In this richly-colored painting, artist and patient-rights activist Regina Holliday depicts central themes of the upcoming Stanford Medicine X conference. On the artist's blog she explains:
In the foreground, two girls stand within rising water. They are patients in need of rescue from the coming flood. One girl turns her back to the viewer and holds a smart phone in her hand. The other girl looks out of the frame and a blue twitter bird perches upon her finger. Though they look concerned but they are not panicked, because they have the tools of mobile health and social media to help them.
To the left of this piece, a series of people are pushing their rafts upon the rising water. Our blocks from the tower have become rafts to navigate the deluge. Here we have doctors, techs, academics, venders, designers and patients trying to find common ground. Each uses the pole in their hands to move forward in the water. As the pole crosses before their body each becomes the letter "X."
We are the X in Medicine X. We are the unknown part of the equation. We are the mysterious other that has not been applied to the solution. We are the files locked in a cabinet and dismissed as other or strange. We are the ever arching story above and beyond the episode of care.
Via Medicine X blog