Brandt Welker · Essays
Thirty years building systems people's lives depend on — at NASA, at the VA, and in the software that runs a hospital.
I'm a healthcare technology executive who writes about how these systems actually work: where the incentives point, why good engineering is mostly subtraction, and what changes — and what doesn't — when the tools get smarter.
Stop Auditing the Phrases
AI watermarks are shipping this month, and everyone is busy auditing the writing for an answer that was never there. You don't detect who wrote it like a fingerprint. It's an assertion made by the person willing to say, "I wrote this."
Start here
If you're new, these two are the argument in miniature: how the money works, and what rigor means now.
- 01
The Denial Machine
One in five claims gets denied on the first pass. A system that says no to a fifth of everything is not making mistakes. It is doing exactly what it was built to do.
- 02
Raising the Bar: Why AI Doesn't Erode Rigor, It Redefines It
Every major tool in history lowered one threshold and raised another. AI is no different — it resets the floor and forces excellence upward.
More essays
All essays →- Stop Auditing the Phrases
- Culture Doesn't Shape Behavior. Incentives Do.
- Raising the Bar: Why AI Doesn't Erode Rigor, It Redefines It
- The Power of Simplification: Lessons from Spacecraft Design
- The Denial Machine
- Are You in an Abusive Relationship with Your EHR?
- Don't Let Health IT Go Extinct
- Care Coordination on FHIR: The Case for API-Based Exchange