The Global Innovation Center Brings Vision Care Innovation to HLTH 2023 [WATCH]

VSP Vision's Global Innovation Center traveled to Las Vegas in October to attend HLTH 2023—a four-day conference focused on the future of healthcare—to represent VSP Vision alongside top innovators, executives, and entrepreneurs all working together to drive the industry forward.  

HLTH features conference sessions highlighting the latest healthcare technology and trends, along with opportunities to collaborate, demo, and engage with the 12,000+ attendees from across healthcare and benefits. 

The Global Innovation Center led a robust and impactful VSP Vision innovation activation at this year's conference, which included an interactive booth featuring VSP & You, a digital experience that gamifies the pre-enrollment process; a Tech Talk detailing the Future of Benefits; and a partnership at the event’s Innovators Reception. In addition, VSP Vision Care President Kate Renwick-Espinosa was on-hand to deliver a fireside chat on vision and dental as the front doors to health and wellness. 

Watch the three-minute recap video below to learn more about the Global Innovation Center’s presence at this event, along with key takeaways from the conference. 

[View the Global Innovation Center's HLTH Recap Video]

A few of the most talked-about trends at HLTH 2023 included: 

• Customer centricity. Healthcare companies both large and small are focused on putting the customer at the core of everything that they do by making healthcare easier and more accessible through choice, convenience, and continuity of care.   

This trend was best outlined during a session entitled “The Amazon of Healthcare: A Customer-Obsessed Approach to Improving Human Health,” featuring panelists from Amazon and One Medical. As mentioned during the session, “easy drives convenience, convenience drives engagement, and we need engagement for better health outcomes.” 

• Leveraging AI. Nearly one in four booths at HLTH 2023 featured artificial intelligence in their product positioning and 11 session topics covered AI. Generative AI, in particular, was a stand-out category.  

Discussions that surrounded this trend included the need for healthcare to become more data driven for AI to be successful, the overall challenges of implementing AI— including, cost, compliance, and security—and the need for improved testing and evaluation standardization.   

• Oral care and vision care are front doors for healthcare. Oral care was a significant part of the healthcare innovation discussion at the conference thanks to CareQuest Innovation Partners, who sponsored an innovation showcase, a startup pavilion, and more. Like vision care, oral care can reveal more serious health issues, particularly cardiovascular problems. And, like vision care, there are massive disparities in access to oral care due to inadequate insurance coverage and a limited supply of providers.  

The oral care startups that were spotlighted by CareQuest are battling these issues by working to bring dental services to the homes of underserved populations (Enable Dental), providing personalized on-demand virtual care and oral health coaching (Dentistry.one), and providing a saliva test to diagnose cancer earlier (OrisDX).

For more vision innovation news and updates, check out the Global Innovation Center's LinkedIn page.