An artist, hacker and interaction designer, Salvatore Iaconesi embarked on a bold open-source project in 2012. Subject: his own brain cancer
Why you should listen
Yesterday I went to get my digital medical records: I have to show them to many doctors.
Sadly they were in a closed, proprietary format and, thus, I could not open them using my computer, or send them in this format to all the people who could have saved my life.
I cracked them.
I opened them and converted the contents into open formats, so that I could share them with everyone.
In cracking his scans, X-rays, lab notes and charts, and opening them to the world, he laid out a model for open-sourcing not only a support group, but a whole cure (he calls it, in his native Italian, "La cura"). And he means a cure of any kind: "There are cures for the body, for spirit, for communication." He had brain surgery in February 2013, "and everything went perfectly." Now he is working on sharing the benefits of his experience.
What others say
Salvatore Iaconesi has given us a manifesto.
Salvatore Iaconesi’s TED Talk
More news and ideas from Salvatore Iaconesi
Live from TEDGlobal
Why I open-sourced cures to my cancer: Salvatore Iaconesi at TEDGlobal 2013
June 14, 2013
“This was my cancer,” TED Fellow Salvatore Iaconesi begins his TEDGlobal talk, showing a slide of brain scans taken last summer, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 39. Since the moment Iaconesi heard the word “cancer” come out of his doctors’ mouth, he noticed something — that the way people related to […]
Continue readingLive from TEDGlobal
All Together Now: The speakers in Session 12 at TEDGlobal 2013
June 14, 2013
TEDGlobal 2013 has come to a close, and we’ve reached the final session: All Together Now. Here a look at the speakers who appeared in the session. Click on the speaker’s name to read a recap of their talk. Michael E. Porter wrote the books on modern competitive strategy for business. Now he is thinking deeply […]
Continue readingHealth
The latest on Salvatore Iaconesi: the continued momentum of open-sourcing cancer cures
November 7, 2012
“This is my brain cancer. It isn’t nice,” says Salvatore Iaconesi, the engineer, artist and TED Fellow who recently opened up his medical files to the world, crowdsourcing cures of the medical type as well as those for the soul. In this just-released talk from TEDxTransmedia, Iaconesi explains why he made the decision to release […]
Continue reading