Snowmageddon and the 2017 Digital Health Evangelist Award

Each year fifty of the leading entrepreneurs, investors, technologists, reporters, and providers dedicated to bringing technological advancements to healthcare are recognized at the Top 50 in Digital Health dinner hosted by Rock Health, Fenwick & West, Goldman Sachs, and Square 1 Bank. I was honored to win the Digital Health Evangelist 2017 category and planning to attend the gala event to receive my award, and happily it was even during during #JPM17 week in San Francisco.

columbia river gorge photo blog by blaine franger

Unhappily, my flight was cancelled due to a pretty big snowstorm which socked the Pacific Northwest and halted almost all air travel. But I'm still a winner because I have many friends and colleagues who voted for me, I have a loving family, and most of all my devoted wife who has to put up with all the stuff most of you never see. And of course there are a host of people along my journey in life that have been so instrumental in any success I may have - and certainly God has richly blessed me beyond measure. What a long strange trip it's been indeed...

So it is with a happy heart that I share this Facebook video my wife took of me, using our mailbox as a snow podium and with only birds, cats, and our dogs in attendance 😀

Seemed appropriate to me and I am still truly humbled by the honor of winning this award and I will try to live up to the high standard that the 2016 Digital Health Evangelist set - Daniel Kraft, MD sets the bar pretty high!

I am going to make it my mission in 2017 to redouble my efforts to building consensus among diverse stakeholders to use new and forward leaning technology tools in order to solve big problems. In this year of transition (in so many ways) it will be even more important that we all pull together to fix this broken healthcare system.

Accepting my Digital Health Evangelist 2017 award (in absentia due to the PacNW snowmageddon).

So again, thank you to all who voted and now it's time to get packing for sunny Orlando. See you at HIMSS!