Medical Futurists to Discuss Non-Human Health Assistants

The 2014 Future of Health Technology Institute (FHTI; Hopkinton, MA, USA) summit will explore uses of non-human health assistants in medical care.

Held this year at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Cambridge, MA, USA), the 19th FHTI summit’s theme is “Create Healthcare’s Future, Cure-Care-Connect.” During the summit, 18 prominent scientists are scheduled to deliver short presentations to answer 18 important medical and health questions. Among them will be Mitch Lawrence, executive VP of Next IT, who will present and demonstrate the company’s intelligent Virtual Health Assistant (VHA) technology.

“One of the driving trends we’ve seen over recent years in health technology is the dramatically expanded use of digital and robotic healthcare assistants and avatars,” said Renata Bushko, head of the FHTI. “Most of us may not use digital health devices connected to your doctor yet, but you probably will soon, for the simple reason that this technology is inexpensive, accurate, tireless, and available 24/7.”

Ronald Arkin, PhD, of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA) will present a talk on “Robot’s Ethics: Maintaining Dignity in Patient-caregiver Relationships”. Other presentations include “Persuasive Health Communications” by Anand Rao, PhD, of the University of Mary Washington; “Persuasive Electric Vehicles (PEV): A New Concept for Healthy Urban Transportation” by Ryan Chin, PhD, of MIT’s Media Lab; and “The Future of Healthtech is Fashion”, presented by Mark Francis, new venture development lead and wearable product innovator at Intel (Santa Clara, CA, USA), who is developing a number of wearable device technologies for health and wellness applications.

The 2014 FHTI Award will be presented to Albert J. Di Rienzo, President of RedSky (El Paso, TX, USA), for his pioneering work promoting entrepreneurship in the medical and scientific fields. Akili Interactive Labs (Boston, MA, USA) will be the 2014 recipient of the FHTI Product Award for the development of the first therapeutic mobile video game, which targets the improvement of executive function deficits by using an approach that combines cutting-edge neuroscience, clinical validation, and state-of-the-art game mechanics.

Related Links:
Future of Health Technology Institute
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Georgia Institute of Technology