Atul Gawande

Surgeon, writer, public health innovator
Surgeon and public health professor by day, writer by night, Atul Gawande explores how doctors can dramatically improve their practice using approaches as simple as a checklist – or coaching.

Why you should listen

Atul Gawande is author of several best-selling books, including Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect ScienceBetter: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End and The Checklist Manifesto.

He is also a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science, a MacArthur Fellowship and two National Magazine Awards. In his work in public health, he is Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation and chair of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally.

In June 2018, Gawande was chosen to lead the new healthcare company set up by Amazon, JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway.

Photo: Aubrey Calo

What others say

“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

Atul Gawande’s TED talks

More news and ideas from Atul Gawande

Live from TED2017

Health, life and love: The talks of Session 4 of TED2017

April 26, 2017

Session 4 of TED2017 kicked off with an interview with perhaps the greatest athlete of all time, Serena Williams, and closed with the potentially world-changing announcement of this year’s TED Prize wish from Raj Panjabi. In between, the session saw a surprise talk directly from the Vatican by His Holiness Pope Francis — the culmination of […]

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