FutureMed: Summary

I wrote recaps of all the 6 days of FutureMed course at NASA about the technologies, developments and concepts I saw and heard. Now it’s time to provide some pieces of advice for future participants and I also wanted to share my thoughts about how the participants/faculty seemed to assess the importance of the topics covered during the course compared to my scores. Red cells below represent topics of which I underestimated their importance and green ones represent topics which I valued much more compared to the coverage they received in the program.

It seems social media and e-patients are more important for me, while I seriously underestimated the power in data driven health and design in healthcare.

A few pieces of advice for future participants:

• Sleep a lot before the event as there is a reason it is called the Sleepless University.
• Try to move away from your regular work for these days so then you can focus on the content of the program. I did it and it absolutely worked out for me.
• Be open, enjoy teamwork but feel free to present the projects you have been working on to other participants as well as to the faculty.
• Bring a camera as you are free to take pictures almost everywhere. I made a mistake by not doing so.
• Prepare a short prezi for the unconference session.
• Read a bit about the participants and the faculty members before the event, it will facilitate discussions.

And finally here is my headshot (the photographer told me to pose like a medical futurist, I tried to do my best).