Jim Hewitt on Building the AI Layer Above the EHR and Reimagining Healthcare Technology

Overview

From Grain Elevators to Self-Taught Programmer

“Once I got hooked, I started consuming and teaching myself how to program.”

Jim’s technology career began far from a traditional software environment. As the fourth generation of his family’s grain elevator business in rural Illinois, he grew up performing physically demanding work while learning the value of service, relationships, and responsibility.

Choosing software meant walking away from the family business he was expected to inherit. Jim describes leaving for Chicago in 1989 to accept a junior programming position as one of the most difficult decisions of his life, but also the decision that launched his healthcare technology career.

Building Hospital Technology Before Modern EHRs

“We all lived and breathed that mission of actually creating better healthcare for the United States.”

At Enterprise Systems, Jim entered healthcare during a period when hospitals were beginning to replace mainframes, install networks, and adopt personal computers. He learned new programming languages, database technologies, networking systems, and healthcare workflows while working directly with hospitals and clinical subject matter experts.

The experience taught Jim that successful healthcare software requires more than technical capability. Developers must understand the environment, workflows, and people affected by the technology.

Electronic Prescribing and the Growth of Allscripts

“After working on real-time financial clearing systems at the Options Clearing Corporation, Jim returned to healthcare as Chief Information Officer of Allscripts.”

The company recognized that handwritten prescriptions represented one of healthcare’s largest paper-based processes. Jim and the Allscripts team helped build an early wireless electronic prescribing application and contributed to the development of standards for transmitting prescriptions electronically to pharmacies.

The experience reinforced a recurring theme in Jim’s career: meaningful innovation begins by identifying a difficult operational problem and applying technology in a way that improves safety, efficiency, and usability.

Giving the Medical Record Back to the Patient

“Why don’t we spin off a company to give the record back to the patient?”

While serving as CIO of Springfield Clinic, Jim gained a new perspective on healthcare information management. He saw how difficult it was for patients to obtain their own medical records and how those records remained fragmented across hospitals, clinics, and EHR systems.

That frustration inspired the creation of Jardogs and its flagship product, FollowMyHealth.

FollowMyHealth eventually served tens of millions of patients and became a prominent patient engagement platform after Jardogs was acquired by Allscripts.

Why Healthcare Needs an AI Layer Above the EHR

“Leave your EMR as a system of record.”

Jim’s interest in generative AI accelerated when he received early access to OpenAI technology. Although the first models were slow and prone to hallucination, he immediately recognized their ability to understand the structure of clinical documentation.

That realization led to a larger question: what could AI accomplish if it had access to the patient’s complete clinical context?

JardogsHealth is now developing an AI-powered layer designed to operate above existing EHR systems. Its goal is to transform clinical data into an AI-friendly format that can support real-time documentation, coding, scheduling, patient engagement, and revenue-cycle workflows.

AI Requires Judgment, Architecture, and Oversight

“AI is not going to replace you, but somebody using AI is going to replace you.”

Jim believes developers must learn to use AI, but they cannot surrender technical judgment to it. AI can accelerate software development and perform substantial amounts of coding work. However, it may recommend solutions that appear correct without understanding the system architecture, regulatory environment, performance requirements, or operational context.

Jim’s message is clear: use AI as a capable companion, but continue questioning, validating, and supervising its output.

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