10 epic SXSW healthcare panels you need to vote for today

Yep—you read that right. SXSW 2016! Organizers just announced that they’ve received a record number of panels to choose from, and here’s where you come in: Before you take off for your last beach getaway, be sure to vote on your favorite panel. Can’t decide? No problem—we’ve got a few choices below that feature entrepreneurs and CEOs from digital health’s hottest companies. Polls close September 4th.

Digital Health and Outcomes: Where's the Evidence?

Despite thousands of apps and devices emerging in the digital health universe, the sad fact is that most have no demonstrable outcomes—they don't clearly improve anyone's health, and they haven't proved they can reduce costs—ultimately leading to a lack of viability. It's time for the sector to mature and start demonstrating its value. This panel, moderated by BuzzFeed's Stephanie Lee, will explore how digital health companies can use clinical evidence to succeed through the lens of a company that has commercialized its outcomes (Omada Health), a company that validates emerging products (Evidation Health), and an investor that evaluates hundreds of companies each year (Rock Health).

CEO Braindump: Scaling a Digital Health Company

Record-breaking dollars are flowing into digital health, with over $4B in funding in 2014. While some digital health companies are thriving, most will fail. This interactive panel will provide a robust discussion around the hurdles these founders faced, and how they turned these challenges into a mega growth opportunity. The goal is to extract insights from the two seasoned digital health founders of Omada Health (a B2B company) and Doctor on Demand (a B2C company), who have raised $30M and $86M in venture funding respectively.

Consumerism in Healthcare

This panel will focus on the role of consumers in healthcare. In the broadest sense, we will answer questions like what technologies are consumers most interested in and how can we reach these consumers? Digital health is about reducing the costs of healthcare and improving care across the board. If we believe in it, our jobs should be to get it into the hands of everyone. We will talk a lot about the challenges of getting consumers to use technology, why there isn't a health app on your homescreen yet, and how we think about using digital health to reach those that aren't in the same socioeconomic level as traditional tech consumers.

Call your moms! (All 85 million of them)

Women make over 80% of healthcare decisions, and family health and maternity represent the largest cost area in healthcare—if you're not targeting mom, you're probably missing the boat. Even the savviest intuition needs market and user validation; this interactive panel comprised of entrepreneurs and investment experts working across commercial and Medicaid populations, will discuss new and innovative ways to “make mom happy,” while building a sustainable business.

So You've Moved to Value-Based Care, Now What?

The ever-increasing burden of chronic disease combined with the shift to value-based care presents a new challenge to healthcare organizations. Government and private payers have made commitments to shift the majority of their contracts with healthcare providers away from fee-for-service to value-based care, which means that providers need to figure out how to deliver value – fast! Population health management is the answer, but it’s not easy to drive results and doesn’t usually work well with legacy IT systems. How can healthcare organizations effectively and efficiently use population health management to deliver value-based care for patients with chronic illness?

mHealth Empire: The Rise of the Digital Revolution

Big Data and mobile health are transforming the healthcare landscape. The digital revolution is here and health tech heavyweights are ready to ride the wave. Take a look into the future of drug development and how mHealth technology, including wearables, sensors and apps, are uncovering new “digital biomarkers” and driving a patient-centric research model. The connected patient paired with tech straight out of the Matrix is altering the way we’re collecting and understanding our own data, helping people to better understand themselves today to proactively lead healthier lives tomorrow.

Mission (not) Impossible: Digital Behavior Change

Personal data tracking is the hot thing in digital health, despite research showing that knowledge does not lead to sustained behavior change. Most apps target healthy people rather than users needing behavior modification. How can digital health truly help users implement meaningful change? Interventions that include social reinforcement through peers, family or a health team, individualized care plans, and building self-efficacy are proven to show results. This session will present three models for how to leverage digital health interventions to meaningfully connect users with health care experts through health coaching, care team integration, and earlier risk identification.

Imagining the Future of Personalized Medicine

Healthy Design: Engaging Patients to Get Results

We are in the middle of a historic shift in health care. As digital health matures, and the industry becomes increasingly focused on the patient and consumer experience, health care companies are confronting a new challenge: design. Omada Health has made product design part of the company’s DNA; CEO Sean Duffy and VP of Product Sean Duffy will discuss the importance of design in digital health, and how well-designed health care products don’t merely ‘look pretty’ – they drive quantifiable improvements in patient outcomes. The pair will use real-world examples to demonstrate that well-designed health care products lead to healthier patients, and lower health care costs.

Coaching: The New Frontier in Digital Health

How do you achieve your personal best? Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?

As we look to the future of healthcare, ground breaking technologies are being developed faster than ever before. However, in our session we will delve into a method which has been used in athletes and musicians for decades; coaching, which is transforming preventative medicine and enabling us to be our healthiest selves at a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches.