Judith R. Faulkner

America's largest medical records vendor, Verona-based Epic Systems, recently revealed that it's using artificial intelligence tools to find and patch security risks that could allow hackers to access patient data undetected.

The security flaws and plans to address the risks were revealed by Epic's founder and CEO, Judy Faulkner, at an industry conference last month.

That's according to reporting from The New York Times.

Based near Madison, Epic maintains health records for more than 325 million people worldwide, according to the company.

So these are really important initiatives, uh, by Epic and, you know, others who are doing similar work in the field of medical records.

But, you know, AI has its downside, and it gives these hackers, uh, you know, a huge leg up so they can, you know, with less expertise on their part and, uh, much faster, they can operate and make attacks on your system.

That's what led Judy Faulkner just, you know, a week or so ago to make a startling announcement that they were suspending, uh, new product development for six weeks while they dealt with these, you know, finding patches for these potential gaps that, where that could be exploited by people using AI.

Um, you know, Epic ul- ultimately walked that back a bit.

Aside from all that, random American girl trivia fact.

One of my favorite just, like, random snippets of this is we have two of the most amazing female entrepreneurs in Pleasant Roland and Judy Faulkner.

Yeah.

Both from Madison, Judy being obviously the founder and CEO of Epic.

Everybody, single person has one, and it's not the idea, it's the relentless drive, the, the passion of getting through to the next steps that drive real business success.

So if you look at people like Judy Faulkner at, you know, at, um, Epic.

You look at people like Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Platforms, Elon Musk, all of them had these ideas, you know, uh, that came from different places.

Uh, but it wasn't Judy Faulkner deciding that we need an electric medical record.

It was the relentless prosecution of the idea, the push forward of the idea that made that great.

Um, you know, similarly, uh, you know, people have been talking about electric cars for some time.

And I hear very different things from the very best of the best.

And one, before I share the questions they ask, I wanted to share one experience from a call I made to Judy Faulkner years ago.

And I'd started to hear from their clients that they were nickel and diming.

And Epic, you know, had kind of in the early days, a single contract.

So, so here's the thing with Mark Zuckerberg.

He might be, with Judith Faulkner, with a few others, uh, Justin Wong of course, one of the most relentless, resilient founder CEOs of the last few decades.

Simply remarkable to watch.

And obviously, there's a few of them, but, but it really is something how relentless and how much he's constantly at it, even through all the changes that go on in the technology and social media world.