I probably shouldn’t be telling this story. It starts in 1968. According to (brilliant) researcher, surgeon and writer Atul Gawande, in that year, The Lancet published findings that represent one of the most important medical advances of the last century. It was just this: David R. Nalin and Richard A. Cash, American researchers in Dhaka during a cholera outbreak, added sugar to salt and water hydration and administered it orally to 29 patients. Cholera deaths: zero. Sugar, it seems, helps the gut absorb fluids. Cholera pandemics killed millions in the nineteenth century. Even after intravenous fluids reduced mortality to 30 per cent in the early years of the twentieth century, globally, most people died, especially in places where...

I’ve had jobs that made me cry – don’t ask – but this may be the first time I’ve had a job that caused me to make other people cry. With a lot of help from other team members, I make videos and write stories about Telehomecare. I talk to patients and their family caregivers, their nurses or respiratory therapists and doctors. From time to time, we visit patients in their homes. That’s where Telehomecare connects them with a clinician who monitors their vital signs remotely and coaches them about how to live their best possible life. Then we tell their stories on screen, in news stories and on our web site so that people – and health care providers – learn about the program and how it can...