A Labor of Love

Building the HLTH agenda is both a thrilling and extremely difficult undertaking. HLTH has tasked itself to become THE event for health innovation and it is not taken lightly. To accomplish this lofty goal, HLTH will feature the latest and greatest content on the most current topics impacting the industry. Our 2018 and 2019 iterations created excellent groundwork to build on as HLTH expands the scope of topics for 2020.  There are a couple of areas that I am particularly excited about diving into this year. To start, we saw the incredible reaction to many of the amazing partner presentations we had at HLTH 2019 from Crossover Health and Comcast to Microsoft with The Jackson Laboratory. We quickly realized that unique partnerships between unlikely players are where real innovation takes place. In 2020, we plan to feature an entire track on new and novel partnerships stemming from unexpected sources in a theme called “Health Collabs”.  HLTH takes attendees’ feedback on sessions seriously, and one standout session at HLTH 2019 was a primary care debate featuring Aledade, Iora Health and VillageMD. The session was 40 minutes long, but could have gone on for hours! Primary care innovation was clearly a pressing topic then and even more so moving into 2020. There has been so much movement in the space particularly in subscription-based clinics and fully digital PC options. HLTH 2020 will feature a track, “Primary Care v.2020” dedicated to the future of primary care including top organizations leading the change.  AI is in no way new to health or HLTH, but our approach this year will be. HLTH’s “AI’s Reality Check” track will purposely avoid broad panel discussions talking around the potential for AI in health. Instead, the track will feature presentations from leaders touting real data and evidence on where AI is making an incredible impact here and now. Lastly, we are very interested in diving deep into the economics of health in 2020 and beyond in our “Health-o-nomics” track. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, several weaknesses in the health system have been put in the spotlight. The virus has forced us to face challenges head-on around vaccine & medication shortages, price transparency & surprise billing, access to care & prevention tools, supply & demand imbalance, and more. Our speakers will delve into the details and provide unique solutions to balance the scales of health and better prepare ourselves for the future.  Aside from the aforementioned new track themes, we are exploring a plethora of other key topics that we feel will continue to trend into 2021: The sleep tech space has been of particular interest this year. The evidence connecting poor sleep patterns to greater health issues is overwhelming and the industry’s response has been pretty spectacular.  The liquid biopsy market is moving quickly and we are watching closely. HLTH 2020 will showcase incredible companies making early intervention the new normal of care.  Human-centered design has been taken to the next level to impact the patient experience through physical spaces. We will feature novel hospital designs centered solely around the patient. The 2020 Presidential Election’s impact on healthcare will be weaved into various discussions throughout the HLTH agenda. HLTH is only a few weeks away from the election and our expert speakers will make sure attendees are prepared for whatever results occur. I can go on forever about our agenda, it is a labor of love! There is so much happening in every corner of the industry and our goal is to showcase it all across our 100+ session agenda. We pride ourselves on not siloing the players within the health ecosystem to specific tracks, but want multiple perspectives involved in every conversation being had on stage. We encourage speakers to break out of their comfort zones and speak on topics that our attendees would not expect.   The goal is to evolve our agenda in response to new discoveries, pressing news, and attendee feedback. We want to move away from stale discussions and towards the uncomfortable conversations that are necessary to create positive change. Our HLTH team is confident that 2020 will be bigger and better than ever!  I look forward to meeting you in Vegas this October!