Medfusion: The Nonclinical Medical Conference

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Julie Silver MDJulie Silver MD at Medfusion 2011

I went to Medfusion last year and was really impressed. This year I was blown away.

I got back from the Medical Fusion Conference last night and I wanted to set down my thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind, so here are some of my take-aways kind of as a stream of consciousness.

  • The Aria is a nice hotel for conferences and the Sky Suites are sweet. From the time that I parked the car (I drove down) I didn't step foot outside of the hotel until I left on Sunday. (I've been to Vegas a lot so no need to dawdle.)
  • The conference always surprises me with how savvy the physicians are who attend. If you're looking to keep you head down and love to toil in obscurity, this is not the conference for you.
  • Dr's Ed Hsu and Italo Subbarao are incredibly fun and very generous: Ed and Italo have written an intense (I'm half way through) thriller on bio-terrorism and I got to spend some time with them that included taking some photos at the room in the Aria referenced in their book.  I'm sending some copies to friends. You can buy Prion on Amazon here.
  • Greg handles conferences really well: (The experience now doubt.) They seem to just flow along without a hitch. (Whoever was running the front desk also deserves kudos.)
  • I always wish that I had more time: There were a number of writers for Freelance that were there and I would have loved to sit down with and learn something from but I missed completely and probably came across as an ass. My sincere apologies to those that I didn't sit down with. I hope to next year.
  • These guys are all really good speakers: From Barry Silbaugh's first talk to the end I was really impressed with every presentation. Super good stuff and everyone brought their A-game.
  • I need to work on my public speaking: No one threw cabbages out of kindness but there's room for improvement there.
  • The networking is at least half of the value: Medfusion isn't like most of the medical conferences that I've been to where you already have a cadre of buddies or everyone's doing exactly the same stuff and it's not that interesting. (If you're a plastic surgeon, how many other plastic surgeons do you already know who are doing exactly the same thing that you are?) Medfuion really is about opportunity and real changes and deals get done.
  • Julie Silver is a fantastic speaker and terrific person. (I owe you $40 Julie.)
  • Gautam Gulati is doing some really interesting work and is a great presenter. I'd be taking his class on Medical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Hopkins if I were there.
  • Students want this information and access too: There were a number of students at Medfusion this year and they're also excited to know that, as a physician, you can do something that's uncommon or non-traditional and that you can still have and control your own career in medicine. This was personally exciting to me and we'll be launching a companion site to Freelance MD that's targeted exclusively at medical school students and residents. (This will not be 'integrated' in to the Freelance MD physician community since the audiences are completely different.)
  • Opportunity is everywhere and there are physicians who are taking advantage of it.
  • I dropped the Twitter ball: I didn't see until after the conference all of the tweets that were going out in real time capturing part's of the presentations. I should have been more forward-thnking and used my iPad. I should also have taken more pictures. My iPhone just doesn't cut it long distance.

Anyway, those are a few of my initial thoughts. I look forward to finding out what some others think of their experiences.