2024 Agenda
October 2024
On Day One, John Carreyrou joined us to share his role in uncovering one of the greatest frauds in Silicon Valley history: the Theranos scandal. Juxtaposed next to Carreyrou, Darius Shahida, CSO of Butterfly Network, told us the story of a young ambitious company on a mission to democratize access to ultrasound technology globally. It’s impossible not to draw parallels between the two companies. As we unpacked and contrasted the two stories, however, we learned a few important lessons for building ambitious early state ventures in healthcare. First, “fake it till you make it” culture has no place in healthcare. When patient lives and medical decisions are on the line, a higher standard must be upheld. Second, transparency is essential. We learned of the intense secrecy Theranos founders and management created within the company, particularly with regards to the company’s intellectual property. Butterfly on the other hand, was built on a rich foundation of published academic research, dating back decades prior to the company’s founding. Finally, government plays a critical role in regulating and funding healthcare innovation. The FDA, CMS, and other regulatory bodies have immense responsibilities to uphold standards and protect patients. On the other hand, the government plays a critical role in funding basic scientific research via the SBIC, NSF, DoD, DARPA, and other programs.
On Day Two we kicked off the morning by learning about the Key Technology Waves in 2024 - Genomic Medicine, AI/ML in Patient Care, and EHR & Data Interoperability. We heard from Aneesh Chopra about the Era of Health Information Fiduciaries - How Open Data, APIs and GenAI Can Democratize Access to High Quality Care. We learned an important lesson from Dr. Kapil Parakh - that success in deploying new healthcare technologies depends on factors beyond the technology. It’s critical to start with the problem first and work backwards to the deployment of technology.
In the Health Policy session we heard from Dr. Nirav Shah and Dr. Rebekah Gee about the necessity to create a burning platform to drive change. We also learned that policy is one of the most effective ways to create impact, and good policy can come from anywhere. Finally, Dr. Shah and Dr. Gee shared five of the top regulatory shifts for 2024.
We wrapped up Wave with our Applied Innovation Case Studies segment, where we heard from Michael McCabe from ON Advisors, Justin Brueck from Endeavor Health, Nick Barcellona from WVU Medicine, Peter McCaffrey and Zain Kazmi from University of Texas Health System, and Chris Altcheck from Cadence RPM.
