Time flies when you have fun. What a privilege to work along side my Co-Chair Salman Hirani, MD on the American Academy of Pain Medicine and MIT Hacking Medicine Innovation Challenge. Over the past 3 years, 175 startups from over 30 states and 15 countries have applied to pitch at our annual Innovation Challenge!
We became the first specialty society to partner with the AMA to host the Physician Innovation Network In Real Life (PIN IRL) event thanks to Amanda Azadian. We were able to showcase our past winners including Manju Dawkins, from Thimble Braxton Norwood from Lutroo Imaging, James Khan from FaraMed Tech, and Kike Oduba, from WellnessWits, and innovators from our AAPM faculty including Ajay D. Wasan, Beth Darnall, PhD and Trent Emerick, MD, MBA.
We were able to invite Jesse Ehrenfeld MD MPH to speak on AI in Healthcare as our Annual Meeting’s Keynote Speaker, and Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA to give a fireside chat about lessons he learned from his father, and how those lessons can shape the future of healthcare.
We were able to bring Tyler Best from Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), Sean Day from Rock Health Capital, M Christine (Chris) Stock Health2047 Capital Partners, Jacob Coverstone, Sachin Jain, and Jesse Ehrenfeld to speak on panels about healthcare startups.
All of our panelists joined Dan Brounstein, Mary Van Doren, and Christine Von Raesfeld to judge the 3rd Annual AAPM x MIT Hacking Medicine Innovation Challenge presented by Saluda Medical with additional support from Enable Health and Abbott, which was a massive success and continues to be the crown jewel of the AAPM Annual Meeting.
Participants, ranging from established startups to aspiring healthcare entrepreneurs, pitched their solutions aimed at improving the lives of those affected by pain.
Menda Health, founded by Arun Nijhawan, Kartik Shastri, and Les Aria, PhD won both the M.M. Sadipe Grand Prize and the Subash Jain Audience Choice Award. The Subash Jain Award is named in honor of Dr. Subhash Jain, one of the earliest and most honored pain medicine physicians of the Academy, and the father of our keynote speaker, Dr. Sachin Jain. The M.M. Sadipe Prize is named in honor of our past President, Dr. Kayode Williams’ father.
Menda Health works to help patients regain their life from chronic pain by providing virtual video sessions with a licensed pain therapist using an evidence-based neuroplasticity approach.
Our four other finalists included incredible companies who we will continue to support through their journey including AugMend Health , D.Sole BackStop Neural, and Articulate.
I am so incredibly proud of our team including Alex Yu Julio Vega, David Jevotovsky,, Philip Susser, Peter Vu, Swathi Rayasam, and so many more talented innovators in the field. Special thanks to Dr. Kayode Williams and Dr. Michael Hooten for seeing the vision so many years ago. Stay tuned because we have some exciting work we can’t wait to tell you about.
