Skip to content

Keynote

Patients Are Impatient

Patients research, organize, invest, and demand better. Drawing on a decade of getting EpiBone's first patient to the operating room and the emails that kept arriving, Nina charts how people in pain became partners in medicine: as advocates, as investors through crowdfunding, and as participants claiming the right to try.

EpiBone spent its first ten years earning permission from the FDA to treat its very first patient. Through all of it, the emails from patients kept arriving: people in pain, researching their options, asking when. Many of the people who joined the company as founders, investors, and employees did so because they are, or love, someone living with the conditions it aims to treat. Nina's view of patients was formed in that inbox: they are informed, organized, and done waiting.

This talk maps the ways patients have become participants in medicine. They read the papers and use AI to summarize them. They organize advocacy that moves regulators. They invest in the companies working on their conditions, alongside institutional backers, through equity crowdfunding. And they press for access to investigational treatments through expanded access and right-to-try programs. For companies, clinicians, and policymakers, Nina lays out what this shift asks of them and how to build alongside patients from day one.

What your audience takes home

  1. 1How patients moved from waiting rooms to cap tables and policy hearings, and what that means for anyone building a treatment.
  2. 2The mechanics behind the shift: patient advocacy, equity crowdfunding, expanded access, and right-to-try, explained by a founder who opened her company's round to patients and fielded their emails for a decade.
  3. 3Practical ways for companies, clinicians, and funders to involve patients early and earn their trust.

Questions this talk answers

  • What do patients know today that they could not know a decade ago, and how are they using it?
  • How does equity crowdfunding change who gets to back a biotech company?
  • What do expanded access and right-to-try programs promise, and what do they deliver?

Watch

See the stage presence.

The future of repairing the human body

TED2023 — Live from the TED2023 mainstage in Vancouver

Could tissue engineering mean personalized medicine?

TEDGlobal — Over one million views

More keynotes

Explore other talks.

Organic Intelligence: When AI Meets Biology

AI is learning the language of cells. Nina maps the convergence of machine intelligence and living systems — from algorithm-designed tissues to biology as the next computing platform — and what it means for every industry that touches the human body.

For

Technology and AI conferencesInnovation summits› 2 more
Explore this talk →

Personalized Longevity: From Lifespan to Healthspan to Joyspan

What happens when replacement parts for the human body become real, and they are grown from your own cells? Drawing on the first human trials of lab-grown bone, Nina charts the path from one-size-fits-all healthcare to treatments as personal as a fingerprint, and from living longer to living fully: lifespan, healthspan, and what she calls joyspan.

For

Longevity and wellness summitsHealthcare and hospital systems› 5 more
Explore this talk →

Biology's Industrial Revolution: Growing the Future and Securing It

Cells are becoming partners in design: self-healing bridges, living textiles, lab-grown bone and meat. Nina shows how growing products will transform materials, medicine, and supply chains, and what it takes to grow living products safely and at home: the biomanufacturing capacity, the safeguards, and the policy choices behind a secure bioeconomy.

For

Manufacturing and supply-chain leadershipMaterials and design conferences› 6 more
Explore this talk →

Building the Impossible: Science Fiction to Science Fact

Living bone grown from a patient's own cells was science fiction a decade ago. Today it is in human trials. Nina shares what it took to get there, from lab bench to FDA-cleared clinical trials: building teams, culture, and conviction for a product that is alive, and the lessons that transfer to anyone building something the world calls impossible.

For

Founder and investor gatheringsCorporate innovation teams› 2 more
Explore this talk →

Bring Nina to your stage

From TED to Davos, Nina translates the frontier of biology and technology into talks audiences never forget.

Keynotes are booked through The Lavin Agency. Interviews, podcasts, and campus or community talks come straight to Nina's team.