Telling Stories & Busting Myths at Mayo Clinic’s Transform 2015 Conference

We’re just back from Mayo Clinic’s excellent Transform Conference 2015. What struck us about the conference was just how fun it was. Bring together a group of people who are passionate about changing health, and put them in an innovative setting, and some magic happens.

Here are some other highlights of the conference that made it a stand out:

The Host: NPR host John Hockenberry was the MC for the entire conference. His ability to ask hard questions and also provide consistency across the themes and panels was fantastic. He was also able to talk about his own experiences as a patient from an early accident.
Storytelling: The power of story was on showcase from Minnesotan playwright Kevin Kling, to the Pecha Kucha talks, and even the ThinkBig Innovation Challenge, which featured real patients telling their stories to find a match with a startup. The two winning startups (disclosure: we were one of them) also both featured real stories that inspired founders to start the companies. In connecting with other attendees, everyone had a personal health story to share, even though attendees were in the healthcare industries it was the personal stories that resonated the most.
Diversity: Very low incidence of panels that were all white men. And not token diversity, these people are leaders in their fields and incredibly inspiring, like Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, founder of the Center For Youth Wellness, and expert on early adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and how they impact future health.
Myth Busting: Myths were busted all over the place. Here are some examples:
- While 10% of people cause most of the costs in healthcare, we’ll all be in the 10% at some point, in the same way that we are in the 10% of spend for other life events like weddings, buying houses, or paying for education.
- Shame and ritual can both be powerful motivators. Positive reinforcement has it’s place but we always think we’re perfect in the future so today sometimes we need shame to get us to do things we don’t want to. This was from behavioral economist and head of The Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, Dan Ariely.
- Free telehealth is cost-effective. Or this could also be subtitled: proactive, preventative, and accessible care is cheaper. This is from Oscar CEO Mario Schlosser.
- Price transparency is not just for patients: how can providers evaluate treatments or drugs if they are unaware of the costs.
The Mayo Clinic: It was our first time visiting, and we loved the tours of the Center for Innovation, and the Center for Healthy Living. More on those in a future post.
Interactivity: From maker labs and nurse maker projects, to the ability to spend time with every speaker immediately after they talked, it was a hands on type of conference. The entire conference was live-streamed as well, and the top tweeter was watching from home!
His Holiness, The Dalai Llama: Yes, he was visiting Mayo.