Thought Leaders and Innovators came Together To Share Their Knowledge, Experience, Research and Insights about the Future of Health.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

STARTUP SHOWCASE

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Garheng Kong founded HealthQuest Capital in 2012 to improve people’s lives through improving healthcare on a significant scale.  His vision was to build a best-in-class team of the highest talent and integrity to work with outstanding entrepreneurs to transform healthcare through high growth companies while generating outsized risk adjusted returns for investors.

A physician, scientist, and engineer by training, Garheng has over two decades of experience investing in innovative healthcare companies with a long list of successes (25 IPO/M&A exits). He has represented HealthQuest on the boards of Ajax I, Ajax II, Ajax III, Alcresta, Avedro, Avizia, BardyDx, Castle Biosciences, CleanSlate, Etairos, ENT Specialty Partners, Everlywell, HealthChannels, Magnolia Medical, Perspectum, Pulmonx, Spirox, TigerConnect, Trice Medical, Venus Concept, and CareMetx/VirMedica.

Some of his notable past successes include IPO’s with Avedro (AVDR), Castle Biosciences (CSTL), Cempra (CEMP), Alimera (ALIM), Applied Genetic Technology Corp. (AGTC), AmWell (AMWL), Proteon (PRTO), Pulmonx (LUNG), Histogenics (HSGX), TransEnterix (TRXC) and Venus Concept (VERO). His investments going on to successful M&A transactions include: Ajax I (Medtronic), Avedro (Glaukos), Avizia (AmWell), Calibra Medical (J&J), Cellective (AstraZeneca), Serenex (Pfizer), Athenix (Bayer), NovaMin (GSK), Aldagen (Cytomedix), Salveo Specialty Pharmacy (United Health), SARCode (Shire), Spirox (Stryker), and Virmedica (CareMetx).

Garheng’s interests and industry footprint are broad as he also serves on boards of LabCorp (LH), Alimera Sciences (ALIM), StrongBridge (SBBP), Be The Match, Duke University Medical Center, and has served as Chairman on nine boards. He is an Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow, Kauffman Fellows Mentor, and member of YPO.

Garheng received undergraduate degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Biological Sciences from Stanford, while on an athletic scholarship. He then earned a MD, PhD and MBA from Duke University, graduating at the top of his class in each instance. His early career included stints at GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey and a medical device start-up, TherOx, before joining Intersouth Partners and then Sofinnova Investments. He is married to his physician wife (a board certified cardiac electrophysiologist), has 3 children, and was a nationally ranked volleyball player (and avid “foodie”)

Kristen Valdes, founder and CEO of b.well Connected Health, has dedicated her career to empowering consumers with the data and tools to take control of their health care journey. An award-winning leader and acknowledged visionary, Valdes has pioneered inventive solutions that are pushing the industry forward into the consumer-directed future of digital health. She is driven in that quest by her experience as the mother of a child with an autoimmune disorder who nearly died due to a lack of health data interoperability. 

Prior to founding b.well in 2015, Valdes was an executive at UnitedHealthcare running Medicare Advantage plans across 12 states. She started her healthcare career working with CMS on the first national payment integrity programs for Medicare and Medicaid. She then helped to build XLHealth, one of the pioneering Medicare Advantage plans for the chronically ill.  Valdes was responsible for maintaining and growing the profitability of the plan and was instrumental in its acquisition by UnitedHealthcare in late 2012 for $2.4 billion.

Valdes has won numerous awards for her leadership. Named one of “Maryland’s Most Admired CEOs,” she was recognized in 2020 as one of four "Women Transforming Industries" by Accenture and Springboard Enterprises for re-imagining how we can more efficiently and wisely leverage technology to access healthcare. Under her leadership, b.well has been recognized by Business Insider as “one of 35 healthcare startups VCs say will take off in 2021”; by BuiltIn Austin as a 2020 Best Place to Work; by the Digital Health Awards as the 2020 winner of the "consumer directed digital health" category; and as a “Top Innovator” at the 2019 Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge.

Valdes is a board member of the CARIN Alliance, a non-partisan multi-stakeholder collaborative that aims to enable consumers to access their health information with less friction. Her personal profile is shaped by strong family values, a superior work ethic, and an integrity-driven competitive nature.  She is actively involved in her community, serves on various boards as an Advisor and has been a featured speaker at numerous healthcare industry conferences.

Chris Moose is a Partner in IBM's Healthcare and Life Sciences practice leading IBM's COVID-19 credentialing and vaccine distribution strategies with Federal, State and commercial entities.  This involves convening an ecosystem across Government and Private entities and deploying technology to address visibility, coordination and security challenges as we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

His most recent project drove IBM's interaction with the State of New York and deployed the Nation's first state-issued digital COVID credential. With over 19 million eligible users this is a new model for entities to represent facts, establish trust and has far reaching implications beyond COVID and healthcare. He achieved this by combining cryptography and blockchain to form new business networks and ecosystems. Currently he is scaling this platform, IBM's Healthpass, globally and presenting IBM's blockchain and ecosystem point of view to congressional, federal agencies, states and national media.

Mr. Moose's COVID activities align with his belief in the power of technology, the importance of business platforms and the need for industries to rethink where they cooperate versus compete.  The increase in connectivity, compute and bandwidth when merged with decentralized technologies and a shifting regulatory landscape enables organizations to focus at higher levels in the value chain and will drive dramatic innovation.

Outside IBM Mr. Moose is an advisor at Capital Factory, a Startup investor, Advisor to Global Healthcare Crisis Center (GHC3) and advisor to the Global Self Care Federation.

Startup showcase

Zachary Ballard received his Ph.D. from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of California, Los Angeles in 2019, working with Professor Aydogan Ozcan. He has co-authored 11 peer-reviewed journal articles and a book chapter in the field of biophotonics and computational sensing. During his education, Dr. Ballard received the Dr. Ursula Mandel Scholarship for graduate students in scientific fields allied to medicine, the 2018 SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship, and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Dr. Ballard is a co-founder of Hana Diagnostics, Inc. a start-up focused on commercializing computational point-of-care sensor technology.

Hana Diagnostics was launched in spring of 2020 with the immediate goal of commercializing an innovative diagnostic test from UCLA that provides novel functionalities to improve the accuracy of rapid testing. Our rapid testing platform uniquely supports up to 100 independent simultaneous assay reactions within a plastic cassette, and leverages a compact reader working with AI-based calibration algorithms to accurately report measurement results of key clinical panels. Co-founders: Profs. Aydogan Ozcan, Dino Di Carlo, Omai Garner, Drs. Hyou-Arm Joung (CTO) and Zach Ballard (CEO) have worked together for nearly 5 years on this platform technology and bring synergistic expertise in translating technologies from the lab into the clinical space. Together our team’s mission is to democratize next-generation diagnostic technologies through rapid testing innovations and a computational sensing approach to sensing.

Wei Escala is the founder and CEO of Eggschain. She proudly operates at the intersection of technology, blockchain, reproductive medicine, scientific research and marketing. She successfully identified, captured the imagination of, onboarded and continued to learn from/collaborate with a stellar team of technology experts, business experts, esteemed physicians and scientists. Before founding Eggschain, she has held executive positions at Valvoline, Evenflo, Procter & Gamble, Frito Lay and Kraft Foods and has run P&L of up to $300 million in the US. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Computer Science, and a MBA from Emory University. She is passionate about women’s health, family building, enabling better education and better decision-making for men, women, families, partners and organizations.

Eggschain is a digital health company that is a thought leader in the fertility, female-Healthtech, family-building and cryogenic preservation industries. We are patent-allowed and cloud-based. We provide an intermediary that facilities IVF procedures, egg-freezing, sperm-freezing, and donor process. We lead the thinking on chain of custody tracking of bio specimens, including sperm, eggs, embryos, genome, stem cell, and other genetic material. Also, we provide fertility doctor approved information and educate women, men, family and partners on how best to have a baby, and how to make decisions. On the B2B side, we make inventory-managing bio specimens and equipment more accurate, faster and easier. We help prevent mistakes and help labs run more efficiently. Hospitals, physician’s labs, high complexity labs, prenatal screen labs and newborn screening labs, toxicology, chemistry labs, and other labs benefit from our service.

Asma Mirza has a graduate degree in Global Health from Duke University's Global Health Institute. She has a background leading healthcare interventions and implementations in the U.S., Middle East, South Asia, and the Caribbean, and analyzing the market assessment accordingly. She assisted in the delivery of a healthcare technology that was delivered during the onset of the Syrian Civil War, which included surveys, user interviews, and a technological analysis. Asma is trained in qualitative and quantitative analysis of communicable diseases and their large-scale global impact in transforming into an outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic.

Steradian Technologies is developing The RUMI, a hand-held, no-lab diagnostic device, that uses photonics for rapid amplification and direct detection of pathogens in breath under 30 seconds. The device can be used for both communicable and non-communicable disease detection. Currently, the device is being developed for respiratory viral and bacterial diseases and early-stage, non-small lung cancer detection. The device is portable, and can be used anywhere without the need of a lab. Testing can run about a tenth of the cost of PCR, or the price of latte ($5), increasing testing accessibility across all communities! The device has demonstrated 99% sensitivity and is being tested currently at JLABS and the Center for Device Innovation. Steradian Technologies was one of the Grand Prize winners of XPRIZE's $6m Covid-19 Rapid Testing Challenge!

Logan Jacobs is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 8 years experience building teams and developing innovative products. A former financial advisor at Raymond James Financial, Logan has spent the past 5 years launching new medical devices. Logan holds a BS degree in finance from the University of Tennessee and an MBA from the University of Washington.

TourniTek is the first pre-hospital treatment for limb threatening injuries. Using therapeutic cooling, TourniTek preserves injured limbs in the field until patients can be transported to definitive surgical care. By treating these injuries prior to surgical care, TourniTek can prevent amputation and permanent disability.

IMPACTIVO, LLC is an impact-driven health technology and consulting firm committed to transforming health systems. We achieve our mission by empowering leaders to take informed action that makes health and wellbeing accessible to individuals, families, and communities.

Our cutting-edge work at the intersection of data-driven decision making and learning has been conducted with the support of organizations including the HRSA Region 2 Public Health Training Center, the National Science Foundation and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. IMPACTIVO specializes in methods for assessing community health needs, strategic planning, provider readiness, workforce development, and implementation of evidence-based practices.

Our leadership development programs, training and technical assistance resources are followed by over 4,500 health leaders.

Bonn Macy is a management consultant and business strategist and has helped some of the largest and some of the smallest companies around the world develop and implement strategies, assess markets and competitors, evaluate new technologies, and develop new businesses. Bonn has been a management consultant with both McKinsey & Co. and Booz Allen Hamilton and a corporate and financial planner with BP. He co-founded and directed the Startup Santa Fe and Startup New Mexico organizations to support and facilitate the growth and needs of startups and the expanding entrepreneurial communities in the State of New Mexico and the City of Santa Fe. As a Presidential appointee in the second Clinton Administration, he created and developed one of the largest Federal businesses, producing billions of dollars in annual revenue, as well as worked with industry and the western States on policy issues. Over the past few years, he has been pursuing startups in the health and wellness and pharmaceutical sectors. Bonn earned Bachelors and Master’s degrees from Columbia University in Materials Science and Resource Economics, a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics in Economics and Finance, and additional graduate studies at London Business School and the Universities of Stockholm and Vienna.

Phyteau is developing an innovative, new class of therapeutics for diabetes, obesity, related conditions like NAFLD & NASH, and weight-loss. Our approach activates the body’s natural metabolic system by activating enteroendocrine cells in the lining of the intestines to release therapeutic levels of key incretin and metabolic hormones, including GLP-1, PYY & CCK. These boosted hormones:
1) signal insulin release,
2) reduce blood sugar levels & peaks and HbA1c,
3) reduce appetite, food intake & weight, increase satiety,
4) slows gastric emptying & intestinal motility,
5) improve metabolism and fat thermogenesis,
6) reduce liver fat & fibrosis,
7) protect against many age-related functional declines and conditions,
8) are cardio- & neuro-protective

The result is safe, affordable first-line treatments that provide a powerful tool for blood sugar control, weight-loss, metabolism and aging. We address growing global unmet needs in pharmaceutical markets and in consumer health & nutrition with a variety of technologically advantaged products.