TEDMED will be a whirlwind of events, speakers and experiences that will challenge us here at Medgadget both as technologists and medical students. One of the fantastic things about medical education in the age of social media is that we get to interact with students and faculty all over the world. You can have the experience of interacting over Twitter with a leading pediatrician that developed a tool you used that day in the emergency room. You can share an email with the editor of a leading medical journal. Also, you can interact, commiserate, and encourage fellow medical students all over the world. These are people that you might never meet, except at TEDMED over the next week.
That is probably one of the best things about an event like TEDMED (or any TED event for that matter; we are unapologetic TED fans). Meeting people with dreams of a better health system, with better outcomes, that is fairer to all, including the people who work inside the system as well as those that are served by it. There is amazing energy that comes from such serendipitous meetings, and we want to capture that energy and share it with you.
Any “TED-ster” will tell you that it’s not “TED” that makes a TED event special. It’s the people. Talking with speakers in interactive spaces like The Hive, and sharing ideas with entrepreneurs and visionaries who are helping create new ways of approaching the wicked problems we have in health care will be the essence of TEDMED, and we hope to bring you a taste of that.
Finally, we at Medgadget are excited to share with you The Smartphone Physical. We will demonstrate, with the help of TEDMED attendees, the current capabilities that the smartphone you have right now can provide for diagnosis and capturing basic (and some not so basic) physical examination data for use by the patient and health care provider. In the process we hope to spur a discussion about how the physical exam can change, how patients can be made more aware of their physical exam findings, and how we can get feedback on how their exam may change over time. Maybe we can ask some questions about the future of the patient-provider relationship, and how we can take the leap to a more effective model of healthcare in the future.
Regardless, this week is going to be exciting and challenging. Some ideas will take off, some ideas will fall flat. However, there will be dialogue and serendipity…and together this is our most important resource.
Reporting by Medgadget guest blogger, Mike Moore