Meet the Future: JHF Attends 2023 CES Digital Health Summit

Nancy Zionts and Dr. Karen Wolk Feinstein at the CES Digital Healthcare Summit in Las Vegas.

Since 2009, the most influential players in healthcare innovation and technology, including the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, have also traveled to CES for its Digital Health Summit in search of innovative ways technology can enhance healthcare delivery, outcomes, and delivery.

CES features more than 3,200 exhibitors representing 173 countries, territories, and regions. The innovations that took center stage in 2023 were those that increase efficiency in health care, improve health equity, and save lives as patients seek ways to empower themselves and take control of their care and wellbeing. Among the exhibits and experiences of interest were the digital twin, a technology using the digital world to improve the physical one by predicting how a person might perform in real-world health scenarios; special sessions on women in technology; and tools to help meet the moment of the growing mental health epidemic.

JHF President and CEO Dr. Karen Wolk Feinstein and COO and Chief Program Officer Nancy Zionts represented JHF at the 2023 Digital Health Summit, which was held on January 8 and 9. CES, which is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association, attracts more than 180,000 total attendees from around the world.

Nancy Zionts demonstrates the digital twin technology at the CES conference.

The Digital Health Summit featured the latest in consumer technologies, including machine learning and AI, virtual and augmented reality, precision drug treatments, condition-specific wearables, sleep and fitness tracking, telemedicine, 3D printing, and data security/Blockchain. Sessions explored the topics of the opportunities and challenges of the increasing role of big tech in health, the future of at-home testing and diagnosis, and ensuring a diversity of voices and talent are involved in developing new technology for health care. 

The insights from CES provide JHF with a window into the future of healthcare technology to inform its agenda to advance patient safety and its work in senior care. As the guest of Steve Ewell, Dr. Feinstein and Zionts met with other grant makers in aging for a luncheon and to tour various exhibits highlighting how technology is supporting seniors aging in the community, and their caregivers.

Dr. Feinstein remarked the continued innovation of at-home testing and diagnostic technologies on display at CES have the potential to bridge gaps in care to begin to make health care more inclusive and patient-centered, to equip community health workers with the data necessary provide efficient and effective care, and to empower individuals with data to become active participants in and advocates for their own care.