Anna Young

CEO of MakerHealth, TEDMED Speaker, & MIT Lecturer
Anna Young
  • Recognized as one of the “Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and a “Top Health Innovator Under 35” by LinkedIn
  • Top reviewed speaker who has given talks at TEDMED, Wired Health, and leading medical centers
  • Incredible, first-hand insights on innovation taking place in hospitals across the country

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MakerHealth CEO, Anna Young, works from a fundamental belief that, with the right tools, everyday people can use their ingenuity to create devices that heal. Applying years of global experience with the Maker Movement, Anna brings prototyping tools and makerspaces into hospitals enhance the natural do-it-yourself problem-solving abilities of clinicians and patients. These Medical Maker Spaces allow providers to work alongside patients to create DIY health technology solutions for more customized and affordable care.

Anna is the co-founder of MakerNurse, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) sponsored program to empower and support inventive, frontline nurses who innovate, and hopes to bring nurse “making” to the forefront of health care solutions. Anna’s roots come from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as researcher in the Little Devices Lab and lecturer in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. Anna has spoken at TEDMED, WIRED Health, and leading academic medical centers on the topic democratized medical device fabrication and user innovation.

In 2015, she was recognized by LinkedIn as a “Top Health Innovator Under 35” and in 2016 received Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business”. Anna trained as an economist at the University of Dayton and resides in Boston, Massachusetts. 

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Anna Young: A Maker Revolution In Healthcare | TEDMED

User Innovation in Medical Device Design
Hear stories and case studies of how patients and clinicians are designing, making and sharing medical devices that transform product development cycles and distribution models.

  • Respiratory circuits for COVID-19 patients
  • COVID-19 infection control devices for patient transport from helicopters to hospitals
  • CGM Systems for Diabetic Patients at Home
  • DIY Smart Medical Devices

The Factory at the Bedside

Gain insights into the future of medical device manufacturing with novel fabrication and invention environments installed at the point-of-care, giving clinicians access to 3D printers, laser cutters and sensors on demand to make customized health technology. Learn how these hospital makerspaces are transforming the patient experience by enabling prescriptions for prototypes and just-in-time design and fabrication of medical devices for patient care.

  • Surgeons learning to 3D print patient data
  • Doctors writing prescriptions for prototypes for adaptive devices for patients
  • Nurses learning to laser cut wound care materials for on-demand manufacturing

The Invisible Researcher

Stealth innovators in science and healthcare are reinventing how technology is developed and implemented around the world. They pursue novel discoveries without the traditional barriers of professional researchers and an accelerated pathway to implementation with immediate feedback loops.

  • Frontline nurses and paramedics creating wound-care materials to rapidly cure infant abdominal wall defects and tremendously reduce cost of care while improving outcomes
  • How did a community of citizen scientists use an expired space craft to discover another world that professional astronomers overlooked
  • Using solar thermal energy and low-cost pressure cookers, a network of rural Nicaraguan clinics developed solar powered autoclaves for instrument sterilization

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