Biography
Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is often considered the “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing medical specialty in U.S. history. His 2015 book, The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age, was a New York Times science bestseller. Thirteen times, Modern Healthcare magazine has ranked him as one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S.; he was #1 on the list in 2015. In 2020-21, his tweets on Covid-19 served as a trusted source of information on the clinical, public health, and policy issues surrounding the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic is driving the unprecedented transformation of the global medical research ecosystem through the search for effective new therapeutics that can help ease symptoms and prevent death among COVID-19 patients.