Bethany (00:00)

Point is, we have been having these conversations privately for years about healthcare, about technology, about the industry that we are in in the United States as well as in Europe and globally what's going on. We really just realized we should maybe hit record. Maybe other people want to hear this too.

Stuart (00:35)

Hello and welcome to Haverin about..., our brand new podcast where we're gonna mix some stories, some health IT strategy and a good amount of Scottish style blethering. I'm Stuart Miller and I've been talking way too much professionally and personally for over 30 years. So naturally I decided we should start a podcast.

Bethany (01:00)

What else do you do in 2025? Everybody has a podcast, so why can't we? ⁓ I am Bethany. I'm his daughter, his co-host, and my role here is to try and make sure we don't go completely off the rails and end up posting a four-hour podcast. If this sounds interesting to you and you're interested in some of our nonsense and our insight, please hit subscribe so that you don't miss

Stuart (01:04)

Yeah.

Bethany (01:29)

the exciting things that are coming over the next few weeks, months, decades, we'll take over the world, all that good stuff.

Stuart (01:38)

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. So who are we? Let's do a few introductions. So already I introduced my name and a little bit of my background. If it hadn't escaped your attention already, I'm Scottish.

I'm a double lung transplant survivor, started out as a nurse, moved into healthcare and healthcare IT leadership and expanded technology. And I've spent decades leading teams of people in sales, revenue and product. And these days I coach, I consult, I write and now I guess I podcast.

Bethany (02:15)

Again, who doesn't? So it's less obvious. I am also Scottish, but grew up mostly in England, hence the accent. But I started my career in digital marketing for politicians, country music stars. It was great. A lot more bougie parties than in healthcare technology. But I realized, you know, after a couple of years, I really wanted to do something with a little bit more meaning in my life. And so transitioned to healthcare technology, working in

Stuart (02:40)

Hmm.

Bethany (02:45)

implementation, customer success, account management, sales, all that fun customer facing stuff. I've worked at Nuance, which is now Microsoft, Allscripts, which is now Altera and Harris, Tract Manager, which is now Simpler, Lineate, which is now Rhapsody. Basically, if you hire me, your company's going to get acquired. I'm going to end up with a

Stuart (03:07)

You

Bethany (03:07)

whole stack of different business cards, 20 million different email addresses. It's a great time.

Stuart (03:08)

Hahaha.

Bethany (03:13)

I am currently leading sales for a really impactful small European company and I just love it. I have got a four, almost five year old who wants to, on the last time I checked, be a ballerina robot maker. ⁓ So that's my life, ballerinas and robots.

Stuart (03:29)

Yep.

You

Bethany (03:35)

I have a Frenchie that just

wants to sleep the whole time and snore in the middle of all my Zoom and Teams calls. And I'm probably the slightly more sarcastic of the two of us.

Stuart (03:45)

⁓

yes, yeah I think with you it's a little bit more upfront with me it's kind of sort of like hidden unless you poke the bear in which case yeah okay it can rear its head there too. But what does Haverin about mean? Where did that title come from? Well Haverin is ⁓ an old Scots word which basically means rambling or talking too much, talking nonsense generally. ⁓ It also therefore is a nod to my heritage, our heritage.

Bethany (03:49)

You

Stuart (04:15)

and frankly to our personalities.

Bethany (04:20)

Yes, but it is very much structured nonsense. God knows I love a spreadsheet. I love a bulleted list. If you color code something for me. I love it. So we have built this podcast again around the four themes that dad has created in his Substack Haverin So dad, do you want to maybe talk a little bit about the format you've created?

Stuart (04:30)

You

Yeah,

yeah. And the podcast won't religiously follow this, but it'll give you an idea of the type of sort of discussions that we're going to bring and also the type of guests we fully intend to bring ⁓ some of our friends, some interesting people we meet along the way and interview them as we go so that it's not just going to be listening to us. We're going to bring some really fascinating people and people who have got insight at all levels.

of experience so that you get a chance to kind of see how other people are trying to deal with this kind chaotic environment that we're all having to deal with right now. So the Substack is basically created into four sections, a bit like an old fashioned Sunday newspaper. So the first section is really inspired by Bethany and the conversations that we've had over the last 10 years of her career, which is navigating work and leadership and

Bethany (05:11)

Mm-hmm.

Stuart (05:39)

life inside a commercial environment and looking at it from different ends of the career ladder. Being able to look at passing wisdom down, but also getting insights the other way. I've learned as much from Bethany as she might have done from me about what's happening out there in the world as you try to engage. So The Next Generation is that. The briefing room. Yep.

Bethany (06:03)

Well, and one of the

best things that you've taught me is at conferences and sales kickoffs, there is nothing that happens after midnight that will bring anything good to your life. And the few times that I've not listened to my dad, it's, you've been proven right. So there's some professional wisdom on all different levels that we share there.

Stuart (06:11)

That's good.

Yeah, there's been some...

So that's the first section. The second section is the kind of more nitty gritty stuff. That's called The Briefing Room And The Briefing Room essentially is where a lot of that kind of deep dive, kind of analytical programmatic stuff is that I write, talking more about what's happened in the industry. do some...

kind of post-mortem analysis of things that haven't gone well. I do some deep dive of what does this technology direction look like? And it's basically those are much longer articles that are ⁓ heavily cited and referenced inside them. So it'll allow you to be able to really go and dive deep on a topic. Then there's the third section, which is Blethering And that kind of speaks to itself. If you don't know what that word is, just go and...

and try and Google it and it'll explain what blethering is. And that's more personal stories, ⁓ experience from both of us in terms of being a parent, being part of a family, trying to navigate that life work balance stuff, as well as some of my experiences with healthcare as a consumer, as a patient. You know, how do we experience that? And Bethany has her own stories there. And I think we'll try to lean in on that because it becomes very relevant.

Bethany (07:30)

Okay.

Stuart (07:45)

to how we perceive the challenges with healthcare and how technology 2 come to bear there. The fourth section is called Vision to Action, and that's a theme that I've been going on for a while now. And it's really intended to drive into a book series. The first book is going to be called Agile Client Engagement, and it's really addressed at those people.

who are managing large complex existing customer relationships. How do you try to reinforce that relationship and the value the customer is getting out of the solution that you have sold them? And how do you try to maintain and grow that to turn them from being a customer into your biggest fan and advocate ⁓ and moving forward from there? So that's the four sections.

If you're curious at all, click the link that's in the description and in the show notes if you're listening on audio. And head on over to Substack and if you can't, if you don't have time to do that, just go to Substack and search for Haverin and About. You will find me, because it's relatively unique and distinctive. I think I even have enough published now that I'm popping up on Google and Bing and other search engines too.

Bethany (09:06)

Yahoo. I don't know if Yahoo is even still a thing. Ask G's. Let's kick it. Old school search engines. yeah, that's a good one. So we have...

Stuart (09:09)

my goodness. Go go duck duck duck go. That's yeah, yeah, yeah. Perplexity. What's

perplexity is now got their new thing out. Anyway, yes.

Bethany (09:23)

Who knows? ⁓ Point is, we have been having these conversations privately for years about healthcare, about technology, about the industry that we are in in the United States as well as in Europe and globally what's going on. We really just realized we should maybe hit record. Maybe other people want to hear this too.

I think mum and my brother and my husband are all sick of the two of us talking. The four year old is probably sick about hearing

about Epic and Cerner and what does the Oracle acquisition of Cerner really mean in this industry? The four year old is probably like, okay, we've heard it, I know. So we are here. We will ramble, we will share with you. We'll try and keep it somewhat structured though.

Stuart (09:58)

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's the thing is we're looking to share and share means from you too. So if you want to click in the comments and leave any comments or questions, suggestions, we're more than happy to consider those and to be able to respond and interact with you. So please do that. And there'll be some other sort of like ways that you can interact with us that I'll cover towards the end. But the key thing is we're not here to be influencers, although, yeah, I don't know.

If people want to send us a free Rolex watch, I'm up for it Bethany. How about you?

Bethany (10:44)

What do I want? My child currently eats her weight in cheese strings once a week. if Sargento or Frigo, I don't even know the ones. there's the Disney ones, the Disney cheese strings. That's really, those are the biggest hits. So if they want to sponsor us, I'm all in, all in.

Stuart (10:56)

You

Yeah.

So reach out to us in the comments and send us a note. We'd love to hear from you.

Bethany (11:14)

Absolutely. Yeah, you can, I guess, buy dad a drink or a coffee or something on his Substack So go, go buy that man a coffee or buy him a coffee that he can then send to me. We can share our coffees.

Stuart (11:27)

Absolutely, you

can leave a note and it uses an application. It uses an application called Kofi, K-O-F-I, if you've never used it. It's very popular amongst all of the creatives. And it is designed to be a kind of donation tool. So, you know, if there's anything, it's a tip jar if you want. So you'll find that link in our description, but also as Bethany says on Substack, you can do that.

Bethany (11:31)

Only for Bethany.

you

Stuart (11:56)

And on Substack, if you enjoy what you find there, please subscribe there too, because I would really love for you to be able to continue to receive updates about the writings that I produce regularly. And if you feel extra generous and feel like you're really getting great value, becoming a paid subscriber would really help us, because all this technology does cost some money for us to be able to share. And we would appreciate your support.

Bethany (12:23)

Sell the

value of the technology dad. All the value. Yeah, you can also find us on Instagram. We'll post little snippets of the podcast there.

Stuart (12:25)

⁓ absolutely. All the value. Anyway.

Bethany (12:34)

can subscribe on your favorite podcast solution network, whatever, know, basically Spotify or Apple podcasts really. And then we're both on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with us if you're not already. We are always happy to help.

Stuart (12:43)

You

Bethany (12:51)

answer any questions or be of help to anyone in the industry if we can be. There are just so many options.

Stuart (12:55)

Yeah,

LinkedIn's where I live too. I publish some stuff there. I also write occasionally on Medium. You might stumble across an article of mine in there. ⁓ But effectively, just reach out and touch.

Bethany (13:03)

Ahem.

Yeah. So a little ⁓ heads up, a little tease about what's going to be coming. As dad said, we're going to be touching on a number of different subjects. And one of the first ones that we're tackling is, the, big baddie of healthcare right now, artificial intelligence. What does it mean? Who sells it? Does it really make an impact? And really everyone is selling it now. If you go to any conference, artificial intelligence is on everyone's booth.

Stuart (13:27)

⁓ Hmm.

Bethany (13:40)

Those marketers are getting paid a lot of money. The product people are getting paid a lot of money. But how much of it is real? How much of it is hype?

Stuart (13:47)

Yeah. Yeah, and we're calling the episode Cutting through the AI FUD.

in healthcare and just for those who are uninformed, of course means fear, uncertainty and doubt. And we'll be looking at it from both sides of the table. What hospitals are really looking for, concerns that they've got about the technologies that are being offered to them. And then what are the vendors pushing? How does that marry up against the challenges and problems they're actually trying to solve?

And then how can sales teams successfully position AI solutions to be successful? Because ultimately, it's a very simple proposition in sales. Somebody has a problem. They're looking for a solution. And it's a question of driving value. I.E. what's the impact that's come in there? And that proposition is not going to change no matter what it is you're selling. Somebody needs to understand that value before

Bethany (14:45)

Mm-hmm.

Stuart (14:48)

And along the way, they will have all kinds of concerns, those FUD factors, whereby you're gonna have to handle objections. How can you do that effectively with your solution?

Bethany (15:00)

Exactly. And we're going to look at what it means today as well as in the next five, 10 years, you know, technology moves so quickly. How do we best prepare ourselves, our clients, our companies to really make sure that they're prepared. So, so exciting, such a good tease. Please make sure that you're subscribed so that you don't miss it when we release that episode soon.

Stuart (15:23)

Well, we hope you will join us, we really do, and until then, keep Haverin!