Keynote Speakers

The Annual Meeting Keynote speakers give our membership an opportunity to hear from individuals whose breadth and vision extends beyond the specialty of radiation oncology to inform them about the bigger picture of the rapidly changing health care environment. With their knowledge and expertise, this year’s Keynote speakers will continue to highlight the meeting theme Embracing Change, Advancing Person-centered Care.

Wendy Dean, MD Moral Injury and Choosing Change Monday, October 25 9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. CEO and Co-founder, The Moral Injury of Healthcare, a nonprofit organization addressing the crisis of clinician distress. COVID-19 laid bare myriad gaps and challenges in how health care functions, both for patients and clinicians. Talk will explore how reframing current challenges, choosing change, and starting with a foundation of empathy and curiosity will lead us to a better, more sustainable health care environment for everyone in the future.

Barry Schwartz, PhD The Choices that Matter Tuesday, October 26 9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore (Emeritus Psychology) Author of “Practical Wisdom” We generally believe that there can never be too much choice, and the doctrine of patient autonomy embodies that belief. But it is a mistake. Too many options can produce paralysis, poor decisions, and dissatisfaction with even good decisions. Moreover, it can turn people into maximizers, choosers who are only satisfied with the best. Medical professionals should seek the “sweet spot”—enough choice to give patients a feeling of autonomy but not so much that it produces paralysis and dissatisfaction. Moreover, medical professionals themselves need more choice than they may now have, enabling them to use wise judgment in finding the right way to interact with patients, and to build up the kind of trust that encourages patients to be partners in their treatment.

Fei-Fei Li, PhD  Illuminating the Dark Space of Health Care with Ambient Intelligence Tuesday, October 26 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Sequoia Capital Professor, Co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Professor, By Courtesy, Operations, Information and Technology at The Graduate School of Business. Served as Vice President at Google and as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud during sabbatical from January 2017 - September 2018. In this talk, we introduce how this technology could improve our understanding of the metaphorically dark, unobserved spaces of health care. In hospital spaces, early applications could soon enable more efficient clinical workflows and improved patient safety in intensive care units and operating rooms. In daily living spaces, ambient intelligence could prolong the independence of older individuals and improve the management of individuals with a chronic disease by understanding everyday behavior. Similar to other technologies, transformation into clinical applications at scale must overcome challenges such as rigorous clinical validation, appropriate data privacy and model transparency. Thoughtful use of this technology would enable us to understand the complex interplay between the physical environment and health-critical human behaviors.