Wendy Sue Swanson, M.D., M.B.E.

As technology accelerates and public trust in medicine is severely tested, we face a defining challenge: How do we harness innovation's full potential while preserving the human foundation that makes healing possible? Because medicine's greatest power has never been choosing between technology and humanity. It's always been using one to amplify the other.

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Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson knows this terrain intimately. As a pediatrician, digital health pioneer since 2009, doctor who had melanoma and founded a cancer prevention company, she has lived on every side of the trust equation—as the doctor offering understanding and medical expertise, the patient searching for answers, the mother fighting for better, and the founder turning personal crisis into public health action. Through three family cancer diagnoses—her own, her son's sarcoma, her mother's leukemia—she learned what twelve years of pediatric practice and fifteen years translating medicine online couldn't fully teach: how trust is built, fractured, and restored in our most vulnerable moments.

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Dr. Swanson offers a powerful reframe: trust is not just a feeling—it's clinical infrastructure. She demonstrates how the innovations that can erode trust—rushed consent processes, opaque data systems—can instead become engines for building it through real-time updates, transparent results, and digital tools that bring us together rather than pull us apart. And crucially, in an era of growing skepticism toward science and institutions, healthcare systems must become more social—empowering their trusted clinicians to share truth, translate complexity, and meet people where they are to rebuild public faith in medicine itself.

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This is a call to action for anyone who touches healthcare. Dr. Swanson challenges us to elevate trusted voices, transform vulnerability into strength, and build the more humane, patient-centered future that every person deserves when they're afraid, in pain, or fighting for their life.

As technology infuses the health space, we must examine the opportunities of novel innovation on improving wellbeing, health care, and the experience of both prevention and treatment of disease. From chatbots, AI software, social media, and digital health to cancer screening, mental health, and the toll of the “diseases of despair,” Dr. Swanson will explore the challenges at the confluence of rapid, technologic innovation and health. Some things are changing and some things must not. As our lives are inevitably altered by things like ChatGPT, we can guide what health care becomes. Audiences will walk away with a deeper understanding of how and why technology and innovation outpace the velocity of change in health care delivery. They will gain insight into how to effectively embrace new technologies to enhance their ability to serve their communities; be prompted to consider the ethical implications of integrating novel technologies like AI into health care delivery; and learn strategies for problem-solving amidst the ongoing "infodemic" sowing seeds of misinformation and distrust. Dr. Swanson will explore what matters most with today’s challenges for humans (prevention of disease, violence, isolation, cancer, heart disease, mental health, costs in health care, etc) as technology transforms the way we live our lives. She’ll discuss where technology cannot encroach on care and provide a way forward to improve your approach with examples to peak curiosity and solution-making.

As a pediatrician, bioethicist, digital health pioneer, and startup founder, Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson tackles this central concern shaping medicine's future. Drawing from her roles as Seattle Children's first Chief of Digital Innovation, Chief Medical Officer at Before Brands, and founder of a public health communications venture, she examines how AI is challenging traditional notions of medical care and trust.

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Dr. Swanson illuminates a critical tension: while healthcare maintains its cautious approach to change, at times patients and providers alike seek thoughtful restraint in AI deployment—united in prioritizing authentic human connection and safety over speed. She explores how this shared mindset reshapes medical decision-making, asking: Which aspects of healthcare welcome machines, and what parts should remain deeply human?

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Through her experience spanning clinical medicine, public health communication, and health innovation, she offers insights on harmonizing AI's transformative potential with healthcare's need for measured, ethical progress – creating a future that preserves the human essence in medicine while embracing meaningful innovation.

Drawing from decades as a physician executive and digital health pioneer, Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson shares both data-driven insights and powerful personal narratives that illuminate the unique path of women leaders in healthcare and technology. Through stories of challenge and triumph, she reveals how women can transform traditional obstacles into distinct advantages in medical leadership.

In this compelling keynote, Dr. Swanson unpacks the science of effective leadership while sharing hard-won wisdom about building authentic power. She explores how women can harness emerging technologies like AI while staying true to their values, how to create lasting change through strategic visibility, and how to build communities that amplify impact.

From navigating boardrooms to building digital health initiatives, Dr. Swanson offers practical strategies for developing what she calls "the leadership fingerprint" – that unique combination of bravery, authenticity, and poise that distinguishes transformational leaders. She demonstrates how women can leverage their distinctive strengths to build trust, drive innovation, and reshape healthcare's future.

This isn't just about surviving in medicine and tech – it's about thriving and creating a legacy that empowers the next generation of women leaders.