Can the Innovator Class Save Healthcare?
Perched on the banks of the Potomac River, the TEDMED gathering weighed in last week on what it considered the greatest challenges facing healthcare.
A meeting closely associated with the high tech-optimism of Silicon Valley and other outposts of America’s innovator class, TEDMED came east this year from it’s previous home in San Diego. The idea was to bring the gathering’s ethos and its troupe of entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, doers, and artists to our nation’s political capital.
It’s unclear whether Washington was listening during the three and half-day day assembly, since much of the establishment here was away on Easter-Passover break. But National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins gave a talk. And so did Commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration Margaret Hamburg, along with a few other Washington types, even if they mostly didn’t stay and mix in the usual TED fashion.
Still, the 1700 attendees did engage in an activity that Washington understands - an election.
The delegates - many of whom paid $5,000 to be there - voted for one of 50 “Great Challenges” facing healthcare that they believed was most worthy of attention. They were joined by thousands of non-attendees following the meeting for free on simulcasts and on the organization’s website.
Sponsored by the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the TEDMED organization, the challenges included The Obesity Crisis, Eliminating Medical Errors, End-of-Life Care, Impact of Poverty on Health, and Medical Information Overload.
Click here for the full slate of candidates.
The list included some perennial Washington obsessions such as Addressing Health Care Costs, but did not include other DC favorites such as the solvency of Medicare and Medicaid and the future of Obamacare.
The soft-pedaling of politically touchy issues was in line with the wishes of the new curator of TEDMED, Jay Walker, who decided that the meeting would avoid contentious content during its first outing in DC. An inventor and the founder most famously of Priceline, Walker’s company, Walker Digital, acquired TEDMED last year.
Not everyone in the TEDMED community agreed, given that this is a political town and issues can be discussed without taking sides. Personally, I believe that a TED meets Washington airing of issues could be exciting. Walker, however, wanted to stay with the tradition of TED, which stands for Technology Entertainment & Design - but not politics.
Each of the 50 challenges at TEDMED were represented by an “advocate” - entrepreneurs, physicians, hospital executives, patient representatives, and others. At the last minute, probably late at night, a challenge #51 was added to the list - Sleep Deprivation - hardly a shock at a meeting of over-achievers.
Some of the advocates campaigned hard for their challenge, donning buttons and t-shirts and passing out cards and flyers.
For instance, one morning on a bus taking me to the meeting place at Kennedy Center, a personable young physician named Rajiv Kumar thrust out his hand and a card encouraging me to vote for his challenge - Inventing Wellness Programs that Work.
“70 percent of Americans don’t exercise regularly,” he explained, telling me he had co-founded a company in 2006 called ShapeUp. Based in Rhode Island, Kumar’s business company is using data and the latest Health 2.0 tools to help other companies incentivize their employees to be more fit, to improve health and to save money.
In another nod to Washington, a few advocates enlisted the deeper pockets of well-healed sponsors such as the Cleveland Clinic. Their Chief Experience Officer, physician James Merlino, campaigned for Improving Medical Communication. His flyer quoted George Bernard Shaw: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
And now, the envelope please.