We pick out 7 reads inspired by Toronto Health Innovation Week to help reframe your thinking and spark your collaboration to improve healthcare outcomes in Ontario, Canada and beyond.
Essential Toronto Health Innovation reads
- The Futures of Health – Spaces + Places of Care by Idea Couture
- The Gene – An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
- Do No Harm – Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh.
- What Matters Most – Patient Outcomes and the Transformation of Health Care by The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM)
- The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands by Eric Topol
- How We Can Win: And What Happens to Us and Our Country If We Don’t by Anthony Lacavera and Kate Fillion
1. The Futures of Health – Spaces + Places of Care
Our highest recommended read from 2016 and perfect for visionary thinking for THIW. It is also written by Toronto based Idea Couture. It anticipates what reasonable predictions we can make about the future of care in 2025 and beyond? It is a thought-provoking book. The book is well structured around shifts, tension matrices, narratives and design principles. Chapter 5 on Economic + Human Values in Healthcare is pertinent to the ongoing discussion about outcomes. It is well referenced and illustrated; reminding me a little of Business Model Generation. This was also a top pick for Dr. Zayna Khayat, Future Strategist at Saint Elizabeth Healthcare.
“Over the last two decades, our understanding and experience of ‘Place’ has been disrupted, upended, reconfigured, and forever transformed. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”
2. The Gene – An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Our top recommended read from 2017. Dr. Mukherjee’s writing style is highly readable and absorbing. It certainly fulfils its title as an Intimate History. Don’t be put off by the number of pages. This #1 New York Times Bestseller was mesmerising. Those with healthcare background or interest will read a little deeper into the concepts and terminology. For me it provokes the question, what will people look back on in 200 years, “can you believe people used to think that in 2017?” Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University. In describing gene variation, he writes,
“But the real surprise, perhaps is that we should be surprised at all.”
3. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Dr. Gawande is a spellbindingly good storyteller of the highest order. It challenges our healthcare assumptions about the goals of healthcare and what quality of life means. The book makes our lifetime must-read list, whether you work in healthcare or not. His 2014 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures – The Future of Medicine are articulate, measured and insightful. The podcasts are the perfect accompaniment to his outstanding book Being Mortal as well as complementing this wider topic.
We are graduating from the century of the molecule to the century of the system.” Atul Gawande
4. Do No Harm – Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
The author, a British surgeon, guides the reader through real-life scenarios facing the surgeon. It echoed the importance of listening to the patient to address patient-centred concerns. Marsh reflects on the value of asking your physician what option they would choose if the patient were their family member. It may be the most obvious, yet, least often asked questions. Why is that? This was the perfect accompaniment building on Atul Gawande’s outstanding book above Being Mortal, which we recommended last year.
5. What Matters Most – Patient Outcomes and the Transformation of Health Care by The International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM)
This downloadable book presents the why, how and what of building transformation in value-based health care through outcome measurement. The book is centred on multiple case studies and personal insights that brings a great resonance to it. We recorded a short video interview with Alethse De la Torre, Director, Standardization and Latin America, from ICHOM, at the Medtech Conference presented by MEDEC. Look back at our previous post Value-based health care – ICHOM.
“The best way to avoid health care cost is not to do stuff that doesn’t work”, says Caleb Stowell, ICHOM
6. The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands by Eric Topol
This was recommended by Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya PhD at the IDEATHON: Innovating the Customer Experience run by Hacking Health Toronto on the first day of THIW at MaRS Discovery District.
I will never look at my smartphone again in the same way after reading The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands”, noted Dr. James M. Parish in his review of this book.
7. How We Can Win: And What Happens to Us and Our Country If We Don’t by Anthony Lacavera and Kate Fillion
How We Can Win is a timely book by Anthony Lacavera and Kate Fillion. We rank it as one of the best reads in the last six months. If you haven’t read it yet and you care about tech startups in Canada, you really should.
“To rebrand Canada as a place where innovation and entrepreneurship thrive, we need to be aware of our history as well as our present-day strengths. To believe we can innovate, we need role models, from the past and from the present. And we also need to make it possible for innovation to thrive in every corner of the country.”
Our final recommendation is to download the Hacking Health Yearbook below, released in the days before Toronto Health Innovation Week. 
“How can we start from scratch, reimagine what we can do differently in healthcare in Canada so that the patient experience is smoother, less stressful, a lot easier to navigate to get the information they need,” described Nick Piperno co-lead at the IDEATHON.
DOWNLOAD THE HACKING HEALTH YEARBOOK
- Watch our four 1-minute video interviews recorded through Toronto Health Innovation Week – Patients Included
- Read our recent post What True North means for Waterloo Region
Brain photo by Jesse Orrico on Unsplash.
