Brooke Brown: Healthcare IT in the Age of AI | Ep 1193

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Digital Executive – Ep 1193: Brooke Brown: Healthcare IT in the Age of AI
Host: Coruzant Technologies
Guest: Brooke Brown, VP of Product Management at Relias
Date: February 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode spotlights Brooke Brown, Vice President of Product Management at Relias, as she shares her expertise on the evolving landscape of healthcare IT, especially the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), data interoperability, and the unique regulatory challenges healthcare faces. The discussion centers on how emerging technologies are reshaping operational efficiency, compliance, and patient outcomes in healthcare organizations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Persistent Challenges in Healthcare IT

• Interoperability Remains Central:
  • Brooke Brown: "It's really about interoperability. It's really about bringing the data to the clinician and the administrator at the right time to support high quality outcomes." [01:34-01:53]
  • Despite decades of technological advances, the foundational challenge of efficiently delivering the right data to providers remains.

2. AI’s Emerging Role and Regulatory Complexities

• AI as a Regulatory Assistant:

  • Healthcare organizations, especially those operating across states, grapple with numerous, often conflicting regulations.
  • Brooke Brown: "I found really the most efficiencies that I can gain for these organizations...by surfacing those regulations in a way that is in context, if you will." [02:42-03:56]
  • AI helps by parsing vast, complex regulatory documents and mapping them to existing organizational policies, driving efficiency and risk mitigation.
  • AI also enables automation of education and training related to regulatory changes by highlighting policy differences (“deltas”).

• Immediate Value:

  • The most tangible benefits of AI today are in navigating compliance and regulatory landscapes, freeing up resources for direct care.

3. Balancing Speed, Compliance, and Quality

• Human in the Loop is Essential:

  • Brooke Brown: "When you're talking about healthcare in this industry, you're not in a situation where you can really let AI make the decisions for someone, but you can let AI make the decisions easier." [04:36-05:27]
  • The approach is AI-enabled decision support—not replacement—empowering subject matter experts (SMEs) to validate, refine, and approve AI-generated recommendations.
  • Models are improved via expert feedback (“thumbs up or down”) on AI suggestions.

• Patient Safety and Trust:

  • Automation supports clinicians but ultimate authority and responsibility remain human to safeguard patient trust and safety.

4. The Future: AI, Data, and Product-Led Innovation

• Acceleration in Precision Medicine and Care Delivery:

  • Brooke Brown: "The synthesis of these large amounts of information, when you think about evidence, when you think about outcomes...really being able to sift through that like never before." [06:01-06:59]
  • Advanced AI models (e.g., from OpenAI, Anthropic) enable rapid, evidence-based insights—speeding up the match between patient needs and best-fit interventions, including in areas like MRI analysis and surgical techniques.
  • Product innovation will drive more connected, resilient healthcare workforces, addressing industry-wide staffing shortages by automating administrative burdens.

• Improvements in Outcomes and Equity:

  • Anticipated to cut process times by "magnitudes of 50, 60, 70%,” facilitating broader, more equitable care delivery amidst ongoing resource constraints.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Enduring Challenges:
  • “Interoperability...bringing the data to the clinician and the administrator at the right time to support high quality outcomes.”
    —Brooke Brown [01:34]
• AI as a Contextual Guide for Compliance:
  • “Rather than them having to go to 50,000 websites and read through 600 plus regulations...I can surface that up to them using AI.”
    —Brooke Brown [02:53]
• On Keeping the Human in the Loop:
  • “You’re not in a situation where you can really let AI make the decisions for someone, but you can let AI make the decisions easier.”
    —Brooke Brown [04:42]
• AI's Accelerating Impact:
  • “Precision medicine...map that back to the desired outcome for a complex patient and cut that time down by magnitudes of 50, 60, 70%...”
    —Brooke Brown [06:43]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:34] — Interoperability as a steady challenge
• [02:42] — AI delivering immediate regulatory/compliance value
• [04:36] — Balancing speed, compliance, and patient safety, importance of human oversight
• [06:01] — AI and interoperability’s role in the next 5–10 years; precision medicine and efficiency gains

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Episode Takeaways

• Interoperability and regulatory compliance remain central to healthcare IT.
• AI is a transformative tool—but must complement, not replace, human expertise, especially for patient safety and trust.
• The pace of AI-driven innovation is enabling more efficient, resilient healthcare systems, supporting evidence-based care and workforce enablement amidst ongoing staffing shortages.
• The industry’s future is data-driven but will always require human oversight to ensure quality outcomes.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Brooke Brown. With more than a decade of healthcare IT and frontline clinical experience, Brooke Brown serves as Vice president of Product management at relias, where she drives the strategic vision and execution of the company's evolving product portfolio. She partners closely with cross functional teams to ensure products solve real workforce challenges while supporting measurable improvements in care delivery. Her work focuses on building connected workforce enablement solutions that help healthcare organizations operate with greater clarity, confidence and resilience. Well, good afternoon, Brooke. Welcome to the show.

[B]

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me.

[A]

Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. You're hailing out of the great city of Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm in Kansas City, so I always appreciate when guests take the time out of their day to make this work across time zones. So thank you. And Brooke, jumping right into your first question, as vice president of product management at relias, I'm you oversee a complex healthcare IT portfolio. What are the biggest product challenges healthcare organizations face today and how are those needs evolving?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And the needs tend to stay pretty steady decade over decade. Technology is evolving to make that easier, but it's really about interoperability. It's really about bringing the data to the clinician and the administrator at the right time to support high quality outcomes.

[A]

Great, thank you. I appreciate that. And as a healthcare executive, I was in technology healthcare for a lot of years. Interoperability was always a challenge. We've got people visiting from an ER or some other clinic out in a rural area, and you're trying to get medical records and bringing everything together so you can actually do a better job of taking care of the patient. I know that's always a struggle, but with technology, especially AI these days and some of the other newer technologies that are coming about, that we're being leveraged in healthcare, like blockchain, for example, is really gonna be a game changer. And I appreciate the work that you're doing, Brooke. You're integrating AI to improve operational efficiency and customer outcomes. Where is AI delivering the most immediate value in healthcare? It. And where should leaders be more cautious?

[B]

Yeah. So as you know, healthcare is heavily regulated and that's really complex, especially for larger organizations and providers who sometimes span multiple states and territor. And that means they are subject to multiple regulations, both state and Federal. And so I found really the most efficiencies that I can gain for these organizations and really allowing them to put their focus back on care by surfacing those regulations in a way that is in context, if you will. So understanding a policy maybe that they have in their organization that's maybe subject to a recent regulatory change, rather than them having to go to 50,000 websites and read through 600 plus regulations and subscribe to RSS feeds to figure out that they actually need to adjust the policy to mitigate risk and support high quality outcomes, I can surface that up to them using AI to carefully read through the policies that they have and understand and map those to the language in the regulations that are changing. And then further we can educate them using that same AI by being able to do comparisons of the deltas between regulatory changes, which as you know, can be very, very deep and complex in nature.

[A]

Thank you, I appreciate that. And you went into some really important things. Obviously efficiency is always great, but especially in healthcare. But your regulatory and compliance risk, patient safety, those things can really bog you down. And there's always constant changes. But with the help of AI, you can actually make that process a lot safer, a lot more efficient. And you can actually, as you mentioned, do a lot of education as well around that. So I appreciate the insights. And Brooke, product leaders frequently balance speed, compliance and quality in regulated environments. How do you make trade offs while keeping patient safety and trust at the center?

[B]

Yeah, it really ties back to your last question, Brian. I think really having a human in the loop, when you're talking about healthcare in this industry, you're not in a situation where you can really let AI make the decisions for someone, but you can let AI make the decisions easier. You really think about operational and clinical decision support. So my premise is and always has been really thinking about how I can queue up those recommendations and those suggestions that are coming from AI in a way that they're hitting the right SME or subject matter expert inside of an organization that has that final authority to say, yes, we need to do that. But not only that, can also send me a thumbs up or a thumbs down about that recommendation or about that decision support that my solution is providing so I can continue to make my model better.

[A]

Thank you. Yeah, AI certainly can be a virtual assistant. I leverage AI every day, probably do a hundred prompts a day on multiple platforms. It's great. But the key is having that human in the loop. And that goes without saying across all industries, but healthcare is really important to obviously keep that patient Safety and build in that trust. So again, appreciate the insights. And Brooke, the last question of the day as we look ahead, how do you see AI data on interoperability and product led innovation reshaping healthcare delivery over the next maybe five to ten years?

[B]

So many ways. So many ways, Brian. I think just the pace of probably the last two or three years with OpenAI and Anthropic and all these different models coming out and really focusing on how we can really start to solve some of these challenges in healthcare. I think the synthesis of these large amounts of information, when you think about evidence, when you think about outcomes related to specific MRI machines or techniques used in a surgical setting, really being able to sift through that like never before. Right. And being able to take precision medicine and map that back to the desired outcome for a complex patient and cut that time down by magnitudes of 50, 60, 70%, really accelerating care delivery and being able to address more broader populations despite the staffing shortages that we're seeing in the industry.

[A]

Thank you. Really appreciate that. And certainly it's been a struggle and I've seen this over the years in healthcare, but I know it's more of a challenge now. Staffing obviously is really, really important and AI can help with that in a lot of different ways. Had several guests that talk about that, that do recruiting with AI and some other things in the healthcare space. Pretty cool. But yeah, technology paces just, I, it's, it's leapfrogging so quickly right now. But what's cool is we're leveraging the technology like AI for evidence based medicine, outcome safety, precision medicine, which you talked about as well. And I think that's really important that you highlighted that. That's awesome. Brooke, I really appreciate you being on today. It was such a pleasure and I really look forward to speaking with you again soon.

[B]

Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it and, and I also look forward to additional conversations in the future.

[A]

Bye for now.