DENVER, CO – Leading figures in healthcare innovation gathered at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus on June 24^th to learn about the progress of this year’s 10.10.10 Health. The clinicians, academics, and executives in attendance appeared eager to engage with 10.10.10, a Denver-based business generator intent on inspiring market-driven solutions to healthcare’s toughest problems.

Nationally recognized healthcare innovators headlined the event, including Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, the executive director of digital health at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Dr. David Rosenman, one of the founders of Transform, the Mayo Clinic’s international symposium on healthcare innovation. Yet the attention of both the audience and the speakers alike seemed to be directed at the ten entrepreneurs who had been selected to participate in 10.10.10 Health 2016.

Now in its second year of operation, 10.10.10 Health brings ten serial entrepreneurs together for ten days in Denver, Colorado, where it pits them against highly complex problems like Alzheimer’s, aging, and homelessness. The June 24^th gathering at Anschutz Medical Campus represented the midpoint of this year’s program, with the ten entrepreneurs preparing to develop their market-driven solutions after having immersed themselves in wicked problems for five days.

The public event gave clinicians of all kinds a glimpse into the innovative program’s inner workings, while exposing the entrepreneurs to individuals who could potentially play an important role in the eventual development of their companies. On several occasions, the speakers directly addressed the entrepreneurs, especially when discussing the need for market-driven solutions to the healthcare system’s problems.

“We’re always talking about putting patients at the center and getting them their data,” admitted Dr. Swanson. “People like you are going to make sure we do.”

The speakers also offered the entrepreneurs advice on how to encourage the adoption of their solutions in the healthcare system, with Dr. Rosenman highlighting the opportunities present in traditionally underserved markets.

“Disruptive innovations start small,” Dr. Rosenman said. “They don’t try to compete head-on with the established companies. They do things that are good enough, and small and affordable, and nobody knows they are coming.”

For their part, the entrepreneurs appeared ready to begin the sprint phase of the program, a five-day long design process that would culminate in the public display of their solutions at I3, 10.10.10 Health’s final event on June 30^th. But Pam Nurrie, one of the ten entrepreneurs participating in this year’s program, emphasized that while the remainder of 10.10.10 Health 2016 would be spent developing market-driven solutions, the business generation that 10.10.10 had been designed to produce might take months – or even years – to occur.

“You plant the seed,” Nurrie explained, “it incubates, it germinates, and then maybe thirty days from now it sprouts.”

Tom Higley, the founder of 10.10.10, has insisted on several occasions that he would consider 10.10.10 Health 2016 a success even if it generated only one or two companies, stressing that the program’s main purpose is to encourage entrepreneurs to turn their skills to addressing wicked problems in healthcare.

“What we care about really is not just a company that gets started, not just a company that gets funded, not even just a return on investment for those companies,” said Higley. “What we care about is impact on the world.”

 

Curious to see what the entrepreneurs of 10.10.10 Health 2016 have come up with? Get your tickets now for I3, the program’s final event, and find out what healthcare’s newest innovators are developing. (Enter the code 1010102016 to get free admission to the event!)