The account as dictated, preserved verbatim. Everything elsewhere on this site that derives from it is a distillation — and where the two differ, this governs.
Dictated by Jonathan Paul Hare in working sessions with Claude (Anthropic) and transcribed in-session. Lightly cleaned for typographic errors and false starts; wording, sequence and emphasis preserved. Not an audio transcript. Where the distilled page differs from the source, the source governs.
[Hare, 26 Jan 2009, to Vijay Goel:] It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm going to be in Southern California from this Thursday through (probably) Monday of next week... We're collaborating with over 30 partners and with various states, federal agencies, medical associations and sponsors in congress towards launching a self-funding "personal health network" organized around patients and their personal network of caregivers. I've attached a couple of pieces to give you some context.
[Esther Dyson, 26 Jan 2009:] Jonathan - FWIW - it's important to remember that X-Prize wants the criteria for a prize, not the specs of a solution.... Esther
[Hare, 26 Jan 2009, 11:15 PM:] My primary interest is not competing for the x-prize directly, but in having an x-prize that draws in as many participants pursuing or supporting breakthrough innovation as possible. In particular, the key question is how to attract participation and collaboration by the mainstream of healthcare - more likely to be laggards than innovators. The scale of the healthcare ecosystem is so large and the problems are so systemic, intertwined and pervasive that some creative thinking is in order as to what the prize itself is (beyond just $10m in cash). Also, the nature of the healthcare challenge seems much different from the original x-prize, and solutions depend more on fostering ecosystem collaboration than head-to-head competition. When John and I first started discussing it, I was pretty skeptical - but we came up with some ideas that could work. Anyway, I'm not sure I have the answers, but I've got some ideas I've road-tested that resonate with some key audiences. Also, my recollection of the early x-prize crowd (i.e. Adeo Ressi) is that they were a lot more fun to hang out with than NASA/Boeing/etc. folks. And - I'm looking for an plausible excuse to hang out in LA for a few extra days.
[Vijay Goel, 27 Jan:] Thanks for reaching out. As Esther mentioned, we're very much involved at present in identifying the right idea(s) in healthcare that could become a prize... Please let me know... if you'd be interested in a formal 1 hour interview, as we begin our idea identification phase. [Sig: Vijay Goel, MD · Director, Prize Development · X PRIZE Foundation · Playa Vista, CA]
[Goel, 28 Jan:] Monday would work well for me... Would you like to connect in our offices in Playa Vista? As I mentioned, we'd like to talk about areas where a health prize may address market failures and catalyze advances that would improve care while reducing costs... some of our colleagues at WellPoint may also want to listen in.
[Hare, 29 Jan, 1:53 PM:] How does 10:30am PST on Monday work on your end? The WellPoint folks are welcome, naturally.
[Goel, 29 Jan, 6:06 PM:] Could we make it 11?
Corrections applied downstream are recorded here rather than made silently. The source above is unaltered.
Dated documentation of the healthcare-era ecosystem argument that the architecture later formalized: Hare's 26 January email argues that systemic healthcare problems yield to fostered ecosystem collaboration rather than head-to-head competition — the Catalyst thesis, stated to the X-Prize Foundation in 2009 — alongside the contemporaneous scale of the personal health network push: thirty-plus partners, states, federal agencies, medical associations, congressional sponsors. Esther Dyson's one-line discipline ('X-Prize wants the criteria for a prize, not the specs of a solution') is preserved as the kind of sentence mentors are for. The Ressi aside independently corroborates the S-120 relationship five years on. Tom Tauzin appears as a participant and possible co-connector; no identification beyond the thread is assumed. Contact details in signatures are decades-stale and flagged under the standing redaction-veto convention.
Each page below is a distillation of the account above. The chain is recorded in both directions so that a reader, a journalist or a future system can walk from a claim back to what was actually said.
A source record can be wrong about the world even when it accurately preserves what was said. Corrections are recorded alongside rather than replacing it — nothing here is overwritten.
Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly — both are on the button — or use the structured contribution form. A timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record.
Correct or extend S-122 → All source records →