Indian-origin surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande doing exceptional work abroad

NEW DELHI: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan have picked Indian-origin surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande to lead their new non-profit healthcare joint venture. The new firm is meant to help the three companies improve health care and lower costs, and it will be based in Boston. Gawande has elaborated on America’s failure to deal with rising health-care spending and criticism on his industry's practices in writing.

Here are five things to know about Gawande:

1. Gawande was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Indian immigrant parents, who were both doctors. His distinct academic background includes an undergraduate degree in biology and political science from Stanford University, an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Balliol College, Oxford, a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School, and a Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

2. Gawande is also a bestselling author, and he practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital and is a professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.

3. In his 2014 book "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End," Gawande argued against prolonging a poor quality of life for the elderly.

4. Gawande has written several New York Times bestsellers such as “Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science,” which was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2002.

5. Gawande, now 52, has become prominent among health-care policy experts with a 2009 New Yorker article, “The Cost Conundrum,” that examined why health care was vastly more expensive in some parts of the US than others, despite little difference in the sickness or health of people getting it.