Emerson Smith, Ph.D.

Emerson Smith is a medical sociologist, a flight instructor as well as a commercial and search and rescue pilot, a Texan born in Chicago, and a writer and blogger. He unabashedly takes a global view on hospitals, health, and healthcare innovation.

His career began at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and Parkland Memorial Hospital.  He works with hospitals and healthcare organizations in new service development, market analysis and strategy, medical error reduction, safety improvement, and getting higher quality outcomes.

He lived in England in Devonshire with his wife, an attorney, immersed in the culture of universal health care, the National Health Service, English common law, and clotted cream.  

Although based in the US, Smith continues to go abroad, with one example in Central Europe, notably Poland and Bulgaria, to promote “Collaboration Centers” to improve the health and wealth of people recently emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. 

The Collaboration Center concept came, in part, from his work with BMW Manufacturing, recognized for its global collaboration strategy and focus on improving the health, education, and wealth of the people in the communities in which it builds its cars.

In 2007 Smith was a featured speaker for the annual 10-city US tour of the Press Ganey Regional Workshops.

He received his Ph.D. from Emory University, his M.A. from Texas Christian University and his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin.  He was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Exeter in the UK.  He is President of Metromark Research, Inc., a healthcare research company with offices in Dallas, Texas and Columbia, South Carolina.

Printable version of speaker bio.