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Authors: Mary Lou Finlay
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still practising long-distance medicine, so one day I tracked him down to a clinic in New London, New Hampshire. We didn’t know it at the time, but our interview had caught Carlin in the middle of his own adventure, and his journey was just as exciting in its way as the Around Alone race. He began by telling me how important the Yasekov case had been for him.
That was the sentinel case for a sweeping change in medicine. That was the first time, basically, that the Internet came to someone’s rescue very quickly and that there was actually an infrastructure—my practice—built around that capability. Back then I had really high hopes for this. I had been a refugee camp doctor and had lived overseas and I thought, Holy cow. If I make this work on a simple practice basis, then it’s just purely a question of scaling this up in the years ahead and recruiting medical centres to participate so you could have a portal like my practice and use that portal to focus real expertise on some distant patient or clinic to the benefit of that patient.
At the time he treated Victor Yasekov, Dr. Carlin told me, he was just finishing a long-distance medical project inGhana—part of what he was now calling his World Clinic—and he was working out of the New England Medical Center in Boston. Three weeks later, they let him go. Carlin believes that some of the older doctors there didn’t understand what he was trying to do, marrying medicine and the Internet. Maybe, too, they resented all the publicity he was attracting. Ironically, his face was on the cover of
Tufts Medicine
the very day he was clearing out his office.
Whatever the reason, Carlin was reduced to running the World Clinic out of his living room, which he did for about five weeks. Then he forged a new association with the Leahy Clinic on the outskirts of Boston. He also landed some private funding for his World Clinic experiment, and for about 20 months, the business grew nicely. Then, in April 2000, the tech market crashed, and his investors pulled up stakes and fled. In June he started laying people off, and by the following April, he was almost back where he’d started: a one-man company running everything from his own computer.
Except that his experience had taught him that the service he was trying to offer was really needed. So Dr. Carlin reclaimed the company’s title for himself, determined to keep it going. From 7:00 in the morning until 3:15 in the afternoon, he told me, he would work on his World Clinic practice; from 3:30 to 3:50, he would nap; and from 4:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., he would work as an emergency room doctor. This is what he did for two years to support his wife and kids while he was putting his World Clinic on a solid footing again.
I acquired the ability to really, solidly focus on what exactly needed to be done to survive. You’re walking in a holy light, so to speak. You know how they used to say the saints walk in a holy light? It’s somehow analogous to that, because you have absolute clarity.
This ability to focus and to make it past the most horrendous obstacles was something Daniel Carlin had in common with the sailors he liked to help, I observed, and he agreed.
It seems to have paid off. His World Clinic in New London, New Hampshire, now boasts 3 full-time doctors and 5 support staff and can call on the help of 20 other physicians for consultation, including 8 specialists. Their clients include crews, island populations, top executives and families with “high net worth” who travel a lot and maybe keep several residences in different parts of the world. The money the clinic brings in from well-heeled clients goes to support projects in Madagascar and Cambodia and a street clinic in Boston. Carlin even has a few sailors still on his list, including a bunch of “old guys in their 70s,” who had just called him from Gibraltar the day we were chatting. They were in the process of planning “their last hurrah”—a voyage from
That was the sentinel case for a sweeping change in medicine. That was the first time, basically, that the Internet came to someone’s rescue very quickly and that there was actually an infrastructure—my practice—built around that capability. Back then I had really high hopes for this. I had been a refugee camp doctor and had lived overseas and I thought, Holy cow. If I make this work on a simple practice basis, then it’s just purely a question of scaling this up in the years ahead and recruiting medical centres to participate so you could have a portal like my practice and use that portal to focus real expertise on some distant patient or clinic to the benefit of that patient.
At the time he treated Victor Yasekov, Dr. Carlin told me, he was just finishing a long-distance medical project inGhana—part of what he was now calling his World Clinic—and he was working out of the New England Medical Center in Boston. Three weeks later, they let him go. Carlin believes that some of the older doctors there didn’t understand what he was trying to do, marrying medicine and the Internet. Maybe, too, they resented all the publicity he was attracting. Ironically, his face was on the cover of
Tufts Medicine
the very day he was clearing out his office.
Whatever the reason, Carlin was reduced to running the World Clinic out of his living room, which he did for about five weeks. Then he forged a new association with the Leahy Clinic on the outskirts of Boston. He also landed some private funding for his World Clinic experiment, and for about 20 months, the business grew nicely. Then, in April 2000, the tech market crashed, and his investors pulled up stakes and fled. In June he started laying people off, and by the following April, he was almost back where he’d started: a one-man company running everything from his own computer.
Except that his experience had taught him that the service he was trying to offer was really needed. So Dr. Carlin reclaimed the company’s title for himself, determined to keep it going. From 7:00 in the morning until 3:15 in the afternoon, he told me, he would work on his World Clinic practice; from 3:30 to 3:50, he would nap; and from 4:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., he would work as an emergency room doctor. This is what he did for two years to support his wife and kids while he was putting his World Clinic on a solid footing again.
I acquired the ability to really, solidly focus on what exactly needed to be done to survive. You’re walking in a holy light, so to speak. You know how they used to say the saints walk in a holy light? It’s somehow analogous to that, because you have absolute clarity.
This ability to focus and to make it past the most horrendous obstacles was something Daniel Carlin had in common with the sailors he liked to help, I observed, and he agreed.
It seems to have paid off. His World Clinic in New London, New Hampshire, now boasts 3 full-time doctors and 5 support staff and can call on the help of 20 other physicians for consultation, including 8 specialists. Their clients include crews, island populations, top executives and families with “high net worth” who travel a lot and maybe keep several residences in different parts of the world. The money the clinic brings in from well-heeled clients goes to support projects in Madagascar and Cambodia and a street clinic in Boston. Carlin even has a few sailors still on his list, including a bunch of “old guys in their 70s,” who had just called him from Gibraltar the day we were chatting. They were in the process of planning “their last hurrah”—a voyage from
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