Billionaire wants to transform the judicial system

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the wealthiest man in L.A., wants to work with UCI on a digital network. To start: Improve how courts manage the foster system.

Patrick Soon-Shiong, one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles, is teaming up with UCI's School of Law in hopes of revolutionizing the judicial system. Shown above in front of a white board that explains what is happening with the health care system.
COURTESY OF NANTWORK

BY LORI BASHEDA / STAFF WRITER
Published: June 3, 2014 Updated: June 4, 2014 11:44 a.m.

The wealthiest man in Los Angeles is looking to team up with UC Irvine’s School of Law in hopes of transforming the country’s judicial system.

Patrick Soon-Shiong was on campus recently to receive Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s annual Public Service Award.

Soon-Shiong, whose $10 billion net worth puts him at No. 130 on Forbes’ list of wealthiest humans, made headlines recently for taking the same “giving pledge” made by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Translation: He has promised to give away at last half of his fortune before he dies.

And one of the latest things Soon-Shiong has expressed interest in spending some of his money on is improving how the courts manage foster children.

First: The backstory.
About eight years ago, Soon-Shiong sat down with former state Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Santa Ana, who at the time had just been appointed chief executive at the California Medical Association. Soon-Shiong wanted to discuss his plans to build a national nonprofit medical database, a sort of information superhighway for health care.

The idea was to help those in the medical world communicate with each other and share information, including patient DNA. It would connect doctors for purposes of clinical trials and treatment.

Today, that health care sugerhighway is under construction; a handful of hospitals are involved in the pilot program.

A few years ago, Soon-Shiong went back to Dunn, who was by then the executive director of the California State Bar.

“I think there’s another place that needs a grid,” Dunn said Soon-Shiong told him. Over lunch, he explained how he wanted to create a judicial database in the vein of the health care superhighway.

The legal world has many neighborhoods: prosecutors, defenders, social services, law enforcement. Often, the people in one neighborhood don’t know what the people in the other ’hood are up to.

In particular, Soon-Shiong is concerned about the foster care system.

“The statistic is horrific,” Soon-Shiong said in a phone interview. “Foster kids, on average, go through seven homes in their lifetime. From court to court and home to home. (Then), at the age of 18, they’re thrown into the street.”

It’s unclear what connection, if any, Soon-Shiong has to the foster care system. An assistant said only “it’s just a passion of his,” but declined to elaborate.

Still, a bigger question remains: How would digital information help change foster care?

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/s...soon-dunn.html