A Marriage Of Data And Caregivers Gives Dr. Atul Gawande Hope For Health Care

Dr. Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) has been a bard in the health care world, straddling medicine, academia and the humanities as a practicing surgeon, medical school professor, best-selling author and staff writer at the New Yorker magazine. His long-form narratives and books have helped illuminate complex systems and wicked problems to a broad audience.

One recent feature that continues to resonate for those who wish to apply data to the public good is Gawande’s New Yorker piece “The Hot Spotters,” where Gawande considered whether health data could help lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care. That story brings home the challenges of providing health care in a city, from cultural change to gathering data to applying it.

This summer, after meeting Gawande at the 2012 Health DataPalooza, I interviewed him about hot spotting, predictive analytics, networked transparency, health data, feedback loops and the problems that technology won’t solve. Our interview, lightly edited for content and clarity, follows.