Posts by: Shiv Gaglani

With the saying, “All good things come to an end,” in mind, we’ve reached the final day of TEDMED 2012. The tenth session, and first of Day 4, began with a cameo by TEDMED co-creator and serial entrepreneur Marc Hodosh who stayed to emcee the session. First up was legendary cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Bud Frazier, and his colleague at the Texas Heart Institute, Dr. Billy Cohn. On a side note, we spoke with Dr. Frazier the day before and when we asked him about advice he would give to medical students and biomedical engineers, he echoed E.O. Wilson’s remark from yesterday: find an overlapping niche and purpose that you can fulfill extremely well. For him that was creating artificial heart pumps, starting first with the pulsatile flow model and then revolutionizing the field by transitioning to the continuous flow model. Drs. Cohn and Frazier began the talk by comparing the pulsatile design of heart pumps to the flapping-wing ornithopters in aviation history. In that analogy, the 747s of heart pumps are the next generation models they are working on that have minimal moving parts and essentially rely on an electromagnet that rapidly spins an Archimedes screw to pump blood throughout a patient’s body. Patients with this device are eerily living without a pulse, which could be confusing for first responders and may require patients to get medical tattoos that say “pulse-less heart pump inside.” This simple and elegant design is long-lasting and, according to the surgeons, is broadly applicable to the hundreds of thousands of patients with failing hearts. When asked about whole-heart transplants, Dr. Cohn responded with the memorable quote:

“Counting on transplants to solve the organ crisis is like counting on the lottery to solve poverty.”

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Though TEDMED Day 3 started a little ominously due to an apparent fire at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, we’re happy to say that it turned out to be as enjoyable and enlightening as the days before. The first session (and sixth so far) began with singer and songwriter Jonathan Mann, who regaled the audience with a TEDMED-exclusive song about the 51 Challenges, of which the top 20 would become this year’s official TEDMED Challenges. Later in the day the top 20 were announced and the highest voted challenge was inventing effective wellness programs, and you can see the complete list here: challenges.tedmed.com.

Following Mann was Caltech Professor Frances Arnold who spoke about her work making molecules “have sex” – that is recombining in order to create unique properties that may be medically relevant.

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It’s only the second day here at the Kennedy Center and we have to say that TEDMED seems to have pulled out all the stops. The first session of the day began with our favorite nerdy science singer and songwriter, Jill Sobule, but this time she was accompanied by a special guest: none other than NIH Director and leader of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins. Rather, given how Dr. Collins played his six string and sang, it’s fair to say that he was accompanied by her. With lyrics like these, the song could alternatively have been called “Disease Don’t Care” or “Knock Out Disease:”

“Disease don’t care if you’re black or white / Disease don’t care if you’re left or right / Disease don’t care if you’re rich or poor / Disease will find a way to come’a’knocking on your door / So come on people won’t you join me please? / Let’s bring it all together and knock out disease!”

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Medgadget’s coverage of TEDMED has one simple goal: to give you a synopsis of each day so that you can get the TEDMED highlights from afar (that is, unless you are watching right along at one of the thousands of TEDMEDLive Simulcast sites). Rather than only pick one or two speakers, or events to cover, we prefer to provide you a recap of the day with an emphasis on the talks you may find more relevant.  For reference, you can view the schedule and the speaker list. If there’s anything in particular you’d like us to cover in more depth, don’t hesitate to let us know by visiting our Facebook page and commenting there or messaging us. 

Medgadget is at TEDMED 2012 in Washington D.C. and we’re excited that we did not have to wait a full year to experience the magic again. Though it’s only been six months since TEDMED 2011 in San Diego, much more has changed than the venue and season. Everything seems bigger and bolder. There are over 1,200 delegates here from all around the globe and virtually every profession you can think of is represented – from the Director of the NIH to the world’s foremost big wave surfer. There are also tons of new programs and features, such as remote simulcasts (TEDMEDLive), the Great Challenges program, attendee scholarships (Frontline), and even a mobile app (TEDMEDConnect) devoted to the 3.5 day conference.  We look forward to reporting on how each of these take form, beginning with Tuesday’s proceedings.

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