sort of excited about are always interested in is is we things is doing a, a partnership with MedStar health around uh, their concierge medicine and it's a tracking for blood pressure and, um, you know, sort of a new scale. And I've had that weeping scale for, I don't know how long, but.
00:23:46 Janae Sharp: Oh, awesome.
00:23:47 Megan Antonelli: Sounds like I need a new one.
00:23:49 Janae Sharp: Yeah, you need a new one. It's great to be able to get better health data and health care at your house.
00:23:56 Megan Antonelli: It sure is. Sometimes it's overwhelming, but it's good. Um, and then, you know, I think we'll, uh, we have, uh, some exciting things in the works in terms of the rest of our year. It's been quite the sprint from February third now to March sixth. And, you know, we'll come home March twelfth, and then we just have the whole rest of the year to do some more fun health impact things. We're planning some dinners and of course we're going to. This will be the first time we've announced our October sixth and seventh health impact in, um, in the fall, so we're excited to get planning on that. So if you are interested in being part of digital health talks, we would love to interview you. If you have good things, send them to Janet. And. And uh, if you are interested in being part of Health impact, reach out. You know, we are always looking to amplify good stories, great work, and, um, just excited to be a part of this amazing community. Um, thanks for listening. And that's all for now. This is Megan Antonelli and.
00:25:03 Janae Sharp: Janet signing off.
00:25:04 Megan Antonelli: Signing off.
00:25:07 Outro: Thank you for joining us on Digital Health Talks, where we explore the intersection of healthcare and technology with leaders who are transforming patient care. This episode was brought to you by our valued program partners. Automation. anywhere. Revolutionizing healthcare workflows through intelligent automation. Natera. Advancing contactless vital signs. Monitoring elite groups. Delivering strategic healthcare IT solutions. Sailpoint securing healthcare identity management and access governance. Your engagement helps drive the future of healthcare innovation. Subscribe to Digital Health Talks on your preferred podcast platform. Share these insights with your network and follow us on LinkedIn for exclusive content and updates. Ready to connect with healthcare technology leaders in person? Join us at the next Health Impact event. Visit Healthimpact forum for dates and registration. Until next time. This is digital health talks where changemakers come together to fix healthcare.