Episode #2: The Human Algorithm in Healthcare

Episode #3: The Regulation Equation - Mastering the Mind with Self-Regulation Expert Brad Chapin

SUMMARY: In this episode, I sit down with Brad Chapin, M.S., LCP, MLP, who is an author, internationally recognized speaker, and one of the foremost experts in Self-Regulation Training,  for a conversation that will fundamentally change how you think about your own mind, your behavior, and your potential for growth. Brad has spent his career at the intersection of psychology, education, and human development. He is the creator of the Self-Regulation Training System, a research-grounded, cognitive-behavioral framework now used by thousands of educators, clinicians, and mental health professionals across the country. In this conversation, you'll hear: 🧠 What self-regulation actually is - and why most people confuse it with willpower, discipline, or compliance. Brad breaks down the three core domains ( physical, emotional, and cognitive regulation) and explains how mastering each one unlocks success in every area of life. ⚡ The fight-or-flight trap — why your body's stress response system is the #1 saboteur of your decisions, your relationships, and your mental health, and the two critical skills that allow you to shut it down before it shuts you down. 🎓 Self-regulation and academic performance — the surprising data on how developing regulation skills dramatically improves not just behavior, but learning outcomes, social skills, and long-term life success , and why this is the missing variable in most educational reform conversations. 😰 The anxiety connection — how dysregulation fuels anxiety, why most anxiety interventions miss the root cause, and what Brad's evidence-based framework offers as a real alternative. 💬 Labeling emotions and cognitive regulation — how something as simple as naming what you feel can interrupt the neurological chain reaction of reactivity, and how to train the cognitive system to stop unhealthy thought patterns before they derail you. 👩‍🏫 A message for every educator, parent, and clinician — why self-regulation is the universal skillset that cuts across every presenting problem  (e.g., anger, anxiety, academic failure, relationship conflict)  and how to start teaching it tomorrow. And in our Pulse Check rapid-fire segment: Brad discusses his full-circle moment when he walked the halls of the same inpatient psychiatric facility where, at 17 years old, he was a patient, only to return 25 years later as its Director of Clinical Services. What Stranger Things (and a Broadway stage) has to do with proving that people labeled as problems can do a complete 180 when someone actually believes in them. And the one sentence that captures his entire life's philosophy: "Self is the first word in self-regulation, it has to start here." This is a conversation that will challenge how you think about human behavior, whether you're a clinician, educator, parent, coach, biomedical data scientist, or simply someone who wants to understand the importance of self-regulation in all of our lives. LINKS TO BRAD'S WORK: Books by Brad Chapin, M.S., LCP, MLP mentioned or referenced in this episode: 1. ⁠Helping Young People Learn Self-Regulation⁠ [https://www.researchpress.com/product/helping-young-people-learn-self-regulation/] 2. ⁠Helping Teens Learn Self-Regulation⁠ [https://www.researchpress.com/product/helping-teens-learn-self-regulation/] 3. ⁠Self-Regulation Skillset for Educators⁠ [https://youthlight.com/product.php?id=3998] 4. ⁠The Legend of The Regulators and The Secret List⁠ [https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/brad-chapin/2701128/] Self-Regulation Training Videos with Brad Chapin [https://accutrain.com/self-regulation-2] DATA WITH A PULSE: THE HUMAN DIMENSION PODCAST This podcast is about data, humanity, technology and the ideas that can improve how we care for people. The podcasted is hosted by Dr. Guy Hembroff, PhD - a faculty researcher at Michigan Technological University and Director of the ⁠Biomedical Data Science (BDS) Research Lab [https://sites.google.com/mtu.edu/bdslab].⁠  Subscribe, leave a review, and send questions to hembroff.podcast@gmail.com [hembroff.podcast@gmail.com]. Keywords: self-regulation, emotional regulation, cognitive regulation, physical regulation, fight-or-flight response, self-control, cognitive-behavioral psychology, anxiety management, anger management, academic performance, artificial intelligence, biomedical data science, AI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbrl3yrRCs]

Episode #2: The Human Algorithm in Healthcare

Episode #2: Dr. Thomas Simmer, MD — "The Human Algorithm in Healthcare" Data with a Pulse: The Human Dimension In this episode, Dr. Guy Hembroff, PhD sits down with Dr. Thomas Simmer, MD, physician, healthcare architect, and former Chief Medical Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, for one of the most candid, wide-ranging, and deeply human conversations in healthcare you'll hear this year. Dr. Simmer spent three decades at the intersection of clinical care, policy, and data-driven transformation. He pioneered the state's Patient-Centered Medical Home program, now a national model, and championed a philosophy that still challenges the industry today: you don't improve healthcare by judging physicians with data. You improve it by supporting them with it. In this conversation, you'll hear: 🔬 The moment that changed everything — a career-altering encounter with W. Edwards Deming’s book, Out of the Crisis, and the realization that medical harm wasn’t predominantly due to bad doctors. It was about bad processes. 🏥 The real story behind Michigan's PCMH — how a bold idea became the nation's most influential primary care transformation model, and why it almost never happened. 💊 Why financial incentives are killing healthcare — a provocative, evidence-backed argument that rewarding physicians for performance scorecards is not only ineffective but actively destructive to care quality. 🤖 AI in the exam room — where artificial intelligence genuinely augments clinical judgment, where automation bias becomes dangerous, and why "implement and walk away" is the worst thing any healthcare organization can do. 📱 The future of personal health records — are wearables, continuous glucose monitors, and real-time patient data finally bringing us to the era of true longitudinal health records? And what's still standing in the way? 🧠 Mental health and physical health — why treating them as separate systems causes real clinical harm, and what an integrated model of care actually looks like. 👨‍⚕️ A message to the next generation — what every future clinician and biomedical data scientist must understand about what data can and cannot tell you about the patient in front of you. And in our Pulse Check rapid-fire segment, coffee's surprising role in sparking the Renaissance, the best piece of advice Dr. Simmer ever received, the funniest moment of his executive career, and what he'd be doing if medicine had never called his name. This is a conversation that will make you think differently about the healthcare system, whether you're a clinician, a patient, health informaticists, biomedical data scientist, a policymaker, or simply someone who wants to understand how the decisions made in boardrooms shape medical care. Books mentioned in this episode: 1. Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success [https://www.amazon.com/Insanely-Simple-Obsession-Drives-Apples/dp/1591844835] * Ken Segall 2. Out of the Crisis [https://www.amazon.com/Out-Crisis-W-Edwards-Deming/dp/0262541157] * W. Edwards Deming 3. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World [https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Grounds-History-Coffee-Transformed/dp/1541699386/ref=monarch_sidesheet_image] * Mark Pendergrast  4. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department [https://www.amazon.com/Present-Creation-Years-State-Department/dp/0393304124] * Dean Acheson 5. The Guns of August [https://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning/dp/0345476093] * Barbara Tuchman Data with a Pulse: The Human Dimension Podcast - is hosted by Dr. Guy Hembroff, a faculty researcher at Michigan Technological University and Director of the Biomedical Data Science Research Lab. [https://sites.google.com/mtu.edu/bdslab] New episodes explore the breakthroughs, challenges, and lived experiences at the intersection of healthcare, data science, technology, and human stories. Subscribe, leave a review, and send us your questions!

Episode #1: From Bangalore to Michigan's Upper Peninsula—Ram Bagaria on Startups, Grad School, and Guitar as Therapy

In my conversation with Ram Bagaria, he shares his journey from working in India's Silicon Valley to pursuing a master's degree in data science in the U.S. He discusses the importance of effective soft skills in the technical industry, the challenges of transitioning to graduate school, and the significance of being skilled in both feature engineering and data science model development. Ram also reflects on his entrepreneurial spirit, detailing his early ventures and the launch of his most recent venture, BookSip, an AI-driven platform for books turned into summaries and podcasts. He emphasizes the balance between academic responsibilities and entrepreneurship, cultural adjustments he faced moving to the U.S., and the mental health strategies he employs to cope with stress. The conversation concludes with Ram's aspirations for the future and insights on personal growth and resilience. CONTACT GUY: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-hembroff * Biomedical Data Science (BDS) Research Lab: https://sites.google.com/mtu.edu/bdslab EPISODE LINKS: * BookSip: https://www.booksip.co/ * Ram's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ram-bagaria/ * Ram's GitHub: https://github.com/Rambagaria * Ram's Portfolio: https://sites.google.com/mtu.edu/rambagaria