Links ...

1. An inspiring lecture at TED India by Dr. Thulasiraj Ravilla on the truly revolutionary Aravind Eye Care System that has used the McDonald's model to provide eye care to millions. This post has a bunch of links about Dr. Venkataswamy, the founder of Aravind.

2. Year of first mention of Contact Lens in NYTimes: 1930.

3. NPR story -- Atul Gawande's 'Checklist' For Surgery Success -- on the author's latest book, The Checklist Manfesto (along with excerpts from Chapter 1):

   "Our great struggle in medicine these days is not just with ignorance and uncertainty," Gawande says. "It's also with complexity: how much you have to make sure you have in your head and think about. There are a thousand ways things can go wrong."

   At the heart of Gawande's idea is the notion that doctors are human, and that their profession is like any other.

   "We miss stuff. We are inconsistent and unreliable because of the complexity of care," he says. So Gawande imported his basic idea from other fields that deal in complex systems.

   "I got a chance to visit Boeing and see how they make things work, and over and over again they fall back on checklists," Gawande says. "The pilot's checklist is a crucial component, not just for how you handle takeoff and landing in normal circumstances, but even how you handle a crisis emergency when you only have a couple of minutes to make a critical decision."