My name is Morgan Biele (Creative Writing Minor) and I am a Senior, Pre-Med, Health Humanities enthusiast, and an eager registered attendee and planner for the Medicine, Humanities, and Business celebration happening this fall. At this event, happening on the fifth of November, Dr. Quinn Wang M.D. will be speaking about her start-up, Quadrant Eye, and will delve into her experience practicing medicine in an interdisciplinary way. I am so excited to hear from Dr. Wang, and also to watch this event bring together such a big community of people dedicated to not only medicine, but also this range of overlapping fields, just like me.
This is the second iteration of an event that happened last year, in which Grace Li spoke to a Duke audience about pursuing her medical education while also having written a novel. This event was absolutely amazing, from the candor with which Grace spoke about navigating the Duke experience to the realization of just how many people were there with books in hand wanting to know how they too could be writing and doing medicine at the same time at whatever stage of their career they were in. I watched in awe as I found people asking the same questions I had hoped would be asked, wondering the same things that I had been wondering.
In thinking about this year’s event, I am really looking forward to finding that sense of connection amongst the group again. Dr. Wang created Quadrant Eye as a way to make eye care and diagnostic processes more accessible, driven by narratives in her own life and others, and noting the number of people around the world who were not able to receive adequate optometry because the needed equipment was unavailable. As a result, Quadrant Eye, among other feats, provides a first-of-its-kind at-home eye exam, brought to fruition by a vast array of experts in technology, population health, engineering, design, business, and practicing physicians. As a result, I have no doubt that this talk with Quinn Wang will show attendees a holistic world of medicine informed across disciplines and getting creative to provide solutions to meet patients’ needs. Events like this remind me of the biopsychosocial lens by which health can be understood, and make me eager to see a healthcare that continues to meet patients wherever they are. For those interested in learning how the humanities and business fit within the scope of medicine, I think this event will be a must-see and I can’t wait to find my curiosity for the health humanities encouraged in this way. Thank you to the Franklin Humanities Institute for their support of this event, and for making it such a special part of Duke!
Dr. Quinn Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Quadrant Eye, will be speaking at Duke's Fall 2022 Medicine, Humanities, and Business (MHB) Celebration on Saturday, November 5th from 6pm-8pm in Schichiano Auditorium. Dr. Wang is a Duke and UCSF trained comprehensive ophthalmologist and Y-Combinator venture startup founder. She graduated from Duke University in 2010 with a BA in English Literature and with an MD from the Duke University School of Medicine in 2015. Dr. Wang will highlight how an immersive undergraduate background in English literature allowed her to take a creative (and successful!) leap from practicing surgeon to startup CEO. She will also speak of the opportunity (and challenge!) involved in being a female leader in both the surgery & startup scenes of Silicon Valley. Refreshments will be provided.
