Episode #197. The Invisible Engine of Healthcare Is Breaking, Can AI Fix the Lab?, with Julian Wilkison-Duran, founder of Astor Mind

Summary

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Risk Never Sleeps Podcast – Episode #197:

"The Invisible Engine of Healthcare Is Breaking, Can AI Fix the Lab?"
Guest: Julian Wilkison-Duran, Founder of Astor Mind
Host: Ed Gaudet
Date: March 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Ed Gaudet speaks with Julian Wilkison-Duran, the founder of Astor Mind, about the hidden but critical role of hospital laboratories in patient safety, the mounting challenges these labs face, and how Julian’s novel, biology-inspired approach to artificial intelligence could provide solutions. The conversation dives into Julian’s unique career path from clinical lab scientist to technology entrepreneur, the acute pressures on lab professionals, and the promise—as well as peril—of bringing AI into healthcare’s invisible engine.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Julian’s Background & The Birth of Astor Mind

• Career Journey:

  • Started in clinical lab science at DeVry, worked five to six years in hospital labs (00:45).
  • Saw stagnated career growth in labs; pivoted to software consulting, then realized systemic problems (01:00).
  • Founded Astor Mind to solve persistent business and lab issues using a “biology-based” AI approach (01:32).

• Naming & Inspiration:

  • “Our AI is actually based on a biological starfish… so I was kind of playing around with the word star and landed on 'Aster.' And then it kind of sounds like Mastermind.”
    – Julian Wilkison-Duran (01:50)

• Early Tech Influences:

  • Grew up with the Internet; taught himself HTML as a kid, early gigs building websites (02:13).

• Entry into Healthcare:

  • Started as a caregiver and, through mentorship, moved into lab work, eventually running a small urgent care laboratory (03:00).
  • “I was one of the first cohorts to graduate doing it.” (03:55)

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The Hidden Crisis in Clinical Labs

• Persistent Problems:

  • “Problems that they had 10 years ago are still present.” (04:08)
  • Labs face high knowledge requirements, technical troubleshooting, and manual, stressful communication.

• Critical Communication Gaps:

  • “There has to be some way to have real time communication between the floor and the laboratory… the doctors and nurses should already know when a machine goes down—that should be automatic.” (05:30)

• Examples of Lab Risks:

  • Dangerous specimen mislabeling, blood banking complexity and its life-or-death consequences, chronic understaffing, extreme stress, and low pay (06:15–07:30).
  • “You’re in direct charge of someone’s life… sometimes you can’t give [blood] to them right away because you have to do a lot of workup… It’s a huge responsibility.” (07:00)
  • High burnout: “Not a whole lot of people want to do this job. And people that do, they have a real passion for it. Otherwise you would just quit the next day.” (07:40)

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AI, Automation, and Astor Mind’s Novel Approach

• Bio-Inspired AI:

  • “Our AI is closer to biology than an LLM would be… less hallucination… it’s a thinking thing now.” (09:00)
  • Built with JavaScript for broad accessibility: “You don’t need big data to do AI and you don’t need big processors… our AI runs on a consumer-grade laptop… anyone could build their own model.” (09:51–10:40)
  • Focuses on “domain-specific models,” not all-knowing black boxes.

• Transparency & Auditability:

  • “We can specifically say, this is the thought process that our AI did, whereas modern AI these days—it’s a black box.” (09:25)

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Entrepreneurial Insights & Personal Growth

• Startup Challenges:

  • Herculean task to communicate breakthrough ideas: “I was like, ‘Look at this starfish that I made.’ And people are like, ‘What starfish?’” (11:08)
  • “Aligning your vision with the reality of what they see is hard… Instead of talking about what [the AI] is, talking about what it actually does.” (11:19–11:25)

• Early Lessons:

  • Dealing with expectations and managing “What else can it do?” reactions (12:01).

• Direct Customer Feedback:

  • Wife’s perspective: “The stuff that you’re making, I needed yesterday and quite literally yesterday.” (12:37)

• Biggest Regret & Advocacy:

  • Wishes lab careers were better represented so students could join directly: “I wish I could have started out just in the laboratory… wishing that the laboratory was represented more as a career path.” (12:57–13:47)
  • Vision: build awareness and status for laboratorians.

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Patient Experience & Transparency

• “Pizza Tracker” for Labs:
  • “If a patient had something like [a pizza tracker] for their lab results… They can see it on their phone while they’re sitting in their hospital bed…” (13:55)
  • “That would give clear vision to the patient of what laboratory actually does.” (14:24)

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Education, AI, and the Future of Work

• Unconventional Advice:

  • “I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. I probably would have continued what I was studying on my own… The knowledge is free now…” (14:50; 24:35)

• Filler Classes:

  • “While it’s great to know general knowledge… It didn’t apply directly to anything that I was doing and I felt like it was a money grab.” (15:14)

• AI’s True Role:

  • “AI is not going to take over jobs… you always have to have a human in the loop.” (16:37)
  • “AI allows you to skip all the rubbish and go straight to the creativity.” (17:20)

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Personal Stories, Passions, Risks, and Reflections

• Passions Beyond Work:

  • Still biology and tinkering, inspired by childhood curiosity (17:47–18:20).

• Risk:

  • “The riskiest thing I’ve ever done? Leave my job and do this.” (18:31)

• Fun Facts:

  • Resumed skateboarding at age 40. “I fell pretty hard and then couldn’t move for a week… I got back up on the horse. I’m taking it slower, of course.” (18:57–19:17)

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Concerns & Vision for AI

• Worries About AI Power:
  • “What keeps me up at night… Everybody just decided that AI was going to do everything from being a judge, jury, and executioner all the way to driving my car. That’s what scares me. Because I know what AI is under the hood…” (19:41–20:43)

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Favorite Music & Movies

• Albums for a Desert Island:

  • “40 Ounces to Freedom” by Sublime (21:14)
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Under the Bridge”
  • Selena (full album)
  • Green Day

• Favorite Films:

  • The Matrix, Terminator, John Wick (22:20–22:45)

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Advice for New Cyber and Healthcare Professionals

“My honest advice… Learn how to use [AI tools]—because that’s all they are, is tools. Those tools are not going to go and invent something for you… That’s your job. There’s not going to be jobs in the traditional sense anymore. You’re going to make your own jobs.”

– Julian Wilkison-Duran (23:00–24:08)

• Emphasizes initiative: “If you want something, you’re going to make it… You have more tools now than anybody ever has on Earth.”
• Encouragement to take ownership and build.

Host Ed Gaudet’s Praise:

“That’s the best answer so far, and I’ve done 200 episodes, Julian.” (24:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Lab Stress:
  “Doctors and nurses calling you minute by minute, asking, ‘Where’s my results?’ My machine’s down, so I can’t give you results until I fix it… Not a whole lot of people want to do this job.”
  – Julian Wilkison-Duran (05:00–07:40)

• On Transparency:
  “Modern AI these days, it’s a black box… We can specifically say, this is the thought process that our AI did…”
  – Julian Wilkison-Duran (09:25)

• On Entrepreneurship:
  “When you show somebody something extraordinary, the initial response is, ‘Oh, wow, look at what you can do.’ And then the next response is, ‘What else can it do?’”
  – Julian Wilkison-Duran (12:01)

• On Taking Risks:
  “If you’re living gently, you’re not really living. You got to take some risk in your life. Otherwise… what are we doing?”
  – Julian Wilkison-Duran (19:24–19:38)

• On AI’s Place in Society:
  “A brain without a body is just a brain. You need people doing stuff... AI is not going to tell you the solution... it allows you to skip all the rubbish and go straight to the creativity.”
  – Julian Wilkison-Duran (16:37–17:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Julian’s Career Path & Astor Mind Origins: 00:36–03:55
• The Current State and Challenges of the Lab: 04:02–08:01
• Astor Mind’s Unique, Bio-inspired AI: 09:13–10:46
• Startup Lessons & Communication Challenges: 11:02–12:19
• Personal Background: Education & Lab Representation: 12:57–13:54
• Improving Patient Transparency – The “Pizza Tracker” Idea: 13:55–14:43
• Views on College and Learning: 14:50–16:26
• The Human-AI Relationship: 16:37–17:40
• Personal Risk and Passion Projects: 17:47–19:24
• Concerns about AI Overreach: 19:39–20:43
• Desert Island Albums & Favorite Films: 21:11–22:45
• Career & Life Advice for New Professionals: 23:00–24:35

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Conclusion

This episode examines the often-overlooked but vital world of hospital laboratories, their acute pains in the digital age, and how AI can—or cannot—help. Julian’s story intertwines technology, grit, pragmatism, and vision, capped by a profound and actionable vision for young professionals: use curiosity, seize new tools, and don’t wait for permission to invent the future.

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Transcript

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Foreign.

[Ed Gaudette]

Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps, where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudette.

Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast in which we learn about the people that are on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care. I'm Ed Gaudette, the host, and today I am pleased to be joined by Julian Wilkeson Duran. Julian. Welcome, sir.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah, you bet. Let's start off with sharing a little bit about your background, what you're currently doing, a little bit about your company with our listeners.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, so a little bit about my background is I started out in clinical lab science. So I went to school at devry and I got a clinical lab science degree and I work in hospital laboratories for five or six years. So I got a lot of experience doing that. And then I noticed some trouble in the laboratory and the ability to move up in the laboratory is very difficult. And I kind of had a passion for software and so I kind of went back to that and did consulting for big financial companies. But then I realized that it doesn't matter what company you're at, they all have similar problems with, you know, data and staffing and all that. And so I found myself with similar problems no matter where I went. And so I decided to try to solve some of those problems. And I started my own company a couple of months ago called Astromind. And so now we've been set out using our technology that's biology based, solving some of the hardest problems that businesses have these days.

[Ed Gaudette]

Cool. Where'd you get come up with the name? What's the name mean?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, so the way I came up with the name is that our AI is actually based on a biological starfish. And so I was kind of playing around with the word star and kind of landed on aster. And then it kind of sounds like Mastermind.

[Ed Gaudette]

Nice, I love that. How did you get into tech? How did you get into software?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, I started pretty young. I was the generation that kind of grew up with the Internet. And so growing up being a 10 year old, everybody wanted their own website. And back then it was GeoCities and, and so learning HTML and setting up my own site like that. I kind of just grew up with it and then realized I had a knack for it and just continued to learn on my own as a hobby. And the hobbies started turning into like a career path that I could choose or not choose. And somewhere around high school I got my first, like Professional gig making websites for, like, a real estate company.

[Ed Gaudette]

Nice.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yes. And it went really well. And then the economy went south, and I was just like, let's. Let's find something else to do. And that's kind of where I landed in healthcare. Starting out as a caregiver. You know, I started out from the very bottom when it comes to healthcare. Started out as a caregiver. One of the nurses kind of mentored me, and she's like, yeah, I kind of have a knack for this. And I was just like, all right. And so I got an associate's degree and did medical assistant work over at an urgent care. Nice years. And then kind of made friends with a few of the doctors there. And I ended up running the laboratory for the urgent care. Very small little laboratory. I had a microscope and a urinalysis machine. Nuts about it. Oh, and it had a cbc, old culture counter. Oh, wow. And so he showed me how to use that, and he's like, if you really like this stuff, this is actually a career path that you could go down. And so he kind of mentored me. And at the time, there was very few college programs to do that kind of work. And the devry just barely opened up their program. I was like one of the first cohorts to graduate doing it. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Are you staying in the medical area, the medical industry, with your new company?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Well, leaning towards that way. The reason I say that is because my wife still works in the laboratory, and that's where I met her. And problems that they've had 10 years ago are still present. And I'm finding more and more that the technology that I'm creating can actually help the laboratorian in many ways. So one of the problems that laboratorians have is they've become these. Not only do they need a vast amount of knowledge in chemistry and biology and. And hematology and all this other stuff, but they've all of a sudden become glorified mechanics with all this automation. And so when a machine breaks, you're stuck fixing that machine. And then you have doctors calling you minute by minute, asking, where's my results? Where's my results? My machine's down, so I can't give you results until I fix it. But that doesn't stop them from calling you. And then the other problems that you run into is, like, you have these critical results to give to a nurse. There's no digital way of saying, here's my critical results nurse. And the nurse verifies it digitally. It's a very manual process of calling on the phone to the floor and saying, hey, nurse, so, and so somebody's troponin is a high level, so they're probably having a heart attack. All right, you still have to document that manually and put it into the computer and all that. But you know, in the reality, the nurse probably already had that information because the patient's having a heart attack. So there, there has to be some way to have real time communication between the floor and the laboratory. For one, the doctors and nurses should already know when a machine goes down that, that should be an automated thing of letting everybody in the ER in the hospital know, hey, the heart of the hospital is down. You're not gonna, nobody's gonna be able to do much until this machine gets fixed. So that's, that's one thing. And then being able to resolve critical results in a timely manner also affects patient care.

[Ed Gaudette]

So those are the two problems you're helping, are going to approach, organizations helping

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

them with, okay, two of the bigger problems. And then there's other automation problems like say, well, this has happened quite a few times with mislabeled specimens. How do you figure out that it is a mislabeled specimen without having to run it on a machine and getting weird results? And how do you prevent that from happening to begin with? There is various methods that they use these days with two barcode scans and whatnot, but stuff still slips through the cracks and it's very dangerous. The other problems that you have in the laboratory is some of the work that we do in the laboratory has to be highly focused. And so one of those areas is in blood banking. And so you're in blood banking, you're in direct charge of someone's life. They, they need life saving blood right away. And sometimes you can't give it to them right away because they have what's called an antibody. And so if they have an antibody, you have to actually do a lot of workup they call it, to figure out what that antibody is before you can give them the blood. Because you have to give them blood without that antibody or they'll die anyway. So it's a huge responsibility. And let's say that isn't your only responsibility. You're not just doing blood banking, you're also in hematology, resulting CBCs and doing cell counts. And that machine goes down in chemistry. How much attention are you actually paying to being able to work up that antibody? And generally the solution is to have more laboratories in the lab, but that doesn't happen. There's a staph shortage. Just like everywhere else in the hospital, people won't show up for work or people will quit because there's low pay, there's extreme stress. Doctors and nurses yelling at you 24 7. Not a whole lot of people want to do this job. And people that do do it, they have a real passion for it. And you have to. Otherwise you would just quit the next day.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah, no, I think that exists throughout healthcare. Right. There's so many jobs and so many roles. If you don't have that passion for healthcare, what you're doing, and really take that, that mission, which is shared Right. With everybody in the ecosystem, which is really cool outside of healthcare, you don't really see that without that, you know, it's really hard to obviously weather those ups and downs that we, we deal with every day. So you're an entrepreneur, your first company. Is this your first company?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

This is my first.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, wow, that's exciting. So let's kind of dive into that a little bit. What do you, you know, what are some of your challenges? What are you looking at over the next couple years from an entrepreneur's perspective?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

A lot of it is normal startup growth, things of trying to find people that can help me do this work. And then a lot of it is getting people to understand something that's completely different and thinking outside the box. Because while we are an AI company, our AI is not like everybody else's. And you can't just say that with a grain of salt and expect people to understand. And so trying to explain that to people that our AI is closer to biology than an LLM would be. And what are the benefits of that?

[Ed Gaudette]

And risks.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

And risks, yeah. You know, while you get less hallucination and whatnot, there's the risk of, you know, it, it's autonomy and, you know, it's a thinking thing now. So what it thinks and what you think might not jive, but again, it's, it's built in constraints too, and auditability that we have that other just doesn't have, because we can specifically say this is the thought process that our AI did, whereas modern AI these days, it's a black box. You can't really do that.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's right, yeah. And how are you building. Are you building it in Claude or are you building it in OpenAI or.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, that's a great question. The specific programming language I'm using is JavaScript. And the reason I chose JavaScript is because I wanted to make this AI as accessible as possible to everybody. One of the problems with AI these days is it's inaccessible. Even if I wanted to build my own model, a lot of the stuff to be able to do that is proprietary and uses. You need to have vast amounts of knowledge in order to get there. What I wanted to do is abstract that away, make it so that you don't need big data to do AI and you don't need big processors either. REI runs on a laptop, on a consumer grade laptop that. And I did it in such a way that anybody could build their own model on whatever they want to do. So very domain specific. Instead of having the world's knowledge in a brain, only having the knowledge that you actually need at the given moment.

[Ed Gaudette]

So a domain specific language model versus a large language model that any correct?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Really, really good. Smart. What are, what are some of the challenges you're finding that you hadn't considered prior to becoming an entrepreneur? What are some of the things you're running into going, oh, wow, I didn't even think about this or realize this was going to be an issue.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

A few of the things are expecting people to understand what I know.

[Ed Gaudette]

It's a problem.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

And so when I first went out there, right. I was like, look at this starfish that I made. And people are like, what starfish? What are you talking about?

[Ed Gaudette]

That's great. Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

And so aligning your vision with the

[Ed Gaudette]

reality of what they see is hard. Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

So instead of talking about what it is, talking about what it actually does and what it can do for them. Yeah, that's one reality check for me. And then something else is letting everybody kind of catch up to where I am. And this isn't an arrogance thing by any means.

[Ed Gaudette]

No, I understand completely.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Because some of the stuff that I talk about you've only seen in movies. Really. And so that, that's kind of the reference. And some of that reference isn't true either. Right. It doesn't work exactly like how it does on tv, but it certainly looks that way. And so kind of managing expectations. And then the other thing is, I just told this to my business partner is when you so show somebody something extraordinary, the initial response is, oh, wow, look at what you can do. And then the next response is, what else can it do? And so managing that as well.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

There's a million things that this can solve. And so choosing the ones that matter to me matters.

[Ed Gaudette]

You're already wise at three months. You said three months. Yeah, three months into it. Yeah. Most people never get to the point where they understand those points. So that's that's actually really good. What now you said, you said your wife works in the.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

The medical. Works in the laboratory. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

What does she, what does she think about your, you know, excited your new journey?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

She's like the, the stuff that you're making. I needed yesterday and quite literally yesterday.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's great. Yeah, you already have. You're living with a customer.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, that's great.

[Ed Gaudette]

So when you think about your career, I'm going to go back and probe on a couple questions, if you, if you don't mind. What's some of the biggest mistake you' made so far and biggest learning event

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

as far as the company goes or like anything. Yeah. In general, I wouldn't call it a mistake, but I would call it the path that I took. I might reorder it differently. Okay. Instead of starting out on the bottom of doing caregiving. Well, I appreciated that and it was a lot of hard work and it made me appreciate what nursing does and things like that. I wish I could have started out just in the laboratory. I would have known that the laboratory existed and not just stumbled upon it. So that's one thing, is wishing that the laboratory was represented more as a career path so that people like myself could skip all the rubbish and go straight to the point of I can work in the laboratory and it's kind of fun and it's what I like to do.

[Ed Gaudette]

Well, that could be part of your, you know, your overall vision and mission could be bringing awareness to that area.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

So one of the things that I've been thinking about is, you know those pizza trackers, right? Yes. It says, your pizza's in the oven, your pizza's on the way. Right? Yes. If a patient had something like that for their lab results. Right. They can see it on their phone while they're sitting in their hospital bed. They're like, oh, the phlebotomist is going to come and draw me in five minutes. I love that. And then they go and do it and then, oh, your blood's on the way to the machine. Your blood's on the machine running. You know, we're about to get the results in five minutes. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's cool.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

So something like that and that. That would give clear vision to the patient of what laboratory actually does. Because if you ask a patient these days what happens after the doctor dries your blood, the nurse draws your blood, they're like, oh, the nurse goes and runs the test. The nurse has no clue how to do that. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

Someone else.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's a great point. You know, if you could go back in time and tell your 20 year old self something, what would it be?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

This might sound bad and difficult, but I probably wouldn't have gone to college. I probably would have continued what I was studying on my own and maybe audited some classes that I actually cared about and then just continued where I am now, if I'm super honest.

[Ed Gaudette]

No, I love that. I love that. And what classes do you feel like you had to take that you shouldn't have taken?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Well, it's a great class. I think that economics and some of the other lower level, I don't know, I call them filler classes because while it's great to know general knowledge and being well rounded. Yeah. It didn't apply directly to anything that I was doing and I felt like it was a money grab. Interesting. And then the other thing that they started to do was like in chemistry, when, when my wife took chemistry, she had chemistry 1, 2, and then organic chemistry or whatever. But now what they're doing is they're splitting up these chemistry classes so that you're taking like subclasses of what you need to know. And it's just an odd way of doing it and it's not cohesive. A lot of people might get left behind there. And that's usually like the washout class is in chemistry. You're either making it or not at that point. And it would be nice to know that ahead of time than wasting two years of your life and then figuring out, oh, this isn't for me.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah, no, I think that that's interesting. I think. And then I think this next generation is struggling with a. The cost of university and college.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

And certainly the impact AI is going to have on the future of jobs as well. So I think it's a really interesting point that you bring up. Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

In my honest opinion about AI taking over jobs, it's not going to take over jobs. And the reason I say that is because you always have to have a human in the loop. Even if you have the most advanced brain. A brain without a body is just a brain. You need people doing stuff. That's what the whole world is about. If you step way outside of your computer and look outside, who's mowing your lawn? Right. Who's picking the vegetables? Who's actually doing the work to survive? It's not AI, it's people. And people still have to talk to people too. That's the other thing is you could talk to a computer all you want and Rubber duck against an AI to try to figure out a problem. But AI is not going to tell you the solution. It's going to give you ideas, but you need to talk to other people that have creativeness and solve those problems. I think what AI does is it allows you to skip all the rubbish and go straight to the creativity. All the mundane stuff goes away and all of a sudden you can do the novel things that actually matter.

[Ed Gaudette]

Well put. Outside of your day job, what are you most passionate about? What would you be doing if you. You had all the money in the world and you could do anything?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Oh, yeah. Probably is still the same thing.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's good. That means you're doing the right thing.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

I've always been passionate about biology and how things work. I remember being five years old in my dad's shop because he's a wood shop teacher and trying to make a hand because I watched, you know, Star wars and I saw Luke Skywalker's hand. I'm like, I could do that. I can. You know, that's just a couple of bolts and a string. You can pull it and the finger moves. Right. So, yeah, I've always been like this.

[Ed Gaudette]

It's just a little Leonardo da Vinci in you. Yeah. What's the riskiest thing you've ever done? This is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast, so I have to ask you that question.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. Leave my job and do this.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's right.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Because I was making really good money and it was very secure and, you know. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Wasn't it great entrepreneurship?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

I had a good gig. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Now you're an entrepreneur, though. Don't go back.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

That's so great.

[Ed Gaudette]

Share a fun fact about you.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

That many people don't know a fun fact. Oh, that was a weird one.

[Ed Gaudette]

That doesn't have to be fun. It could be.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. At the age of 40, I tried skateboarding again. That was. Oh, my God.

[Ed Gaudette]

How did that turn out?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

I fell pretty hard and then couldn't move for a week and. Oh, right.

[Ed Gaudette]

Are you still doing it?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

I got back up on the horse. I. I'm taking it slower, of course.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

But yeah, it. It's something physical to do. Gets me away from the computer.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's also pretty risky.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. I don't like to take life lightly. You can ask my wife or anybody who knows me real well. If you're living gently, you're not really living. You got to take some risk in your life. Otherwise. Absolutely, you know.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. What are we doing? Right.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

What keeps you up at night?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Weird things.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's okay. Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. So the stuff that keeps me up at night is like, I would wake up in the morning and. And everybody just decided that AI was going to do everything from being a judge, jury, and executioner all the way to driving my car. That. That's what scares me. Because I know what AI is under the hood. And letting AI have that much power over my life would. Is definitely scary. So that, like, the other night I had a dream of I was making software for legal systems, and I didn't even know they made this movie already. But the software did all the research and it pulled all the. The sources of all the case studies of this guy, and I could prove that he was guilty without a reasonable doubt just because of all the cases that I was able to pull from all of time. But in reality, the guy didn't commit the crime. Like, that's my fear, is letting AI have that much power. It should never get to that point.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. Amen. Amen. That's going to be the hardest part of the journey for everybody, I think, is governing that and not. And realizing that if we give it too much power and autonomy, that could really. That could become a movie that we don't. That. That no one wants to actually deal with in. In reality. So I like to ask this album. I don't know if you're a music or a movie person, but if you're on an island and you can only bring five albums with you, what would they be?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

That's my favorite question.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, good. All right, cool.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

One album that I can listen to non stop is 40 ounces to freedom from Sublime.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

It's like when I was first learning music, it was the first forbidden CD that I wasn't allowed to listen to. And so I listened to it and, you know, I snuck it around in my backpack everywhere. And, you know, I saw them in concert.

[Ed Gaudette]

It's a good show.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

It is.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. It's a lot of energy.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. Saw them a Warp tour way, way, way long.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

But yeah, okay. Sublime. Good. Sublime. And then a movie or.

[Ed Gaudette]

No, just five albums or.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Oh, five albums.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Let's see. Red Hot Chili Peppers under the bridge. Nice. Good one. Obviously, I'm an alternative fan.

[Ed Gaudette]

I. I can see your pattern.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Something that's not alternative. How about Selena? That. That whole.

[Ed Gaudette]

Wow, that's shocking.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, that's.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's okay. It's your island, man. It's your island. Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

I'd be rocking Biddy Bitty Bomb Bomb all day. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Bored enough you can only climb so Many palm trees.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. Three more. I have no clue.

[Ed Gaudette]

Two more.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Two more.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

It's okay. You don't have to give it.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, Green Day.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. And.

[Ed Gaudette]

Well, movies. What kind of movies?

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

You like movies? Huge fan of Matrix, obviously, you know, and Reeves just in general. Yeah, he's a.

[Ed Gaudette]

He's a badass.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Terminator. Grew up on Terminator.

[Ed Gaudette]

They have a documentary on the John Wick movies. Have you seen that? Yeah, that's really good.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Amazing actor.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. He's so good. He's so. He's.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

All right, what advice do you have to. This will be interesting. Cyber professionals just starting out, coming out of school that want to break into either cyber or healthcare or both.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

My. My honest advice to them right now, especially because a lot of them are like, I can't find a job. AI's taken over jobs. Or, you know, why. Why did I study computer science when AIs could just write the code for me? My honest advice is learn how to use Claude. Learn how to use cursor, Learn how to use the tools, because that's all they are, is tools. Those tools are not going to go and invent something for you. That. That's your job. And so if you're coming out of school and you're looking for a job, don't make your own job, because that's the name of the game. In the future, there's not going to be jobs in the traditional sense anymore. You're going to make your own jobs. And if you want something, you're going to make it, and it's not going to pop out of thin air. You're going to have to figure out how to do it. But at least you have the. You have more tools now than anybody ever has on Earth, ever. And so you can literally manifest something that nobody has ever seen before, and you're the only one that's been able to do it. How. How cool is that? Like, the options are unlimited these days, and it doesn't even matter where you're from or who you are anymore. It used to, but the world has gotten really small now.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's amazing. That was amazing. That. That's the best answer for so far. And I've done 200 episodes, Julian, so.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah, that.

[Ed Gaudette]

That was fantastic. No, absolutely, I agree with you 100%. Don't sit there. Don't feel sorry for yourself. Don't like, oh, me my. Don't. Don't, like, build something. You have an opportunity to build something. Learn something. Yeah, maybe you spent four years and you didn't learn how to do AI. But now you can do it, and now you can do it on your own. I love that.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. And the knowledge is free. Now, that's. That's the other reason I wouldn't.

[Ed Gaudette]

This is amazing. Exactly. You know, I think, I wonder what's going to happen to the whole university structure, because quite frankly, like you said, the knowledge is free. Why do I need to go to university? All I need to do is be able to ask. I need to be curious, which most kids are. Right.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Lose curiosity when you become an adult. You got to keep that childlike mind. Right. Otherwise you lose it. And so coming out of school at that age, you're so curious, like, now's the time to press, you know, double down on that and. And build your own thing.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

Yeah. And this is like a huge for instance. And it's. Wouldn't it be cool if Call of Duty had this feature? Make your own Call of Duty. The fuck what your passion is then. That's, you know. Oh, I don't like what Bethesda did yesterday. Well, make your own Bethesda. Nobody's stopping you. It, you know, I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's great. That's great. Well, any. Anything else you'd like to add? This has been terrific. I really appreciate your time today.

[Julian Wilkeson Duran]

No, that, that's. I. I generally don't talk a whole lot, but you did a good job. Yeah. Appreciate it.

[Ed Gaudette]

Appreciate you, Julian. Thanks for your time. This is Zed Gaudette from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. If you're on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care, remember to stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.

Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps. For the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety, Visit [e-mail] that's C-E N S I N E T.com I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. And until next time, stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps.