20 people who make healthcare better
I followed a link in a tweet today to an article in Health Leaders Media that put the spotlight on 20 people who make healthcare better. I'm not sure if the profiles are in any particular order, but I was pleased to note that three of the first four on the list were familiar names--Atul Gawande, Dave deBronkart, and Daniel Sands, MD. Full of confidence in my ability to identify and pursue the right "people in motion," I scanned the remaining names on the list and did not recognize any of them. The good news is that there are 17 more interesting people I plan to learn about.
I first heard about Atul Gawande via a guest post on this blog entitled Moral Hazards 'r Us where the author references Gawande's New Yorker article The Cost Conundrum, "...a brilliant piece because it shines a light in so many directions." Give it a read, if you haven't already.
After stalking @epatientdave via Twitter and his blog, I finally had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a conference in Toronto--Medicine 2.0; I wrote about it in a previous post. The Health Leaders article describes Dave as "...the quintessential engaged patient consumer the likes of whom—depending on your viewpoint—is either an anomaly or an inevitability." After meeting Dave recently at a the ePatient Connections Conference here in Philly, I continue to stalk him to keep up with his efforts to enable others to partner with their healthcare providers. Get to know him, he's quite a guy!
As a biproduct of my stalking Dave, I learned about Danny Sands, engaging physician and one of the key reasons Dave is able to actively partner in his own medical care and promote participatory medicine. Danny is assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and senior medical informatics director for Cisco Systems. Check out the Health Leaders Media article to learn more about Danny and the others.
