Posted November 9, 2009 by Uba Backonja

From October 27^th through the 30^th, TEDMED wowed San Diego.  The conference, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, focused on medical innovations ranging from Dr. Craig Venter and his discussion of synthetic genomics, to Dr. Anthony Atala and the seemingly fictional yet full-on reality of tissue and organ regeneration done at the Wake Forrest Institute of Regenerative Medicine.

One of the unofficial themes of the conference, as noted by several speakers, was the importance of patients telling their stories, how narrative is central of understanding a patient’s health.  This theme and several showcased projects resonated with Project HealthDesign.

Eric Dishman, Chief Strategist and Global Director of Product Research, Innovation, and Policy for Intel’s Digital Health Group, focused on “bringing health care home and to the home.” The project, stemming from Intel’s study of seniors, focuses on measuring and monitoring health behavior in meaningful ways and on shifting from a “mainframe model” to a “personal computing" model in health care.  He demonstrated how one can pick up changes in health in the nuances of how one answers the phone.  Voice more quiet than normal?  May signal Parkinson’s.  Taking a longer time for the person to recognize the person on the other line?  May be a sign of dementia.  Taking them longer to get to the phone?  May have mobility problems.  Dishman also discussed the mechanism of bringing health care to the home via home monitoring—cameras, sensors embedded in the rug, and on-person devices that can capture gait, stride, length, and body position.  By tracking changes in patterns in the household, one can be alerted to potential problems.

Dr. Vic Strecher, at the University of Michigan Center for Health Communication Research, highlighted one of the projects that perhaps resonated with Project HealthDesign the most.  Looking at what inspires behavior change (motivation, confidence, and events, which are often chaotic) and aligning behavior and core values to initiate behavior change, Strecher has created a website for tailored digital health coaching.  The uniqueness in the tailoring is in that multiple facets of a patient’s life are taken into consideration and used as mechanisms to initiate behavior change.

Bill Davenhall, from Health and Human Services Solutions at ESRI, had patient narrative at the center of his talk about how one’s “place history” (where you have lived or been) impacts your health and should be required in PHRs.  He showed not only mapping place history from recall but also capturing this data via GPS and Geographic Information Systems.  This data can then be integrated with, for example, pollution information from the Environmental Protection Agency, allowing for risk assessment based on pollution exposure.

Other interesting speakers included Alexander Tsiaris, founder and CEO of Anatomical Travelogue.  Emphasizing the importance of telling stories, he unveiled TheVisualMD.com, a visual health information guide for patients in video and visual (including 3D) format.  The library is open source and includes a personalized section where personal health information notes can be inserted into educational tutorials.

Also, the audience had the honor to hear Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the President’s special advisor on health policy, speak about health care and what matters in reform.  One of the points that he highlighted was that a move to home care is key to health reform.

The only disappointing part of the conference was the lack of nurses in the lineup and in the audience.  Hopefully in the future the innovations of nurse scientists and researchers can be showcased along with other health scientists.

Talks from the conference will be available at TED.com and TEDMED.com in the near future.  TEDMED 2010 has opened registration for next year’s meeting.

Comments

[Sarah Apple]

Talks are being released weekly at http://www.tedmed.com. You can view at Dr. Anthony Atala's at http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_growing_organs_engineering_tissue.html

[Uba Backonja]

All videos will be at www.tedmed.com/videos.

Bill Davenhall and Craig Venter's videos are up now as well!