TDP 220: ECU Health's CMIO Dr. John Hanna: What Clinicians Build When Given No-code AI Tools, Why Most Health Systems Are Governing AI Backwards, and Is a Personalized EHR a Dream or Inevitable?

Subscribe on: RSS | SPOTIFY | APPLE PODCAST | GOOGLE | BREAKER | ANCHOR

On this episode of The Digital Patient, Dr. Joshua Liu, Co-founder & CEO of SeamlessMD, and colleague, Alan Sardana, chat with John Hanna, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer at ECU Health about "What clinicians build when given no-code AI tools, Why Most Health Systems Are Governing AI Backwards, Is a Personalized EHR a Dream or Inevitable? ...and more..." Click the play button to listen or read the show notes below.
‍

Audio:

‍

Guest(s):

• John Hanna, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer at ECU Health
• Joshua Liu, MD (@joshuapliu), Co-founder & CEO at SeamlessMD

‍

‍Episode 220 - Show Notes:

[00:00:07] Episode preview

[00:06:36] How infectious disease training shaped Dr. Hanna’s path into informatics

[00:08:53] What clinicians built when given no-code AI tools

[00:12:39] Why trust and confidence—not coding—are the foundation of AI adoption

[00:13:45] What the lowest-hanging fruit for AI agents in 2026 looks like

[00:16:10] How inline decision support can replace interruptive alerts

[00:19:57] Why “bounded flexibility” beats one-size-fits-all AI tools

[00:22:26] How personalized AI interfaces could mirror Netflix and Meta

[00:23:55] What it really means to monitor AI across a health system

[00:31:35] Why daily monitoring revealed uncomfortable truths about sepsis alerts

[00:34:22] How low-prevalence math makes false positives unavoidable

[00:37:11] Why clinician workarounds should be treated as data, not defects

[00:40:15] How rapidly evolving LLM workflows change validation strategy

[00:44:05] What human-in-the-loop responsibility looks like today

[00:45:54] Where bias can quietly enter the AI lifecycle

[00:49:06] What healthcare might regret about today’s AI approach

‍

‍Fast 5 Lightning Round:

1. What is your favorite book or book you’ve gifted the most?
   The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
2. If you could instantly master any skill, what would it be?
   Super active listening.
3. Would you rather have Super strength, super speed, or the ability to read people’s minds?
   Mind reading.
4. What is something in healthcare you believe others might find insane?
   "If you ask 10 people working on 10 different problems in healthcare, who is your most important stakeholder? You will get 10 different answers."
5. What is the last movie or TV show you saw, and what did you think of it?
   Zootopia 2 – it was very entertaining and underneath it lies a lot of meaningful insights!

‍

The Digital Patient has been recognized as Feedspot's #1 Patient Engagement Podcast of 2025. Thank you to our listeners for making this happen!