FRIENDS IN LAB COATS

They have many things in common, like being driven individuals, patient-centric doctors and excellent communicators. THE WEEK used their time together at the Cleveland Clinic as a thread to chat with Dr Jame Abraham and Dr Madhu Sasidhar

- MATHEW T. GEORGE

When you are online, do look up the sixth edition of The Bethesda Handbook of Clinical Oncology by Dr Jame Abraham and Dr James L. Gulley. You are unlikely to find a review below 4.5/5. And that is from diverse platforms such as Goodreads and Amazon. Abraham is chair, department of haematology and medical oncology, Cleveland Clinic.

And then you have a doctor who taught himself programming while being a specialist in internal medicine, pulmonology and critical care. At the height of the Covid pandemic, he managed the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi. Dr Madhu Sasidhar is president and CEO of Apollo Hospitals' hospital division.

Abraham went from Calicut Medical College to the University of Connecticut to the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health in the US to West Virginia University before his current role in Cleveland. Sasidhar went from JIPMER to St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City to Yale University and then capped it all with a master's in business administration from INSEAD, France. As they were friends at Cleveland Clinic, this reporter sat down with them in Delhi for a freewheeling chat on the sidelines of THE WEEK Health Summit a few weeks ago.

The engineer and the Jesuit priest

While it would be an understatement to call Sasidhar and Abraham overachievers, it came as a surprise when both admitted that they initially had other professions in mind. Abraham wanted to be a Jesuit priest, and one cannot but feel that there is a bit of that vocation left in him. Sasidhar wanted to be an engineer and spent a year in engineering school before joining medical college. Again, one cannot but feel that there is an engineer in him still.