WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- TEDMED, www.TEDMED.com, the annual multi-disciplinary gathering where leaders from all sectors of society come together to explore the promise of technology and potential of human achievement in health and medicine, has announced the first 10 of its speakers and two new collaboration and innovation initiatives for 2013.

Further to its mission of inspiring cross-disciplinary collaboration and breakthroughs, TEDMED has added two new opportunities for innovators and thought leaders: The Hive and Great Challenges Day.  The Hive and Great Challenges Day will bring together experts and future-thinkers across varied fields to showcase transformative ideas, and to discuss new ways of thinking about the great challenges faced in health and medicine.

The annual TEDMED event will take place at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC from April 16-19, 2013.  The first group of speakers is:

Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Chancellor, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor.  Topic:  Can we innovate better by throwing out our favorite tools?

Elazer Edelman, Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor, Health Sciences and Technology, MIT Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center; Senior Physician, Brigham and Women's Hospital.  Topic:  The Big Bang in Medicine and Engineering - will the knowledge explosion actually hurt innovation across disciplines?

Elizabeth Marincola, President, Society for Science and the Public; Publisher, Science News. Topic: With open access, who translates medical research?

Larry Smarr, Professor, University of California, San Diego; Director, Calit2.  Topic:  Can you coordinate the dance of your body's 100 trillion microorganisms?

Sue Austin, Artist, Freewheeling. Topic:  When is a wheelchair an ultra-light submarine?

Deborah Estrin, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell Tech, NYC; Professor, Public Health, Weill Cornell Medical College; Co-founder, Open mHealth. Topic: What happens when each patient becomes their own "universe" of unique medical data?

John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design. Topic:  How can design principles lead to more discovery and better treatment?

Isaac Kohane, Professor of Pediatrics and Health Sciences Technology, Harvard Medical School.  Topic:  How can every clinical visit be used to advance medical science?

Peter Attia, Founder and President, Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI).  Topic:  Is the "obesity crisis" just a disguise for a deeper problem?

Christopher J.L. Murray, Institute Director, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).  Topic:  What does a $100 million public health data revolution look like?

40 Transformative New Companies to Be Selected for Innovations Showcase; Applications Process Opens Today

The Hive, debuting at TEDMED 2013, is an immersive and informal social environment dedicated to exploring transformative innovations and inspiring entrepreneurs in health and medicine. Located in a 30,000 square foot superstructure on the South Plaza of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, The Hive will bring together a diverse community of independent start-ups, incubators/accelerators, government-run challenges, academically-led programs and labs run by Fortune 500 companies. In association with the StartUp Health Network, TEDMED is accepting applications to feature 40 innovators and entrepreneurs who will share their products and services with TEDMED Delegates. A continued online conversation will foster the unexpected connections and new possibilities that emerge from four days of discovery at TEDMED 2013. To apply, please visit www.tedmed.com/thehive.

Great Challenges Day Takes New Approach to Understanding Complex Issues
On the afternoon of Friday, April 19^th, on the George Washington University main campus in Washington, DC, TEDMED will host its first-ever Great Challenges Day (www.tedmed.com/greatchallengesday), a multi-disciplinary gathering of more than 500 TEDMED Delegates including medical professionals, technology experts, policymakers, non-profit leaders, big business leaders and academics.  Using tools from the emerging discipline of medical and scientific storytelling, participants will collaborate to better understand, and to better communicate the complexities of some of health and medicine's most complex and pressing challenges.  These challenges range from managing the obesity epidemic to addressing medical costs. The gathering will leverage personal, anecdotal views to help participants further explore, understand and share the complexities that drive the Great Challenges.

Conference Simulcast Extends Reach to Global Audiences
Talks by each speaker will be globally simulcast from the conference via TEDMEDLive. Last year, TEDMEDLive enabled an estimated 50,000 remote participants to join the 2012 conference from some 300 auditoriums as well as 1,500 clinics and healthcare locations from all 50 states, plus locations in Canada and Mexico. TEDMEDLive hosting locations include teaching hospitals, medical schools, research institutions, university life science departments, and state and federal government agencies. This year, the simulcast is expected to include thousands of locations in dozens of countries around the world, for an estimated total audience that is anticipated to exceed tens of thousands of remote Delegates.  To apply to host a TEDMEDLive simulcast, please visit www.tedmed.com/live.

TEDMED Partners:

The TEDMED conference and mission are generously supported by major partners, including some of the world's best-known companies and thought leaders in the realm of health and medicine: Booz|Allen|Hamilton, Verizon Foundation, GE Healthymagination , Kaiser Permanente, Johnson & Johnson, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mars Inc., Target , Xerox, and Panasonic.

Contributing Partners:
Major Contributions provided by Steelcase and Nurture by Steelcase.

TEDMEDLive Simulcast Partners
TEDMEDLive is made possible through the generous support of The California Endowment, Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), Scientific American (a Division of Nature America, Inc), Royalty Pharma, Florida Blue, Xerox, and Panasonic.

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.

TEDMED issues monthly email bulletins.  To subscribe, please send an email to: update@tedmed.com.

Follow TEDMED at Twitter via @TEDMED, and the Great Challenges at #greatchallenges.

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 world's only TED-licensed event focused solely on innovation and breakthrough thinking across all of health and medicine. TEDMED 2012 featured 71 preeminent leaders in health, medicine, science, technology, business, government, academia, media and the arts, who spoke before a sold-out audience of more than 1,600 Delegates. Jay Walker has served as the Curator of TEDMED since 2011. Walker is also the founder of Priceline.com.  For more information, please visit www.TEDMED.com.

SOURCE TEDMED