On a crisp November day, the Hanover Inn buzzed with energy as researchers, clinicians, students, alumni, and industry leaders gathered at Dartmouth for the second annual Innovation in Medicine & Healthcare Summit. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural event, the summit demonstrated how Dartmouth continues to translate cutting-edge research into real-world solutions that improve patient care and advance health equity.
“Mental health and education are inseparable,” President Sian Leah Beilock, PhD, said in her opening remarks. “Students cannot thrive academically without supporting their mental well-being.”
Steven Leach, MD, interim dean of the Geisel School of Medicine Dartmouth, welcomed attendees by speaking to the power of Dartmouth’s tightly connected research and clinical ecosystems. He described how bringing “researchers, innovators, educators, policy leaders, caregivers, and entrepreneurs together” creates conditions that accelerate discovery and translation that can “improve millions of lives in the days ahead.”
Their words set the tone for a day that would showcase innovation not for its own sake, but innovation in service of human flourishing.
Health at Home
Prior to the day-long summit, a welcome dinner held on November 5 turned the spotlight on the home, and the interconnectedness of patient, provider, and family.
During the dinner’s panel, Richard Levy, PhD, D ’60 shared his journey caring for his wife with dementia, and how even well-resourced families struggle to navigate and balance home care. His lived experience is at the core of why he is working to help build a better system for everyone.
From there, the panel got practical: Bring more care into the home. From innovations in telehealth, to how to deliver better home health and hospice care, to better Medicare and Medicaid models for vulnerable seniors and communities, the panelists emphasized team-based care, simple check-ins, connections to basics like food and home heating oil, and real support for caregivers. They closed with how to scale it: partner across sectors, redesign daily operations, grow the workforce, pay for value, and push smart policy so home care is safe and equitable for everyone.
Student Wellness Meets AI
On November 6, the summit’s opening presentation introduced Evergreen, a first-of-its-kind AI-powered digital ecosystem designed to promote mental health and well-being among Dartmouth students. Unlike social media platforms designed to maximize engagement and profit, Evergreen has a singular mission: help students thrive.
“This is not a replacement for clinical care,” explained Lisa Marsch, PhD, founding director of Dartmouth’s Center for Technology and Behavioral Health. “It’s about building skills for flourishing during the college years and beyond.”
The platform allows students to opt in to share data from wearables, smartphones, dining habits, and academic schedules. In return, they receive personalized recommendations—from stress management techniques to gentle nudges—to connect with friends when isolation patterns emerge. Evergreen is now entering rigorous research studies under institutional review board oversight and has been entirely funded by Dartmouth alumni and parents.
Importantly, Evergreen is being built by students, for students, with more than 130 undergraduates from diverse majors and backgrounds contributing to the project, ensuring it reflects the authentic Dartmouth experience.
For Isaac Wells ’27, a computer science and neuroscience major at Dartmouth working on Evergreen’s development, the platform’s focus on proactive wellness is a major step forward from more reactive treatments. “From my work on a suicide crisis line, I know that by the time someone reaches out in crisis, we’ve missed multiple opportunities for earlier intervention. Evergreen fills that gap.”
The Scientific Magic of CAR-T Cells
One of the summit’s most powerful moments came when Lisa Bianconi shared her patient journey. Diagnosed in 2021 with aggressive stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Bianconi was told she had six months to live after standard treatments failed. That’s when her Dartmouth Cancer Center care team turned to CAR T-cell therapy, an innovative treatment that trains the body’s own immune cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.
“In July 2022, my T-cells were removed and sent to California where receptors were added,” Bianconi explained. “On August 29 those modified cells—designed to fight my cancer—were infused back into my body at Dartmouth.”
Within months, Bianconi was back to teaching full-time. Today, she’s thriving in remission.
“The Dartmouth team was incredible. I tell everyone the secret sauce was excellent care, family and friends, and faith.”
Charles Sentman, PhD, Geisel professor of microbiology and immunology and a CAR T-cell pioneer, said that before CAR T-cells, outcomes after failing two lines of therapy were dire. “Now, long-term survival has been demonstrated,” he said.
Charles Gaulin, MD, a hematologic oncologist at Dartmouth Cancer Center specializing in lymphoma, discussed ongoing efforts to improve these therapies. Soon, a slew of novel approaches will make cell therapies more accessible: allogeneic therapies using donor cells to create off-the-shelf products; in vivo approaches that engineer T-cells directly inside patients’ bodies; and bispecific T-cell engagers that redirect existing T-cells without cell extraction.
“For patients in our rural geography who face challenges accessing these treatments, this is transformative,” Gaulin said. “Receiving cutting-edge care without losing your support system—family, friends, community—changes everything.”
The panel, moderated by Mary Jo Turk, PhD, co-director of immunology and cancer immunotherapy at the Cancer Center and the O. Ross McIntyre, MD, Endowed Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Geisel, noted that opening a dedicated cell therapy manufacturing facility would lead to potential applications across many diseases besides cancer.
Bringing clinical teams, scientists, and regulatory experts into the same room is key to that vision. “It’s why we are developing and testing new approaches right here at Dartmouth, then sharing them with the world,” Turk said.
Expanding Access to Digital Health
Nine out of ten U.S. adults struggle with basic health literacy, and only two-thirds of Americans over 50 feel comfortable using digital technology. For this reason, digital health literacy is what Ruth Berggren, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth Health and the Elizabeth DeCamp McInerny Endowed Professor of Medicine at Geisel, calls “a super social determinant of health….It influences every other determinant because it affects how people access healthcare.”
During the summit, Berggren led a discussion on the critical challenges in digital health adoption, drawing on her work in health literacy and international health. She advocated for “digital health navigators”—not just tech support, but trusted individuals skilled in building relationships and communicating in accessible ways. “Our most isolated patients will need high touch as much as high tech,” she emphasized.
Corey Siegel, MD, MS, director of the Walter and Carole Young Center for Digestive Health at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, presented the REACH program, a telemedicine model for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to address a looming crisis. By 2035, one in 100 North Americans will have IBD, yet currently only 15% receive advanced therapies within the critical first two years.
The REACH program flips traditional care delivery. Patients are seen immediately after diagnosis via telemedicine by a specialty team, then return to community providers with guidance and ongoing mentorship.
“We’ve achieved 85% utilization of advanced therapies within two years, compared to 15% nationally,” Siegel shared. “Community providers tell us they feel like specialists now.”
Advancing Health Equity
A panel examining the investment climate explored the financial challenges of the drug development pipeline, from discovery through patient access, and potential solutions.
Emma Boswell Dean, PhD, MS, health economist at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, spoke to the tensions between innovation incentives and affordability. “We pay the most for drugs in the U.S., which creates perverse incentives. We need payment models that encourage innovation while ensuring access,” she said.
Errik Anderson ’00 Thayer ’06, Tuck ’07, CEO and founder of Alloy Therapeutics, described his company’s mission to reinvest 100% of revenue into innovation and access. “We make proprietary technologies broadly available, so companies compete on better drugs, not exclusive tools.”
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf ’71 offered a policy perspective. “We expanded Medicaid and established insurance exchanges, bringing Pennsylvania’s uninsured rate to an all-time low. The biggest unlock in healthcare is ensuring people have coverage and access.”
As the summit concluded, participants reflected on what these initiatives mean for healthcare’s future, from personalized approaches treating complex illness, tomaking living drugs accessible to more patients to ensuring everyone who needs support can access it.
As Dartmouth builds on its legacy—from being the birthplace of artificial intelligence to pioneering neurosurgery techniques to developing CAR T-cell therapies—this second Innovation Summit demonstrated that the institution’s greatest strength lies in bringing diverse expertise together, maintaining focus on patients, and translating discoveries into better health for real communities.
The path from laboratory to patient requires vision, resources, collaboration, and persistence. But as this summit showcased, when those elements align around patient-centered innovation, the results are life-changing.
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