A message from Conference Chair Daniel Kraft, MD:
Healthcare is in many ways being practiced as it has been for millennium, as ‘SickCare’ — using old, reactive models and mindsets where the FAX machine is the primary mode of sending patient information, where data is still silo’d amongst paper charts or rudimentary EMRS, and where feedback loops between clinician and patient are broken or limited.
We are living however in an fast moving, exponential age, where the convergence of rapidly developing technologies are enabling vast new capabilities that can radically improve and disrupt the future of health, prevention, and clinical practice, and address many of the grand challenges facing healthcare across the planet. It’s challenging to keep up with, understand, and incorporate the advancing technologies (3D printing, low-cost genomics, machine learning) becoming available.
In 2011 at Singularity University, where I chair the Medicine and Neuroscience track, we began an experiment; a novel program to ‘un-silo’ thinking and unleash cross-disciplinary innovation across healthcare. We brought together thought leaders and forward thinking clinicians and innovators in a mix of lectures, discussions, workshops, demos, and site visits, to explore, through the lens of fast moving technologies, the potential to reshape health and medicine .
Three highly successful Exponential Medicine programs were held at the Singularity University NASA Research Park campus. New friendships and collaborations were formed across clinical disciplines, countries, companies, startups, both inside and outside the healthcare industry. Fast rising startups were inspired and founded by Exponential Medicine alumni (including Scanadu and Sentrian).
Given the demand (many more applicants that participant spots) we grew the program to become what it is today. The iconic Hotel del Coronado and it’s magical beachfront setting, gentle waves, warm sunny days, and dramatic sunsets play an important and prominent role in fostering an intimate mix of new ideas, people and collaborations. The participant feedback and enthusiasm has been tremendous. We’ve been told it changes careers, minds, hearts, and lives.
It’s an intense four days of immersion in future-looking topics, hands-on experience, in-depth, late night, high energy discussions with remarkable and inspiring people passionately sharing their ideas, discoveries, aspirations, and invitations to join them. Which is why the conference sells out earlier each year.
Daniel Kraft, MD
Faculty Chair for Medicine & Neuroscience, Singularity Univ.
Founding Executive Director, Exponential Medicine
daniel.kraft@singularityu.org
@Daniel Kraft
—
For an overview of many of the elements covered in Exponential Medicine, watch Executive Director Daniel Kraft, MD’s latest TEDTalk about the Future of Health and Medicine. The Exponential Medicine program will be doing a deep dive into many of the themes and technologies touched upon in this brief talk.
TEDTalk: Daniel Kraft, MD on the Future of Medicine
