Like many trailblazing solutions, Hilmi Quraishi's wildly popular mobile phone games that teach players about AIDS found success through not just hard work, but a novel idea and a bit of serendipity. The novel idea was approaching education about this very serious problem through the universal language of entertainment and using a widely-accessible technology to do it.

It's reassuring to know when you get on a plane, that the pilot has an emergency checklist and a co-pilot backing him up. It should also be reassuring to know that ICU doctors may soon be following their lead.

Every year, some 200,000 patients contract infections during their stay in intensive care. Most of these are treatable with expensive antibiotics and a longer hospital stay. In some cases, these infections can be fatal.

We all rely on our friends to get us through tough times and to help us celebrate the good, but for many disabled men and women, this network of support isn't always easy to build. But with a little help identifying social connections and helping to maintain them, once isolated individuals can become fuller members of the community.