In 2016, Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, gave a talk at WIRED Health titled ‘The WHO and the UN are not fit for purpose to tackle epidemics’. Farrar argued that we needed to invest against future pandemics in the same way we invest in the military. “Otherwise we are leaving a potentially disastrous situation in the hands of the marketplace,” he said. That message, unfortunately, proved prescient.
The question now is: Have we learned any lessons?
There are encouraging signs and in two weeks time on May 26 at WIRED Health in London, the prestigious speaker faculty will provide the answer.
The event programme which you can view here, will leave you feeling inspired and educated for what’s to come in the future of healthcare.
WIRED Health will tackle a range of subjects, from the pandemic to urban epidemiology, to Alzheimer’s disease to the future of the NHS. We will hear from the likes of Devi Sridhar, a professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh who will be examining how we can avoid the next pandemic; Karl Friston, the world’s most cited neuroscientist, will explain how his novel theory of neuroscience can radically change how we treat mental illness and revolutionise artificial intelligence. And Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPhone, iPod and Nest, will share lessons on what healthcare can learn from product design.
You can also watch future unicorns of health tech pitch their technologies, or walk through the Test Lab, an interactive experience of cutting-edge medical technologies.
WIRED Health isn’t only about hearing from innovators on-stage — the breaks in between offer ample opportunity for serendipitous encounters with people you won’t meet anywhere else. WIRED events are renowned for enabling unexpected new contacts and relationships between speakers, delegates and exhibitors, and WIRED Health has been designed to continue that great tradition.
