These are days of tremendous changes in healthcare, as legislative reforms take effect over the next four years in an effort to make healthcare available to everyone—and at a cost they can afford. At the same time, technology advances in Web-based services, wireless communications, and other information technologies offer new possibilities to lower health costs. Still, amid all the talk about payers and providers, electronic medical records, and wireless health, a question lingers—what’s in it for the consumer?
We mean to address that question through our next Xconomy Forum in San Diego, an evening event called Healthcare in Transition—The Consumer Payoff, set for Wednesday, November 17.
I’m excited to announce the group of industry visionaries we’ve assembled from San Diego and beyond to explain the promise and the possibilities for consumers as innovations in health IT help shift the focus of medical care from healing and curing to prevention.
Kevin Patrick, director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems at UC San Diego, will be setting the stage with an overview of the prospects and potential of the kinds of innovations in health IT that will help consumers take charge of their health. Patrick, who also is the editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, oversees programs at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology that address obesity/diabetes, smoking, and other health issues by using mobile devices, social networking, and health IT technology to promote behavior change.
For our main event, we have assembled an outstanding panel of leaders in health IT for a highly interactive discussion: Nat Findlay, founder and CEO of Quebec-based Myca Health; Arlene Harris, co-founder and chairwoman of GreatCall/Jitterbug; Bill Spooner, CIO for Sharp HealthCare in San Diego; and Jean Balgrosky, the former CIO for Scripps Health in San Diego.
After the panel, we’ll hear brief 4-minute “burst” presentations from the CEOs of a couple of the most innovative healthcare startups in San Diego: MediPacs’ Mark McWilliams and Independa’s Kian Saneii. After that, there will be plenty of time for networking with the speakers and fellow attendees.
So if you’d like to join the conversation, which will be held at Johnson & Johnson’s offices in San Diego, mark your calendars for the evening of November 17 and register here now. I hope to see you there.