Houston entrepreneur Brian Lang describes his interest in innovation as something that runs the full spectrum of life.
That can be seen in the healthcare innovation events he has helped to put together, from the Pediatric Pitch competition at South By Southwest this past spring to the upcoming Louisville Innovation Summit, a healthcare-focused conference in Kentucky that features innovators from Houston.
“I’ve ended up working on health innovation from the beginning of life and toward the end,” says Lang, a co-founder of Energizing Health, an initiative that came out of the Kauffman Foundation that aims to boost health IT startups.
Lang’s goal is to help support the so-called digitization of healthcare delivery. “The cultural challenge we learned in Energizing Health is that healthcare is different from the more (traditional) tech startup community,” he says. “We have to get the innovators connected with the right people in the big institutions, who are willing to take risks.”
That’s the main idea underpinning the Louisville summit, which begins Wednesday, and Lang has brought many of his fellow Houstonians to Kentucky to help have the conversation. Among those from the Houston biotech scene attending are Kim Bond Evans, founder of Houston-based Seremedi, and Deborah Mansfield, director of life sciences acceleration at the Houston Technology Center.
In some ways, working on aging healthcare issues takes Lang back to his roots as CEO of Seniors In Touch, a medtech social media startup for senior living communities. Seniors In Touch was sold in 2014 to Trinitycare Senior Living, a subsidiary of Cornerstone Healthcare Group.
Lang will then focus on a healthcare project that’s out of this world—literally. The Launch Health Space Innovation challenge will take place next month as part of the Spacecom conference on spacetech innovation. “Space is a unique environment in looking at innovation of aging,” he says.
