Hundreds in Silicon Valley Turn Out for PAMF Innovation Event on Senior Health
Posted on Apr 30, 2012
The Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s (PAMF) David Druker Center for Health Systems Innovation launched its linkAges™ Successful Aging Program with a community education and developer event on April 14 and 15, 2012. PAMF’s linkAges initiative is pioneering new ways to support seniors in the community to live a meaningful life and to age in place. When the Innovation Center invited the community to share its ideas on developing new ways to help seniors age successfully, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The event had a waiting list within days of the announcement, and more than 300 members and leaders in the community, high tech, government and developers attended the free event, which was hosted by PAMF and Health 2.0 at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum. The event was also carried live on Twitter via the #linkAges hashtag, with people participating virtually throughout theUnited States.
The three nationally recognized keynote speakers at the event were:
- Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer
- Eric Dishman, Intel Fellow and Chief Healthcare Strategist
- Paul Tang, PAMF Chief Innovation and Technology Officer
Dr. Paul Tang, PAMF’s chief innovation and technology officer, welcomed the group with an overview of the two–day event and an enthusiastic invitation for attendees to work together to “join the community in transforming senior health and well-being through disruptive innovation – be a part of it.” Next, he presented to the group on PAMF’s groundbreaking linkAges program, and he also gave an overview of the Innovation Center’s Successful Aging Developer Challenge.
Following Dr. Tang’s talk, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park took to the stage with an energetic discussion on unleashing the power of open data and innovation to improve health.
Eric Dishman, Intel Fellow and Chief Health Care Strategist, spoke on “Inventing Independence.” During his presentation, Dishman provided insight from Intel’s 20-year journey to find aging-in-place solutions. He also shared his personal health and caregiving story with the group.
View videos of the three keynote speakers here.
“We were extremely gratified by the public’s response,” said Dr. Tang. “So many people talked to me about their stories and how the ideas behind our linkAges system resonate with them. For a team that wakes up every day trying to re-invent what we do to help make our communities better, healthier places to live, this was music to our ears. We look forward to partnering with the community to bring the ideas to fruition.”
What Happened at the Developer Event?
Energized by a morning of stimulating talks, over 70 developers responded to the Innovation Center’s challenge: select an important problem to solve that is a barrier to successful aging, and demonstrate how indicative signals could be detected and acted upon to mitigate risks to a senior’s health and well-being and assist in maintaining a high quality of life.
At the end of the weekend, twenty teams pitched their creative solutions, covering the full spectrum of activity-based, physiologic and participatory (human) signals and sensors. Teams were highly multidisciplinary, running the gamut of user interaction and systems engineering developers, designers, gerontologists and businesspeople. As each team presented, a graphic facilitator rendered a real-time interpretation of their solution, providing immediate feedback on the idea and creating quite a buzz in the process.
Read about the winning teams and their solutions on the Innovation Center website.
What’s Next?
The weekend’s kickoff challenge prepared developers for the PAMF Innovation Center’s three-month linkAges Developer Challenge, sponsored in partnership with Health 2.0, and launching April 30. The winner of the three-month Developer Challenge will be invited to join the PAMF Innovation Center Accelerator, a six-month incubator designed to refine and integrate the winning solution into the linkAges ecosystem for rapid implementation within the PAMF community. To provide additional background and help developers prepare for the challenge, a briefing webinar is also planned for May 3.
The Developer Challenge will be an unprecedented opportunity for the winning team to demonstrate proof-of-concept of their solution in partnership with a nationally recognized health care provider, giving them a critical leg up on the path to potential commercialization.
For more information, please visit the Developer Challenge website, which will be updated with additional information throughout the Challenge.
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This is a movement that is gaining momentum in many communities. I live in Foster City and my city has just presented information about a proposed “Foster City Village” which will allow seniors to “age in place.” The Dr. Druker Center for Health proposal sounds similar to the Village concept. Excellent!