C3 Davos Healthtech Summit at Plug and Play

King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre said Tuesday it awarded the winners of its Innovation Challenge at the C3 Davos of Healthcare Silicon Valley Summit in Sunnyvale. (manilatimes.net) The summit was held April 27 at Plug and Play Tech Center, where C3 and its Saudi hospital partner assembled executives, investors, startups and health systems around a one-day agenda on artificial intelligence, biotech and digital health. (plugandplaytechcenter.com) (prnewswire.com) C3 said former U.S. Defense Secretary and Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta delivered the keynote, and organizer Ransel Potter said participants came from more than 25 countries. (prnewswire.com) Plug and Play’s event listing described Silicon Valley as a new stop for C3’s 15-year summit franchise, which has also run in New York, Riyadh, Manama, Beijing and Tokyo. (plugandplaytechcenter.com) The agenda shows how the meeting was pitched to operators and investors, not just researchers. Sessions covered Food and Drug Administration pre-submissions, corporate-startup partnerships, healthcare cost pressure, and the “intelligent therapeutics” overlap between biotech and digital health. (plugandplaytechcenter.com) (c3int.org) C3 said the event would host more than 300 senior leaders, while Plug and Play’s page put expected attendance above 500 and highlighted its network of 550-plus corporate partners across 25 countries. (prnewswire.com) (plugandplaytechcenter.com) King Faisal Specialist Hospital framed the summit as part of a broader commercialization push, saying its role was to create a path for new technologies to be validated, deployed and scaled inside real hospital systems. (prnewswire.com) (finance.yahoo.com) That message ran through the program. KFSH chief executive Dr. Björn Zoëga was slated to present the Riyadh hospital’s innovation model, and the day ended with the KFSH pitch competition winner announcement before a networking reception. (prnewswire.com) (plugandplaytechcenter.com) Tuesday’s winner announcement turned the summit from a networking event into a deal-sourcing exercise, with C3 and KFSH using Sunnyvale to identify startups they say could move into hospital testing and cross-border partnerships next. (manilatimes.net)