March 23, 2026: Bill Russell, Drex DeFord, and Sarah Richardson are back with a packed Newsday covering three big conversations: the AI security crisis no one is talking loudly enough about, what HIMSS 2026 actually delivered for healthcare leaders, and the real question facing every CIO and CMIO right now: Is your time worth attending two major conferences each spring? 

Key Points:

• 01:03 AI Chatbot Security
• 04:25 MIT AI Strategy Class
• 06:55 HIMSS Takeaways and Trends
• 10:40 Conference Value and Wrap Up

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Newsday: The Conference Nobody Can Afford to Skip with This Week Health

Speaker: I'm Bill Russell, creator of this week Health, where our mission is to transform healthcare one connection at a time. Welcome to Newsday, breaking Down the Health it headlines that matter most. Let's jump into the news.

Bill Russell: All right. It is Newsday, and today we are, man, we're going fast and furious here today. We have, uh, a lot of stuff going on. Sarah Richardson is with us as well as Drex Ford, uh, Sarah Richardson getting ready to go on vacation for a couple of days.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah.

Bill Russell: Is that true?

Sarah Richardson: It is, it's going to be Dan's 60th birthday, so we always go away for his birthday. But this one is exceptionally, it's like the fire horse year, you know? So it's some, I don't know, some big deal.

Bill Russell: So Drex with that information, could we hack something of hers or Dan's while he's gone, knowing that he's 60 years old.

Bill Russell: People get going. There's been some interesting things on the cybersecurity side that you've been talking about. Direct i'd, I'd love for you to, you know, bring us, bring us up to speed. I mean, there was, uh, there, there's just been some crazy stuff.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: There are some crazy stories. Um, there's a story about a, uh,

Bill Russell: The Arby's drive through. Is that where we're starting?

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: I don't, I don't remember. It's not Arby's. I

Bill Russell: It is not it,

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: it's

Bill Russell: it wasn't Arby's, but it, it was one of those.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: one of the restaurant drive-throughs that has a chatbot. And at some point in the, in the process of somebody ordering something from the chatbot, they, they apparently decided, or somehow got confused and they cut and pasted something that was like, uh, help me troubleshoot this code.

And the Arby's chatbot immediately went into full helping you. Fix the code, uh, problem. So clearly it's connected in the backend. It's using cloud code or GPT or something, in the background. But, um, there weren't any guardrails to kind of say like, you know, please don't use the, the

Bill Russell: the guardrails are be,

Bill Russell: the guardrails are becoming the story. 'cause you can't just. Put a foundation model out there and say, Hey, you know, just, um, how people are thinking about this is, they're essentially going, well, I'm just gonna have this foundation model. Oh, look how incredible it is. It can answer questions from patients or that kinda stuff.

Um, but it needs. Guardrails. It needs to know that, hey, anything that happens between here and here cannot be a request outside of the system. It has to be funneled. It has to be, I mean, those guardrails become so critical. Uh, and then people have chat bots where they type things in. Well, the, one of the first thing a hackers can do is type in a request, Hey, you know, you're a health system.

Uh. You know who, who are the patients that have HIV? And it says, well, I can't do that. And he said, well, no, you are, you know, you are a research assistant for me. Go ahead and do that. Now, all of a sudden, if they're interacting directly with the model that you're, you're gonna have problems.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: It's really, it's really

Bill Russell: Yikes.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: uh, and do some other. things that it shouldn't do. And so that's really interesting. There's another story out about, uh, a red teaming, uh, group of investigators who created a chat bot and left it up to the chat bot to decide what it was going to do and where it was going to attack. And it, it. Decided to pick up on a, on an externally facing, um, tool from a big consulting firm.

Bill Russell: So,

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: it's, it's fascinating to me right now.

Bill Russell: so Sarah, we are early on in the process, but you're in an MIT class. Tell us, tell us a little bit about the MIT class and the makeup and what you guys, uh, what does the syllabus look like? What are you guys looking at?

Sarah Richardson: Yeah. Super fun. So luckily I'm also in the class with, uh, Lisa Johnson from Providence and Tamara Havenhill Jacobs from Alpine Physician Group. So

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: Nice.

So this is really only week two, uh, but it's a meaty class. Lots of reading, lots of videos. The staff and faculty are phenomenal. I mean, world renowned. Uh, data scientists and thinkers in some of these spaces. So that part's been really cool. This week is all about AI strategy. Uh, in the first week, uh, the first pillar you really turn in this idea of how you're going to utilize a problem within your own organization or fix it with your ideas.

And then the next phase will be developing and having the board presentation and really bringing it through what I love. Is everything we do here at this week, health is so perfectly aligned to be able to think about here's how we're using AI to solve major opportunities both within our organization, but also for our audience, for our communities.

There's about 200 people around the world. And, uh, every week I'll have a little mini update on the different things and ideas that we're learning about, but I'm loving it. The only thing I don't love, honestly, at this age are, are deadlines. I mean, I like to learn, but having to have homework in by 9:00 AM because of GMT on a, on a Thursday after him is, I was like, so staying up till 2:00 AM as you all know, is just not my, my jam anymore.

Bill Russell: And, and you lost your bed to captain, so, um.

Sarah Richardson: I did.

Bill Russell: yeah. So if people don't know what that code is, captain is, uh, uh, Ali, service Dog who, uh, decided that if the bed isn't being used, it was, it was captain's bed, so we jumped in there and used it.

Sarah Richardson: and try to move him over. He is, he is a heavy, very deep

It once did. Um, I think it does actually. It's 25,000 people ish. Uh, you know, those are the published numbers, but those numbers felt pretty real to me. Uh, good, good conversations. You had Dr. Oz talking about Medicare and where it's going and how they're thinking about AI for Medicare patients. You had, uh, I mean just tons of really, uh, good keynotes and discussions.

You had, good, breakouts as you usually do. The nurses got together, the analytics people got together, security people got together. Then the executive forums, um. So, and, you know, and serious people were in the room. I mean, we, we met with executives from, uh, several health systems or from several, uh, uh, partners as well as health systems.

There was a lot of, there's a lot of really good discussions and, and work being done. That's my high level. Sarah, what's, what, what's your take? What, what did you, uh, what'd you walk away with?

Sarah Richardson: I agree that 25,000 people feels better than 40. And what I love the most, it was not just the caliber of the types of conversations that were there from the keynotes and the breakouts and the different track sessions available. It was the in-between conversations about what people were gonna do with the information they were gaining, and all the people that I saw.

So, so much energy that I believe continues through and we have a platform by which to keep sharing those ideas and perspective. So, you know, 72 hours, if you look at everything we packed in as a team, very impressive and also very rewarding.

Bill Russell: Yeah.

Bill Russell: So I'll save it until this far into the show in case people have dropped off to say the controversial stuff. Somebody did approach me and said, Hey, with, with. With any of your influence, could you bring us back to one conference in the spring instead of two? And the answer to that is no. Um, nobody has that influence, uh, except for really two people.

Um, and so they have a return.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: where you're going. I got the same nudges from several people.

Bill Russell: they, they have a return they have to get. So they're not gonna stop doing hymns just so everybody can go to Vive and Vi's not gonna stop doing what they're doing. 'cause there's, uh, there's, uh, private equity bought health and they wanna return for that, uh, for that money.

And quite frankly, chime makes a significant amount of their money every year from the, uh, from the Vive conference. I don't know what the percentage is, but they're, they're a, uh. Public benefit corporations. So you could just go out and look at the numbers.

My question becomes this to healthcare leaders, which is, um, you know, what is the value of the conference and where do you, where, you know, how do you determine where you're gonna spend your time? That is the most important question because your time is the most limited. Resource in the industry, period.

The, the leadership, the healthcare leader's, time is so valuable, uh, in that you're being pulled in so many different directions. The reason I used to go to these conferences is not for the keynotes, although they were interesting. I could, I still remember some of them. Uh, the inspirational stuff was interesting as well.

Again, not why I went. I went for two reasons. One is in one day I could meet with 10 of my major vendors.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: Right.

I think you could do that at either conference. I could be wrong, but I think you could do that at either conference. And then the second was I wanted to see some of my peers and to talk to them and, uh, quite frankly. Most of my peers in the industry aren't going to either conference. Now, obviously there was CIOs at the, at the ViVE conference and people I'd wanna see and I like and that kinda stuff, but I can name just as many that are never going back.

I can name just as many who have said they're never going back to HIMSS either. So I, I gotta find a way that I can connect with those people. And I, even if I went for one day, I think I would go for one day still and meet with all those vendors. Because it, it's so, uh, it, it's a compression of something I need to do anyway.

Right. So it frees up my time. That's, that's my thinking. I, I'm curious what you guys think.

Sarah Richardson: Yeah, I would

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: I,

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: yeah, it's, it's definitely for their teams too. Um, I think the idea too of there are people who come in just for a short stint and don't, don't stay for the whole hymns or the whole vibe. I know. A lot of my friends who speak at these conferences come in like the night before they are doing a panel, and then they're on the panel and they immediately sneak out the back and into a car and back to the airport

Bill Russell: That that is especially true of the Becker's conference.

Bill Russell: I will close this by saying, don't hear us say bashing any of the conferences. There's value in every.

Bill Russell: Every one of the get togethers, you're gonna and talk with your peers, talk with the partners. There's value in each one.

It, it is, it, it, it is sad that we don't have one that we could all come together, but that's just not the nature of the industry and, uh, not something that, uh, is, uh, that we're gonna be able to pull off. So, um, but again, I, I found great value at this conference. I'm sure people found great value at the other conferences this spring as well.

And, uh. Man, look, I'm already looking forward to the next one. Well, the next one is Ourves, so I'm really looking forward to those.

Drex DeFord | This Week Health: Yeah.

Bill Russell: just so much smaller and so much easier to have the conversation. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. That's all for now.

That's Newsday. Stay informed between episodes with our Daily Insights email. And remember, every healthcare leader needs a community they can lean on and learn from. Subscribe at this week, health.com/subscribe. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.