MUMBAI: Indian-American surgeon Atul Gawande has been appointed to lead the health care venture formed by e-commerce giants Amazon, JP Morgan and Berkshine Hathway.
Gawande has taken the role of CEO at the newly formed entity and will officially start working from July. The heath care company headquartered in Boston, US, will be an independent organisation and work as an NGO (free from profit making incentives and constrains).
Thrilled to be working with the company, Gawande said, “I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better health care delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world.”
Gawande mentioned that this work will take time but must be done. “The system is broken, and better is possible.”
The newly appointed CEO practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said, "All felt that better care can be delivered and that rising costs can be checked. Jamie, Jeff and I are confident that we have found in Atul the leader who will get this important job done”.
JPMorgan chairman and CEO of Chase Jamie Dimon added, ”Together, we have the talent and resources to make things better, and it is our responsibility to do so. We're so grateful for the countless statements of support and offers to help and participate, and we're so fortunate to have attracted such an extraordinary leader and innovator as Atul.”
The companies' executives Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon had said in January that their companies would work together to give their combined 8,40,000 employees better health care choices. With this venture, they hope to bring down costs, both for their workers and their companies.
He's a staff writer for The New Yorker and has written four New York Times bestsellers.
It is possible that MacArthur genius grant recipient and the Rhodes Scholar will try a different approach to make the health care ecosystem . Amazon, after all, is known for upending the markets they enter.
