Scott W. Atlas
Senior Fellow

Expertise: U.S. health care system, health care systems of emerging nations, use of advanced medical technology

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Scott W. Atlas is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical School.

Atlas's research interests at Hoover center on issues pertaining to public policy in health care. He is investigating ways of reducing the shielding of patients from cost considerations by increasing direct patient payments for health care, so that free market effects can play out on prices. He also investigates the effects of the changing health care marketplace on technology-based innovations in medicine. Atlas's research also includes collaborations with China on the structure of the health care system there. Some of Atlas's recent publications on health policy include "Relationship between HMO Market Share and the Diffusion and Use of Advanced MRI Technologies" (Journal Amer Coll Radiol, 2004), with LC Baker, and the book Power to the Patient: Selected Health Care Issues and Policy Solutions (Hoover Institution Press, 2005).

Atlas is also the editor of the leading textbook in the field, the best-selling Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain and Spine, now in its 3rd edition. He is also editor, associate editor, and a member of the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and has been a member of the boards of many major scientific societies over the past decade. Atlas has authored more than 100 scientific publications in leading journals. He has lectured throughout the world on a variety of topics, most notably advances in imaging of the brain and the key economic issues related to the future of such technology-based advances.

Atlas has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his leadership in the field. He was named by his peers in The Best Doctors in America every year since its initial publication, as well as in regional listings, such as The Best Doctors in New York, Silicon Valley's Best Doctors, Top 500 Doctors in the Bay Area, and other similar publications.

Before his appointments at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, Atlas was on the faculty of University of California at San Francisco, University of Pennsylvania, and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Atlas received a B.S. degree in biology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and an M.D. degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine.