Health IT, Startups

TEDMED Hive offers new gadgets and ideas to make healthcare less annoying

Beyond the speakers at TEDMED 2014 this week, the TEDMED Hive was the scene of […]

Beyond the speakers at TEDMED 2014 this week, the TEDMED Hive was the scene of much of the activity at the conference and was designed to advance the conversation beyond the auditorium. Healthcare entrepreneurs in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., presented mobile health devices and surgical tools to not only make healthcare easier to get but also to make it easier for caregivers to provide with fewer errors. Social hotspots punctuated the space to encourage attendees to share their personal takes on issues such as the role of the patient and how to make tangible improvements to the way people manage their health.

The first visual attendees encountered as they entered the HIVE was the Imagine Wall, a mural offshoot of the Walking Gallery. The idea is to capture attendees’ ideas for improving healthcare or the obstacles thwarting those efforts.

The Campfire section sought to recreate the intimacy of a campfire at a big indoor conference without violating health and safety. It created a small space within the hall using cartoonish matches with conversation topics on healthcare to encourage visitors to socialize and share their perspectives. They even had ready-to-eat s’mores.

Mana Nutrition used a Rube Goldberg machine to promote its employer wellness program that ties physical activity to helping charities address hunger in African nations, in this case, bicycling.

TedCas, a Spanish company and part of StartUp Health, developed a digital health platform for surgeons to avoid the need to touch surfaces in the operating room so as to reduce the spread of contaminants that contribute to hospital-acquired infections. It collaborated with Thalmic Labs, the company behind gesture control wearable Myo and Microsoft. For instance, its platform could be used to change medical images on a computer screen and to zoom in and out of the image, as well as other sources of patient data. It is in the process of setting up pilots with physicians at institutions such as University of California at San Francisco.

Clear Guide Medical, a spin-out from Johns Hopkins University Hospital founded by Dr. Emad Boctor and Dr. Philipp Stolka, developed a patent guidance technology to make it easier to do procedures using ultrasound such as biopsies, ablation and fluid drainage. Led by CEO Dorothie Heisenberg, the medical device company’s tool lets doctors see the pathway of the needle and track its progress to the target, such as a tumor.

Theranos phlebotomists set up shop at the HIVE and took blood samples from volunteers interested in getting their cholesterol checked. CEO Elizabeth Holmes spoke at TEDMED about how her business is disrupting lab testing.

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