TEDMED 2012 Conference Offers $2 Million in Scholarships to Health and Medicine Leaders and Innovators; Free National Simulcast to Teaching Hospitals, Medical Schools, Government Agencies and Non-profits

WASHINGTON, March 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TEDMED, www.TEDMED.com, the annual gathering where science, medical and technology leaders focus on "imagination, innovation and inspiration" to advance the art of health and medicine, today announced two new programs that will vastly increase the size and scope of its audience.

TEDMED is the world's only TED-licensed event focused solely on innovation and breakthrough thinking across all of health and medicine. It will be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., April 10 - 13.

Speakers, attendee-Delegates and participants will range from biologists (Dr. E.O. Wilson) and writers (Ben Goldacre), to physicists (Albert-Laszlo Barabasi) and public health leaders like the director of the National Institutes of Health (Dr. Francis Collins).  Topics to be explored by TEDMED speakers will include neuroscience, microbiology, surgery, oncology, stem cell therapy, bad science, Alzheimer's, robotics, game science, wearable tech, disease evolution, patient choice, virtual anatomy models, the nature of imagination, and dozens more.

For the first time this year, TEDMED will offer a free simulcast, TEDMEDLive, to teaching hospitals, medical schools, research institutions, university life science departments, state and federal government agencies, health-oriented corporations and non-profits across the nation. Participants, forecasted at more than 50,000, will be able to view a high-definition live stream of each presentation and performance. Using the TEDMED Connect mobile app, remote participants can also ask questions of the speakers in real time, which may be answered directly from the TEDMED stage.

Over 2,000 TEDMEDLive simulcast locations will participate, including institutions such as: Case Western Reserve University, Harvard University, University of California (Davis and Irvine), University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, University of Virginia, Tulane University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University.

Another new TEDMED initiative is the Front-Line Scholarship Program, which offers up to $2 million in half- and full-fee scholarships to those leaders and innovators who are on the front lines of health and medicine. It assists those who would both contribute to the TEDMED conference as attendees, and would greatly benefit from joining the conference in Washington, D.C. in person as a Delegate.  The Front-Line Scholarship Program is underwritten by the TEDMED Patron Fund, whose major contributors include Humana and The California Endowment.

"TEDMED is for everyone who is passionate about the future of health and medicine," said Jay Walker, curator of TEDMED. "Accordingly, TEDMED is committed to bringing even more expertise and perspective to the table for a national discussion of health and medicine, regardless of ability to pay through our Front-Line Scholarship program.  Front-Line Scholarships will permit the broadest possible group of healthcare providers, first responders and other contributors to attend so they can share even more ideas that will save lives."

More than 1,200 TEDMED onsite attendees including researchers, physicians, technologists and policy experts will foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and learning at the Kennedy Center this April. Institutions of excellence represented by speakers and attendees will include The American Cancer Society, The American Red Cross, Biodigital Systems, The Boulis Laboratory, Brandeis University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, The California Institute of Technology, Center for Complex Network Research, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Duke University, Emory University, Harvard University, mc10, Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation, and Education, The National Institutes of Health, New York University, Penn State University, Quest Diagnostics, The Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment, Reuters Health, Children's Hospital Boston, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network.

TEDMED Speaker List (as of 3/12/2012)

• Sekou Andrews, spoken word artist, playwright, actor, poet
• Frances Arnold, Dick and Barbara Dickinson, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, California Institute of Technology
• Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Director of the Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University
• Barbara Bass, Director, Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation, and Education
• Nick Boulis, Founder of the Boulis Laboratory
• Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society
• Virginia Breen, author, poet and aspiring doctor with Elizabeth Bonker, poet
• Atul Butte, Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Computer Science, at Stanford University
• Jon Cohen, Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer and Director of Hospital Services, Quest Diagnostics
• Steve Connell, spoken word artist, playwright, actor, poet
• Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, Seth Cooper, Creative Director, Center for Game Science, University of Washington
• Mary Cummings, Director of the MIT Humans and Automation Laboratory, Jonathan Eisen, Full Professor at the University of California, Davis
• Thomas Frieden, Director, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Ed Gavagan, Owner, PraxisNYC
• Jonathan Glass, Director of the Emory ALS Center, Department of Neurology, Emory University
• Ben Goldacre, best-selling author, broadcaster
• John Hoffman, Vice President, HBO Documentary Films
• Mark Hyman, author & Chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine, David Icke, Chief Executive Officer of mc10
• Diane Kelly, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Sandeep Kishore, M.D. Ph.D., Harvard Medical School fellow, Co-chair, Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network
• Jonathan Mann, singer, songwriter
• Gail McGovern, President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross
• Franziska Michor, Associate Professor of Computational Biology, Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Teresa Monachino, author and founder of Studio Monachino
• Hiep Nguyen, Director, the Robotic Surgery, Research, and Training Center and the Pediatric TeleUrology Service at Children's Hospital Boston
• Miguel Nicolelis, founder of Duke's Center for Neuroengineering
• Ivan Oransky, Executive Editor of Reuters Health
• Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Gregory Petsko, Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at Brandeis University
• Andrew Read, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Penn State University
• John Qualter, Cofounder, Director of Media, BioDigital Systems;
• Joel Salatin, Beyond organic farmer and author
• Judith Salerno, Leonard D. Schaeffer Executive Officer of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
• Jacob Scott, radiation oncologist and cancer theoretician
• Jill Sobule, singer, songwriter
• Reisa Sperling, Director, the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment, Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Step Afrika!, percussive dance group; Traces, urban acrobats
• Marc Triola, Associate Dean for Educational Informatics at New York University School of Medicine
• VGO Robotic Telepresence System
• Washington Performing Arts Society's Children of the Gospel Choir
• E.O. Wilson, Honorary Curator in Entomology and University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

Additional speakers will be announced prior to the conference start date.

TEDMED Sponsors

The TEDMED conference and mission are generously supported by major U.S. sponsors, including some of the world's best-known companies and thought leaders in the realm of health and medicine: Booz/Allen/Hamilton, The California Endowment, The Cleveland Clinic, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Philips, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mars Inc., Siemens and Xerox.

TEDMED Contributing Sponsors

IOMEDIA, Panasonic, Steelcase and Nurture.   

TEDMEDLive Sponsors

TEDMEDLive is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Siemens, and The California Endowment.

For more information: http://www.tedmed.com/conference/live

TEDMED Patron Fund Contributors

Humana, The California Endowment. For more information: http://www.tedmed.com/conference/patron

TEDMED Talks and Updates

TEDMED.com makes all of its stage presentations available as videos at www.TEDMED.com at no cost after the conclusion of the conference. Videos are also posted on TED.com, YouTube and CNN.com for free online viewing.

TEDMED issues monthly email bulletins.  To subscribe, please send an email to: [email protected]. 

Follow TEDMED at Twitter via @TEDMED.

An RSS feed of TEDMED news and video releases is available via the TEDMED Blog, blog.tedmed.com.

TEDMED, LLC is an independent organization operated under a special license from the nonprofit TED conference.  TEDMED is the only authorized, independent TED conference focusing on the fields of health and medicine.  For more information, please visit www.TEDMED.com.

SOURCE TEDMED