Hi, Talya! Please tell us a little about your day job.
You mean BOTH my day jobs… I have a dual-life, if you will, focusing both on academic research, and on applying scientific principles to promote health in my company. I am Associate Professor and founding director of the Center for Medical Decision Making at the Ono Academic College (just outside of Tel Aviv), and CEO of CureMyWay – a company that promotes behavior change towards better health.
What are you passionate about?
I came into medical decision making through teaching genetic cousenlors, sitting in on consultations, and seeing how poorly people understand the information they receive. Since then, I’ve been passionate, bordering on evangelical, about ensuring patient comprehension. But this is just the ground floor. Beyond that, motivation is key. This translates to everything – from the tiniest behavioral change (read my Psychology Today blog for my battle with flossing), to adherence to medication. To me, comprehension also mean treating patients as consumers – I’ve been teaching consumer behavior at Wharton, and very dedicated to the consumerism approach in healthcare. I suspect if you read my blog you’ll discover how deep I am into yoga, and how much I love my kids (though they repeatedly teach me the difficulty of introducing behavioral change).
What are you doing to “hack” health care?
I introduce patient empowerment through comprehension and motivation. My company is designing an incredibly cool platform for improving and maintaining health. This will serve consumers, as well as pharma companies, HMOs – the works. We were included in GEW 50 last year – so stay tuned!
Why are you attending HealthCamp Boston?
I’ll try (almost) anything once.
If you were to lead a session, what would it be about?
My session would be about ensuring patient knowledge, so that systems – from bloodwork results delivered by HMOs to anything your app can do for you – is easily comprehended. Another potential session would be on embedding motivation in anything health-related, making sure patients are engaged over time.
What kinds of people do you want to meet at HealthCamp?
I’m looking forward to meeting anyone who is passionate about health – because each person teaches me something that makes my platform better!
See you in Boston!
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