Sanders was the General Director of MGH from 1972 to 1981. From 1965 until 1972, he directed the hospital’s cardiac catheterization laboratory, during a period in which the need for diagnostic techniques that used cardiac catheterization was growing quickly because of advances in heart surgery. Sanders was a leader in several facets of health care. He spent much of his career in major pharmaceutical companies. He has also chaired the New York Academy of Sciences, the Commonwealth Fund, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and Project HOPE, a humanitarian health care aid organization.