The first time I attended Medicine X, back in 2012, I was blown away. The powerful talks, the hip (pink and purple) staging, the energy in the room... It was like no other academic conference I had attended. The even cooler thing, though, has been watching Medicine X grow over the years from a single event to a robust, year-round program that is championed by patient advocates and others intent on disrupting health care. (In the words of Bryan Vartabedian, MD, what was once an annual meeting is now a "global movement.")
This fall, in recognition of how large Medicine X has gotten -- and how much there is to talk about -- the annual conference has morphed from three days to what is being dubbed Medicine X Week. "What we have learned over the years is that what people value most from this conference is its inclusivity," Larry Chu, MD, executive director of the conference, said in a recent story. "We bring together researchers, patients and policy leaders to work on problems that matter in health care, to look at emerging technologies from a patient-focused viewpoint, and to create new ideas to solve problems. Three days is just not enough to do all this."
Among the events planned for the week are keynote talks from Susannah Fox, chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Lindred Greer, PhD, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and others, as well as:
- Health Care Safety Design Challenge: a daylong event that asks, "How should we respond when medicine hurts instead of heals?"
- IDEO Design Challenge: a daylong dive into design thinking for health care to be held in partnership with IDEO, a global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations innovate
- Health Care Innovation Summit: a one-day event to explore how to address health-care costs
- Behavior design workshop: an event led by behavior design expert Kyra Bobinet, MD, to explore neuroscience-based solutions to health-care problems.
- A takeoff of the reality television show "Shark Tank," that will allow five finalists to pitch ideas for improving cancer care to a live panel of judges, including "shark" Robert Herjavec
- Special sessions on the opioid crisis, policing patient privacy and the future of President Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative
I've got Sept. 12-18 blocked off on my calendar, and I hope you do, too. Information about the conference and registration are available on the Medicine X site.
Previously: Stanford Medicine X leads precision medicine workshop at the White House, "No ordinary conference": The magic that is Medicine X returns to the stage and Stanford Medicine X: From an "annual meeting to a global movement"
Photo courtesy of Stanford Medicine X
