Where: Los Angeles, California
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Blogger, author and futurist John Irvine helped found The Health Care Blog (THCB) in 2005 with Matthew Holt. Over the next ten years he led the site as executive editor as it evolved into the leading health care blog covering the intersection of health, technology and policy. Part alternative medical journal, part opinion page for health care leaders and front line health care workers and part stage for technology evangelists hoping to introduce new companies and ideas, THCB’s unusual format quickly proved a hit.
Founded on the operating principle that the wrong ideas often get too much play in coverage of health and medicine and that journalists often fail to recognize important disagreements between experts until it is too late, THCB gave a platform to writers who otherwise weren’t being heard and won a reputation as an “influential,”ground-breaking” and “contrarian publication” read by industry insiders.
Under John’s leadership, THCB ran blog posts by authors on both sides of many of the issues dividing healthcare. The blog aggressively covered the battles over Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, the drive to modernize medicine using electronic health records and data and the subsequent tech backlash, industry consolidation, the debate over quality and measurement and many other stories.
Bloggers included Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, UCSF’s Bob Wachter, Harvard’s Ashish Jha, CDC Director Tom Frieden, Aaron Carroll, Andy Slavitt, Elizabeth Rosenthal, futurist Jeff Goldsmith and a long list of talented contributors too numerous to mention.
THCB’s success led to the highly successful Health 2.0 conference series, which John helped start in 2007 with Matthew Holt and Indu Subayia, before returning to lead editorial operations at THCB. A venue for healthcare startups, thought leaders and investors, Health 2.0 was sold to HIMSS in 2018 for an undisclosed sum.
In 2018, John left THCB to pursue his other writing projects while the site took a new direction under publisher Matthew Holt.
In 2019 John founded The Deductible with the University of New Haven’s Jason Chung, based on the idea that coverage of the health care system is overly influenced by a closed group of experts and journalists.
Education
John attended Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota and Columbia University. He holds a Masters in Diplomacy and International Relations from the Whitehead School of Diplomacy.
Editorial Interests
John’s editorial interests include futurism, health technology, the business of health care and political economy of health care, international healthcare system and the rights of healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses and the
A believer in Billy Bean’s school of managing and identifying undervalued talent chronicled in ”Moneyball”, John enjoys finding and developing new bloggers and helping them tell their stories. He works with doctors, technologists and business people to develop opinion + analysis. Through his Elysian Park project he works to identify potential projects for
Fiction
John is the author of the forthcoming novel + original television series The Dead Policeman, featuring the fictional detective Siddhartha Sen, set in the city of Kolkata, India.