The End Of The Beginning: Great Challenges Day

 

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TEDMED is the experience of a lifetime and attended by many people who change lives. During TEDMED Great Challenges Day, brilliant minds problems-solve the biggest challenges in health care. But however revolutionary an idea, it can only affect the mind it inhabits. Therein lays another challenge: How to spread a great idea?

In science we are told to be objective, but facts are not what make us memorable. You may not know what a neuroendocrine tumor is, but I am sure you know of the infamous Apple genius who died of pancreatic cancer. It isn't the detail that provokes us to thought, it’s the story. Therefore, we must use our seemingly insignificant stories to represent innovative factual knowledge. By provoking the spirit with the story of struggle, we may allow heroic ideas to inspire the imaginations of others. And so it is, the solutions of tomorrow are hidden in the simply stories of today. 
Now that is an “idea worth spreading.”

(For full TEDMED videos and more: http://www.tedmed.com/videos)

Hive Hopes For The Future: The Smartphone Physical Will Save Lives

Hive Hopes For The Future is a segment focused on the technologies featured at the TEDMED Hive. 

Medgadget and Nurture are preforming physical exams that you won’t recognize. This primary care experience is focused on building an environment around the patient-doctor relationship. There is no exam table, no scary equipment, only a familiar comfy recliner and a smartphone. Medgadget and Nurture have created the hardware and technology to read everything from your vision to your lung function, all using a smartphone. They can even visualize the blood vessels of your heart. The application can be downloaded for free on any patient’s smartphone. In the doctor’s office, the phone connects to innovative hardware. The entire exam can be performed and stored on the patient’s phone. This revolution in care provides immediate, patient-owned data and an office visit focused on the explanation and understanding of your health.

(To see more on the smartphone physical: http://www.smartphonephysical.org/index.html)

Sekou Andrews Asks, “Where's The Love?”

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Why is there a belief that love resides in the heart? When you fall in love, the butterflies are in your stomach. When you lose someone you love, it is your lungs that feel frozen as you gasp for breath. To Andrews love is a systemic emotion, while the heart harbors the far more insidious. After his grandmother lost 6 of 11 children to heart disease, she herself succumbed to a broken heart. Today, spoken word sensation Sekou Andrews sings the stark story of America’s leading killer, heart disease. In a fast-food society where obesity is rampant, what we love is killing us. How many more will murder before we heed to the telltale heart?

Charity's Six Lungs Sing A Different Tune

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“Some people say that life is not a sprint, it's a marathon…But life is not a marathon, it’s a relay.” These are the words of world-renowned opera singer Charity Tillemann-Dick, who has trained three sets of lungs how to breathe in order to sing for us today. Charity has idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, which required her to receive her first bilateral lung transplant at the age of twenty. Six lungs later, Charity is an organ donation advocate and spokesperson for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association. She would not be alive today without the charitable actions of strangers. While 90% of Americans believe in organ donation, only 40% are registered donors. Today is your opportunity to register as a donor at http://donatelife.net/. "This is your opportunity to pass the baton." 

Playing Well With Others

The faculty of the Washington Conservatory shows us the true meaning of opus.

(Video Courtesy of TEDMED Press Portal)

Michael Hebb Is Inviting You To A Death Dinner

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Let’s put it all out on the table. How we end our lives is the most important and expensive conversation Americans are NOT having, says Hebb. Americans are not dying the way they want to die. 75% of Americans want to die at home, but only 25% do. 62% of U.S. bankruptcies are incurred due to healthcare costs, and the leading cause is end-of-life care. It has been suggested that we should expand the definition of life to include death, instead of seeing death as the failure to live. Dying is not losing the fight but continuing the journey, and doing so with dignity is something worth talking about. 

Plan your death dinner today: http://www.deathoverdinner.org/

Backstage At The Kennedy Center Is Right On Target

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