Ep. 122: The American Health Apparatus and Public Health Transparency with Microsoft's Dr. Jim Weinstein

Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

"As I scientist I ask-- where's the data on COVID vaccines? How many women, how many men, how many shots? Which arm? Did it cause their diabetes to get better? Did it affect their time off of work? What kind of reaction? We need to know this."

Renowned physician and executive Dr. James Weinstein is here, talking public health, policy, wasteful spending, and transparency— or lack of— in our medical system. Life can throw us medical curveballs, sometimes one after another. How is a patient, regardless of having healthcare or not, supposed to know what is best for him or her? Jim Weinstein’s model, conceived at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, is one he calls “informed choice.” Can doctors and patients work together to find a way to better decision-making? Where is the basic data on responses to mRNA vaccines that the public can access and look through? Why is public messaging often so muddled? With a deeply personal story interwoven with family tragedy and a wealth of expertise in the corporate and academic medical worlds, this is a unique perspective on the complex inner workings of the system most close to us all— our health.

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Dr. James N. Weinstein joined Microsoft in July 2018 as Senior Vice President, Microsoft Healthcare, leading strategy, and innovation. During the pandemic, he has worked with Operation Warp speed and various organizations around the world, including, WHO, CDC as well as state and local government efforts to bring the Microsoft vaccine platform for enrolling, disseminating, and tracking vaccine participants. He serves as executive sponsor for some the largest health delivery systems in the world, including, NHS, HCA, CVS, MGB (the Harvard system), John’s Hopkins, Centene, Kaiser and many others. Dr. James N. Weinstein is the immediate past Chief Executive Officer and President of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health. The $2.5 billion system includes New Hampshire's only academic medical center and a network of affiliated hospitals and clinics across Vermont and New Hampshire, serving a patient population of about 2 million. Under his leadership, Dartmouth-Hitchcock worked to create a “sustainable health system” for the patients and communities it serves, for generations to come. As leader of a bi-state health system, he created an operating model based in population health locally and nationally. The 7 hospital system ranked in the top 1% for quality. He created a joint venture with Harvard Pilgrim to create a new health plan for Northern New England. He worked with Congress during three prior administrations, and helped lead the ACO, population-based strategies and led national efforts in Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROM’s) and Health Equity. In the past few years, he’s helped lead the formation of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), funded initially by an $80 million grant from the Department of Defense and more than $300 million in private sector funding. ARMI uses 3D technology to print human organs, a development that could transform the world of organ transplantation and the lives of millions affected by diseases such as kidney disease and diabetes. He is a member of the Board of Directors of ARMI/BioFab.