BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Powering Precision Health 2016, the nation's first biomed innovation-driven summit, today announced its unprecedented keynote lineup of industry icons. Founded by life sciences visionary and entrepreneur, Kevin Hrusovsky, along with a team of influential life science experts, Powering Precision Health will launch in one of the world's leading meccas of science and discovery, the Life Sciences Corridor. The mission of the summit is to establish a new paradigm and white paper for precision health by fostering collaboration among the world's foremost doctors, researchers, scientists, innovators, investors and policymakers. The inaugural summit will be held on September 26th at the Boston Marriott Cambridge with registration at www.pphsummit.com.
"Precision health can be realized by deploying disruptive technologies that enable today's 'sick care' to be transformed into tomorrow's proactive, personalized, and economically viable healthcare," said Kevin Hrusovsky. "The vision for Powering Precision Health is to catalyze a science-based movement focused on disease prevention, early detection and personalized treatments. The summit's vision is bold, its mission noble, and its potential for eradicating disease is unprecedented."
In April of 2016, Hrusovsky assembled some of the greatest minds in medicine -- a think tank of health innovation -- for an executive thought leadership forum on how to revolutionize healthcare via precision medicine. Powering Precision Health Summit evolved out of this brainstorming session, and several members of that luminary roundtable serve on the steering committee for the prestigious summit.
"Precision health is on the horizon as we move the needle from symptomatic care to asymptomatic care. This provides us with the ultimate goal of defining wellness and preventing the progression to disease," said Dennis A. Ausiello, MD, Jackson Distinguished Professor of Clinical Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Chief of Medicine, Emeritus at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). "I'm thrilled to lend my knowledge and expertise to this important initiative, and I share in Kevin's vision of developing a new paradigm for healthy living."
The summit will feature three executive panel sessions and speaker tracks diving deep into scientific solutions based on novel research for preventing, detecting and treating disease long before symptoms present. The focus will be primarily oncology, neurology, cardiology, and the basis of most disease pathways, inflammation. Major new findings will be released in each of these disease categories, setting the stage for disruption in today's medical practice. Potential for early detection of breast cancer, CTE, Alzheimer's, cardiac disease, and other lethal diseases through simple, noninvasive blood testing will be spotlighted at the summit.
"We're just beginning to see very exciting developments at the crossroads of machine learning and healthcare," said GV General Partner Dr. Krishna Yeshwant. "The more we can foster cross-pollination between tech and medicine, the better chance we have to improve patient outcomes across a wide range of diseases and conditions."
Dr. Robert Stern, Clinical Core Director of Boston University's Alzheimer's Disease and CTE Center is a renowned advocate of precision health. "Our recently launched $16 million NIH study is aimed at developing methods to diagnose the neurodegenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, during life," he said. "The promise that precision health holds is exemplified in these novel technologies to be highlighted at the summit, solutions that will help researchers discover biomarkers needed for the detection of CTE in the living, perhaps even before symptoms occur."
Former NFL Pro and New England Patriot's Safety Tim Fox, a patient advocate speaker at the upcoming summit, suffers from memory loss, mood changes, and cognitive impairments that he attributes to the multiple concussions he suffered throughout his 20-year college and pro football career.
"I'm very grateful for the power of research, and for this hugely important summit -- the coming together of the world's top scientists to help prevent and treat diseases like CTE from wreaking havoc on people's health and well-being," said Fox.
It's exactly this goal that Hrusovsky has spent the last quarter century collaborating on in order to advance medicine into a proactive healthcare system. A key component of reaching this goal is this summit series he initiated while at FMC, Caliper Life Sciences and Perkin Elmer, when top minds in the industry would convene to tackle the most challenging health issues of the day. The inaugural Powering Precision Health Summit capitalizes on this strong track record for innovation in life sciences and diagnostics, showcasing disruptive technologies that help transform today's "sick care" into true, personalized healthcare.
"We look forward to welcoming the Powering Precision Health Summit to the world's premier biotech supercluster, a thriving life sciences ecosystem committed to the goal of precision health," said Robert K. Coughlin, President & CEO of MassBio, a 750+ member life sciences trade association. "This event will convene and promote collaboration among our robust research community, which is leading the development of cutting-edge therapies, diagnostics and medical devices that will not only improve patients' lives here in Massachusetts, but around the world."
Strategic Steering Committee
Powering Precision Health is guided by a Strategic Steering Committee that sets the direction of the world's most influential precision health summit. The Committee Chairman is Kevin Hrusovsky, Quanterix Chairman & CEO, Committee Members include: Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, Robert A. Stern, Ph.D., Boston University, Dennis A. Ausiello, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Robert A. Weinberg, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Krishna Yeshwant, MD, GV (formerly Google Ventures), John Houston, Ph.D., Formerly SVP Bristol-Myers Squibb, Robert K. Coughlin, President & CEO, Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and Doug Cole, MD, Managing Partner, Flagship Ventures.
Official Sponsors of Powering Precision Health 2016
The Official Platinum Co-Sponsors of Powering Precision Health 2016 are Quanterix and Cellaria Biosciences. Quanterix is renowned for its ground-breaking tools in high definition diagnostics for life science research, in-vitro diagnostics, companion diagnostics, and blood screening. Cellaria Biosciences creates breakthrough oncology models that ultimately lead the research community to more personalized therapeutics, revolutionizing and accelerating the search for a cancer cure. Official Gold Sponsors of the summit will be announced on September 12th. For sponsorship inquiries email kcoffey@pphsummit.com.
About Powering Precision Health Summit
Powering Precision Health 2016 is the nation's first summit dedicated to bringing the world's leading physicians, scientists, innovators, investors and patient advocates together to unveil their latest research on new biomarkers that are revolutionizing precision health. Founded by Kevin Hrusovsky, a widely acclaimed thought leader and visionary in life sciences and personalized medicine, PPHSummit is an executive think tank of researchers and clinicians working together to transform healthcare. Addressing a wide spectrum of therapeutic areas -- neurology, cardiology, oncology, inflammation and infectious disease -- PPHSummit unveils groundbreaking approaches to prevention, early diagnosis, and NexGen treatments. PPHSUMMIT features an unprecedented keynote lineup of dignitaries from Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital, MIT, Brigham and Women's, Tufts, Whitehead Institute, Boston University and more. Join the conversation on social media using hashtag #PPHSUMMIT. For more information: Website www.pphsummit.com, Twitter @PPHSUMMIT, Facebook @PPHC2016, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/powering-precision-health-2016, Email: info@pphsummit.com.
Contact: Heidi Creighton, Director
Mobile/Text: 978-302-1198
Email: hcreighton@pphsummit.com
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