AI Amplified: Why Healthcare AI Success Starts With Governance, Not Technology, with Ben Scharfe

S2E1: Why Healthcare AI Success Starts With Governance, Not Technology, with Ben Scharfe, Executive Vice President of AI Initiatives at Altera Digital Health On this episode, host Dr. Heather Bassett welcomes Ben Scharfe, Executive Vice President of AI Initiatives at Altera Digital Health, to make the case that the biggest lever in healthcare AI isn't the model — it's the foundation underneath it. Ben traces his unconventional path from accounting and financial leadership into healthcare AI, and argues that the same continuous-learning mindset that got him there is what teams need most as the technology keeps shifting. He walks through Altera's approach to building a care intelligence platform grounded in data quality, provenance, and access controls before layering on more sophisticated AI capabilities, and explains why transparency and citations to curated clinical sources matter for earning clinician trust rather than operating as a black box. Ben and Dr. Bassett dig into a risk-based approach to agentic autonomy — giving AI more latitude on low-risk administrative tasks while keeping tighter, deterministic guardrails around higher-acuity decisions. They also cover the real economics of scaling agentic AI, from understanding the cost of a ""unit of work"" to avoiding technically impressive but needlessly expensive architectures, and discuss how ambient AI's biggest wins — clinician satisfaction, reduced burnout, retention — often show up before the financial ROI does. Throughout, Ben's message is consistent: start with the problem you're trying to solve, not the AI you want to use. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen