In March of this year, TEDMED’s Jay Walker and Kaiser Permanente Executive Vice President and CIO Philip Fasano had a conversation about imagining tomorrow’s health and medicine at Walker’s Library of Human Imagination.  Recently, the tables were turned, and in a first for the Center for Total Health Blog, Fasano conducted his own Q&A with Walker – about his library’s collection, his role in TEDMED, and what he thinks about when he contemplates the future of health care.

Watch a video of Walker’s conversation with Fasano below, and read on for Fasano’s follow-up Q&A with Walker.

Philip Fasano:

Your Library of Human Imagination is impressive.  For people unfamiliar with the library, can you briefly describe what it is?  Where did the idea come from and how did you bring that vision to life?

Jay Walker:

The Library is a 3,600 sq. ft. wing of my home containing about 30,000 books as well as maps, charts, artworks and a wide variety of historical objects.  Everything in the Library was selected or created to illustrate something about human imagination…from a Gutenberg Bible page to one of the original 1957 Russian Sputnik satellites (a backup that was never launched).  The room combines traditional architecture with high-tech art, sound and lighting, plus unusual design features such as floating platforms and an invisible glass bridge.  The whole look and feel was inspired by the paradoxical spaces of M.C. Escher.

Fasano:

What prompted you to get started collecting?

Walker:

About 15% of the human population has the collecting gene.  I’m one of them.  After I’d been collecting for several years, I asked myself, what is the common theme that runs through all these incredibly diverse items?  I realized that every book or object appealed to me because it was an example of imagination at work.  So about 12 years ago when we built our new house, I made sure to include this Library as a showcase to promote understanding of human imagination and, hopefully, inspire a sense of wonder and curiosity.

Also, my wife said I had to keep all my stuff in one room.

Fasano:

If you had to distill your library down to one or two items, what would they be and why would you select them?

Walker:

Tough assignment!  One thing I usually show visitors is the Harmonia Macrocosmica by Cellarius.  This 1660 atlas included the first published heliocentric depiction of the solar system – a map that divides the Age of Faith from the Age of Reason.  So it’s a dividing line between two highly imaginative ways of looking at the universe.

For people in the health field, I like to show the “flayed angel,” published in Paris by the anatomist and artist Gautier in 1745.  This painting is considered by many to be the Mona Lisa of anatomical artwork.  It’s a three-foot-high, color portrait of a nude, seated woman, viewed from the back with her face turned in three-quarter profile.  Her back is slit open up the spine, and her skin and muscles are peeled aside on both left and right to reveal the ribs beneath.  It sounds grotesque but it was created for educational purposes and the image is actually quite beautiful.

Fasano:

What motivated you to become the curator of TedMed?

Walker:

I have been an enthusiastic member of the TED community, the “ideas worth spreading” conference, for 25 years and have served on TED’s brain trust for many years as well.  When I was invited to speak at TEDMED in 2010, I fell in love with it and so did my partners.  We believed TEDMED could become a great vehicle for progress in health and medicine, a place where people make the unexpected connections that lead to new thinking and unusual collaborations.  We also saw TEDMED as a safe meeting place to have the kind of multi-disciplinary dialog around wellness that everyone says we need, but which just isn’t happening anywhere else.  So we got involved and, together with the growing TEDMED community, are doing our best to support all of that.

Fasano:

What prompted your interest in health care?

Walker:

I have always been passionately interested in the sciences, including medical science, even though I am not an MD or a PhD.  I see health care as an important facet of the much larger field of health and medicine generally.  It’s the one subject that directly impacts all of us.  It’s also the place where so much of today’s intellectual excitement of discovery and invention is happening.

Fasano:

Where are you making investments that are technology and health care related today?

Walker:

TEDMED itself represents a major investment and we’re investing in more ways to serve our community, with support from generous sponsors and partners.  For example, this year TEDMEDLive expanded the simulcast of our Washington, DC conference stage program to 50,000 people in 87 countries and the U.S.  We’re also investing significant time and resources in several concepts and ventures that we believe will leverage technology to serve public health in innovative ways.  But it’s a bit premature to go into detail at this point.

Fasano:

When you think about the future of health care, what comes to your mind?

Walker:

I think about the fact that the consumer is just arriving at the party in a serious way for the first time and that, no matter what health professionals or policymakers expect or want, in a free market and in a democratic society the consumer is going to drive the direction of health and medicine.

I think about the fact that new technology and wearable biosensors are going to connect all of us to the network.  When the day comes that every organ has its own IP address and is providing real time feedback to our doctors 24/7, our behavior will change and how we interact with the health care system, our environment, our food, our employer and our health insurance will change.  Radically.

I think about the fact that there are unlimited opportunities for business acumen and imagination to be applied to create products, services and businesses that not only make healthy revenues, but that also make America healthier in the process.  And, I believe business has a social obligation to make this happen.  Prevention, for example, should be a trillion-dollar industry in this country.  And someday it will be, hopefully sooner rather than later.

So there is a revolution coming in health and in health care, a very positive and constructive revolution; and for all the change we’ve seen in the past decade, this is only the beginning.  Hang on because it’s going to be an incredible rocket ride.

 You can see a virtual tour of the Walker Library of Human Imagination here.