Eric J. Topol, MD
A practicing cardiologist at Scripps in La Jolla, California Topol is well known for leading the Cleveland Clinic to become the #1 center for heart care. While there he also started a new medical school, led many worldwide clinical trials to advance care for patients with heart disease, and spearheaded the discovery of multiple genes that increase susceptibility for heart attacks. Since 2006, in La Jolla, he leads the flagship NIH supported Scripps Translational Science Institute and is Professor of Genomics at The Scripps Research Institute. He also serves as Chief Academic Officer of Scripps Health and is a co-founder of the West Wireless Health Institute. Topol pioneered the development of many medications that are routinely used in medical practice including t-PA, Plavix, Angiomax, and ReoPro and was the first physician to raise safety concerns on Vioxx. He has published 1100 peer-reviewed articles and over 30 medical textbooks. In 2009, along with Francis Collins and Harold Varmus, Topol was selected to be one of the country’s 12 “Rock Stars of Science” in GQ Magazine. In 2011, the University of Michigan, where he had served on the faculty, initiated the Eric Topol Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine to recognize his contributions. The University of Rochester, his alma mater medical school, awarded him the Hutchison Medal, the University’s highest honor. In 2012, he was voted the most influential physician executive in the United States in a poll conducted by Modern Healthcare. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is one of the top 10 most cited researchers in medicine. His book The Creative Destruction of Medicine (Basic Books) was published in 2012.
Anne Balsamo, PhD
In her recent book, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work (Duke, 2011), Anne Balsamo offers a manifesto for rethinking the role of culture in the process of technological innovation in the 20th century. Based on her experiences as an educator, new media designer, research scientist and entrepreneur, the book offers a series of lessons about the cultivation of the technological imagination and the cultural and ethical implications of emergent technologies. Dr. Balsamo was recently appointed the Dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School for Public Engagement in New York. Previously she was a full professor at the University of Southern California in the Annenberg School of Communication and the Interactive Media Division of the School of Cinematic Arts. From 2004-2007, she served as the Director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC where she created one of the first academic programs in multimedia literacy across the curriculum. In 2002, she co-founded, Onomy Labs, Inc. a Silicon Valley technology design and fabrication company that builds cultural technologies. From 1999-2002, she was a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents), a collaborative research-design group at Xerox PARC who created experimental reading devices and new media genres. She served as project manager and new media designer for the development of RED’s interactive museum exhibit, XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading that toured Science/Technology Museums in the U.S. from 2000-2003. Her earlier book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke UP, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies.
Jay Baruch, MD
Jay Baruch, MD is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, where he also serves as the director of the Program in Clinical Arts and Humanities, co-director of the medical humanities and bioethics scholarly concentration, and director of the ethics curriculum.
His collection of short fiction, Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers (Kent State University Press, 2007) was Honorable Mention in the short story category in ForeWord Magazine’s 2007 Book of the Year Awards. His short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous print and online literary, medical and humanities journals.He is a former Faculty Fellow, Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. His academic work draws on his experience as an emergency physician and a writer, and involves program development with a central focus that emphasizes the role of humanities and creative thinking as medical instruments to produce better healthcare providers. His present work is exploring the role of narrative and humanities as a means for community engagement on healthcare issues. His teaching and curriculum projects at Alpert Medical School are rooted in interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations. Examples include bringing medical students into conversations with law students at Roger Williams University Law School, art students at Rhode Island School of Design, and acting students with the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program. He has also taught undergraduate medical humanities seminars at Brown University.
He lectures nationally on topics ranging from creative writing, the medical humanities, and medical ethics. More information on Jay Baruch can be found at www.jaybaruch.com
Marc Triola, MD
Dr. Marc Triola is the Associate Dean for Educational Informatics at NYU School of Medicine. He directs the NYU School of Medicine Division of Educational Informatics (DEI, http://dei.med.nyu.edu), one of the largest medical educational technology laboratories in the country. Dr. Triola’s research experience and expertise includes computer-based medical education, the use of Virtual Patients, and the assessment of change in knowledge and attitudes resulting from computer-assisted instruction. He chairs numerous committees at the state and national level focused on the future of health professions educational technology development and research.
DEI has played a key role in transforming medical education locally and is recognized internationally as a leader of innovation within medical education. Dr. Triola and DEI have been funded by the NIH, the IAIMS program, the National Science Foundation Advanced Learning Technologies Program, the Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Triola is currently the Principal Investigator of a grant from the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation to support the development of NYU 3T: Teaching, Technology, Teamwork, which provides NYU medical and nursing students with longitudinal exposure to a diverse patient population and systematic interdisciplinary education in the competencies of team-based care; the first large scale medical-nursing education collaborative at NYU. He recently gave a ‘TED Talk’ at TEDMED 2012 and his first textbook, “Biostatistics for the Biological and Health Sciences”, was published by Addison Wesley.
Dr. Triola is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the NYU School of Medicine. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and subsequently served as Chief Resident for the Internal Medicine Training Program. He completed a Research Fellowship in Medical Informatics at the NYU and Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Yuri Millo, MD
Yuri Millo is a physician with over 20 years of experience in healthcare innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Dr. Millo Co-chair the American College of Surgeons committee on technology and standards, he is alumni of Singularity University medical executive program and presenter at Future Med. He in member of several organization including the American College of Healthcare Executives. He is a sought-after speaker, presenting internationally on the topics of simulation, training and innovation.
Dr Millo area of innovation is the junction of Technology, Training and Healthcare.
Dr Millo recently founded Millo Group, a consulting and service group focused providing medical simulation and modeling solutions based on innovation, research and evidence based science.
Until recently in his position as Director and Founder of SiTEL of MedStar Health, for ten years he provided the unifying vision for the development of advanced education and training technologies at MedStar Health a $3.8 billion, not-for-profit organization in the greater Baltimore-Washington area with nine hospitals.
The area of innovation was in design and operation of new simulation centers, integration of serious games in healthcare training and development of advance talent management systems.
In 2000, prior to launching SiTEL, Dr. Millo founded the Internet Academy for Medical Education. It was one of the first providers of synchronous and asynchronous online continuing medical education.
Dr. Millo completed medical school at Caregi Faculty of Medicine, Florence, Italy and trained in general surgery and vascular surgery in Tel Aviv and plastic surgery in Jerusalem, Israel. He completed a fellowship in pediatric plastic surgery in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Dr. Millo served in the Israeli Air Force as a Rescue Team Commander.
Dr. Millo donates time and expertise to Operation Smile, an international children’s medical charity that treats childhood facial deformities including cleft lips and cleft palates.
Louise Aronson, MD
Louise Aronson is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the author of A History of the Present Illness, linked stories which take readers into the lives of doctors, patients, and their families, providing a portrait of health and illness in America today. An academic geriatrician and medical educator, Dr. Aronson directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center, the UCSF reflective learning curriculum, and the Pathways to Discovery Program, and serves as associate editor for the JAMA Care of the Aging Patient series and director of Public Medical Communication for the Program for the Aging Century. She is the recipient of the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, a Geriatric Academic Career Award, the Cooke Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, the Lieberman Scholar Award, and the AOA Edward D. Harris Professionalism Award. Dr. Aronson also holds an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and her writing has appeared in both literary and medical journals, in the lay press, and increasingly, on blogs. She has won the Sonora Review Prize, the New Millennium Short Fiction Award, three Pushcart nominations, and has been awarded UCross, Ragdale and Hedgebrook Foundation residencies. Find her at http://louisearonson.com/ or on twitter @louisearonson.
Louise Aronson is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). A geriatrician and medical educator, Louise cares for frail older adults, directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center, the UCSF reflective learning curriculum, and the Pathways to Discovery Program, and serves as associate editor for the JAMA Care of the Aging Patient series and director of Public Medical Communication for the Program for the Aging Century. She is the recipient of the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, a Geriatric Academic Career Award, the Cooke Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, the Lieberman Scholar Award, and the AOA Edward D. Harris Professionalism Award. Dr. Aronson also holds an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and her fiction has appeared in both literary and medical journals including Bellevue Literary Review, Northwest Review, Fourteen Hills, The Literary Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. She has won the Sonora Review Prize, the New Millennium Short Fiction Award, multiple writer’s residency fellowships, and three Pushcart nominations. A History of the Present Illness is her first book.
Alexa Miller, MA
Alexa Miller is a recognized expert in aligning medical training with education methodologies in the visual arts. She is the principal of Arts Practica, a medical education consultancy committed to improving quality in care providers’ attention. Over the past decade, she has worked with hospitals, medical schools and other health care organizations to create and facilitate museum-based workshops and programs. Alexa is co-creator of the Training the Eye Program at Harvard Medical School, a preclinical course focused on the physical exam and the process of diagnosis, and has contributed to research on the impact of arts training on medical students. Alexa is adjunct faculty in Brandeis University’s Education Department, where she works closely with the Rose Art Museum. Formerly curator of education at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Alexa created professional development workshops, taught courses in arts learning, and conducted research on undergraduates’ museum experiences.
A frequent presenter to medical and general audiences on the impact of aesthetic experiences on clinical engagement, Alexa has written and contributed to research in peer-reviewed publications, including Journal of General Internal Medicine and the Journal of Museum Education.
Alexa received her BA in art history from Swarthmore College and MA in studio painting from the Wimbledon School of Art. She has received awards from Creative Center for People with Cancer and New England Museum Association. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband (a biologist) and toddler (a professional trainspotter) among many picture books.