**UPDATE: The good folks at SxSW have extended the voting until Sunday. Put this on your to do list for the weekend.
Today is the last day to support your favorite innovative thinkers in health by helping them get on the agenda at SxSW Interactive in Austin in the spring. There are in the running for a spot in the Health and Medicine track. There are 4,219 proposals for the entire festival and 109 in the health track.
You don’t have to have a badge for the event to vote (although you should have one if you don’t already). Just create an account and vote.
Here are the 10 conversations I’d like to hear at the event: lots of design in healthcare and patient voices.
Community-Building: Better Than Chemo
What can you learn about breast cancer from 100,000 tweets and more than 100 hours of conversation among 8,000 people? Four women – Jody Schoger, Alicia Staley, Deanna Attai, and Xeni Jardin – will explain during this session.
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.
What if Zappos Sold Drugs?
Elliot Cohen is always working on something interesting and we need a lot more conversations about design in health care. This panel will look at examples of well-designed healthcare products from both traditional & non-traditional players and lay out the 5 tenets of designing for better health — arguing that making experiences delightful, simple, and hassle-free can create radical change.
H@cking Medicine B!TCHFEST: Pain Points to Pilot
The best way to find workable solutions is to combine in one room people who don’t usually talk to one another. That’s why I love this idea:
We’ll bring down doctors to work with hackers to get ideas into practice. Physicians will divulge their specific pain points. Hackers will then be coached by the physician & workshop facilitators from H@cking Medicine on how to take those pain points & develop quick solutions to pilot by workshop’s end.
Five Ways Health Decisions Don’t Make Sense
Why don’t more people just do it – get off the couch, take their meds, stop smoking? Aimee Roundtree of the University of Houston-Downtown explains why what seems like a good decision to one person looks completely differently to another:
- Many other factors besides evidence–such as tradition and emotion–impact decisions about health
- A wealth of options can confound rather than improve one’s capacity for making decisions
- The value of a decision is highly subjective
Healing Healthcare with UX Design
What happens when an IDEO person has to help a loved one survive breast cancer? A design expert gets a first hand look at the sorry state of decision aids in healthcare. Abbe Don, now of Epocrates, will share how her experience as a caregiver shaped her thinking about design and the patient experience. She will present real-world examples of mission-driven designs that are transforming healthcare.
Embarrassing Bodies: Multiplatform Medical Taboos
We just wrote about a man who was featured on this program, and I admit my first reaction was, “This is the worst reality show yet.” But, I was wrong – this is not an exploitative show. It seems to actually help people and the producers claim to have saved Britain’s national health system thousands of pounds. It would be fascinating to hear how this British TV show has “evolved into a revolutionary multiplatform brand spanning websites, mobile apps, games, health tools, citizen science projects, live on-air Skype consultations and more.”
Minorities and Health Tech: A How-To Workshop
Dr. Ivor Horn is on this panel and she was one of the most popular and articulate speakers at ENGAGE in June. This is another topic that we can’t hear enough about and reaching African Americans and Latinos will be crucial to the success of healthcare marketplaces, not to mention improving individual lives. This workshop will explain the need for health tech that consciously includes underrepresented groups in the design and implementation process, as well as a discussion of why minority developers are uniquely suited to lead innovations for the urban community.
Finding the Superbug’s Kryptonite
Dr. Stephen Daniels, the Executive Director of the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology in Dublin, Ireland, will examine which new technologies hold the most promise, and call on the tech sector to increase its commitment of resources and creativity to the global war against superbugs.
Creating an Iconic Brand in Digital Health
Malay Gandhi of Rock Health is leading this panel, and if anyone knows how to build a sharp and smart brand, it’s the team at Rock Health. The group will discuss why there has been a lack of notable consumer companies in digital health and the companies most likely to become the new icons.
Why We Need a Federal Life Science Startup Package Amy Millman of Springboard Enterprises and Joan Fallon of Curemark will lay out a case for how the government spur innovation and enable quicker life cycles for greater number of products and why market pressure alone will not incentivize innovation in the life sciences.
