Hot Topic: Health, Technology and Data - Which is the best way to go?

Shwetak N. Patel, Eva Wolfangel, Katherine Chou, Stefanie Friedhoff, Ziad Obermayer, Arunan Skandarajah, Aisha Walcott

Envisioning how the future of healthcare could be transformed by technology, sensors, data and machine learning can be very exciting. Even though many innovations and promising new methods are theoretically possible, they also come with inherent obstacles that can be easily overlooked. Starting with the right questions, researching the real problems and challenges with the infrastructure such as the Internet or electricity, as well as questions of privacy and the needs of the population are important to consider.

In order to thoroughly examine eHealth’s influence, the session has been broken down into two panels. The first half, “Global Health and Tech,” will be devoted to the question of what the real conditions are like in different parts of the world and what the largest challenges are. The second panel, “Concrete Innovations, Apps and Challenges,” is set unpack current solutions and forecast the potential of future developments.

Panel 1: Global Health and Tech

  • Stefanie Friedhoff, Harvard Global Health Institute
  • Arunan Skandarajah, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Ziad Obermayer, Berkeley Public Health Institute

Panel 2: Concrete Innovations, Apps and Challenges

  • Katherine Chou, Director Healthcare & Life Sciences at Google
  • Aisha Walcott, IBM Research Africa
  • Shwetak Patel, University of Washington, ACM Prize in Computing