Connected Health Symposium Looks for Answers to Healthcare's Troubling Questions

As Joseph Kvedar, MD, director of Partners Healthcare’s Center for Connected Health, looked out upon a crowded ballroom at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel Thursday afternoon, he was reminded of a concept hatched roughly two decades ago. “We had the crazy idea that the doctor and the patient didn’t have to be in the same room together,” he recalled. This week, more than 1,000 healthcare executives, physicians, nurses and IT experts joined him to point out just how far that crazy idea has evolved.

The two-day Connected Health Symposium, in its eighth year, brings experts from around the world together to discuss the latest in technology and concepts designed to drive healthcare innovation. Sub-titled “Driving Quality Up and Costs Down: New Technologies for an Era of Accountability,” it featured, among other sessions, debates on the effectiveness of the accountable care organization, panel discussions on mobile technology, social media and consumer health and keynotes from writer and surgeon Atul Gawande, MD, Nuance Healthcare’s Janet Dillione and none other than the Crown Prince of Denmark...