In the Loop: David Beiser and Kevin O’Leary

Is Design Thinking Good for Your Health? Crossing medical, engineering, design, and entrepreneurial boundaries to improve quality of life in chronic disease

In 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) first defined health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” A convergence of mobile computing, sensor technology, health policy reform, and budgetary necessity has created an opportunity to transform the current medical paradigm of fragmented specialty care into a system that is focused on maximizing the WHO’s holistic definition health across the population. In the fall of 2012, Dr. David Beiser and Kevin O’Leary met as fellows in the D4Lab, a collaboration between the University of Chicago and IIT Institute of Design that taught design thinking principles to a group of innovation fellows interested in solving some of the big problems in health care. What started as an interesting professional development opportunity, catalyzed the co-founding of Qualia Health, a company that combines wireless sensors and quality of life measures to optimize health in patients with chronic disease. David and Kevin will lead an informal discussion about the promise of connected health, their early experiences founding a company, and the role that design has played shaping the development of their company and ultimately changing the course of their careers.

David Beiser is an emergency physician at the University of Chicago where he has spent the last 10 years treating patients and researching strategies for improving outcomes following cardiac arrest. Prior to medical school, he spent several years as a design engineer at an orthopedics division of Smith + Nephew and pursued a graduate degree in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University.

Kevin O’Leary is an MBA/JD candidate at the University of Chicago. Prior to school, he worked at Medtronic in Heart Failure marketing, founded a business strategy consultancy, and worked in investment banking at Piper Jaffray.