Blue Button is a Trojan horse for culture change in the American health care system. It places power in the hands of patients and whets the data appetites of millions of Americans and the companies who would like to serve them. If you’ve never heard of Blue Button, here’s a quick overview: The federal government […]
positive patterns
If we give people access to the tools they need to solve problems, they will
One of my core beliefs is that if we give people access to the data, information, and tools they need to solve their own problems, they will. The Maker movement is an example of a group of people who embody this idea. They modify and improve the world around them. They look at a problem and not only say, […]
How to judge an innovation
George Hacks is a medical and assistive device hackathon happening this weekend in Washington, DC. The students organizing the event have done a stellar job recruiting sponsors, “need-knowers” (organizations looking for fresh perspectives) and “problem-solvers” (students from all sorts of majors, from public health to international relations to biomedical engineering). I’ve been advising the team and […]
Conference organizers:
Steal these ideas!
On February 21, Larry Chu, MD, announced that Stanford Medicine X would take a hiatus. He shared the following story: Eight years ago, I posted a tweet announcing my intention to launch my first conference at Stanford. I received a variety of responses, but the one that remains the most poignant is the one I received from […]
The silver lining of jury duty
Imagine taking a 7-hour flight on a low-budget airline every day for 5 weeks, sitting elbow to elbow with the same 22 people, listening to fragments of some of the most violent, upsetting stories you have ever heard. That was my experience of grand jury duty in Washington, DC. I tried to sit quietly and endure. […]
Letter to shareholders
For tax purposes, I recently added up all the various sources of income I’d received in 2017. It was a real hodge-podge of a year since I left my appointment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and started working on my own projects again. This exercise brought home the lesson that […]
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