Fifteen years of longitudinal research, health-system strategy, applied AI, and near-future product design — building the intervention layer that should already exist between everyday environments and clinical care.
I design systems that remember the humanity healthcare keeps forgetting — the part that gets optimized out when AI, operations, and efficiency metrics take over the conversation. The goal isn't optimization. It's agency: helping people feel stress coming and course-correct before crisis.
For fifteen years, across Clemson's Center for Success in Aging, CVS Health, Philips, Novant Health, and now Somatag and Kutuhala Studio, two theses have held. Environment regulates physiology as powerfully as medication. Participation is impossible when the system is illegible. The systems we've built largely ignore both facts — and AI in healthcare is breaking down right now not because the tech is weak, but because it forgets the humanity it's supposed to serve. I build the systems that don't.
The work ranges from IRB-approved longitudinal studies to health-system patient experience frameworks to wearable intervention protocols to applied-AI infrastructure for civic healthcare participation. The through-line is the same: emotionally intelligent systems design for the layer between everyday life and clinical care.
Consulting and strategy work happens through Kutuhala Studio. Product R&D through Somatag. The thinking happens in public on Field Notes.
A 3.5-year IRB-approved longitudinal study tracking heart rate variability in 32 family caregivers of Alzheimer's patients. Seven community centers adopted the resulting respite program.
Twelve digital health pilots across CVS's pharmacy and care-management portfolio. Fifteen percent year-over-year lift in adherence for key chronic conditions. Programs adopted by Aetna Care teams and Health Hubs.
Somatag — a screenless, body-worn protocol that detects autonomic dysregulation through HRV and intervenes with gentle haptic cues. Active R&D; manufacturing partnership secured.
A Patient Experience Vision Framework across three rural NC hospitals. Peer recovery coach integration in emergency departments. $180K grant secured. Built through 350+ community interviews and multi-site co-design sessions.
An NSF-backed generative AI platform using GPT-4 and RAG to translate dense CMS, FDA, and ONC regulatory documents into persona-specific explanations. Policy comprehension time: 2–3 hours → under 20 minutes.
A 0→1 product strategy and service design concept for a Healthcare Control Center — unifying patient flow, workforce operations, and executive intelligence into one adaptive interface. Forward-looking: an AI-assisted operations copilot.
AI is not failing healthcare because the tech is weak. It's failing because model outputs are being confused with the product. The product is a relationship — between a person, their body, and a system that's supposed to care for them. Emotionally intelligent systems design is the missing discipline.
The HRV study showed environment moves physiology as reliably as medication. The question is no longer whether adaptive environmental design affects outcomes. It's which populations, which modalities, and which governance frameworks produce the best ratio of benefit to dignity.
Optimization asks people to conform to the system. Agency asks the system to expand around the person. The shift sounds rhetorical until you try to design for it — and then it rewrites the interface, the incentives, and the operating model underneath them both.
I'm exploring these questions in public. Field Notes is a Substack dispatch on adaptive systems, behavioral science, and what it looks like to build technology that holds people rather than optimizes them. Published monthly, more often when something is worth saying.
Subscribe to Field Notes ↗IRB protocol design, longitudinal and mixed-methods study, biometric monitoring, ethnographic research, participatory co-design. Built for signal quality that survives the handoff to implementation.
Health-system strategy, behavioral health program architecture, service blueprinting, 0→1 product strategy, Medicare Advantage pilot design. Work that crosses clinical, operational, and design disciplines without losing the humanity in any of them.
Generative AI platforms (GPT-4, RAG, NLP), behavioral sensing, wearable and ambient system design, HRV-based intervention protocols, adaptive environments. Built on today's stack, pointed at what's plausible in three years — and governed by what's humane today.
Strategy, research, and systems design for health innovation teams. Clinical pilot design, behavioral program architecture, applied AI, 0→1 product strategy.
Inquire ↗Healthcare innovation, behavioral design, near-future systems. Also open to research partnerships, clinical fellowship programs, and academic collaborations.
galligancm@gmail.com →