NextMed Health: Where Cutting-Edge Technology Meets Medicine

[00:00:01] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.

[00:00:29] Hey everyone, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. Saul Marquez here with the amazing Dr. Daniel Kraft. He is the founder and chair of NextMed Health as well as the founder and leader at digital.health. So excited to be with you, Daniel. Thanks for jumping on. Daniel Kraft Great to be back in the metaverse with you. Daniel Kraft So super looking forward to next week. We'll be doing some fun stuff together.

[00:00:54] Daniel Kraft And look, I wanted to take this time to talk about NextMed Health and the things that you're doing there. For folks that may not be familiar with it, they're probably living under a rock. But for those that may not be or need an update, tell us about NextMed Health. What are you guys up to? Daniel Kraft Well, the back story is I'm a traditionally trained physician scientist, medicine, pediatrics, rheumatology, oncology, bone marrow transplant. I got very ensconced in the convergence of everything from digital health, medical devices,

[00:01:21] shared medicine for something called Singularity University. And starting in 2011, built a whole program looking at not the future of medicine through the lens of one specialty or med device or digital or pharma, but that super convergence. That was called exponential medicine through 2019. We had a little pandemic and now it's called NextMed Health. And the real theme here is that most of us in the health and medical technology world often get in our sort of silos, our specialties. And the magic between what's happened in NextMed Health since 2013 is to bring people together from

[00:01:50] all these different fields, AI, robotics, nanotech, reading printing, to chat pods and drones and psychedelics to go, where are we now? What's near and what's next? And how do we really catalyze this future of health and medicine? And I've run this at the Hotel Del Coronado, a magical spot in San Diego since 2013. And we're at the beach. Some people call it the burning man of healthcare conferences, it meets health and technology. But you really get people out of their usual mindsets and have a magical mix of faculty, amazing community, beachside bonfires or Charlotte Disco,

[00:02:19] fun mixed in with a really amazing community that's trying to bring the future faster and cross-fertilize and learn from each other. I love the meeting. I've been to it many times as exponential medicine and now NextMed Health. And I can tell you guys, it's phenomenal. If you want to get out of your norm and see where things are going, like they're talking about things that will probably become mainstream in seven to 10 years. And you're getting exposure to them at this conference. So it's certainly one

[00:02:48] that I'm a huge fan of. I don't even call it a conference. It's more like a gathering or a tribe of clever optimists, the folks who are often trying to drive change in their organizations or don't know they need to move faster because the future is coming faster than you think. And again, it's not around one thematic, but the future thematic is what's next. And so this year we've got, I'm really excited about our faculty. We've got everyone from my old friend, legendary inventor Dean Kamen, who is well-known for inventing the Segway, but really is a medical device invader extraordinaire.

[00:03:18] Now approaching into cell therapy, regenerative medicine. We have Eric Topol from Scripps out of San Diego, who's obviously an amazing thought leader. Michelle Williams, the recent dean of Harvard School of Public Health. We're crossing the future of neuro and brain tech, Ed Boyden from MIT, who is one of the co-founders of Optogenetics, will probably get the Nobel Prize soon, the future of neuro tech. Sort of big brains and folks with incredible experience like Larry Brilliant, who is an epidemiologist and now looking at the future of longevity. Rick Doblin, you may

[00:03:45] have heard of in the news around maps and trying to leverage psychedelics for everything from PTSD and beyond. And a whole array of other folks from Hugh Heard from MIT doing bionics, Jennifer Garrison, longevity and women's health. Amir Dan Rubin, who was the recent CEO of One Medical, Chris Longhurst, who was my intern back in the day, but now is the chief medical officer for UCSD. John Brownstein from Boston Children's, Chris Mason from Cornell, folks from ARPA-H across the spectrum, including a

[00:04:10] really amazing mix of startups with this innovation lab we call it, with about 60 startups still possible to apply for one of our last spots where we select down from about 300 to about 60 early stage to later stage companies. You really get to meet the future early. So it's a mix of main stage faculty and really a single track meeting. It's not like you're having to choose between 10. The innovation lab where you can touch the future early from next generation VR headsets to 3D printing to wearables

[00:04:37] and future pharma. And then we do some deep dive breakout sessions in the afternoons. And then we have amazing musicians. Like last year we had Aloe Black and we did music and we magicians. So I won't run through the whole faculty because there's too many, but it's a really interesting cross-convergence. It gets people out of the uterine head space and realizing that everyone could be part of catalyzing the future of medicine together. That's amazing, Danny. It's so much fun too. I

[00:05:02] remember having a karaoke last year. We had a little karaoke. We had a neuroscience meets magic then turned into a karaoke session. We have a resident magician, Robert Strong, and together with amazing UCSD physician, Adam Gazzelli, who's a neuroscientist. They do a bit of a special session on the neuroscience of magic. So bring your magic tricks. And you're at the beach in San Diego. What can go wrong? Thank you, man. Can't beat it. Well, certainly a favorite that we wanted to make sure that

[00:05:31] everybody listening and watching our podcast were familiar with. Where can people go get their tickets? Is it filling up fast? Because this tends to be like, I don't know how big is the meeting this year? Yeah. We can only fit about five, 600 people there. So it always sells out, usually very international. I think we had 25 countries there the last couple of years. And you go to nextmed.health, nextmed.health, you can check out the faculty and the innovation lab. If you have a startup,

[00:05:59] we have a startup competition as well called the METI, Medical Entrepreneurship and Destruction Awards. Some of those companies have gone on to even go public over the last decade. We've had startups, speaking of startups, we had Moderna there in 2015 before everyone knew what MRNA was, and Livongo there in 2013 or 14. So you'll see early stage elements you might want to invest in, whether it's next generation CRISPR or what's happening next in virtualized hospital home, by the leaders from Mass General, Jared Connolly speaking about that. Or get into your flow state

[00:06:25] with Stephen Kotler or learn about Voices biomarkers. And of course, the through line is going to be what I like to call multimodal health and AI enabled prevention diagnostics and therapy, all the way to regenerative medicine and big data and global and public health. Because I think from my perspective, it's not about any one technology. It's about their super convergence, how we mash them up to solve grand challenges, whether it's for next generation oncology, which is my field to enabling public health in new formats. So check us out at nextmed.health. We

[00:06:54] encourage all sorts of folks who are future thinking and sometimes even stuck in the mug to come and mix it up together. I love it. Neil, thank you so much for that. Folks, take advantage of this conference. It sells out fast. And that's why we wanted to make sure to get this hot out the press to you. There's still some tickets open. Check them out. We'll leave it in the show notes. And thanks to Dr. Daniel Kraft for his forward thinking and the things that he does to make health care better. Daniel, thanks for being with us. Thanks so much. Cheers.

[00:07:21] This podcast is produced by Outcomes Rocket, your healthcare exclusive digital marketing agency. Outcomes Rocket exists to help healthcare organizations like yours to maximize their impact

[00:07:46] and accelerate growth. Visit outcomesrocket.com or text us at 312-224-9945.