Out of Patients EP406: Pediatric Engineering for the Rest of Us: Dr. Jamie Wells
Jamie Wells doesn’t fit into your LinkedIn boxes. Physician. Educator. Policy wonk. Bioethicist. Blockchain ambassador. Director of MIT’s RSI program. And now, author of A Clinical Lens on Pediatric Engineering. She’s the unicorn’s unicorn—and one of the few people I trust to speak fluently across medicine, tech, policy, and what actually works for patients.
I brought her back on Out of Patients because she’s the kind of mind we need more of: fearless, funny, overqualified, and allergic to bullshit. We talked about everything from gene therapies and drug repurposing to why kids hate taking medicine and how a teenager once went viral for calling her the coolest doctor alive. She’s brilliant. She’s weird. And she makes topics like pediatric radiology and AI feel like edge-of-your-seat cinema.
She reminded me why one-size-fits-all medicine has always been a lazy cop-out. Kids aren’t tiny adults. You can’t shrink a system designed for 70kg white dudes and expect it to work. Jamie’s book—and this episode—lays out a blueprint for actually doing something about that.
There’s also an extended riff on the worst-tasting meds, bubblegum-flavored compliance, and the ridiculous ways health systems still ignore the “end user.” Spoiler: it’s the kid.
Producer
Matthew Zachary invented healthcare podcasting before podcasting was a thing. In 2007, fresh off building Stupid Cancer, he grabbed a mic, launched The Stupid Cancer Show, and started broadcasting patient stories on internet talk radio when everyone else was still writing blogs.
19 years and 2000+ episodes later, Out of Patients is still the most unfiltered healthcare show anywhere.
Matthew does not do softball interviews. Brain cancer at 21 taught him that time is finite and bullshit is expensive. He gets guests to say things they would never tell Congress. CEOs admit what is broken. Patients name what actually hurts. Scientists explain what industry does not want you to know. The conversations other shows will not touch because of sponsor concerns or political correctness.
What makes him different: he has been on both sides of the mic. Featured in documentaries. Keynoted hundreds of conferences. Published in The Hill. Now marching into Washington with a national patient constituency behind him.
But he has also been the guy puking from radiation, fighting insurance denials, and watching friends die from paperwork.
That dual perspective creates interviews you will not hear anywhere else. He knows which questions make power squirm because he has asked them from hospital beds and boardrooms both.
No pre-approved questions. No PR handlers. No seven-minute segments. Just real conversations with people brave enough to tell the truth about American healthcare.
Still the show where whistleblowers go first. Still the show … Read More
Out of Patients EP455: SurgeON: Dr. Jeremy Heffner
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