Episode #227. We’re Tracking Everything… But Who’s Protecting Them?, with Sri Bharadwaj, COO and CIO at Longevity Health Plans

Summary

Risk Never Sleeps Podcast – Episode #227 Summary

Episode Title: We’re Tracking Everything… But Who’s Protecting Them?
Host: Ed Gaudet
Guest: Sri Bharadwaj, COO & CIO, Longevity Health Plans
Release Date: May 28, 2026
Episode Theme:
This episode explores how Longevity Health Plans innovates care for elderly patients in skilled nursing facilities—those society often forgets—by leveraging data analytics, building proprietary technology, and instilling a culture of cybersecurity and moral responsibility. Sri Bharadwaj discusses the challenges, ethical dimensions, and transformative promise of AI in protecting and extending the quality and safety of life for this vulnerable population.

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Main Themes & Insights

Serving the Most Vulnerable: A Forgotten Population

• Focus: Longevity Health serves patients predominantly aged 80+, often in the last stage of life, living in skilled nursing facilities with high-acuity needs and few family contacts ([01:01]–[2:26]).
• Mission: "We give them longevity, so we give them life, basically another few years of their lives. So that’s why we are called Longevity Health." – Sri, [01:14]
• Society often neglects this population, many of whom are wheelchair- or bed-bound or have behavioral health issues and little support.

Data as a Tool for Better Lives—and Greater Risk

• Value of Data: The elderly have very rich healthcare data due to comorbidities, pharmacy, frequent hospitalizations, and complex needs ([03:41]).
• Challenge: "They don’t even know what their rights are to protect and manage it... These people don’t even know that there is a breach law." – Sri, [04:30]
• Responsibility: Ethical imperative to safeguard patient information even when patients are unaware of the risks or incapable of self-advocacy.
• Moral Framing: "It’s more of a moral obligation." – Ed Gaudet, [05:29]
• "Moral obligation to make sure we do the right thing for them." – Sri, [05:31]

The Cybersecurity Challenge in Skilled Nursing Facilities

• Systemic Underfunding: "Skilled nursing facilities... typically don’t have good cybersecurity posture... not only are they underfunded, but they also are in a state where a lot of people don’t know that they have a lot of data." – Sri, [05:44]–[06:10]
• No Meaningful Use Funding: Many have no EMRs, or minimal digital records—adding complexity and risk ([06:16]).
• Longevity Health’s Role: Working hands-on with facilities to increase cybersecurity understanding and defenses ([06:23]).

AI for Predictive Care and Security

• Predictive Analytics: Using AI to monitor patterns in activities of daily living (ADLs)—changes in speaking, eating, hydration, bathroom use—to catch early signs of decline, prevent falls, and avoid hospitalizations ([07:12]–[10:16]).
• Notable Moment: "You can see patterns, you can see trends... and when we do something called Sing Fit... somebody who had not listened to a song that they were playing in their 60s and 70s... now they start speaking, they start singing, they start dancing." – Sri, [07:43]–[08:58]
• AI’s Impact: Early intervention through AI reduces complications such as sepsis and hospital-acquired conditions.
• Security Angle: AI is also used to strengthen security posture and manage growing threat environments ([10:17]).

Building Proprietary Technology for Unique Needs

• Custom EMR: Off-the-shelf EMRs inadequate for highly complex, volatile, high-acuity elderly population. Longevity Health built its own EMR and care model to better serve and monitor these patients ([10:43]–[12:43]).
• Continuous Risk Assessment: Their EMR facilitates real-time, ongoing risk assessments for each patient ([11:12]).

Sri’s Professional Journey

• Motivation: Personal loss of his mother and dissatisfaction with outdated, paper-based healthcare fueled a career in improving health systems ([13:03]–[14:17]).
• Background: Started as an accountant/CPA, moved into technology, then healthcare technology.
• Advice to 20-year-old self: "Jump into healthcare, build something. Grow something so that you can care for people when you need to." – Sri, [14:23]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• The Mission:
  "We give them longevity, so we give them life, basically another few years of their lives." – Sri, [01:14]
• On Data Protection:
  "It’s my responsibility... I have to think twice that, hey, these people can't even have a voice for themselves." – Sri, [05:23]–[05:27]
• Ethics of Care:
  "It’s more of a moral obligation." – Ed Gaudet, [05:29]
  "Moral obligation to make sure that we do the right thing for them." – Sri, [05:31]
• AI & Joy in Care:
  "Somebody who had not listened to a song they were playing in their 60s and 70s, now they start speaking, they start singing, they start dancing." – Longevity Health Executive, [08:58]
• Technology Built for a Purpose:
  "No EMR would work for us, so we built our own... now I have to secure code." – Sri, [12:43]–[12:55]

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Key Timestamps of Major Segments

• [01:01] – Introduction to Longevity Health's mission and patient population
• [02:28] – Using data to extend life and improve quality in end-of-life care
• [03:41] – The richness and risks of data in the elderly population
• [05:29] – The moral obligation in cyber and patient safety
• [06:16] – Nursing home underfunding, lack of EMRs, and cybersecurity challenges
• [07:12] – Using AI to manage daily health and identify risks early
• [08:48] – Music therapy ("Sing Fit")—real-world impact on patient engagement and detection
• [10:16] – AI’s dual role: predictive healthcare and security
• [10:43] – Custom EMR solution and continuous risk assessment
• [13:03] – Sri’s personal story and motivation to join healthcare
• [14:23] – Career advice and transition from accounting to healthcare IT
• [15:08] – Hobbies: gardening, homegrown food, and local living

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Conclusion

Sri Bharadwaj offers a passionate and practical perspective on the intersection of technology, ethics, and geriatric care. By focusing on a hidden, vulnerable segment of society, Longevity Health is pioneering not only care models but moral and digital safeguards, striving to give patients dignity, safety, and even joy in their final years. AI, proprietary technology, and direct collaboration with under-resourced facilities all play crucial roles in this mission—reminding us that risk never sleeps, especially for those who are least able to protect themselves.

Transcript

[Sri]

Foreign.

[Ed Gaudet]

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 Gaudet.

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 Gaudet, the host of the program, and I found a long lost friend and customer. You still a customer? I think you are.

[Sri]

Yes, we are.

[Ed Gaudet]

Sri.

[Sri]

You made a mistake.

[Ed Gaudet]

Longevity. We made a mistake. How have you been doing?

[Sri]

Very well.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah, it's been a while.

[Sri]

It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a while since I come to him. Yes.

[Ed Gaudet]

Really?

[Sri]

Yeah, it's a lot. Four years, Five years.

[Ed Gaudet]

Wow. Okay.

[Sri]

So I am speaking tomorrow.

[Ed Gaudet]

You are? Okay, good.

[Sri]

So I said, okay, fine, I'll come a day earlier and check it out.

[Ed Gaudet]

What are you speaking on? What's your topic?

[Sri]

One of the things that I'm speaking on is around data analytics, which is a very big component for us. Yeah, we take care of patients who are fairly very well aged, so 80, 85. And they our patients who are in skilled nursing facilities that happens to be their last home. So they are high acute. So we take care of them in a way that these are Medicare Medicaid patients and not much to offer, but we take care of them in such a way that we give them longevity, so we give them life, basically another few years of their lives. So that's why we are called longevity Health. I love that it's, I mean, from my perspective, I mean, I've done payer provider, all of that stuff. And when this came around, it was like maybe giving back in a way to the population that you've forgotten. Yeah, that population does not have much of care because they are basically. Society treats them like unwanted people because they're basically in a wheelchair or tied to a bed 90% of the time. And so what we've done is we've been able to look at the data that we get from those patients and basically help them live longer lives.

[Ed Gaudet]

That's incredible.

[Sri]

So an average person that comes into our program lasts three years, meaning after year three, they basically die. We lose 3% of our population to death, our patient population to death, which is very unique in healthcare. What we are doing is of course securing the data, that's one thing. But beyond that, how do we give them a lease of life for another, say six months or a year? Many of them are end stage renal disease patients, esrd. Some of them are high acute cardiology patients with several comorbidities like copd, chf. So we take care of those patients. And the fun part is they don't even know how we secure their data because they don't even know we exist to take care of them. Yeah, some of them have behavioral health issues. Those are younger populations. Some of them are patients who their families have forgotten. And they are in their skilled nursing facilities because they have what you call a caretaker to take care of them. Or the courts have appointed somebody or the social welfare taking care of that

[Ed Gaudet]

ward of the state. War of the state.

[Sri]

So what we've done is we've applied to cms. So we have a CMS contract that allows us to create a health plan with a model of care that identifies this patient population, figures out how we can take care of this population in a way that makes sense for them. Yeah, that's a very different mindset. I mean, I know a lot of people who have grandmothers and grandfathers who struggle with the last few years of dementia and, you know, so when you look at that population and that population that requires healthcare, the fun part is it's great to be serving that population in a way. But the other part is having been in cybersecurity for many years, that population's data is very rich because they have a lot of pharmacy, they take a lot of medications, they have a lot of falls, they go to the hospitals a lot. So you have a lot more clinical data coming from that population, but they don't even know what their rights are to protect and manage it and deliver it in such a way that is safe and secure for the clinicians to address. So my job is to make sure that not only we use that data to better their health, but use that data in such a way that it's maintained in a way that a normal patient would like to see it maintained. So today, if I lose my patient data, there is hipaa, there is breach laws and everything else. These people don't even know that there is a breach law. So it's my responsibility, I suppose. Not just my responsibility, but I have

[Longevity Health Executive]

to think twice that, hey, these people

[Sri]

can't even have a voice for themselves.

[Ed Gaudet]

It's more of a moral obligation.

[Sri]

Moral obligation to make sure that we

[Longevity Health Executive]

do the right thing for them.

[Sri]

I love that. So it's very, very different, Ed, that when you take care of these kinds of risks that are managing, it's a very different kind of risk.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

The other piece is, which is more important is skill. Nursing facilities.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Right.

[Sri]

Skilled nursing facilities. Typically don't have good cyber security posture. Right. Reason is because not only are they underfunded, but they also are in a state where a lot of people don't know that they have a lot of data. Right, they have a lot of data.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

And they were not given the meaningful use money. They don't have EMRs. Right.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Security capabilities. So what we do is we work with them to shore up their cybersecurity

[Sri]

defenses and we work with them to figure out how do we get them the understanding. Oh, wow. And then we also help ourselves because

[Longevity Health Executive]

that data comes to us.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yes.

[Sri]

We have to make sure that we are securing the data.

[Longevity Health Executive]

So it's a very interesting, unique, very unique, very interesting.

[Sri]

I mean, many of your podcast listeners may not understand how difficult it is to treat this kind of population and manage their data.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

Purely because it's not much spoken about or not much heard of. Right. I mean, everybody knows that, you know, okay, you're sick, you go into nursing home. Right. That's what happens to grandmothers and grandfather. That's typically in their head. But how much of data there is, how much of work there is to manage it, et cetera, is huge. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

How are you thinking about applying AI to this?

[Sri]

So, interestingly enough, we have to be

[Longevity Health Executive]

able to predict what is happening to that patient population because most of that

[Sri]

patient population typically, what would you call

[Longevity Health Executive]

it, Susceptible to falls. Because they don't have the right.

[Ed Gaudet]

Their gates. Off balance.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Balance is you don't have it. And then many of them are in wheelchairs and when they are in wheelchairs, they just move around, they just don't know and guess what happens. Right.

[Sri]

Then we have to be able to

[Longevity Health Executive]

say, okay, how do I apply AI to this patient population? What can I do? So then we start looking at activities of daily living. ADL's. Okay, this person was speaking yesterday. Today he's not. Why? This person was consuming two bottles of water a day and now they're consuming half a bottle.

[Sri]

What happened? Oh, this person has not passed motion

[Longevity Health Executive]

for the past three days.

[Sri]

Okay.

[Longevity Health Executive]

There's a problem there. This person has not taken his medication. Why has he not taken the medication? Not that we have not tried to give it to them, but they've not taken the medication because they just don't want something is happening to their system. So these are what we call activities of daily living. And when we got these active daily living, we can see patterns, we can see trends. And then there are people who we do something called sing fit, where we come together and sing a Song that we play for them from the 1960s, 1970s. Because that's their era.

[Sri]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

So guess what happens, right? It's very interesting.

[Ed Gaudet]

They come alive. I bet they come alive.

[Sri]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

They. Somebody who had not seen triggers a memory or trigger.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Somebody who had not listened to a song that they were playing in their 60s and 70s. Now they start speaking, they start singing, they start dancing.

[Sri]

Yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

The lady was, I mean I was at a skilled nursing facility the other day and we were doing sigfit and this lady who's supposed to be on a wheelchair for the past three years all of a sudden tries to stand up and do this.

[Ed Gaudet]

Oh my God.

[Sri]

Like, oh my God, that's changing.

[Ed Gaudet]

That's incredible.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Incredible. So now what happens is. So then we have that data.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

And then what we do is, okay, they have been singing and dancing for the past three weeks. This week something's wrong.

[Sri]

They are odd.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Okay. Something's happening to their system. What is happening? Right. So then we start going down a path of identifying patterns. So AI can do a very good job of that. So we can identify patterns, we can identify how it makes sense, what makes work. And then we avoid hospitalization because the minute they get hospitalized then you have multiple things happening. They get sepsis, hospital acquired conditions like Papacy cari. It just creates different level of change in their health care. So that's definitely different. So AI from that perspective is very, very interesting.

[Sri]

Yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

And guess what? AI and security, how do you deploy AI in security?

[Sri]

How do you make sure that you

[Longevity Health Executive]

can manage threats to get in the environment?

[Ed Gaudet]

So you're busy.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Slightly busy, Slightly busy.

[Ed Gaudet]

Now you were there from the beginning, right, of this company?

[Sri]

Yeah, yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

A few years ago. We started when it was Covid. We had a few hundred patients when I started. Now we've got 14,000.

[Ed Gaudet]

Okay. And tell listeners about your role.

[Longevity Health Executive]

So I'm the chief operating and information Officer for Longevity Health. I manage both on the plant side and the provider side. So we have our own emr. We wrote our own emr. You did? Yeah. Our own emr because we needed a model of care for this particular paper.

[Sri]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

No one had it.

[Sri]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Interesting. They don't understand how to treat those population at all.

[Ed Gaudet]

Well, plus it's proprietary and probably gives you an advantage.

[Sri]

Yeah, true.

[Ed Gaudet]

Right.

[Sri]

So we have to submit a model of care to cms. That's the requirement. And when we submit the model of care, we said these are a few things that we need to do. Manage all this information, have a particular. Do a risk Assessment, manage the risk, make sure that the person is not going from medium to high risk. And so we have to do that, and we have to do that constantly. Patient population is volatile in terms of healthcare.

[Ed Gaudet]

Right.

[Sri]

So, but when we did that, we then figured out how do we make sure that we can take care of that population the way that makes sense. But then I didn't have any EMR that will give me a nice model of care that I can put together that tells me when I have to do my next risk assessment that doesn't tell me all of that stuff. So now we built our own emr. Oh, wow. I mean, our teams reviewed a bunch of EMRs at that point in time and said didn't make much sense. I mean, the EMR per se is more of a. I mean, today's EMR is built for billing, which is true. Some clinical data and then billing. Right. But Most of the EMRs that we have seen is focused on the population that are more healthier.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sri]

So we built our own to make sure that. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

Healthier younger population.

[Sri]

Healthier younger population. You know, once in six months, go to the doctor, have a, you know, blood test and whatever. Right. Otherwise you're, you know, even if you go in a hospital, you got the hospital EMRs, which is different.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

So there's nothing that would work for us. So we built our own. So guess what? I'm securing an emr. Yeah. Which is typically not a job that somebody have to do. Right.

[Ed Gaudet]

Because somebody else does it for you.

[Sri]

Does it for you. So now I have to secure code. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

You just like to stay busy, Sharia.

[Sri]

Just busy.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Ed Gaudet]

How did you get into health care?

[Sri]

Good question. Years and years ago, I'm like, I'm going back when I was younger, I got into healthcare because my family had a situation that I lost my mother when she was young. So it kind of triggered a lot of things that I think we should look at. So I was getting conscious about my health myself. That's one thing. But the second thing is I found that the healthcare system did not have a good process when I got into healthcare, long before meaningful use and everything else. So there was not much data that I could take. The only time I visited the doctor was he had a yellow folder with a bunch of piece of paper. Piece of paper. And then he used to have the 16 checkboxes he used to do. And then at the end, he would just simply sign. Yeah. And I said, okay, where was my last year's piece of paper? He's like, oh, we had a whatever. And then I think we don't know where it is now. I'm like, that's my phi.

[Ed Gaudet]

Not anymore.

[Sri]

Anymore. Sri. It was funny. I mean, so, I mean, when you're thinking of those days.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Yeah, it's very different.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

Very, very different.

[Ed Gaudet]

You could go back in time and tell your 20 year old self something.

[Sri]

What would it be? If I go back in time and do my 20 year old, I would have started down the healthcare path earlier than. No, I did.

[Ed Gaudet]

What were you doing then?

[Sri]

I was an accountant by profession.

[Ed Gaudet]

Oh, okay.

[Sri]

I'm a cpa. So I did accounting for a living. And being counters are being counters. So after a point in time it like, okay, this is not helpful.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

Then I moved into technology and then I moved into healthcare technology. So it is interesting. So I would have said if I was 20, I would say jump into healthcare, build something. Grow something so that you can care for people when you need to.

[Ed Gaudet]

If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing? What are you most passionate about? You got any hobbies or so Very interesting.

[Sri]

I would be doing gardening.

[Ed Gaudet]

Gardening. Not. What type of gardening? Love that.

[Sri]

I live in Florida nowadays, so tomatoes, vegetables. Tomatoes. Mangoes. Mangoes. Flowers.

[Ed Gaudet]

Oh, nice.

[Sri]

Avocados.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Ye.

[Sri]

Coconuts, Bananas. Lychee. Lyi, you name it and it's growing in the yard.

[Ed Gaudet]

You need a restaurant too.

[Sri]

Of course. Yes.

[Ed Gaudet]

Farm to table.

[Sri]

Farm to table.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Yes. In fact, one of our neighbors is

[Sri]

a farm to table.

[Ed Gaudet]

Really?

[Longevity Health Executive]

Yes.

[Sri]

They actually have cows and get milk and really. Farm to table.

[Ed Gaudet]

Are you on the west coast or.

[Longevity Health Executive]

No, I'm on the east coast.

[Sri]

I'm down in Florida nowadays.

[Ed Gaudet]

Whereabouts?

[Sri]

Near Palm Beach, Florida.

[Ed Gaudet]

Palm Beach. Okay. Nice.

[Sri]

Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's a little bit inward, not on the water.

[Longevity Health Executive]

It's good, right?

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah.

[Sri]

I don't want to get too close to this hurricane.

[Ed Gaudet]

Come on. You get down to Miami at all?

[Sri]

Yeah. About two hours away. So Miami is not Key West. Key west. Another two hours downtown, which is fine.

[Longevity Health Executive]

I mean, it's great to be a visitor.

[Sri]

Yeah. I don't know if I want to live there when it's like, fair enough. Okay. You got a stage three coming in. I'm like, okay, I need a head.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah. Evacuation right now. It's hard to get out of Key West. That happens. Everyone's trying to get out.

[Sri]

Parking lot.

[Ed Gaudet]

It's a parking lot.

[Sri]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

You big music fan? You mentioned 60s and 70s music.

[Longevity Health Executive]

No, I mean what we do.

[Sri]

I mean that 60s, 70s music. Is purely for the patients. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

No, but how about you just generally, do you like music?

[Longevity Health Executive]

I mean, I like music, yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

What type of music?

[Sri]

So, most of.

[Longevity Health Executive]

I mean, I do more podcasts now.

[Ed Gaudet]

Okay.

[Longevity Health Executive]

What podcast? I listen to a lot of podcasts.

[Sri]

Podcasts, mostly around healthcare. You do?

[Ed Gaudet]

Okay. What's your go to podcast for health?

[Sri]

There's a guy who wrote Chat GPT md. He's a nice guy.

[Ed Gaudet]

Yeah, I think I interviewed him. Yeah,

[Sri]

a very good guy. He has a podcast, Fixing Healthcare.

[Ed Gaudet]

Nice.

[Sri]

So it's a good podcast that talks about revolutionary stuff that might be good for people to think about. Right.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Obviously, many of the things he talks

[Sri]

about are like, okay, not today, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, situation. But it's interesting.

[Longevity Health Executive]

Start provoking.

[Sri]

Kind of tops. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudet]

Sree, really great to see you and have you on the podcast. I appreciate you.

[Sri]

Thank you.

[Ed Gaudet]

Ed Gaudet from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast brought to you by Senseinet, the leader in risk management for healthcare. 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.