FOMO about ViVE Conference 2024?
Trust us if we tell you the scene that lived up to expectations. The conference offered eclectic experiences aside from presentations, panels, and the exhibit hall, including yoga sessions, a puppy park featuring certified therapy dogs, concerts, a startup pitch competition, interactive workshops, and demo sessions, and over-the-top side events.
(Spoiler alert! We hosted one of them on Day 1! We'll cover it all below).
It’s no surprise that ViVE is always packed with engaging talks. There’s so much to cover! Beyond that, we did notice a trend in the topics of debate and discussion. Among these, three topics stood out to us:
- Cybersecurity challenges, concerns, and approaches
- AI deployment in healthcare
- Health Systems' big bet on innovation
Without further ado, let's move on to the learnings:
1. Cybersecurity concerns and approaches
The number of significant hacking-related data breaches reported to the HHS (US Department of Health and Human Services) Office for Civil Rights has increased by 256% in the last five years, according to industry reports.
Healthcare's vulnerability was a hot topic for ViVE. Even though cybersecurity has become increasingly important over the past few years, the recent Change Healthcare incident was a nudge for us all.
There’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel, and the following panels showed us why.
“Healthcare Cybersecurity 2029: From Critical to Stable Condition in Five Years”
Due to persistent cyberattacks on the healthcare system that have impacted patient safety, finances, operations, and public confidence, an HHS task committee declared healthcare cybersecurity to be in "critical condition" in 2017. The Health Sector Coordinating Council – the industry-run critical infrastructure advisory council to the federal government and the health sector will be releasing this year its five-year Health Industry Cybersecurity Strategic Plan, which serves as a wellness formulary for how the sector can improve its security and resilience forecasting from "critical" to "stable." The Strategic Plan, developed over the course of 18 months by leaders in the healthcare sector in collaboration with government partners, outlines the cybersecurity risks associated with the industry's broad trends over the next five years and how we should get ready for them.
The panel took the stage to discuss the process and pillars of the plan, which can be displayed in this image:
The discussion resumed with a call to action for the health innovators. As we continue developing new healthcare technology solutions and getting MVPs released fast, the developing process should be "secure by default, secure by design."
Authors of "AI and Cybersecurity Handbook for Healthcare Boards"
This panel aimed to introduce a new publication conceived in collaborative work by dozens of the world's most brilliant minds in the fields of informatics, law, medicine, technology, business, engineering/bioengineering, information security, privacy, and leadership, in addition to project and program management. The goal of this Taylor & Francis book series: "Trustworthy Technology and Innovation in Healthcare," is to upskill clinicians and foster a common language, respect, and set of objectives across cybersecurity, IT, law, and medicine. They're resources to industry-leading standards and certification, designed to help health systems, medical device companies, investors, and other stakeholders identify and drive ongoing success with technology and innovation.
2. AI Maturity showcased at ViVE 2024
Light, camera, AI in action! Yes, we’re talking of action because last year, AI was in everybody’s mouth, but we could see it was mainly in an exploratory status. It wasn't very clear how we would deploy it in the healthcare industry from a practical point of view.
Now, things are actually happening, and the talks are about how we’re making it happen. Noticeable startups have emerged, focused on improving workflows, workloads of healthcare staff, and, with it, the overall patient experience.
AI: The Good, The Bad, and the Governed
There is a lot to learn about the ethical ramifications and road map for applying AI to produce outcomes that people can trust—fair, accurate, consistent with the law, and socially beneficial. The discussion panel came up with four points to take into account when deploying safe AI in healthcare:
- There's an urgent need to set up a solid framework, but this should act as a thorn in the flesh. We're innovating too fast to improve patient outcomes faster; that should be kept going.
- We need internal best practices sharing happening now. Embrace the collaboration and learning from each other to rapidly adopt guiding rules. It consists of a public-private partnership anchored on trust.
- It is important to bring consumers and patients to the table during AI technology development to get their concerns, needs, and genuine understanding.
- AI models are only as good as the data they're trained. The performance and accuracy of AI are intrinsically tied to the quality and diversity of the data used during their training. It is critical to have a robust and representative dataset to ensure optimal model outcomes.
Charlotte’s AI Web of Clinical Workflows
In a healthcare setting, artificial intelligence (AI) functions as a quiet, spider-like companion, creating a web of knowledge to assist clinicians and maximize outcomes for each unique patient. Despite the popular fear, the panelists in this discussion agree on one point: this technology is not designed to replace clinicians but instead empower them with Spidey-like senses.
One of the highlights of this talk was the discussion surrounding AI predictions for the future. Two points stand out:
- The future will be more knowledge in front of people at the right time to make better decisions and better patient outcomes all the way around.
- Directly connected to the previous is the idea that through a regulatory pathway guided by the White House Brief on AI, we will be able to take the massive data sets on the EHRs to help inform clinical decision support truly. That will happen sooner or later, according to the experts on the panel.
Puppeteer’s Debut on ViVE 2024
With less than a year in activity, Light-it’s spin-off company, Puppeteer, founded by our three co-founders Alan Brande, Martín Oppenheimer, Javier Lempert, and ex Meta, Federico Ruiz, made its debut at ViVE.
In the last year, many healthcare organizations have struggled to fully utilize the potential of AI assistants and language models (LLMs). Although they were aware of the enormous benefits that LLMs may have for their businesses and practices, developing and implementing them proved to be a significant challenge. Along came Puppeteer… With its platform, healthcare organizations can quickly develop AI Agents with human-like abilities ready to improve patient outcomes and expedite the task of medical professionals.
For Puppeteer’s team, it was not only exhilarating to be at ViVE, but also to realize the tremendous potential its technology has to impact the industry, given the number of people who approached the booth to explore, test, and fully understand how we are transforming customer interactions!
3. Health Systems’ Big Bet on Innovation
A new breed of innovation centers is springing up in the core of health systems, each with a distinct aim to revolutionize healthcare. This discussion dived into the main challenges of four healthcare systems across the US: Houston Methodist, Northwell Health, Sutter Health, and Providence.
These innovation centers work on solving problems with durability across the system, prioritizing them, and researching to build solutions to the table. These were the three “big bets” shared by the panelists:
- Identity-driven personalization: truly personalized care, from the content delivered to the patient, next steps, indications, and tasks. The focus is on creating uniquely personalized experiences.
- Bringing people back to people: new solutions to reduce administrative burden assist clinical decisions to bring our caregivers back to the patient.
- Identification of operational efficiencies to automatize processes that can relieve financial pressures.
They all agree that they seek scalable solutions; they only work on things that can scale up quickly. If it can't, there's no time; they'll move on to a new alternative.
Light-it’s Cocktail Hour Side-event
Not everything was serious debate and discussion; we sprinkled in some fun, too, and we're safe to say that Light-it stole the spotlight in the entertainment track!
We co-hosted an exclusive meetup after #ViVE2024 at La Lo La Rooftop in AC Hotel by Marriott together with our friends from Slice of Healthcare, Healthie, Sage Growth Partners, and Alvarez Search.
With 250+ attendees, "The Cocktail Hour" was a blast; even the rain couldn't rain on our parade while we connected with digital health leaders and discussed innovation in healthcare.
Oh, the places we’ll go
Light-it’s immersion into ViVE 2024 was not just about absorbing industry insights but also actively contributing to the transformative dialogue. From cybersecurity challenges and being witnesses of the maturation of AI in healthcare to witnessing Puppeteer's impressive debut and exploring the innovative bets health systems are placing, our team experienced and shared the full spectrum of advancements.
We still have our adrenaline pumping! Undoubtedly, the ViVE event is one of the catalysts for digital health advancements. We walked out with our heads held high, having proven once again that we are active participants in the digital transformation of the healthcare industry.
