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HLTH Promises To Be A New Breed Of Healthcare Conference

Join over 80 senior level healthcare experts from across the ecosystem to help transform the industry. Read more about this new event right here at MedCity News.

With $5 million in venture funding and the leadership of top fintech and commerce event founders, HLTH promises to be a new breed of healthcare conference. The four-day event planned for May 2018 in Las Vegas, will cover the healthcare innovations that are driving quality improvements and cost reductions and, essentially, transforming the entire health industry.

“We are seeing the walls across healthcare come down. Companies like Google and Amazon, who are primarily focused on innovation in other industries, are developing strategies specifically focused on healthcare,” says HLTH’s chief content officer Constance Sjoquist. “Unlike the siloed healthcare events that take place today, HLTH will be an ecosystem conference, where all the major participants — payers, providers, pharma, employers, government, investors, startups and innovative technology vendors — will drive the conversation around how we leverage technologies, strategies and relationships to improve healthcare.”

The more than 80 HLTH speakers confirmed include the CEOs of athenahealth, ZocDoc and GE Healthcare, as well as innovators from Fidelity Investments, Humana and Goldman Sachs. The event’s preliminary agenda includes the issues that are redefining healthcare, including non-industry companies entering healthcare, personalizing healthcare, the aging U.S. population, genomics and Trumpcare.

MedCity spoke with Sjoquist and HLTH Founder, Chairman and CEO Jonathan Weiner. Here’s our chat, edited for length and clarity:

MedCity: Jonathan, you and HLTH co-founder Anil Aggarwal, both venture partners at Oak HC/FT, launched the Money20/20 and Shoptalk events. How did these experiences prepare you to create HLTH?

Weiner: I’ve been a venture-backed entrepreneur since the late ’90s, mostly in the payments and fintech space. I created several companies. The first company was the first third-party processor for prepaid cards for Visa and Mastercard. We sold it to the largest credit card processor in the world. I went on to create another technology company, the leading platform for dealing with emerging payments. Google acquired the company in 2012 and I stayed on to head up Global BD for Wallet & Payments.

As operators in the industry, we were asked to sponsor and speak at a lot of events. We didn’t get much value out of it because the content wasn’t great and we were not meeting the right people. As macro trends like AI, Big Data, Machine learning and Mobile were changing Financial Services, there needed to be an event that pulled the right people within the ecosystem together in order to move the industry forward including new entrants like Apple and Google.

We created Money 20/20 against a backdrop of a lot of existing events in the financial services industry. You could go to an event every week. Within a couple of years, Money 20/20 became the largest payments and fintech show in the world. Now it has over 12,000 attendees, including 2,500 CEOs. We then started ShopTalk within the retail and e-commerce industry. Retail is one of the sectors that is going through massive disruption. We felt within that industry, there wasn’t a forum that was acting as a catalyst for moving the dialogue forward. ShopTalk is now considered the most important and influential event in the retail and e-commerce industry.

MedCity: What about your background, Constance?

Sjoquist: Recently I was a healthcare analyst at Gartner. The Gartner healthcare team covered all the technology across payers, providers, life sciences, entrepreneurs, startups and tech vendors. We spoke at events, wrote thought-provoking research papers, and held one-on-one conversations with healthcare executives around how to leverage innovative technologies as well as rethink how we align with others in the industry to improve operationally, financially, and to deliver on the promise of a better health experience for consumers. It was a triangle of absorbing information from the industry, assessing, packaging, and communicating salient information whenever possible. As wonderful a role of being a Gartner thought leader was, it didn’t allow a venue to get everybody who needed to be in the discussion, together. HLTH is the opportunity to bring all ideas, technology and dialogue to a bigger audience, where there can be a network effect, propelling the healthcare industry forward.

MedCity: Why did you decide to start HLTH? What hole needed to be filled?

Weiner: As I looked at the healthcare landscape, I saw there was gap for a new large-scale industry event focusing on disruptive innovation across the entire ecosystem.

What HLTH will do – this is where we see the gap – is break down existing silos by creating a forum. Providers, payers, employers, pharma, government, the whole startup ecosystem, all of the investors, media and analysts get together and discuss the potential to improve outcomes, decrease costs and ultimately, reimagine the industry.

Sjoquist: Often at healthcare conferences, the average industry attendee walks aisles of exhibits searching for something relevant to meet their needs, or passively listens to mid-management speakers with marginal passion for transforming healthcare. Healthcare is very risk averse. Before deciding to commit budgets, resources, and time towards disruptive solutions or strategies, decision-makers require data and fact-based evidence: they want to see firsthand, from their peers, which strategies, technologies, partnerships and investments will drive down costs and improve outcomes. HLTH will bring C-level decision-makers and thought leaders into a venue where they can have a discussion on what is actually working in the market. It allows a comfortable level of transparency and willingness to accept and drive industry-wide change.

MedCity: How will HLTH be different from other conferences that are focused on innovation in healthcare?

Weiner: This is a conference meant for senior-level decision makers across the ecosystem. Most conferences don’t have that. We are not pay-to-play in any way. The content is truly merit based. We hire people like Constance who have deep domain expertise in pulling together what will be the best content around innovation in this sector. You should be able to talk about something new and novel. We will have a lot of curated networking. That’s everything from having peer group dinners to having a big startup pitch contest. We’ll have a program where we match up investors and startups. We’ll have the entire startup ecosystem there. We’ll have all the relevant investors at HLTH. We’ll have a hosted buyers program where we’re able to match up service providers and qualified buyers. Our hackathon program will present an opportunity for the world’s best developers to compete and collaborate on the latest tools and platforms being used across healthcare today.

While healthcare is a serious subject matter, we also like to make it fun to be at our event. The HLTH brand is a little whimsical. It’s OK for people to have fun and that will come through from our marketing. At our other events, there is a buzz and energy onsite. There will be lots of announcements — anything from new products to new partnerships to new business deals and new funding announcements.  There will be brand new research being presented for the industry. A combination of all those things is what makes the magic.

Sjoquist: In attending other events that Jonathan has developed, the one thing that stands out is the energy. You feel it everywhere you go. People are so excited to be a part of something transformative. They’re so thankful that something like this exists. They’re motivated to be changing the industry. Even though they might be competing in the market, they’re disarmed and communicating with one another in ways never before available to them.

MedCity: What do you want HLTH attendees to take away from the conference?

Sjoquist: At the end of the day, we want anybody who’s participating in the event to walk away with actionable items — whether it’s deals, partnerships, strategies, technologies, insights, data. This is about change. It doesn’t end when they board their flight home. Throughout the year, that network effect is going to continue. They can build upon those relationships and that synergy, and be one of the people or companies that is going to be the future of healthcare.

Save your seat at HLTH today and save 50% off the registration price here.

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