Robert M. Wachter

Robert Wachter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He coined the term "hospitalist" and is considered the father of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing medical specialty in modern times. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. In 2015, Modern Healthcare magazine named him the most influential physician-executive in the U.S. His 2015 book is "The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine's Computer Age." The New York Times called it "Eloquent...powerfully felt & intelligently analyzed." Abraham Verghese called it "simply brilliant" and Atul Gawande said, "I kept thinking, 'Exactly!' while reading it, and that is a measure of Wachter's accomplishment in telling the tale." In April, 2015, it reached the Times science bestseller list. He and his wife, the author and journalist Katie Hafner, live in San Francisco.