The Future is Here: JHF Attends 2019 CES Digital Health Summit

Since 2009, the most influential players in healthcare innovation and technology have descended upon Las Vegas, NV, for the annual CES Digital Health Summit. What ensues is a glimpse into the future of health care, as industry leaders, entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and healthcare providers reimagine the current landscape—from prevention, diagnosis, and treatment; to workforce preparation and accreditation; to care design and delivery.

The Digital Health Summit combines more than 55,000 square feet of trade-show floor showcases with presentations and demos assembled by the most influential and high-profile speakers. On full display are trends like artificial intelligence and digital therapeutics, marketplace-changing partnerships among industry behemoths, and startup companies that buck convention to deliver better consumer experiences and health outcomes.

JHF President and CEO Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, and Nancy Zionts represented JHF at the 2019 Digital Health Summit, which was held on January 8 and 9. Representatives from the Foundation have attended each of the past three Digital Health Summits, which are part of the larger CES conference. CES, which is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association, attracts more than 180,000 total attendees from around the world.

The 10th annual 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. The exhibitors and speakers ranged from traditional healthcare players (Aetna, Cigna, and Kaiser Permanente among them) to consumer-centric and technology heavyweights (Fitbit, Google's Verily, Johnson & Johnson, Phillips, Samsung, Teladoc) to those who are out of this world — literally (NASA). 

The insights from CES will inform JHF's Window to the Future of Health Care initiative. Through this initiative, the Foundation aims to bring the top digital health innovations and leaders from across the U.S. to Pittsburgh for a summit so that our region can govern, teach, and allocate resources in the most effective manner possible. The goal is to catalyze a regional planning effort that will usher in a new era of healthcare education, training, and governance. The summit would bring together industry leaders and promising advances in the field of digital health and consumer-directed medicine to provide a fully immersive experience into the future of health care.