Healthcare AI Readiness, Without The Hype with Carole Kamangu

Healthcare keeps moving, even when budgets shrink and teams burn out. We sat down with strategist Carol W. Kamangu to unpack how leaders can align infection prevention, operations, and technology to build safer, more resilient systems—and make AI actually useful. Instead of chasing hype, we dig into governance that protects PHI, strengthens trust, and keeps teams focused on patient outcomes.

We start with a simple truth: readiness is a leadership function. Carol lays out how to secure the house with cybersecurity fundamentals; set clear decision rights across clinical safety, compliance, operations, and IT; and stop shadow AI by giving staff sanctioned tools and practical training. We talk real-world workflows where AI helps today—documentation, auditing, outbreak investigations—and how to integrate new tools without adding noise. The goal isn’t headcount cuts; it’s smarter teams who can do higher-value work and prevent unnecessary hiring surges.

From there, we define what to measure and why it matters. Think faster triage and fewer handoffs lost in translation. Think lower infection rates, stronger audit trails, and better cost control. We share a straightforward metric lens—speed, communication, and scale—that rolls up to executive KPIs like HAI reduction, turnaround times, and staff satisfaction. Along the way, we draw a bright line on PHI boundaries, vendor diligence, and auditability, so leaders can say yes to innovation without gambling on compliance.

This conversation also previews the Strategic Systems Summit, a first-of-its-kind gathering that convenes healthcare executives, public health leaders, and infection prevention experts to align strategy with the frontline. Expect actionable playbooks: a governance blueprint, an accountability map, and a readiness checklist you can put to work. If you’re leading change and want AI to serve people—not the other way around—this is your roadmap.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with the biggest AI question on your mind. Your feedback shapes future episodes and helps more leaders find practical, safe paths to innovation.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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Transcript

Welcome And Summit Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to the Follow Brand Podcast with your host, Grant McGall. I am the CEO and chairman of Five Star BDM, and today's episode is a very, very special one because it directly ties to an upcoming leadership moment in healthcare. And what am I talking about? I'm talking about the 2026 Strategic Systems Summit that's going to be on March 5th and March 6th next month, coming up pretty, pretty, pretty soon. Also, they're going to have an event in September. And I'm going to be joined by my good friend Carol. And Carol, man, can't wait to talk to Carol. Carol is a trusted voice in infection prevention and systems leadership. And she is helping to bring together executives and frontline leaders for a summit that is focused on what matters most right now. What am I talking about? Strengthening healthcare systems through strategic infection prevention, leadership, alignment, and workforce resilience and innovation. And yes, we're going to go right there to what we call AI readiness and healthcare. Not the AI hype, not the AI buzzwords, but real world readiness. Because if AI is entering your environment through your vendors, your co-pilots, your documentation tools, analytics, and even outbreak investigations, then leadership has a responsibility to put guardrails, accountability, and governance in place. And that means thinking clearly about safety, trust, HIPAA compliance, and discipline without slowing down innovation. So then in this conversation, Carol and I will break down what readiness actually looks like at the enterprise level, how leaders build

Carol’s Journey And Global Lens

SPEAKER_00 1:55

oversight that scales, and how to make AI usable and safe for the people who do the work. And if you're an executive, a clinician leader, an infection prevention professional, or just an operations leader navigating change, this is for you. So, Carol, would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Hi, Grant. Thanks for having me here. Um, uh it's always a pleasure to speak with you. Uh, I'm a fan of the podcast, so I'm really I feel honored to be here. Uh so I'm Carol W. Kamongu. I always add the W because Carol Kamongu is a very common name in Africa. So just help with the distinction. Uh so I'm the founder and CEO, and I'm a health system and infection prevention strategist with uh Dumontel Healthcare Consulting. Uh and uh this company was built at first with the focus on just uh building up infection prevention programs, but with my passion of uh strengthening health systems, it has grown, uh expanded to more than just infection prevention. So we work with executives, we work with public health leaders, both uh in the in North America and Africa mostly. So uh this is a very great time for us, especially as you said earlier, with all the changes happening in the world.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Big time, big time. Now you gotta tell us what country in Africa. Africa's a very, very big, big continent.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Or what countries uh do we work with? Uh, what country are you from?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And what countries you work with? That would be great.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Oh, yes. So I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and that's really what started my passion for public health, nursing. At first, I wanted to be a doctor, so I started with nursing and decided I don't want to study for too long. So I've always wanted to do public health, so let's go and get off MPH. So that's where my journey started, really. Uh, as a kid, I almost died at seven from an amoeba infection. And that was the first time I had a first-hand experience of how bad the health system was. And I was at school, and even at school, the water was not potable. And of course, I've had many different experiences with infections that almost killed me, like malaria and so on. Uh, so as an adult, once I decided I wanted to start consulting and help strengthen uh health systems uh with a strategic view of infection prevention, because this this um this view of infection prevention really has a strategic vantage point. Infection prevention works with quality, with the executives, with work with risk management. So it has a very special place within a healthcare system in any country to really affect change. So, yes, so this is really where we're coming for the summit together to work with public health uh senior leaders, with infection prevention leaders, and also executives who really have a hand into systems changes.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

I think this is all very important, it's all very timely. And and when you say strategic system summit, the SSS, I'll say it for short, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, that's that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

And I know my audience is asking me this, right? I can feel it. You know, what system problems are we solving? And the big question

Defining The Systems Problem

SPEAKER_00 5:10

is is why now? Is it the is it the IP, the infection prevention, workforce, resilience, emergency risk, is it all of that? What what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yes, so it's way beyond infection prevention at this point. Uh, in discussing with, as I was saying, senior leaders in public health all over the world and also infection prevention leaders and executives, the problems we're really we're fixing at this point is first of all, the leadership alignment in those organizations. So it could be healthcare organizations like hospitals, clinics, uh, nursing homes, but also from a public health standpoint. So we hear a lot uh in multiple conversations with those leaders that what leaders have on their dashboards or what their priorities are are not really what's happening on the front line, whether it's in the community with community health workers or infection prevention leaders or even just your clinicians. So for that's the first thing we're trying to solve, that leadership alignment. And also workforce resilience, which helps with a resilient organization. So we're hearing a lot about burnout, and I'm sure that's not used to you. Burnout in business, burnout in healthcare, burnout in infection prevention, burnout in the executive suite. So we also bring in some experts who talk about prevention and burnout and some of the studies they've done. And we have some uh speakers who talk about resilience in public health, healthcare at the organizational health level.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Uh these are important things. I mean, everything you just said is on everybody's agenda for the boardroom, the executive suite, you know, in your departmental meetings. And here's the question because I know everybody likes I see what she said there, but how does she define you know readiness in practice to practical terms? You're like, so AI readiness, you know, what does that mean for healthcare

What AI Readiness Really Means

SPEAKER_00 7:02

organizations? Not just, you know, when you hear that you think tech team, what is your definition?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yes, my personal definition, uh, and and this is one of the reasons why this was brought up because that also addresses emerging risks. Uh, we think funding has gone lower in so many places in the world. Everyone is trying to adopt AI and it's accelerating. And I mean, as an AI expert, you know, as a tech expert, AI is going so fast that almost no one can keep up. And uh, in many of the conversations with leaders who always request that I talk about AI, one thing I've noticed in common, the pattern is that they don't even know where to start. Uh, so they have nothing in place, no governance, no uh security system, nothing about safety. It's just about how do we use this? So the summit will really address that first part. You want to be ready before you adopt anything. Personally, I've been using AI since it became very important. I would say, what was it, 2022, 2022?

SPEAKER_00 8:03

It was 2023 in that area.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yes, around that time. So I've really I'm really enjoying it because I've been trying many different ways and working with experts in the tech world. And we're already working with AI agents at this point. So we really want to make sure that everyone knows how do I prepare my organization as a leader to put all the same guards in place and make sure that once we deploy, everyone knows what they're getting into.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, that's that's the thing. What are they what are they getting themselves into? You know, that that's the thing because it is changing rapidly, and you can't, you know, you have to set a foundation for the change, right? Change is inevitable, you know. So, what is that gonna look like? And I want to so I get I'm gathering from my audience now, you've got to set the tone, which I like. You know, you set the tone, you define what AI readiness is all about. Now, I know that you're you're gonna present on generative AI in the outbreak investigations, but the audience is gonna want to know what's a realistic uh use case leaders should understand.

First Mistakes To Avoid With AI

SPEAKER_00 9:12

And if you can't answer this, what is the first mistake in AI use to avoid?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Uh, in my experience, and of course, we all have our different uh experiences with the AI world right now. In my experience, the biggest mistake I see is the first question I get is how many um employees can I get rid of by the time I deploy AI? And my response is always that's not what your goal should be. Your goal should be to enhance your team, enhance your organization with AI. As for me, for example, as the CEO of a company, as if I can give that as an example, uh, there's always time, as you know, as a business owner, there's always time where you you have a lean team or you have a you have to hire more people. And when it's lean, we still have that team that uses our AI agents to be effective, to be proficient to remain efficient. We don't say, okay, we have our core team, I'm firing everyone and just work with co-pilot or chat GPT. It doesn't work that way. You do you do end up being burned down because you need humans to work with the AI tools so they can be more effective. So that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

100% on that. I'm glad you brought that up on the hiring tip. I think people misunderstand what it'll probably prevent you of doing is having to hire labor that you really may not need in the future. You already have a great team. Let's upscale them all the way. You see this even in Amazon. They're saying, hey, well, no, we're not trying to, you know, get rid of the workforce that we already have. We're preventing ourselves from having to hire 600 or 6,000 or or more new people just because of the workload, right? So if you can offload some of that work using an AI agent, a bot or whatever it may be to enhance your uh the thing that you're doing with the specific use case, I think that's a wiser use of the tech uh that because I've tell everybody, and especially if you're in any kind of tech, your internet goes out, the power goes out, there's a corruption in the system, there's a virus that goes out, and all of a sudden everything that you set up goes, you know, haywire. You're like, oh my God, we've got to hire all these people back. I mean, so it becomes a problem.

Governance Guardrails Leaders Need

SPEAKER_00 11:26

And that leads to this question around governance, right? Especially AI governance is still a lot of wiggle room in that area. So as an executive, and I ask you this, what are the top, in your opinion, what are the top three governance guardrails we need before we can scale AI?

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I would say, first of all, make sure that you have a system. And I always talk about cybersecurity. I've been talking with some cybersecurity experts. You want to make sure that your system is safe first. Uh, you want to make sure that you have a team. Let's go back to the basics, right? Make sure your team knows how to use technology. You can say, okay, we're going to adopt compiler 365. I'm not uh, you know, endorsing any tools here, but that's an example. So we we're going to deploy a copilot 365, and you have, let's say you have a workforce that's about to retire, they don't have the bandwidth or even the desire to learn a new tool, you can deploy AI. So that's the second thing. And the third thing, how can we make sure that these tools that we deploy are going to be um integrated smoothly into our workflows, not just adopting a tool for the sake of it? How can can we effectively use them and make sure that we become more efficient? And I'll talk a lot about saving costs. Right now, everyone is complaining about I need your help, but we don't have the funding. How can we be creative with AI to make sure that with the current workforce we have in our strategic plan, our long-term vision, we can still move forward with limited funding by use utilizing those tools that are available to us?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

But you said I want the audience to really lean in on this because you hear this so much. I can't afford, I don't want to buy. If you don't invest right now in yourself and your business, in an AI, I say a context-aware internet digital platform, you won't be in business. It's not a question of um, well, can I invest in this? You have to. You're going to have to. It's almost like, all right, you know, we're going to take your internet away from you and go ahead and run business. You'd be like, oh, I can't. Exactly. You know, I've shut down your mobile devices. Go ahead and call everybody. I can't, right? It has going to be the same type of thing. Right now, you can get by with it, but within the next 24 months, you won't be able to get by because the competition is just going to be screaming down the highway while you're still trotting down there with a little with a little horse, right, for the most part, right? So this is important. So with that said, and you speaking back to our business owners, I'm talking about the accountability

Shadow AI And HIPAA Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 14:05

structure. Who has to own the oversight in a healthcare enterprise when it comes to AI adoption, the clinical safety, the compliance, the IT. If you talked about security operations, what's the cleanest decision, or I would say the decision rights model and accountability, in your opinion, that people need or need to look at?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

My simple answer will be every leader, and not just in the executive suite. Every clinical leader, operational leader should be in on it. If you have to create your charter and make sure everyone has a specific uh uh strategic point to carry an accountability point to carry, every leader should be involved in it. Because we see so many silos, and silos don't help us move forward. And once you want to you want to start implementing AI, if you don't have your IT team that's governing all the security on the back end, you don't have the uh executive having a plan for the whole organization, everyone will use utilize AI the way they want. And it's one thing that I implemented uh at Durantel as well. Everyone who comes on board who's working at 40, when it's time to use AI, they have to use our AI agents. That way, there's no information that leaks outside, especially in healthcare. You have HIPAA laws that you have to be careful with. So you want to make sure that everyone in the organization is using the same tool that's governed by the executive team, all your clinical leaders, operational leaders.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yes. I like that because there's a thing now. People heard about shadow IT, because you use another thing, there's shadow AI right now. And that could be good or bad depending on what it is that they're doing and utilizing company um uh intelligence. So important. Everybody signs in their agreement when they get hired in some of these companies that you can't, you know, the company's uh uh intelligence is their own, not yours. Uh so if you put it out into these tools that God only knows what what's going on and how you do it. So you have to have some compliance around it. I want to ask you you didn't start out in IT, but now it sounds like you've done clinical work, but you've really upscaled yourself in just IT platforms technology. You understand the use of it. Talking to someone that that has been on your journey, because there's a lot of people like, I'm not IT person. Talk to them about your journey and how you came to this point

Reducing Fear And Building Skills

SPEAKER_00 16:45

in time and why it was so important.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yes, uh, and I still don't call myself as an IT person or a tech person. I I do agree that I'm tech savvy, and that's the reason why I look at health systems. Uh strategic infection prevention is always part of what I do because I do care about the patients and how organizations are taking care of their primary clients, but uh it it we're at a point in our life in modern society that we cannot live without technology. So it's important to make it part of our job, part of our everyday life. And I only say if there was a day where we lose power, of course we can spend that day without technology, but it's making the world go around. So that's where I find myself. Uh, and it was not um intentional. Uh, I just happen to be one of the people in this field in healthcare and public health who really advanced my knowledge. And I always say I'm a student at heart. I'm a life learn, lifelong learner. So I've learned for myself and I'm seeing where we can utilize it properly to just help our healthcare and public health systems become stronger.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Well, I applaud you because you've taken the initiative and you've applied the drive to upscale and understand how these things apply to what you already know, what your expertise truly is in in the clinical world, right? In healthcare. Like you said, that's what drove you into healthcare in the first place, your experiences when you're in Africa, like, hey, I want to make a difference. And this is great. You understand this is as a tool set and a platform, or less, it's a platform in order to make a real difference. Now, you always hear right now leaders are a little bit hesitant on the AI front because of HIPAA. You mentioned HIPAA, a lot of times they're gonna freeze up. In your opinion, what is the practical line between I call compliant AI use and risky AI use, especially with PHI data in the daily workflow? We just talked about that shadow AI a little bit. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

My response every time I train leaders, I always tell them to be careful. AI is still a tool. So you want to make sure you keep your any confidential information that you're uncomfortable sharing with the tool, you don't have to share it. It's your input that's going in. AI is just giving you an output. If you put a patient

Measuring Value: Speed, Safety, Scale

SPEAKER_01 19:14

information there and it gets leaked out because you don't have strong governance with uh your uh technology, then it's on it really is on you. So uh so I always recommend making sure uh an example I can give uh when I talk to leaders in public health about outbreak investigation with AI. I always say if you want to you want to upload a work uh spreadsheet, make sure you block out of the identifying information. And we've all learned it as public health professionals when I was working in the field. We we've learned how to code. You can code those names, you know. I know with large data it can be hard, but you have to take to do your due diligence to protect that confidential information because that's other people's information that you uh you're juggling and using in those systems. So you want to be very careful.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

That's what's important because I know there's a lot of fear right now and uncertainty in the workforce because of AI is coming in. How do I how do I now work with this? And a lot of times that it's a training issue and an understanding. And so that comes to the question of how do you position AI so it will reduce the burden instead of creating the fear. And I think that's maybe one of the reasons why you're having this particular summit is because we we need to become more comfortable with this world. And that comfort comes from knowing what this is all about, how it helps me in the long term, how it creates value, how it saves lives, and that reduces my workload and that overloading my team. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, that's part of it. Yes, that's one of the reasons because uh one thing I also did forget to mention, I get a lot of requests about how we can implement innovative tools, and AI is always part of the conversation. So we want to make sure not only if we look at our systems, our operations, uh, involve all of our leaders, and that's where we're doing those leadership alignment sessions, but also how do we how do we really work at the system level? Not just the people at the bedside, but all the leaders taking ownership of aligning with what's going on on the front line with technology. We don't have enough funds. How do we become more creative and innovative to save money but move forward?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

That's it. But you've got to rethink the mousetrap, right? And sometimes you outgrow it. So it was nothing wrong with that shoe, but if your foot has grown two sizes too big, the shoe's not going to fit anymore. And I think with AI, you know, in the mix, the things that your workflows, the way you got work got done, is going to change, and you can't just act like it's not there. So that brings us to the next question. And I always look

Who Should Attend And Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 22:00

At this, that technology operates in a three-dimensional world of value. And so, what do you mean, Grant? What is that three-dimensional world? What technology, and I've been in technology 30 plus years, so I know tech and and I know what applications are, I know what infrastructure looks like, and I know what platform looks like. This is a platform. But how these things are actually bringing value to a business is three areas. Number one is speed, and I call that speed to market. If you can do things quicker, faster, better, that's usually a good thing in the business world. So speed to market is very, very, very, very important. The second thing is communication. Technology is very good at communication, just like we're communicating right now over a technology platform. So if you can communicate at speed and you can communicate text, video, audio with a human-like interface, with uh uh voice, natural language processing. That's a big, big, big deal, especially in the AI world. And then that third very important thing is scalability. Now you can scale higher, you can expand your reach. You can take a small team like what you have working with today and have it operate as a bigger team without adding labor and cost into it. That is a huge differentiator, and that's how you compound the use of AI into your world. So as you begin to think through this, and leaders need to know how to measure that value. And so the question comes back to you would be what should leaders measure to know that AI is being deployed first safely and responsibly, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

That's a loaded question. I need a few days to think about it. Yeah, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

That's the question of the other day. What do we need to measure to make sure you know it's actually working right? You know, but you've got to get there. Uh, and just to help you a little bit, and those three things I just talked about, can it do something quicker or before it took us a long time? And the friction, like there's a lot of friction here, and because of that friction, you either lost money, you had poor health outcomes, you know, that's where the speed element

A First-Of-Its-Kind Aligned Summit

SPEAKER_00 24:20

comes into that. And the communication, how many times do you have miscommunication? You have medical errors, is a big thing right now in healthcare. If you can reduce medical errors, that's a huge thing. You can you can save some lives around that. And then because we've all known about shortages in the healthcare world or nurses and things like that. So if you can scale and you can start doing things with the workforce you have, I think that is huge. But you got to be able to measure it, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Right, that's right. Yes. So one thing I always say uh executives and organizational leaders, they always care about what the organization looks like. So the first thing I would say is, is it is it really helping us move forward and still look better? The second thing, because we're dealing with healthcare and public health, the population that we're taking care of and the patients who are our clients, is the deployment of this AI tool or AI system going to help them? Are we going to achieve reduced infection rate? Are we going to save money because we know more infections cause much cause more costs? And that's in any country, any system, no matter how uh the payment system is set up, it affects everyone with cost. Um, and uh the third thing, you know, we know that executives have a dashboard, they always have a plan. So they have those metrics, those KPIs that they're monitoring. So is deploying the AI tool really going to help them reach those KPIs or even exceed them? So those are the three things I always focus on. Uh I believe it's actually four. Uh, the fourth one is your workforce. As I said, you don't want to lose your core team, the ones who are making your business run. And in business, I mean uh small businesses like ours, uh hospitals, clinics, public health departments, uh, even uh anyone actually who's leading an organization. So when you have those KPIs and you're able to deploy your AI tool and measure those KPIs correctly and exceed them, it's it will be helpful to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

So yeah. But you've answered a lot of these questions uh

How To Join And Closing

SPEAKER_00 26:30

very, very well. I think people are leaning in or taking notes, they're gonna rewind a lot of things that you said because it's important. Because everybody's in the learning curve right now. There is no what you call AI mastership. It might be you understand some tool sets, right? But you don't understand how it works in your environment. That's the the that's where the rubber meets the road. How do I integrate this into my my current workflows uh to get the right outcomes uh and and get a better outcome? And you're gonna have to make some changes. That's the thing. Change is is inevitable. So as we think about that in this summit, we need to understand, help us understand this. Who should attend, right? Who should attend, and what outcome can they expect? And who is the summit truly built for? And and most importantly, what should they walk away with, especially uh March 5th, March 6th, that they didn't have before they came in? So there's a before and after. How would you explain that?

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yes, so the summit is for leaders. Um, practitioners can benefit from it, but there may be some things that don't apply to their work. So I would say it's for leaders. Healthcare executives, public health leaders, whether it's a ministry of health or department of health, state department, local department, any leader who has an influence on governance should be part of this in healthcare, public health, and also our infection prevention leaders, because that's also a field that I'm uh work with a lot. Uh and those infection prevention is in both healthcare and public health. So those are the leaders who will benefit the most from uh these sessions. And what they will walk away with are some practical steps, practical um ideas on where to get started. Uh, we've talked about AI readiness. Uh, we uh will have some tech experts who will talk about cybersecurity and governance. And I'll also talk about some of the things we just discussed. You know, what are the things that you want to prevent and how can you make sure you look at those things in your uh in your organization? Uh they'll also uh they'll also uh learn about how to keep their organization resilient through all the changes we're seeing uh at the global level with low lower funding. How can we align correctly our leadership teams and everything that's happening on the front line to make sure that there's alignment, there's less waste uh and reduction in cost, and we're also able to achieve our goals, which ultimately is taking care of those patients, those communities that we serve.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

That is important. These are key takeaways in in what I call uh achievement and and and true value that you're trying to get. You you can't afford to waste time any longer. Time is a is a is a commodity we never get back, right? So valuable use of time is big. I have a session myself at the 2026 Strategic Systems Summit. Again, this will be a March 6th, March 5th, and March 6th, right? And mine is about effective, I would say leadership and AI readiness that connects leadership with influence and workforce trust to enterprise AI governance, including safety, HIPAA compliance, things like that. Because I need to reframe for people or personal branding as a practical leadership uh asset, you know, the credibility and the clarity leaders need to drive adoption, reduce the fear and friction, and operationalize responsible AI scale. So in my session, I will cover what readiness looks like beyond the tech team, including real-world guardrails, the acceptable use of, and also PHI boundaries, the vendor diligence that you gotta have, the auditability, escalation paths, very, very important. So you have to have clear accountability and decision rights across clinical safety, compliance, and all these different operations required to prevent shadow AI while you're building out this psychological safety in your in your world. I'm gonna use the brave framework around boldness, resilience, authenticity, vision, and execution. So attendees will leave with a simple governance blueprint, an accountability map, and a readiness checklist that they can apply immediately to deploy AI safely, responsibly, and effective across the enterprise? So that'll be my session, but this is a two-day conference, if I remember right.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Yes. Um, so before we part words, before we part words, and all the things that we covered, look through that. Is there anything still on your mind that you want to make sure our audience needs to know?

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yes, I would say this is a conference. It's a it's a very different conference. I would say it's first of its kind because we're convening healthcare executives, infection prevention, public health, all decision makers. Most conferences is geared to one audience, but this we're bringing everyone together. And as you you see me on LinkedIn, I talk a lot about alignment because alignment is the only place where we can move forward. I've seen so many silos that have cost money. Uh, and by the time the leadership realizes, okay, let's just work together, that's when things move forward. Um, I could give so many examples here, but one example I can give, and I think that uh the audience will benefit from that. I've worked with some organizations where uh you'll see the infection prevention leader is working on their side, uh, the nursing leaders are working on their own side, and the executives are way higher level in strategic planning, and no one communicates. And then people start complaining. Well, why are we having all these infections? Why are we losing so much money? And by the time we discuss, we sit together, you're having nursing managers who could spread out uh just auditing simple things as just auditing hand hygiene, for example. They could spread it out around their teams and they're doing all the work and they're wasting about 600,000 a year just doing that work when they could be working with the executives and make sure that the mission of the organization is going towards the same vision. So, this is one thing I say that it will be one of its kind. Uh, we've looked and tried to see if there are other conferences like this. This is first of its kind. So, all these leaders should come together because we'll be only stronger by working together.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

100%. Now you gotta tell the artists how they can sign up, what they need to do, how can they get in contact with you as well?

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yes. So uh as of now, we're having an interest list because we want to keep it very intentional. We want leaders who are willing to challenge the status quo to be part of this conversation. Because this is not about talking about compliance or how to do the operational uh task daily. We're really talking about leaders who can make a change. So at this point, we have an interest list. So we want those who are interested and who know they can make a change or at least be part of the conversation that will lead to change to join the wait list. And I can send you a link that you can share. Once they join the interest list, everyone, depending on what their track is, will receive uh um uh a registration information for the specific track. So we have specific track for some people who want to attend the full summit, executive and uh operational leader sessions. Others want to stay focused on their track as well. Uh, so we'll have that also available uh for them. So everyone will be able to get something and run with it.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

This is what's so important, and you're pouring out a key differentiator. This is not AI for AI's sake. This is AI for a specific use case, specifically in healthcare and how it can uh uh help the healthcare system to shore up all those problems in funding, right? The shortfalls in finance, the shortfalls in staff. We hear about it all the time. And we don't want to increase those other uh metrics. No one wants to see more infections, you know, in the hospital, things like that, that preventable death or just higher costs. So I want to thank you for being on the Follow the Brand show. I can't wait to participate in the summit itself. And I want to encourage all of your audience to tune in to all the episodes of Follow the Brand. You can do so at the number five. That's five star BDM. That's five, that's Star S T A R B D M B for Brand, B for Development Information.com. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome.