Episode #210. Why Most Healthcare AI Projects Never Make It Past the Pilot, with Jerry Buchanan, Head of Growth at Optura.AI

Summary

Risk Never Sleeps Podcast: Episode #210

Why Most Healthcare AI Projects Never Make It Past the Pilot, with Jerry Buchanan, Head of Growth at Optura.AI

Host: Ed Gaudet
Guest: Jerry Buchanan, Head of Growth, Optura.AI
Date: April 20, 2026
Location: Live at ViVE, Los Angeles

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, host Ed Gaudet (Founder & CEO, Censinet) sits down with Jerry Buchanan, Head of Growth at Optura.AI, to explore why most healthcare AI projects fail to advance beyond the pilot phase. Jerry shares insights from his extensive career in healthcare IT, Optura’s mission to build trust in AI, and actionable advice for organizations navigating the clinical AI journey. The discussion also touches on Jerry’s personal background, leadership philosophy, and vision for the future of healthcare technology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jerry Buchanan’s Background & Career Trajectory

• Early Career: Began in IT, working at the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, followed by a long tenure at Emids (healthcare services startup), then leadership roles at SoftServe.
  • "I was the 11th employee... saw them grow from 30, 40 employees to a couple thousand. Incredible journey." (01:31)
• Current Role: Leads revenue, client relations, and financing rounds as Head of Growth at Optura.AI, a young healthcare AI orchestration startup.
• Military Experience: West Point graduate, served 5.5 years as field artillery officer.

What is Optura.AI?

AI Orchestration Platform for Healthcare

• “We like to think of ourselves as being in the trust business.” – Jerry (02:14)
• Platform designed to streamline the full AI/automation project lifecycle:
  • Ideation, governance, and approval: Assists in triaging which AI projects get built.
  • ROI measurement: Tracks real value creation from automation projects.
  • Developer tooling: Accelerates technical development and integration.
• Inspired by co-founder Andy Fanning’s experience at Cigna managing large-scale automation.
  • “He needed an army of business analysts... wouldn’t it be great if there’s a platform that helped me manage that without the army?” (03:05)

Why Most Healthcare AI Projects Fail to Scale

• Value = Trust: Organizations need undeniable, realized value from AI initiatives to foster trust at every level—from CFOs to patients.
  • “Value is what equals trust when it comes to AI and automation.” (06:02)
• Bottlenecks: Many promising pilots get lost in the gap between technical feasibility and real-world impact.
• ROI as Flywheel: Even small successes, measured and trusted, can create momentum for further investment and larger projects.
  • “No matter how small you start, you get that flywheel going, and that trust will just continue to grow…” (06:45)

Optura’s “AI-First” Philosophy

• Internal Practice: The company applies AI not just to its product, but across all business functions—sales, finance, account management.
• Agentic Employees: Multiple layers of AI agents augment human staff, from data collection to strategy.
  • “We literally have more agentic employees than I have people employees at this point.” (06:55)
  • Breakdown of agents:
    • Input layer (collects contextual info from emails, calendars, Slack, etc.)
    • Intelligence layer (deal intelligence, competitive analytics)
    • Strategic layer (“Jerry 2.0”) driving actions and decisions (07:18)

The Risk of All-In on AI

• Personal Risk Perspective: Jerry embraces risk by fully committing to AI, believing the greater risk is not evolving.
  • “The risk would be not going all in on AI. So it’s a bit of a knife’s edge journey.” (08:38)

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Personal Touches & Memorable Moments

Life Outside Work: Family, Music & Push-Ups

• “My thing I’m most passionate about is my family...between work and the time that takes, family is about all that’s left.” (08:49)
• Still keeps active: “Try to do a few push-ups and pull-ups on the way whenever possible.” (08:59)
  • “Can you still knock out 50?” (Host, 09:09)
    “Oh, for sure.” (Jerry, 09:10)
• Music on a Desert Island: A diverse list—George Strait, Eminem (“you gotta have Mom’s Spaghetti”), Jay Z, Spin Doctors, Black Crows, Lemonheads, Everclear (09:23–10:21)

Career Advice for Students Entering AI in Healthcare

• “Take that first job...get the experience. Do everything that you can when you get there, and work hard.” (10:29)
• “Be AI-first. You have to be eloquent in AI and how it works… helps to have a computer science degree, but you also have to know how to use it.” (11:13)
• On education’s fear of AI: “...it is valuable to learn how to think and not outsource that to a model. But...it’s part of everything in daily practice.” (11:52–12:07)

Retirement Dream

• Beach town in New England (Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod)—“My dream falls along with my wife’s.” (12:30–12:44)

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Notable Quotes

• On Healthcare IT’s Mission:
  “To see the difference...lives that got changed by the things we'd put into production was very satisfying.” (04:53)
• On AI Orchestration:
  “As models improve and AI just gets better and better, that technical piece in the middle...is going to get easier and faster over time.” (03:05)
• On Value in AI:
  “To see that value become realized in a way that every part of the org can trust…that the CFO, the controllers, trust that value is real.” (06:02)
• On Work Ethic & Leadership:
  “You always look the level above you and think they’re not working as hard. Then you get there and they’re actually working twice as hard.” (10:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------| | 00:53-01:31 | Jerry’s background & healthcare IT journey | | 02:12-02:51 | What is Optura.AI? | | 03:05-04:17 | Andy Fanning’s AI orchestration journey, platform vision | | 06:02-06:45 | AI value equals trust, and the need for measurable ROI | | 06:50-08:11 | Optura’s internal “AI-first” approach | | 08:13-08:38 | Risk and going all-in on AI | | 09:09-10:21 | Personal questions: fitness, music on a desert island | | 10:29-11:22 | Advice for newcomers to healthcare/AI | | 12:30-12:44 | Retirement plans & New England dream | | 13:11-13:47 | What Jerry hopes to achieve at ViVE, conference networking |

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Episode Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, insightful, and often light-hearted, blending strategic discussion with personal anecdotes and practical advice. Jerry’s straightforward, mission-driven perspective and willingness to reflect on both company and personal growth make this episode both informative and relatable.

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Useful for…

• Healthcare CIOs/CISOs and digital risk leaders seeking to scale AI beyond pilots
• Anyone interested in healthcare AI workflows, governance, and value measurement
• Students and early career professionals aiming for a future in digital health
• Listeners seeking inspiration from a leader who has lived healthcare’s mission from the ground up

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“Value is what equals trust… get that flywheel going, and that trust will just continue to grow over time.”
– Jerry Buchanan, 06:02

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For further resources and more on patient safety risk, visit censinet.com

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

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 live at Vive in LA with Jerry Buchanan from Aptura.

[A]

Yeah, it's good to be here.

[B]

Hey, Jerry, Good to see you. It's early here in la.

[A]

It is. It's late at home.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where you.

[B]

Where are you based?

[A]

Right outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Oh, a little town called Franklin.

[B]

I know Franklin. Yeah, that's very nice. Very tawny.

[A]

It's a very nice spot. Yes, spot.

[B]

So let's start off with sharing a little bit about your background, your current role and your current organization.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the head of Growth with Optura, so I lead all things revenue, client related and our financing rounds as we go forward and continue our growth journey as a company. Nice for me. Been here for 10 months. We're a startup, we're quite new, but I've spent a long career in the healthcare IT services side of the house. So you go back long enough. I was an early employee with a company called Emids, which was a startup healthcare services company. I was there for about 12 years and did all sorts of roles there. Started as a delivery person, account management, sales.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

You tend to do everything. And I think I was the 11th employee.

[B]

You get to see a lot when you're. Yeah.

[A]

And you see them grow from 30, 40 employees to a couple thousand. Incredible journey there.

[B]

Did you go public?

[A]

We did not. Did. Gosh. They're probably on their third or fourth funding round at this point since I've left, but went off and did the same thing with some much larger and public companies, culminating in the three years before I came here as the head of healthcare and life sciences for a company called Soft Serve.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the largest Ukrainian.

[B]

I was the customer.

[A]

Yeah. Great little company. Great company.

[B]

Yeah, they were really great. When I was at Improvado, we used.

[A]

We had.

[B]

We were a customer for a number of years.

[A]

Yeah, I spent some time up in Boston.

[B]

Oh, did you?

[A]

Making things happen there.

[B]

Nice. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, so tell us what. Aptura.

[A]

Aptura, yes. So we like to think of ourselves as being in the trust business.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So we're an AI orchestration platform for healthcare and so we help in all aspects of the AI and automation journey. So the ideation, governance and approval process that needs to happen early in that journey. Measuring the value, the ROAI that comes off the back end of all of the projects that you do. And we have this like, think of it as fat technical middle. So it's all the tools that help developers access data, build Regentic workflows, and manage all of that work that sits in the middle.

[B]

Okay, interesting. You said it's a fairly new company.

[A]

How old is it? So we are a little over a year old. Started Christmas Eve of 24.

[B]

Oh, Christmas Eve, yeah.

[A]

Some.

[B]

Somebody had a couple cocktails. There's some eggnog or something.

[A]

Some bourbon involved, for sure. That particular decision.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But really it goes back for probably five or six years from one of our founders. Andy Fanning was the chief AI Officer for the CIGNA Group. Oh, right. And so he had, gosh, a thousand employees across the world that would do 200, 250 automation projects every year. And what he realized was he needed an army of business analysts to help with the, I don't know, thousand ideas that it takes to funnel down to these 200 that are finally approved every year. Yeah. And then his remit from the business was to return to 2.5x within 18 months on every project. So we had a whole other army. Good return. Yeah. A whole other army of analysts measuring that value coming off the back end. And he thought, well, gee, wouldn't it be great if there's a platform that helped me manage that without the army, where just a few people could manage that intake, governance and approval and measuring the value on the back end. And then he had the vision that as models improve and AI just gets better and better, that this technical piece in the middle, that's the bulk of the thousand people that he had, is going to get easier and faster over time. So you need accelerants in that portion of the SDLC as well.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. How did you get into healthcare?

[A]

For me, by accident. I was a business analyst back in the day. I live outside Nashville, which is a huge healthcare town. And so it just so happened that my second IT job I landed in was with a healthcare company. Huh. And it just stuck ever since.

[B]

Why? What was it about healthcare that was different?

[A]

It's. There really is a mission and really my entire IT career, I started with the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, which was incredible. The only knock on IT doesn't pay very much when you work for the state.

[B]

It's mission.

[A]

Yeah, it's mission. But to get into healthcare and to see the difference, especially early in my career when I was very close to the projects, very close to putting things into production and seeing that value that was coming out the other end, hearing the users seeing the. Quite literally, often seeing the lives that got changed by the things that we would put into production was very satisfying. Yeah.

[B]

That's incredible. And did you grow up in Nashville?

[A]

I did.

[B]

Country fan?

[A]

Not so much. I went to college in New York and.

[B]

Oh, where?

[A]

I went to West Point, just north of the city.

[B]

Thank you for your service.

[A]

I say sure. Thanks for your tax dollars sending me to college and paying for about a third of grad school.

[B]

How long, how long did you serve?

[A]

I was then for five and a half years.

[B]

Okay, great. I was field artillery.

[A]

Oh, very nice. Army? Yeah.

[B]

Rotc. Rotc. Oh, not West Point.

[A]

No. You forget you get out into the army. It doesn't matter where people.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

Absolutely. Just my best friends are roti guys.

[B]

Yeah. So no good. All right, so when you think about AI over the next couple years, what are some of your priorities?

[A]

Our first priority is helping organizations realize the value. So we're taking a hard line stance that value is what equals trust when it comes to AI and automation. To see, no matter how small that starting point is, to see that value become realized in a way that every part of the org can trust. That the cfo, the controllers trust that value is real. The business owners trust that value is real. The CEOs see things start to change in P&Ls as they go forward and they find that money to actually reinvest into the things that can make a difference for patients, make a difference for members. And no matter how small you start, you get that flywheel going and that trust will just continue to grow over time.

[B]

All right, and what about internally? How about organizationally? What are you focused on?

[A]

Internal to up Tour. We are 100% an AI first company.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Which is interesting because it's moving so fast. Yeah. And so for us, everything from our sales process, our account management processes, internally, our finance processes, everything is AI first. So we literally have more agentic employees than I have people employees at this point. So really it's an interesting journey and it's happened.

[B]

What does that mean? Agentic employees? What do you.

[A]

Yeah, so it's not necessarily a one to one. It's an entire layered tier of agents. So we have a layer of agents that all they do is receive input. So these are agents always on pulling out of emails and calendars and, and slack channels and all of that. So they have the context of the organization, they don't really do anything. And then there's an intelligence layer that sits on top of that. So whether it's looking at deal intelligence, competitive intelligence, there's a number of agents that sit on top of that and then monitor for the signals to understand what needs to happen. And then there's the strategic layer that sits on top of that. So the Jerry 2.0, which at times I think might be Better than Jerry 1.0, sits on top of all of that, receiving all of that input to get things going. And that's mirrored in marketing, mirrored in sales, mirrored in finance, all the internal parts of the company. Okay.

[B]

All right. Well, let's talk about Jerry the person.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So what's the riskiest thing you've ever done?

[A]

The riskiest?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Things that probably shouldn't be mentioned in public. Sure. ODD podcasts. One of the few people I know that's run from the cops three times and got away all three times. Oh, those are the much younger Jerry.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

For sure. Back in the day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

These days, the risk, you could say the risk is going all in on AI.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I tend to be one of those folks that feels the risk would be not going all in on AI. So it's a bit of a knife's edge journey.

[B]

Yeah. If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing? What are you most passionate about? What are some of your hobbies?

[A]

My thing I'm most passionate about is my family, so spending time with them. So at this point, between work and the time that takes, family is about all that's left.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then, trust me, try to do a few push ups and pull ups on the way whenever possible. Yeah. That seems to be life. When you're in that kid stage and taking care of older parents stage of life.

[B]

Yeah. Can you still knock out 50?

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

I used to be able to do that. Not anymore, though. Not anymore. I barely can push myself out of bed these days.

[A]

You get there. Keep working, Ed. Keep working. Okay.

[B]

If you were in a desert island, you could bring five records with you or albums. What would you bring?

[A]

Oh, five records.

[B]

Where's your musical taste?

[A]

Lean. It is all over the place. Good. All over the place.

[B]

Interesting island then.

[A]

Yeah. So I think I'd have to have. Have to have some country in there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

George. Straight.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I think you could. Let's just pick a greatest hits album.

[B]

Yeah, you can't do that. That's actually against the rules. Sorry if you don't. If you don't know the album. That's fine. That's okay.

[A]

The one that has clear blue sky on, for sure.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Have to get some Eminem in there.

[B]

Yeah. Whoa. Damn.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Eight Mile.

[A]

Yeah. You got to have mom's spaghetti.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Every once in a while. That's how I go all over the place. Little Jay Z. That be nice.

[B]

All right. I see a pattern.

[A]

And then I like some of the 90s stuff. Maybe some Spin Doctors. Oh, Black Crows.

[B]

Spin Black Crows. How about the lemon heads? Big lemonhead fan.

[A]

Lemon heads are good. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

How about Everclear?

[A]

Oh, Everclear is great. Yeah. I love all the 90s stuff. All the 90s.

[B]

Oh, all right. All right. What advice would you have to students coming out of school that want to get into healthcare or AI?

[A]

Yeah. First I'd say make the leap and do it. I see I have younger kids, myself, entering the workforce, and so, number one, take that first job. I think that's what was most important to me. For me, it was to get into it. And I took the leap to work for the state of Tennessee, making 28,000 a year, probably back then. So get that first job. Get the experience. Do everything that you can when you get there and then. And work hard. Just work hard. Yes.

[B]

And kind of have that work ethic.

[A]

And you think that might stop. You always look the level above you and you think they're not working as hard. And then you get there and they're actually working twice as hard. And then the level of.

[B]

Make it look easy. Right.

[A]

That's right. So that. That treadmill never stops.

[B]

No, it's insane.

[A]

So you might as well alert it now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you'll be rewarded for that. And then I do think, honestly, healthcare. Otherwise, be AI first. You have to be AI. You have to be eloquent in AI and how it works.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I do think it helps have a computer science degree. I think it helps actually understand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's going on under the covers a little bit. But you do have to understand how to use it. And seeing my kids going through school today, there's a fear in education about AI. They don't want them to use it. I'm a little on the fence.

[B]

What? Great. What Great. Are they in college or.

[A]

We have just out of college.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

We have a middle of high school and about to go into high school next year.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. You get a range. Yeah.

[A]

You ask grades. That's a mom question. You don't ask the dad the number. The actual grades that they're In. But the schools are a little fearful. And on one hand, it is valuable to learn how to think.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And not outsource that to a model.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then you get into work in your daily practices. It's part of everything. Yeah. Everything that I do. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[B]

So where do you envision yourself post retirement? You're gonna fly fish, motorcycles? What do you. You fix cars?

[A]

No, I take them to the shop,

[B]

restore cars to get fixed.

[A]

We drive electrics, man, you don't want to mess with those things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Pretty bad. I would say my dream falls along with my wife's, which is a beach town in New England.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Where she would love Nantucket.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, one of those places.

[B]

That's where I'm from.

[A]

Oh, very nice.

[B]

Well, I live in Boston, but we go to the Vineyard every year.

[A]

Yeah. We have to explore and get the feel for all these different spots and see which one.

[B]

Not many people bring up the Vineyard or Nantucket. Coming from Tennessee anyway.

[A]

See? So this is for the summertime.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We still have to stay in Tennessee, you gotta say, for the wintertime. Yeah. I'm not doing the winters and.

[B]

No.

[A]

In the north.

[B]

No. It's awful. All right, it's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. What do you hope to accomplish over the next couple days in Vive?

[A]

Yeah, Vive. Much like many conferences, they're a bit of a family reunion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Everyone I've known over my entire career, whether they're payer side, provider side, maybe a bit less life sciences here at Vive. Folks that I've worked with at different jobs and clients that I've had. Yeah. I love that aspect, being here at Vive.

[B]

And I think.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And then for up tourists to meet people that want to get that value chained in their organization.

[B]

Where's. What's your booth number? Up tour.

[A]

No booth.

[B]

No booth.

[A]

Just no booth.

[B]

Okay. Floating around.

[A]

Yeah. All right.

[B]

I was going to go check it out.

[A]

Yeah. No booth. A meeting room. A meeting.

[B]

A meeting room.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

All right, all right, great. Well, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining the Risk Never Sleeps podcast.

[A]

Yeah, thanks very much, Ed. It was a pleasure.

[B]

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.