Be Wrong, Make History

The gap between what can be imagined and what can be accomplished has never been smaller.  The brilliant Seth Godin knows bridging this gap requires a different sort of hard work:  ‘the guts to be wrong, a confrontation with the risk of being stupid‘.

Not easy to do.  But don’t tell that to my friends at the WHO who worked on the Meningitis Vaccine Project.   All they did was make history.

For over a century, Meningitis A has quietly been destroying the lives of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.   The disease is one of the most feared and it’s epidemics have struck more frequently over the last three decades.  Not only does the disease kill one in ten people who are affected, it also leaves a quarter of the survivors with lives that are severely debilitated.  It’s a disease that lingers long after it’s gone.

On December 6, 2010 the disease met it’s match in the form of a vaccine, MenAfriVac™.   Over 19.5 million people in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger started receiving the vaccine.  More than six months later, the Meningitis Vaccine Project reports the lowest number of confirmed Meningitis A cases ever recorded during an epidemic season.

The Meningitis Vaccine Project solved this problem through a unique partnership between PATH, the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  One of the greatest hurdles the project needed to overcome was cost.   The Serum Institute of India stepped up to the challenge and developed the vaccine at less than one-tenth the cost of a typical new vaccine.

This is the first time in history that a vaccine has bee specifically designed for Africa.  The first vaccine ever introduced in Africa before reaching other continents.  And the first time mothers will not have to live in fear of meningitis epidemic taking away their children and destroying lives.

Sometimes you’ll be laughed at on your way to making history.

This changes everything

Sometimes you see something for the first time and instantly recognize it’s a game changer.

Craig Van Korlaar showed me the new ePub from Push Pop Press called Our Choice.

I was blown away.   It has me thinking.  A lot.

This doesn’t just change the game for publishing, but now, for the first time, I really want an iPad.  I hope content producers in healthcare and education will embrace this form of knowledge distribution.

Mike Matas and his team just raised the bar on how to tell a story.  Check out Mike’s presentation @ TED.

Driven, from with-in

In 1993 Michael Jordan had won his 3rd NBA title with the Chicago Bulls.   The Dallas Cowboys were winning Super Bowls.  And …I was just appointed to run the business for a group of Radiologists in Dallas.

(Okay, this is the only paragraph ever written where I’m included with Michael Jordan, NBA, Dallas Cowboys and Super Bowls.  Call it the blogger’s privilege.)

I had no idea what I was doing.  But I did have a vision for the business.

I remember watching this set of AT&T ads in between Bulls and Cowboys games.

It kept boldly proclaiming  - ‘You Will’.

I bought into it completely.

18 years later, what I once imagined then – is simply normal for my kids today.   Amazing!

Those series of commercials did it’s job.

It made me believe.

It fueled a drive and pursuit that paved the way for me to have an amazing career in healthcare.

Today, I still have no idea what I’m doing.  But, I’m daring to imagine.  And … I’m wondering what kind of world we can create for those who are coming upAfter us.

Jim Collins says that ‘achieving greatness is not a function of circumstance, it’s largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.‘

It’s our time to inspire leaders to imagine, dare them to believe and challenge them to pursue.

So, we will.

Be a CEO

Mark Pincus in this NY Times article

“… turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said,  “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it.  And there was nowhere to hide ….”

Simple Food Rules

I think Michael Pollan is a genius communicator.

In his easy to read and insightful mini-book, Food Rules, he simplifies daily food decisions.

Here are three that made me laugh:

1.   It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
2.  Do all your eating at a table.
3.  Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

Easy rules.  Common Sense.  Love it!

Booting Up Mobile Health

Sometimes a shift is propelled by a bottom-up transformation.    The technology being most adopted by rich and poor alike is – the mobile phone.

The Institute for the Future does a great job of examining how mobile phones will transform healthcare:

Over the next decade, a bottom-up transformation of mobility will create a growing number of opportunities and dilemmas for the health care industry. Booting Up Mobile Health: From Medical Mainframe to Distributed Intelligence identifies the drivers shaping mobile health in the future, and forecasts new business and consumer practices that reorganize the health care system as we know it.

Read it!

the Genius inside us …

It’s going to take a lot of genius to wisely invest the $19+ billion that the leaders of our country just injected into the Health Information Technology marketplace via the HITECH Act.

Those of us in healthcare + technology —– we’ve got to start having honest conversations with ourselves and each other.    I love how Elizabeth Gilbert puts a human perspective on what that conversation would be like.

She’s real.  Insightful.  Moving.   Her belief that we’ve got to find a way to take the genius out of us and realize it could be a “peculiar, wondrous conversation”  is exactly what healthcare needs to hear ….to take a much needed leap forward.

We’ve just got to “show up” to the conversation and do what we do.  Olé !!!