"What’s wrong with health care today in the U.S?" Tim Zak asks Ticia Gerber, Vice President of International Programs and Public Policy at the eHealth Initiative. "And, is more technology in health care the answer?"

Tim's guest sits at the center of one of the world’s great current debates: How do we keep people healthy without having it cost an arm and a leg? No pun intended.

While the developed countries possess the most sophisticated technical solutions, they do not always achieve the best results. So what role should technology play in the future of health care? Especially global health care?

As initiator of the nonprofit’s Leadership in Global Health Technology Initiative (LIGHT), Gerber is working across six continents to bridge the public, private, and social sectors. Host Tim Zak talks with her about what it means to create a dialogue between the developed and developing world.

Gerber hopes to identify key barriers, workable strategies, and imperatives for implementing an interconnected, electronic health information infrastructure to support better health and health care. Not suprisingly, she is also immersed in related global issues: pandemics, bioterrorism, and infomatics. A key question for Gerber revolves around data, namely, what does it mean for the world’s health information to be increasingly more interconnected and available?

In dealing with a wide variety of stakeholders -- all of whom have an interest in global health care, from health ministers to CEOs to funders -- how does Gerber handle the multifaceted and often times conflicting agendas? She shares her experience in finding the most effective way to deal with all of these interests and still have big impact on global health through information and IT.