The TEDMED conference was founded in 1998. Its main initiator was Richard Saul Worman, the creator of the TED conference. It was discontinued after several editions, and in 2008 Wurman sold the rights to TEDMED to entrepreneur Marc Hodosh. The next year, Hodosh relaunched TEDMED. The first edition of the conference under his ownership was held in San Diego. In 2011, inventor and entrepreneur Jay S. Walker and a group of executives purchased the event from Hodosh and moved the conference to Washington, DC.
The main goal of TEDMED is to gather innovators (not necessarily in the field of medicine) and encourage them to exchange new ideas that will contribute to the advancements in health and medicine. TEDMED’s core values are inclusiveness, milti-disciplinary collaboration and diversity. According to the organizers, only well-established cooperation between specialists in different fields of knowledge both inside and outside of medicine can catalyze the development of medicine and contribute to building a healthier world.
TEDMED forges partnerships with medical research institutions, industry leaders, government agencies and foundations, think tanks to ensure that cutting-edge biomedical thinking is shared across disciplines and made accessible to the general public. TEDMED is more than just an annual conference; it is a year-round global community that never stops developing.
The stage program of the TEDMED conference features talks by a few dozen speakers selected by the editorial team. The speakers are chosen from thousands of candidates according to TEDMED’s five core values: scientific rigor and significance, multi-disciplinary focus, broad accessibility, a mission to accelerate change, openness and transparency. A speaker may be nominated by any member of the community, self-nomination is encouraged. Speakers are chosen by the independent Editorial Advisory Board that consists of recognized leaders in medicine and health, technology and business, academia and foundations, design and philanthropy, and journalism and communications.
Photo: blogs.plos.org
