“If I were not doing what I’m doing and I wanted to do something in health care … I would go to all of the research universities and would try to figure out where the best, interesting IT software is that can be open-sourced,” he said at a health-IT panel discussion. “My guess is that a platform like that would be remarkably different from the platforms that we are using today,” he said.
He wouldn't go to the patients to find out what they want or to the Hospitals to find out what they need he'd turn to the research community. I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. It probably has aspects of both.
But it's instructional because that's not what normal software company's tend to do. For example, when Microsoft wants to build a health platform they go to hospitals and do usability tests with doctors and nurses.