A general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Atul Gawande is also a staff writer at The New Yorker who's changing the way we think about best practices in medicine (and, necessarily, about the state of the US healthcare system). In 1996 Gawande wrote his first piece for Slate, an analysis of the then-controversial illness known as Gulf War Syndrome. At The New Yorker, he turned in a shocking June 2009 piece, “The Cost Conundrum,” about McAllen, Texas, the town with the second most expensive health-care market in the U.S., taking on America’s high-cost low-quality healthcare system. (The piece was cited by President Obama during his campaign for healthcare reform.)

Gawande approaches medicine with a personal outlook, emphasizing the importance of a doctor’s intention and reliability, and urging doctors to make small changes to improve performance. In his most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande shows how even a simple five-point checklist can decrease up to two-thirds of ICU infections. He suggests that as modern medicine -- and indeed, the modern world -- becomes increasingly complex, we should respond with ever-simpler measures.

In the fall of 2012, Gawande founded Ariadne Labs, a center for health systems innovation run through Harvard and the Brigham and Women's Hospital. The Labs are working to create more efficient, higher quality health care while simplifying the whole system. 

"Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try."

Atul Gawande

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Atul Gawande: How do we Heal Medicine?