It’s not every day that a 1,000-bed floating naval hospital parks across the street from your studio. (From our studio, anyway.) And it’s definitely not every day that said ship’s Commanding Officer invites you aboard for a tour—and then sits down to record a podcast. But all of this recently happened to us, and the result is a superb new episode of The Resonance Test, featuring the USNS Comfort’s Commanding Officer Captain Lanny Boswell in conversation with Continuum’s Mike Dunkley. Some highlights from Boswell:
• “In some of these countries where healthcare is few and far between, when we move in, we can impact and change the health of a small country for years, with a three-week stay.”
• “We are in what we call Ready Five status. We have to be prepared from when we’re given a go signal, to be able to throw the lines within five days. That’s our requirement. And we usually do it in three days.”
• The Comfort’s unilateral design creates a “leapfrogging of communication” which is “not done by going up two or three flights of stairs or into another level or into another building. They’re literally down the hall.”
• “The challenges are so intense and so immense, it really is the belief in the mission to begin with that carries the day.”
• “We represent the best of who we are, as a nation, and our alliances. The multiple countries we take on board. We represent the benevolence of a great thought—that we’re all in this together.”
Host: Pete Chapin
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon
About the Author
Mike DunkleyHead of HealthcareMike leads EPAM Continuum’s medical devices business and is inspired by the opportunity to deliver better healthcare experiences. He’s passionate about understanding client needs and translating them into successful collaborations.
Mike joined EPAM Continuum in May of 2012. He has worked in commercial, project management, and technical roles on numerous multi-disciplinary projects within the medical, consumer, and energy sectors. His experience spans initial project orientation through to product commercialization.
Previously, Mike held various upper-management roles at Cambridge Consultants and worked as VP of Engineering at Cambridge-based start-up Pronutria. He earned a BA and Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Cambridge, U.K.
Ken GordonChief Communications SpecialistKen makes EPAM Continuum’s work visible to the necessary people. He creates superlative content, works with colleagues to do the same, and employs social networks to share it widely.
A card-carrying humanist, Ken co-founded QuickMuse, the improvisational writing website, and JEDLAB, the Jewish education community. He has written for TheAtlantic.com, the New York Times, and many other pubs.
Ken has an English degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MA in English from the State University of New York at Albany. He framed both diplomas long ago, but can’t seem to find them now—a fact he considers all-too-human.
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