HITLAB Summit Special Edition: Your Exclusive Guide to NYC Health Innovation Week 2026
Healthcare doesn’t wait for consensus. The best solutions emerge when the right people are in the same room, pushing past surface-level optimism to address what blocks progress. NYC Health Innovation Week (NYCHIW) brings together the executives, founders, and policymakers who decide which innovations move from pilot purgatory to deployment at scale. We’re down to our final spots. Registration closes on Friday. Join some of the big companies like Microsoft, Merck, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Medidata, Bayer, Bausch Health, JPMorgan, Aetna, NY Presbyterian, NYC EDC, Downstate Medical Sciences University, Mount Sinai and many more,
DAY 1 | Tuesday, May 5 – AI, Strategy & the New Infrastructure of Care
The Implementation Gap: Why Most Healthcare AI Never Leaves the Lab
Everyone is building AI models. Almost no one is deploying them on scale. Tuesday confronts this reality head-on. Expect unflinching discussions on why clinical decision support tools sit unused, how to design predictive models that fit actual physician workflows, and which regulatory frameworks accelerate adoption versus which ones create performative compliance theater. This isn’t about what AI could do—it’s about the operational, cultural, and financial barriers preventing it from doing anything at all. Leaders from University of Toronto. Bausch, Marwood Group and many more will share what worked, what failed, and what nobody wants to admit publicly. The evening shifts to the Microsoft x HITLAB Executive Leadership Dinner—a closed-door setting where senior leaders drop the talking points and address the questions that don’t make it into panel discussions.
What You’ll Walk Away With: Deployment frameworks that acknowledge real constraints, not investor pitch decks
DAY 2 | Wednesday, May 6 – Women’s Health, Digital Therapeutics & What Actually Drives Adoption
Why Women’s Health Innovation Stays Marginalized—And Who’s Changing That
Women’s health receives 4% of healthcare R&D funding despite representing half the population and most healthcare decision-makers. Wednesday examines why this persists and which models are finally breaking through. You’ll hear from founders who’ve built menopause platforms, maternal monitoring systems, and fertility solutions that secured reimbursement and clinical integration—not just venture capital and press coverage. Sessions on digital therapeutics move past efficacy studies to the harder questions: payer negotiations, evidence thresholds that satisfy skeptical health systems, and why prescription digital therapeutics haven’t achieved projected adoption rates. “The gap between breakthroughs and patient care is still too wide, and it costs lives,” says Dr. Stan Kachnowski, Chair of HITLAB. “This Summit convenes the people who close that gap—not through incremental partnerships, but by rebuilding the infrastructure that determines what reaches patients and what doesn’t.” Implementation science sessions cut to deployment strategy: stakeholder alignment that’s genuine rather than ceremonial, change management that survives leadership turnover, and measurement frameworks that matter to the people who control budgets.
What You’ll Walk Away With: The difference between innovations that get piloted and innovations that get purchased.
DAY 3 | Thursday, MAY 7 – Data Infrastructure, Interoperability & the Unglamorous Work That Determines Winners
Backend Reality: The Infrastructural Decisions Nobody Notices Until They Fail
Thursday addresses the architecture most people ignore until it collapses. Interoperability isn’t solved—it’s negotiated daily through fragile agreements between systems that were never designed to communicate. Sessions explore why data exchange still breaks at scale, which privacy frameworks balance access with protection (versus which ones just slow everything down), and how digital identity infrastructure will reshape patient agency and clinical workflow simultaneously. You’ll hear from the CTOs, chief data officers, and security architects who’ve built systems that work under real conditions—not demo environments. Regulatory discussions go beyond compliance checkbox exercises to examine friction points: HIPAA’s evolution (or lack thereof), contradictory state privacy laws, and what happens when real-time AI applications collide with frameworks built for paper records. Closing sessions look ahead to decentralized health records, blockchain applications that moved past hype to utility, and quantum computing’s emerging role in drug discovery and diagnostics. This infrastructure is a competitive advantage.
What You’ll Walk Away With: Technical decisions that determine strategic positioning three years out
The real work happens between sessions—in conversations that don’t fit in panel formats. Every day includes structured networking, dedicated 1:1 meeting opportunities, and environments built for substantive discussion rather than transactional pitching. The Microsoft-hosted barista (May 5-6, 10am-12pm) offers specialty orders via QR code, because good coffee matters when you’re trying to solve hard problems. Evening receptions connect the investors’ writing checks, the innovators building solutions, and the enterprise leaders deciding what gets deployed.
Final Week to Register
NYC Health Innovation Week isn’t about inspiring speeches. It’s about strategic decisions, operational realities, and partnership structures that separate innovations that scale from innovations that stall. If you’re building, funding, or deploying healthcare solutions, these are the conversations that change trajectory.
Thank you to all of our Sponsors and Partners including, Microsoft, Merck, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Medidata, Bayer, Bausch Health, JPMorgan, Aetna, NY Presbyterian, NYC EDC, Downstate Medical Sciences University, EmblemHealth and Mount Sinai for making this event possible.
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