Tom Delbanco, MD, & Jan Walker, RN, MBA

Key Publications 

Inviting Patients to Read Their Doctors’ Notes: A Quasi-experimental Study and a Look Ahead, Ann Intern Med.

OpenNotes After 7 Years: Patient Experiences With Ongoing Access to Their Clinicians’ Outpatient Visit Notes, JMIR

Inviting Patients to Read Their Doctors’ Notes: Patients and Doctors Look Ahead Patient and Physician Surveys, Ann Intern Med.

Technology and Transparency: Empowering Patients and Clinicians to Improve Health Care Value, Ann Intern Med.

Healthcare in a land called peoplepower: Nothing about me without me, Health Expect.

Co-Founders

Tom Delbanco, MD, is the John F. Keane & Family Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Tom and his colleague, Jan Walker, are the co-founders of OpenNotes.

Educated at Harvard College and the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, Tom trained in internal medicine at Bellevue, Harlem, and Presbyterian Hospitals in New York. Following military service, he came to Boston where, until 2002, he was Chief of the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center). In the program he founded and led for more than 30 years, Tom created one of the first primary care practice and teaching programs at an academic health center, and in 1979, he developed and led the Harvard Medical School Faculty Development and Fellowship Program that has now prepared more than 300 general internists for academic careers.

In 1998, Tom was named a Master of the American College of Physicians (ACP), and in 2000 he became the initial incumbent of the Koplow-Tullis Chair in General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, its first chair in primary care. A founder and past-president of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM), in 2003 he received the Robert J. Glaser Award, SGIM’s highest honor. In 2006, Harvard Medical School selected him for the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. In 2017, Harvard Medical School appointed Tom as the John F. Keane & Family Professor of Medicine, a new chair created to promote patient engagement, safety, and healthcare value through fully transparent communication among patients, families, and clinicians. In 2019, the ACP chose Tom as the recipient of its highest annual honor, the John Phillips Memorial Award, established in 1929.

Jan Walker, RN, MBA, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of the research faculty in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Jan formerly served as Vice President for Client Services and Research at the Picker Institute, an organization devoted to measuring patient experiences and incorporating the patient perspective into care, and was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Information Technology Leadership at Partners HealthCare. Educated at the University of Kansas (BSN) and Boston University (MBA), Jan has a clinical background in nursing. Her work has focused on patient perspectives on their care, use of new electronic technologies to improve their experience, and the critical importance of transparency in the patient-provider relationship.