Hanging out with Martha and Ozzy

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At TEDMED

Last week, I was in California for TEDMED, as a guest of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) (Thank you!). Ozzy Osbourne was there to learn about his genome which had been sequenced by 23 & Me. Martha Stewart was there too, and got to touch a beating pig lung used to demonstrate lung transplant. (Celebrity spottings: Steve Wozniak on his Segway and Martha Stewart handling a live pig lung on stage.)

TED conferences bring together a lot of smart, cutting edge thinkers and doers with fascinating attendees who get to hear the latest from some of the greatest.  TEDMED “celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital.” All talks are put on the web. This year’s 70 plus talks included topics like regenerative medicine, visualization, aging, genetics, cancer,  and a lot of inventors, like Dean Kamen and Mark Koska, who talked about their work and what drove them to it. Those of us who came courtesy of RWJF agreed to attend all sessions (I did) and participate in a workshop afterwards. Since our School is planning for 2020, it was a fabulous opportunity to get a view of future trends from some of the people creating them.

RWJF has invested in innovations through its Pioneer portfolio. (To learn more about the Pioneer Portfolio, browse Pioneering Ideas blog, follow on twitter at @pioneerrwjf or visit rwjf.org/pioneer.)

Lessons from TEDMED

Here’s some of what I learned from TEDMED. I’ll share more next week.

• The promise of personalized medicine is still a promise, but one that is slowly beginning to pay off. Some of the new tools might permit progress to accelerate.
• Visualization tools are becoming more prevalent and accessible. Our students and faculty should become facile with this emerging area.
• Flash and entertainment, including songs, poetry, magic and stories, make lectures a lot easier to digest. The quality of slides surpassed anything most of us can produce—incredibly clear, lucid and readable with great animations. We can learn from how TEDMED slides are done.
• Sekou Andrews and Steve Connell did an amazing performance poetry piece with some great lines about death and life. For example, “death is the culmination of a life well-lived.” Regarding death: “You may not be blessed with a long life, but you’re guaranteed a seat.”  “Here’s how you cope with dying. You live! You are dying, and there’s nothing you can do about it except to live each day to the fullest.” I talked with Sekou and Steve afterwards and was blown away by the fact that they had finished writing their piece the day before and then memorized it completely—at least 20 minutes worth. Their skit isn’t up yet on this year’s TEDMED, but you can see more from last year. Every now and then, it is good to be reminded that life is a gift, and death is a certainty.
• Nathan Myhrvold (formerly chief strategist and chief technology officer, Microsoft, founded Intellectual Ventures after he left) said that when you set out to invent, failure better be an option or you’re not set up to invent. Encourage more tries to get more successes. That’s the kind of thinking we applied in creating the philosophy for our Gillings Innovations Laboratories. Listening to Myhrvold and some of the other inventors made me committed to keep examining our guidelines to make sure we are not erecting even well-intended barriers to invention and innovation.

Now, I have to catch up on the emails I missed while away. No matter how hard I tried, with the time difference, I just couldn’t get to them all. Happy Monday! Barbara