Tag: artificial intelligence

The Beastwood Files: July(ish) 2026

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

This may be news to some of you, but apparently navigating the transition from preschool to kindergarten comes with Big Feelings that are hard to talk about but somehow seem to rear their ugly head at the exact moment that Mommy and Daddy are asking that you brush your teeth.

Said feelings, coupled with being the only child in the preschool class to have dropped a nap, led the Beastwoods to tweak the preschool schedule in our waning weeks. That has meant less time for me to devote to the lovely craft of writing and checking emails (the two tasks my son is convinced comprise the entirety of my job). I was kinda sorta prepared for this, professionally and financially if not necessarily emotionally, and have thus spent the bulk of the last few weeks juggling responsibilities, asking for extended deadlines, and wondering if I’ll ever to things on my to-do list like “organize the giant pile of papers on top of the filing cabinet. (Answer: No.)

It’s been A Lot, but it’s also been fun. We’ve taken some weekday trips to museums and playgrounds, had more time to spend at home in the morning (because free play time with 4-year-olds is No Longer Fun), and learned new things like how to make squiggly lines by typing non-words in Word. (Yes, I use Word. I will not be taking any questions at this time.) And, of course, my amazing mother in law has lent a hand. Through it all, I’ve learned how important it is to prioritize what matters – and how rarely that’s enterprise B2B content for healthcare.

Let’s get on with it.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Nailed the most important deadline of the month: Signing up for fall swim class sessions at the local Boys & Girls Club
  • Scheduled an appointment with my eye doctor, dentist, and PCP for the same week, which is good from an efficiency perspective but bad if you don’t want to feel old
  • Endured some of the sweatiest runs of my life in suffocating July humidity and reinforced that this is by far my least favorite season of the year
  • Somehow managed to help set up a campsite (complete with canopy) in 90-degree heat and humidity (with minimal grumbling from all parties involved) and further reinforced that this is by far my least favorite season of the year
  • Watched my son have a little bit too much fun setting marshmallows ablaze in a campfire
  • Get a new keyboard (and wireless mouse) after I got juuuust a little tired of my son (who’s been beginning to type) noting that the “A” key was faded on the old keyboard
  • Answered questions such as “Why do I still have to go to preschool?” “What will summer camp be like?” “Why do I have to go to kindergarten?” “How many days of preschool are left?” and “When are we going on vacation again?” roughly 56 times
  • Forget to take any photos worth sharing that don’t include my son’s face, which explains the hilariously awful image for this post

Happy August. The humidity’s finally breaking in the Boston area. Best luck with the first day of school for those with children. Best of luck with 5-day work weeks and actual deadlines for everyone else. Best of luck with Conference Season for everyone.

The Beastwood Files: June 2026

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

Been a busy few weeks in the Beastwood house. My son survived his kindergarten screening and a trip to a new dentist, I survived three trips to the doctor (for routine appointments, thankfully) with my mother, and we all survived four and a half days in the White Mountains for the Fourth of July (a trip bookended by visits to two different children’s museums in southern New Hampshire).

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Went to more beaches than I can count and didn’t bother to clean the trunk
  • Attended my son’s preschool graduation, complete with mini caps and gowns
  • Experienced the brick-and-mortar sociology experiment that is Walmart Supercenter in Conway, N.H. on the Thursday before Fourth of July weekend to buy as many box fans as I could fit in a single shopping cart to cool off our AC-less rental condo while the heat dome covered the East Coast
  • Signed up for the Manchester (N.H.) City Marathon with the hopes of avenging my Worst Marathon Ever, which I ran there in 2012 (through no fault of the race itself, which is actually quite lovely)
  • Learned that the easiest way to remove matted fur from a long-haired cat is, believe it or not, to gently pull it out

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • In the weeks leading up to Father’s Day, I joked with my family that, as a Boring Suburban Dad, all I wanted as a present was white socks. My son sensed that this was a Dad Joke and was all too happy to play along – and even told me a trip to CVS with Mom was happening so they could get *black* socks to go with them. (I also got to sleep in while Mom and son went to Dunk’s.)
  • When we talked about activities to plan for the Fourth of July in New Hampshire, my son said he wanted to make a gingerbread house. As astute readers will recall, we made a gingerbread house for St. Patrick’s Day, so this request wasn’t out of left field. My son has no interest in eating any of the candy with which on traditionally decorates a gingerbread house; it’s all about the experience. This experience meant red, white, and blue candy, of course.
  • Though our primary connection to the World Cup is themed Squishmallows acquired via Happy Meals, we did catch the end of the Brazil-Norway Round of 16 game while out to dinner on vacation. Amid explaining the intricacies of soccer to my son AND father-in-law (thankfully neither asked me what it means to be offside), we decided our favorite player is The Viking. I can’t really argue with that.

Happy rest of July. We’re home for most of the month, which means we’ll do approximately 2,345 extemporaneous craft projects. The crayons are ready…

This Month (or so) In Digital Health: AI, Data, GLP-1s, and Money (Lots and Lots of Money)

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to the eighth edition of This Month in Digital Health, where you get to read my very own thoughts on the news and trends that caught my attention over the last few weeks. We’re a bit tardy this month – Sandwich Generation Caregiving for the win, am I right? – which means there’s been extra time to gather hot takes on AI, data, healthcare costs, and GLP-1s. Have at it, folks.

AI likes it easy. Healthcare isn’t. Therein lies the rub. Yet another paper has shown that LLMs can outperform physicians when making rote decisions (even general-purpose LLMs) that don’t have to account for the stuff that happens in real life – whether it’s delays in prior authorization or claims denials powered by AI or, like, patients’ unaddressed social needs or the stress of the hospital. Nor does it help that providers fear overreliance on AI will diminish clinicians’ critical thinking capabilities.

Who can access data? What is data? What is access? Rock Health found that 57% of Americans own at least one wearable, and many are tracking health metrics. That’s good! The bad news: Wellness apps interpreting device data aren’t really regulated, and physicians have no idea how they conclude a patient is at risk of, say, depression. Plugging data into an LLM isn’t much better, as general-purpose LLMs aren’t HIPAA covered entities (though the healthcare-specific ones are).

GLP-1s are taking over healthcare, and not in the best ways. Speaking of wearables, Mass General and Samsung Health are partnering to see whether a smartwatch can track muscle loss in adults on a GLP-1. That’s good, because it’s a common concern for patients who lose weight. Other concerns are emerging, too, including GLP-1 prescriptions from telehealth providers who don’t talk about the risks or the importance of healthy habits, and the efficacy of GLP-1 pills, which has self-employed insurers thinking twice about insurance coverage.

Great googily moogily, healthcare is expensive. On top of everything else, GLP-1s are making healthcare even more expensive – to the tune of 9% increases in commercial costs in 2027, per PwC. Only 7 nonprofit Blues plans had positive operating margins in 2025, and many provider-sponsored health plans are giving up amid rising costs and general industry instability. Speaking of which, more than 75% of executives think healthcare’s financial instability will reach an existential tipping point before the end of the decade. Good times.

Meanwhile, in other stories of interest:

  • Given the odd juxtaposition of primary care (with low costs and generally stable utilization) and health insurance (which is meant to cover expensive, unpredictable events), a JAMA paper proposed the notion of primary care as a public utility through which states create a common fund that pays practices directly. Insurers could still compete on other lines of business. I’ve heard worse.
  • The ACCESS Model for Medicare goes into effect on July 5. With 150+ participants already lined up, Second Opinion posed a reasonable question: What about ACCESS for Medicaid? Makes sense to me, especially since states have embraced managed care.
  • When it comes to rural health transformation, the numbers don’t add up. As $50 billion in federal aid doesn’t equal nearly $1 trillion in losses, states are focusing on cost-cutting strategies, not innovation. Good job, everyone.

Happy summer, Northern Hemisphere. If you know me, you know this is my least favorite time of the year. (And if you don’t, well, now you do.) If you need me, I’ll be under an oscillating fan, within a foot of an AC, and waiting until the humidity breaks to do anything that will cause me to begin to sweat.

The Beastwood Files: May 2026

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

I survived my marathon, helped my son adhere hundreds of monster truck stickers to sheets of paper, took my mother to two doctor’s appointments, installed our window ACs, and wrote a few things here and there to boot. In other words, just another month here at Brian Eastwood Writes, LLC. (And I was named Employee of the Month AGAIN!)

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did, Marathon Edition

  • Finish my 5th consecutive Vermont City Marathon (and 6th marathon since my won was born) within the two-minute time window of 3:24:31 to 3:26:31 (in this case, 3:26:23), which means I’m officially nothing if not consistent
  • Gather acceptable snacks to share with my son at the finish line, including slices of pizza, Nutri-Grain bars, and the all-important free underripe bananas that are the reason like 73% of marathon runners compete
  • Wear brand-new compression socks to recover from said marathon because I forgot to pack them and had to purchase a new pair the day before the race
  • Remember to pack everything else that mattered – including the cowbell than my son shook vigorously while in the hotel room but not (AFAIK) while outside cheering for runners

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We completed / survived our first-ever Kid Race, which was a 1/2-mile loop in Burlington, Vermont’s lovely Waterfront Park. We also overcame our pre-race jitters, which were 100% attributable to the presence of mascots in unexpected proximity. We celebrated with pre-packaged trail mix and a sampling from a local ice cream truck.
  • We also experienced and enjoyed our first-ever roller coaster at a local fundraiser fair, though our favorite part very well may have been the fried dough. (Can’t argue with that.) We decided we didn’t like the teacups – and I learned I can’t handle the teacups as well as I used to – but did like the Ferris wheel (even if the waiting was the hardest part).
  • Yes, we heard the sonic boom from the meteorite that landed in the middle of Cape Cod Bay. No, we didn’t think anything of it at the time, especially as our neighbors are in the midst of a large renovation project and it hasn’t been uncommon to hear things get loudly dropped into a Dumpster.

Enjoy June and the beginning of summer. We’re gearing up for a pre-summer-vacation trip to Cape Cod , preschool graduation, and a trip to New Hampshire for the Fourth. We’re NOT going to New Hampshire in June because I told a story once about black files and now we’re convinced that’s when there are YUCKY BUGS in our neighbor to the north. I’m sure we’d have fun, as we talk about the YUCKY BUGS while laughing, but between Champy and the teacups, I’ve scarred my son enough for quite some time.

This Month in Digital Health News: Making AI Meaningful, Managing Climate Change Risk, and a Bunch of Other Stuff

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

It’s time for This Month in Digital Health, where I highlight news articles that caught my attention and offer my take on why I think they matter. Along with the requisite stories about AI in healthcare, this month – fittingly when the Boston area is about to hit record high temperatures for this time of year – we’re looking into climate change and healthcare.

It’s all about meaningful AI utilization now. As half of healthcare organizations have now deployed generative AI, according to a McKinsey survey, attention has turned to tool integration and ROI. That means leaders are looking for meaningful transformation, not even more revenue cycle automation; that often comes down to using AI to solve readily identifiable problems. Meanwhile, because we just can’t have nice things, HHS wants to ditch requirements for transparency in AI tools, because reasons.

Add “climate change” to healthcare’s risk management agenda. First, the bad news: Hospitals in areas vulnerable to climate change haven’t done much to address climate-related health risks, in large part because of socioeconomic disparities. Next, the good news: Looking at climate change as a health equity issue and using existing long-term planning frameworks can help manage these risks. Plus, hospitals are reducing waste – no minimal matter, as the industry accounts for more than 8% of carbon emissions – and EMS and mobile clinics are buying hybrids.

Now, for a bunch of interesting odds and ends.

That’s all for now. Tune in next month when I’m sitting in front of the AC waiting for summer to end even though it hasn’t technically started yet. (One of my most unpopular opinions is that I strongly prefer the colder months of the year.)

The Beastwood Files: April 2026

A panel on tough questions for healthcare marketers in 2026 at Swaay.Health LIVE
~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been able to take a bit of a breather over the last few weeks. The work schedule has lightened up (on purpose), the need to fill out and sign forms for kindergarten in the fall has abated (for now), and I’ve entered taper time for my spring marathon (which is Memorial Day weekend in Burlington, Vermont). I even had time to spend a day at Swaay.Health LIVE, catching up with old friends, learning a thing or two about healthcare IT marketing, and looking important sitting on a tall stool while moderating a panel.

Things I Wrote

Stuff I Did

  • Leave the house during the work week to attend a conference, which was such a big deal that I felt like mentioning it twice
  • Finish my darn eBook, which was also such a big deal that it warrants a second mention
  • Finally take a deep breath and schedule body work for our car after I was in a minor but embarrassing fender-bender in the preschool parking lot this winter
  • Help my son keep his secret about the Mother’s Day present he was making at school and the card he made
  • Continue to adhere the new household rule: Don’t get so much cereal that it doesn’t fit in the cupboard, Brian

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We fulfilled a months-long dream and went to Monster Jam the day before Mother’s Day. We admittedly had more fun at the pre-show pit party (when you get to look at the trucks and meet the drivers) than during the show (when it’s loud and there’s a decent chance the trucks may flip over). We decided we prefer looking at pictures of monster trucks doing tricks in books than seeing them in person – though we do like stadium snacks.
  • Luckily, our monster-truck themed birthday party the prior week was much more successful. I made multiple large cardboard ramps for toy trucks to run down, and my wife and son worked together on crafts and decorations. Special thanks to Costco, Chewy, and especially REI for supplying our home with large boxes – the latter with a long, thin ski box that was just the right size for a single truck. Also, no one got scared when the toy trucks flipped over.
  • One of our birthday presents was a Big Boy Bike with pedals and no training wheels. Our first ride was quite successful until we bumped into a bridge at a park. I then explained to my son that Daddy did the exact same thing when he was leaning to ride a bicycle, only he was in his 30s and it therefore hurt a lot more. (I didn’t show him the scar.)

I hope everyone had a happy Mother’s Day. Ours was rather relaxing, which was entirely the point. I think our son was old enough to understand that’s what it’s all about. We’ll see if Father’s Day proceeds the same way…

This Month (or So) in Digital Health: AI’s Growing Pains, Federal Health’s Shrinking Pains

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, where I summarize news articles that recently caught my attention and attempt to try to put the trends in broader context. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but one of the main themes this month is AI, which healthcare finally seems to be putting under the microscope. Also of note is how the Iran war will impact health systems and how federal health may be gutted yet again.

The honeymoon’s over for clinical AI. One study found clinicians save less than 30 minutes a day using AI scribes and don’t decrease their after-hours EHR use. Another one determined Epic’s algorithms don’t perform well in the real world, which matters because AI vendors struggle to compete with EHR incumbents even if their products work better. So, it comes as no surprise that healthcare’s struggling to calculate AI’s ROI and getting impatient when ROI is slow to arrive. On top of everything else, experts say AI oversight and governance need to catch up. Good times.

Consumers understand AI’s limitations. About one-third of American adults turn to AI with health-related questions. Don’t run around screaming that the robot doctors are taking over, though. Education and research make up more than half of healthcare AI queries, compared to 8% for care questions, and people readily admit they use AI because it’s convenient, not because it’s accurate. Seems like there’s most definitely some log-hanging fruit for all those consumer AI health tools (nearly diagramed by Rock Health).

Federal health funding? What federal health funding? The White House is proposing a 12% cut to HHS in 2027, though it’s worth noting Congress ignored a similar request last year. Even with funding restored, HHS is in disarray after massive job cuts (as are other federal agencies), as detailed in excellent long reads from Healthcare Dive. Also, 400-plus hospitals are at risk of closing due to Medicaid cuts that are projected to reach $1 trillion over the next decade.

Healthcare may feel the pinch of the Iran war. Disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz may not impact medical supply chains immediately, and the uncertainty of what may come means stocking up is a bad idea. Cybersecurity is a more immediate threat, as “cyber conflict increasingly mirrors geopolitical tensions,” one expert told Healthcare Brew.

Prior authorization: Now with slightly less time wasted! The insurance industry patted itself on the back by eliminating 11% of prior authorizations, according to an AHIP statement. Meanwhile, Health Affairs found 90% of prior authorizations are approved the first time, which essentially means the $30 cost per transaction is paying for a rubber stamp.

In other relatively interesting news:

Thanks for playing along. See you next time.

The Beastwood Files: March(ish) 2026

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

Coming to you on a Wednesday evening halfway through the month because I did the thing freelancers like to do where they take on too many assignments at a time – which, if it wasn’t bad enough, was made worse by the fact that I did this at the same time as 1) tax season and 2) try-to-figure-out-after-school-care-for-your-soon-to-be-kindergartner season. At least no one in the house was sick.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Celebrate Pi Day with some close friends, approximately one pie per person, and a rule that anyone in attendance was required to take home leftovers
  • Bake Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, a classic winter holiday staple, on the approximate Spring Equinox
  • Leave the shovel and rock salt on the front porch – because we all know the day they go in the basement is the day there’s a thoroughly unexpected snowstorm
  • Fail to take advantage of day-after-Easter candy sales (which frankly may have been for the better, as we still have Dark Chocolate Cadbury Mini Eggs, which are the better kind)

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We revisited a past Pi Day tradition and made a Pie Shop from a gigantic Costco-sized box of paper towels, from which we dispensed dessert pies as well as pizza and seltzer (while supplies lasted). Why I neglected to take a picture of that and instead am tempting you with a poorly rotated, out-of-focus picture of cookies is something I’ll never be able to fully explain.
  • We made our first trip to the LEGO Discovery Center, and it went about as well as we could have hoped. If not for the next day’s visit from the Easter Bunny, we might even still be playing with the LEGO Delivery Van we got from the gift shop.
  • Speaking of the Easter Bunny … along with dutifully leaving some carrots for him to munch on, we pleaded with him to talk to his “friends” about not eating everything in our garden, please. This may come as a shock, but it didn’t work.
  • I made the mistake of telling my son that I occasionally spell my name wrong when I sign an email. Now, every once in a while, to crack himself up, he’ll just randomly blurt out, “Thanks, Brain!”

Happy spring. May the bunnies leave your garden alone. In addition, may your preferred baseball team remember how to hit the ball, which my team seems to have forgotten.

This Month in Digital Health: Beyond the Conversations With Well-Dressed People in Cushy Chairs

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, where I summarize articles that recently caught my eye to explain why I think they’re important. With ViVE and HIMSS behind us, I figured I’d shy away from all the product and partnership announcements that made headlines, which explains why this is a bit shorter than usual. There were still some compelling stories out there, from the usual AI and rural health challenges to ruminations about how seemingly competing health data exchange efforts will in fact complement each other.

AI: Everything everywhere all at once at the same time. A Health Affairs paper argued healthcare needs its AI bubble to burst, as organizations are chasing “innovation without substance.” It doesn’t help that large language models are susceptible to misinformation (just like people), health systems are still wrestling with human-in-the-loop approaches (focusing too much on individual outputs and not enough on scalable frameworks), and LLMs are impacting how people interact with search results (fewer clicks on reputable hospital websites, which of course isn’t a good thing). If nothing else, I suppose, robots can run the hospital cafeteria.

Rural health: Because healthcare loooooves to rush into things. KFF Health News is all over rural health transformation, where proposals range from investing most of the money (Wyoming) to using robots in maternity care (Alabama). Plus, apparently there’s some tension about plans that were drafted and approved, in no small part because states didn’t really have a lot of time to come up plans. That very well may have been the point – I’ve heard folks argue that CMS was looking to fund projects that were well past the planning stage – but the whole thing’s starting to look rather messy, if not ill-conceived.

CMS: TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem are totally besties. It’s not the best look when you launch a data-sharing initiative and then have to come out and say it’s not competing with an existing data-sharing initiative with similar characteristics and motivations, as CMS and ASTP had to do regarding TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem. Apparently, the ecosystem is an “accelerator,” and its work may (or may not) be folded into TEFCA at some point. Glad we cleared that all up.

ACCESS: With rates this low, who needs a doctor? The proposed annual rates for the ACCESS model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) are, um, well, they’re not very high at all. A lot of folks are arguing that’s exactly the point, as the model’s meant to attract 1) entities that take a digital-first approach to chronic care and 2) patients that don’t necessarily need a lot of in-person care. I get it, but I’m not sure going out of your way to alienate physicians is really the best approach.

In other news:

See you next month, when there will be 95% fewer healthcare IT articles featuring photos of well-dressed people sitting in comfy chairs and holding microphones.

The Beastwood Files: February(ish) 2026

~ iambeastwood ~ Leave a comment

The person in charge of maintaining my work schedule (me) gave me too many longform assignments in late February and early March, while the person in charge of maintaining my running schedule (also me) insisted I remain on track for my marathon on Memorial Day weekend, so (in what is beginning to be a recurring pattern) this post is appearing during the second week of the month.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Did

  • Succeeded in getting my mother’s taxes done at the Senior Center in town (thanks, AARP volunteers!)
  • Went out of my way to participate in a social event (the annual party for the running club I recently joined)
  • Made Snow Mountain in the front yard amid two significant storms with “help” from my young assistant
  • Introduced my son to the concept of false spring during a 75-degree day in early March

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • A recent obsession with couch-cushion forts evolved into destroying said forts. It was determined that the dinosaurs living in the neighborhood should be made aware of the demolition schedule and potential for loud noises. “Be a news reporter,” my son said to me, not realizing just how prepared I would be for the moment. (Lest you think I’m a trombone player in my spare time, I’ve probably worn that fedora a half dozen times since buying it on our honeymoon in 2019 after failing to pack a hat for part of our trip.)
  • We all went cross country skiing for the first time (at Great Brook in Carlisle). My son took off on us as soon as he was strapped into his skis – which was great, except that neither of us were quite ready to chase him. (Not a bad problem to have, mind you.) We only went once this winter, but I’m pretty sure we’ll want to go again.
  • We spent quite a bit of time watching the Olympics, in part because it was 15 degrees out the first weekend of the Games. Our favorite sports were biathlon, bobsled, and ski mountaineering. I did not subject my family to watching the 50-kilometer cross country ski races in their entirety. We also really, really got into the ads.

Happy early Pi Day, which is one of the most important days of the year in the Beastwood household (because of pie, not math).