Institute For The Future

TEDMEDLive 2013: Making the Future of Health

TEDMED is an annual 3 ½ day gathering that brings together “multi-disciplinary community of innovators and leaders who share a common determination to create a better future in health and medicine.” TEDMED 2013 reached an unprecedented audience of over 200,000 people with live simulcasts in 2,700 locations in 81 countries. On April 17, Institute for the Future and the American Heart Association co-hosted one of these nodes at our Palo Alto office, where a group gathered to, in the words of TEDMED curator Jay Walker, “use inquiry, science, faith and imagination to become more healthy as individuals, as families and as societies.” 

 

 

 

 

While videos of these new 2013 TEDMED talks are not available online yet, (they will be released throughout the year), we at Health Horizons wanted to share just a few of the most exciting things we heard from people making the future of health and medicine.

Tuesday night’s opening session was on “Seeing with a Broader Lens” and brought together a diverse group of multidisciplinary speakers to stretch the imagination, challenge the existing paradigms, and solve health care’s hardest problems. The session drew insights from the worlds of music, art, design, neuroscience, computer science, and community health with a resounding call to be more ambitious in our pursuits and more imaginative in our questions. In the words of Rafael Yuste, who helped spark the Brain Mapping Initiative, “science cannot afford to dream small dreams.” 

This message is strongly aligned with the goals of IFTF’s Health Horizon’s program, where we believe that no single institution can solve the complex challenges facing the world today. As we look to the future of health and well-being, some of the most interesting innovations come from the cross-pollination of disparate fields.  

Performing artist Kishi Bashi opened this first session with his “violin-techno-pop” and reflected on his inspiration, the Japanese saying “ichi-go ichi-e,” which means “each moment is unique.” Jay Walker invited the audience to, in this way, “be present” throughout the next few days and open to being inspired by new ideas. Next up was John Maeda, Rhode Island School of Design President, who suggested, “being a leader isn’t about going up the mountain, it’s about jumping off the mountain.” He then discussed the ubiquitous need for design as a way to make meaning, and how the “broader lens” of art and design can help the world of health truly thrive. Danny Hillis, inventor of parallel computing and former Disney Imagineer, discussed a new “golden age of medicine” beyond prevention, where we have the tools to look inside the body and preemptively catch abnormalities before they turn into disease.

“A person cannot be neutral,” said America Bracho, CEO and president of Latino Health Access, in her impassioned talk on embracing a new narrative for community health. “Neutrality is a chemical concept” and unlike pieces of litmus paper, humans cannot be wholly neutral to any situation. She continued that, “awareness increases in the presence of contradiction,” and the reality of health disparities won’t let you forget – and therefor makes it impossible to stay neutral. Her vision of community health moves away from two distinct groups – one with talents and one with needs – and toward one where better health is achieved for all by “engaging with people through what is good about people.” Her call to “recruit the heart and train the brain” resonated strongly for American Heart Association attendees, who work everyday to literally “pull the heart” and create healthier communities.

The session ended with Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General of the United States, talking about how to put the joy back into being healthy, which will happen when people get up and get moving and changes occur at a cellular level. Thanks to the ubiquitous sensors and tracking devices (every TEDMED delegate in DC received a fitbit) we are able to see just how sedentary we are – the “smoking of our generation.” With her prompting, the IFTF group took a pause to go outside and walk around.

Session 2 was on “How Can Big Data Become Real Wisdom?” IFTF Advisory Council member, Larry Smarr, now famous for his extreme self-quantification and stool-sampling habits, came on stage holding a 3D model of his colon and proclaimed, “now that’s power.” He shared his own health successes that came from tracking his microbiome and looks to a future where it will be simple for everyone to do the same, with tools to accurately interpret the vast amounts of data we each store inside. Deborah Estrin is looking to “small data” derived from our individual digital traces. She invited those interested in getting their personal digital data back from service providers to register at smalldata.tech.cornell.edu. Elizabeth Marincola, President, Society for Science and the Public, discussed the scientific publishing debate. She said, “when the best research gets converted into a privately controlled, limited access commodity we are in danger of losing sight of our purpose.” A self proclaimed “capitalist by conviction” she said she is ready for open access publishing to compete in the free market and “may the best model win.” She is certain that the free flow of information will mean the faster advance of science, and it doesn’t mean forfeiting profit. Max Little, spoke on the “unreasonable effectiveness of math” and his work combining contemporary machine learning algorithms to make diagnostic predictions. With a mathematic, panoptic view across all disciplines he sees how everything is connected and suggested “the new way to ask big questions in science.” Finally, Amy Abernethy, former NASA programmer and palliative care oncologist, related a story of frustration over inability to access patient data. She proposed “data drives,” modeled after blood drives, where individuals could donate their data with the confidence others will do the same, and that it will be there when needed most. Even better, “Data is a non-depletable resource. Blood and money go away. But data doesn’t go away… and the more we make use of it the more valuable it becomes.”

IFTF was honored to join TEDMED from afar, and to extend the opportunity for others in our community to do the same. We thank the American Heart Association for their partnership in making the event happen. These speakers will continue to provoke and inspire us as we work to imagine and make a healthier future.

For live updates and more detailed summaries of the talks, visit the TEDMED Blog. To watch talks from previous years, visit tedmed.com/videos.