Mission-driven healthcare

LAWRENCE Patrick, the chief executive of Johns Hopkins Singapore (JHS), could have become an actuary. But his first class at graduate school - econometrics - stopped him dead in his tracks, leaving him convinced that a master's degree in economics wasn't for him after all. He had completed his undergraduate degree in the subject, but eventually decided against pursuing the same route in graduate school.

"I didn't understand anything the professor said on the first day, and that was just a general orientation about the curriculum," he quips. "I understood nothing!"

Banking wasn't a particularly attractive avenue for him either, because then "instead of touching…