TEDMED 2013 is now in full swing. The ambitions of the event are as big — if not bigger — than ever with a series of rock-star attendees from the worlds of academia, arts and medicine.
What TEDMED ultimately becomes will be decided by this year’s performance. I still have my doubts it can reach the goals of its impressive owner, Jay Walker, who has owned the TEDMED brand for only the last two years. TEDMED is a much harder event to pull off than the regular TED, in which you get a cross section of humanity being exposed to ideas they aren’t as familiar with. Here, in this TEDMED audience of 2,000 elites, most of the attendees are very familiar with the topics on stage. Their ideas are hardened. It’s very hard to wow them and challenge them.
That’s TEDMED’s supreme challenge: impress people who already know what you’re about to tell them so they show up. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off this year and going forward.
I say this in part because the memory of TEDMED 2012 has not gotten better with age. For many who attended and declined to return (or re-sponsor at levels as high as $250,000) it didn’t work for them. Many of the D.C. power players who would have hung out longer when the event was in San Diego went back to their day jobs last year. The event had its moments. But most of the panelists did not challenge the audience or were challenged themselves — even though, to Walker’s credit, he tried to do just that a few times in some post-talk Q&A on the stage.
TEDMED 2012 was remembered best by many for the amazing parties — the best being the end of the final full day when all that was served was sugary desserts and cocktails while acrobats flew through the air. But many asked: “Why am I here?” and couldn’t come up with answer that would please the bean counters.
Some just want to be here because it is such an experience. But it is a very pricey one. Also, even though the marketing-heavy Twitter conversation will trend globally and its simulcasts do spread the event’s influence in unique ways, the event garners only mild public attention even compared to other big healthcare events (like last week’s World Health Care Congress).
Finally, and perhaps this is a sad commentary on where healthcare is today, it’s very hard to get healthcare leaders excited about 50,000-foot, dream-big ideas when so many are heads-down entrenched in the next EMR roll out, healthcare reform, patient engagement and other topics.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
TEDMED could serve that purpose: get everyone dreaming so healthcare becomes better than even the big thinkers imagine. But can TEDMED bring the level of conversation that will build this into a global happening as Walker has repeatedly said it will become?
We’ll find out this year.
