Dr. Emanuel,  a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition COVID-19 advisory board, will kick off the first day of RISE National on Monday, March 29,  with a keynote address on the future direction of the American health care system.  Also slated to speak at the virtual conference: infection disease expert Dr. Luciana Borio, who warned the public in January 2020 about the pending COVID-19 pandemic; Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D., a leading innovator in digital health, innovation and prevention; and health care futurist Ian Morrison.

Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D. 

Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D., will head an all-star lineup of keynote speakers for RISE National 2021, a live-streaming virtual event that will take place March 28-30.  

Dr. Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives and a Levy University professor at the Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, will present the opening keynote address Monday morning, March 29, the first day of the main conference.  

His talk will focus on practical, concrete steps that payers and providers, as well as businesses and government, can take to adapt to the major shifts happening within health care and to transform the American health care system to provide consistently higher-quality and lower-cost care.  

Trained both as an oncologist (MD, Harvard Medical School) and a political scientist, Dr. Emanuel offers a uniquely thoughtful perspective on the most difficult issues in medicine today.   

From January 2009 to January 2011, he served as a special advisor for health policy to the White House Office of Management and Budget. As one of the most prominent voices advising the White House about health care, he had a significant impact on federal health care budgets and the Affordable Care Act.   

Dr. Emanuel is a founding chair at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. He currently serves as chair of the meta-council on The Future of Health Committee for the World Economic Forum. Until 1997, he was an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School. He currently serves on President Elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force.

Three keynotes are scheduled for day two of the conference: 

Luciana Borio, M.D. 

Luciana Borio, M.D., who has dedicated her entire career to preparing for pandemics, will open the second day of the conference with a keynote that addresses the impact of COVID-19 in today’s health care system. 

Dr. Borio previously worked on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, where she directed medical and biopreparedness policy, until last year when she left after the administration dismantled its global health unit. She is now the vice president of technical staff at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit venture capital firm focused on the delivery of innovative technologies to national security agencies.

Although she is no longer with the government, Dr. Borio has been an active public health advocate during the pandemic and, like Dr. Emanuel, serves as an adviser on Biden’s COVID-19 task force. 

Dr. Bario will share with RISE National attendees her experience and knowledge regarding COVID-19, vaccine distribution timeline, and the impact the pandemic has had on health care. She will address the challenges faced by many on resource allocation and strategies to prepare for future disruptions.   

Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D. 

Pediatrician Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D., author of Mama Doc Medicine and a pioneer in the use of the digital space to provide humanistic doctor-patient information, will present a keynote on digital innovations that provide hospital solutions and enhanced patient experience. 

Dr. Swanson will speak to how the new tech landscape offers outstanding, innovative opportunities for efficient, yet humanistic, exchange of information in the hospital environment. Drawing on her experiences as chief of digital innovation for Seattle's Children's Hospital, as well as her broader observations, Dr. Swanson shows how technology can create efficient communication solutions while enhancing patient care and caretaker experience.  

A long-time advocate in supporting patients’ engagement in their own health and improving the patient experience, Dr. Swanson has proposed solutions for better online resources to help patients look for medical information to ensure the quality of information. She also helps physicians embrace patients' access to personal health data and shows physicians how to partner with patients using this health data, as well as how to see trends across patient data to improve public health.  

Ian Morrison  

As previously announced, author and health care futurist Ian Morrison will offer a keynote on the future of the health care marketplace.  

Morrison, who specializes in long-term forecasting and planning with an emphasis on health care and the changing business environment, will present insights and implications of health care policy based on the new Biden administration, the continued impact of COVID-19, and mega-trends, including artificial intelligence, data analytics, and the intersection of social determinants of health and digitalization.   

A prolific writer, Morrison is the author of Leading Change in Healthcare: Building a Viable System for Today and Tomorrow and Healthcare in the New Millennium: Vision, Values and Leadership. His book, The Second Curve-Managing the Velocity of Change, was a New York Times Business Bestseller and Businessweek Bestseller and was published in seven languages.  

He has co-authored several other books and chapters, including Future Tense: The Business Realities of the Next Ten Years and Looking Ahead at American Health Care. He also has co-authored numerous journal articles for publications such as Chief Executive, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Across the Board, The British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, and Health Affairs. 

RISE National, a livestreaming virtual event, will take place March 28-30. Click here to learn more about the conference, how to register, and early bird pricing.