MedCity has been fortunate to receive high marks for compelling content both on our website and at our conferences. We tend to have success in featuring top speakers and experts in their field from whom the rest of us can learn.

INVEST 2019 will not be any different. As we prepare for the conference, April 23-24 at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Chicago, I am pleased to announce that we will have a slew of highly admired and influential healthcare executives spending some time with us and describing their vision for healthcare: famed angel investor Esther Dyson; Dr. Sachin Jain, president and CEO of CareMore Health, a division of Anthem, and Dr. Stephen Klasko, president and CEO of Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University.

Esther Dyson needs no introduction. An angel investor par excellence, she has made bets on tech giants like Facebook, LinkedIn aside from numerous investments in health — HealthLoop, acquired recently by GetWell Networks, Omada Health, PatientsLikeMe and scores of others. She is an investor and board member at 23andMe.

But perhaps more importantly, Dyson’s interest in health goes beyond simply investing. She understands that the key to controlling costs and helping people live healthy lives is population health with a particular focus on communities and the social determinants of health. That led to Wellville, a national nonprofit, which is using an accelerator type-approach to healthy living, where she is founding executive director. It is looking closely at five American communities to raise the standard for health and wellbeing. For instance in Muskegon, Michigan the focus areas are on reducing obesity and tobacco use. The model in that community as well as the other four communities Wellville is in leverages the strength of community partners.

At INVEST, Dyson will talk about how the future is to reward companies for keeping people healthy instead of compensating for trying to fix them when they are beyond repair.

Just as community health and social determinants of health are big areas of focus in health, so is the consumerization of healthcare. And INVEST 2019 will take a decidedly unconventional approach in how we tackle this trend. It will feature a debate between Dr. Klasko, who believes strongly that for the industry to succeed, we need to move aggressively toward adopting tools that make the healthcare experience easy and convenient for people. Dr. Jain, on the other hand, believes the consumerization trend is no silver bullet and that true management of healthcare costs means managing chronic patients better. And just providing a tech tool or an app will not necessarily lead to better out comes for patients.

The debate will be moderated by none other than Lisa Suennen, the thoughtful and outspoken health IT venture capitalist and digital health gatekeeper, who was recently named as managing director at Manatt Health.

I am thrilled that such passionate and well-known executives in healthcare are joining our INVEST conference. I hope you will too.  We will be finalizing our agenda soon, but for now here’s the 2019 preliminary agenda. You can also find our 2018 speakers here.

And of course, like always we will host our INVEST Pitch Perfect competition to highlight the top healthcare startups in various healthcare sectors. The contest’s application process will begin soon. So stay tuned for that.