Healthcare Gets Personal on Dec. 12 at Google: Here’s the Agenda

Xconomy Xchange: Healthcare Gets Personal

I first met George Church in the Connecticut backyard of literary agent John Brockman. It was 2007, and Church, the genomics pioneer, was giving an informal talk on synthetic biology. Afterwards, he got stung by some sort of weird-looking bee. The event stuck in my mind.

Here’s hoping next Thursday, Dec. 12, will be just as memorable (maybe without the bugs).

Church, who’s Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a prolific entrepreneur, is keynoting our “Healthcare Gets Personal” conference, which will bring together a distinguished group of business and technology leaders for an afternoon of discussions and networking on personal health, wearables, and behavior tracking. It’s all happening from 4:00-6:00 pm at Google’s offices in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.

The full agenda is here (there may be some tweaks and additions).

—Professor Church will outline his vision for personal genomics and personal health. Well, at least some highlights.

—Daphne Zohar and Eric Elenko from PureTech Ventures will tell us the creation story of Akili Interactive Labs, a company that’s working on cognitive therapies using mobile video games.

—Anita Goel from Nanobiosym, Rony Sellam from Segterra, and Ben Schlatka from MC10 will talk about deep science applied to healthcare devices and personal analytics.

—Jon Flint from Polaris Partners and Dana Callow from Boston Millennia Partners will talk about investment opportunities in personal health (starting with good hair, e.g., Living Proof).

—Robert Goldberg from Neumitra and Ben Rubin from Revv will chat about the future of behavior monitoring (and change) through wearables, software, and startups.

—Joe Concra from O+ Festival will close out the day with some inspirational words on the art of medicine and healthcare.

Looking forward to seeing you on 12/12. There are still a few tickets left, which you can pick up here.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.