Attending my first-ever HLTH USA conference was busier and more tiring than I ever could have imagined. Despite losing my voice after endless back-to-back meetings and happy hours, I left extremely inspired by the future of healthcare innovation and am excited to work together with all of the incredible people striving to change what's possible in healthcare. Some recaps:
Watching Julian Abhari have a flawless pitch representing Skin Check at the Tampa General Hospital Pitch Competition was an amazing feeling, as I got to watch everything come full-circle after I originally met the team and Daniel Marques virtually on the HealthTechNerds slack community. We feel refreshed and revitalized to continue building towards the goal of democratizing access to and equity of dermatological care and skin cancer detection.
Having the opportunity to meet more of the Rock Health team and alumni at the Rock Health Breakfast was a great opportunity while continuing to work with Rock Health Capital. Amazing events like the Fast Track Go-Karting event hosted by SpringTide Ventures (Brad Otto, Claire Elizabeth Smith) or the networking breakfast hosted by Scrub Capital and Inflect (Nika Duan, Andrew Smith) gave me the opportunity to get smoked by my GP Bill Evans (I still want a rematch), catch-up with friends at Seae Ventures (Karlos Bledsoe, Justin Williams, M.S.), Northwell Health (Brittany Wadhwani), and AlleyCorp (Brenton Fargnoli, M.D.), and make new friends as well (John Dayton, MD, MBA, Graham Walker, MD, Brendan Iglehart, Jenny Soriano, MBA, Christopher Herzog, Drew Carpenter, MBA).
There is no question that the most inspiring part of the conference was connecting with physicians who are now operators, advisors, and investors alongside or after their clinical journeys. While the sentiment around the conference continues to be a greater need for physicians involved in innovation, it was amazing to see how many clinicians already have a broader impact on the system. Special shout-outs to Scrub Capital (Rebecca Mitchell, MD and Jonathan Slotkin) and the Clinicians who VC community for bringing together so many clinicians in one place (the walk was still my favorite event) and the Cornell Tech community and friends (Chethan Sarabu, MD, Sumanth Kaja, Vinodh Chandra) reminding me of the health-tech innovation happening closer to home in NYC.
Apologies for not being able to list every incredible person I met or exciting event I attended. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone that was a part of my HLTH experience and I look forward to reconnecting and collaborating soon!