Zen Chu believes that now is the best time in history for healthcare entrepreneurs and engineers to create the data, systems, and products to help medicine medicine scale and serve more patients with higher quality at lower cost. He created and teaches the MIT Healthcare Ventures graduate courses within the pioneering Health Science & Technology (HST) program, a joint initiative between MIT, Harvard Medical School and the Boston academic hospitals. As faculty director for the HackingMedicine.MIT.edu health innovation leadership initiatives, Zen mentors physician entrepreneurs, early-stage startups and health corporations adapting to global digital healthcare transformation, changing healthcare incentives, growth in emerging markets, and new disruptive technologies that re-engineer medicine.
As Managing Director of Accelerated Medical Ventures and its subsidiary Boston Digital Health Foundry, Zen specializes in building early-stage medical technology and healthcare service companies, usually serving as co-founder and first investor. AMV’s portfolio spans Boston, Silicon Valley and China, including PillPack.com, Figure1.com, 3D-Matrix Medical [JASDAQ: 7777], Curoverse Genomics, PathFinder Regenerative Medicine [OTCQB: PFND], BitGym.com, EViPATH Asia, DirectDermatology.com and a few companies still in stealth mode.
Alongside four world-renowned MIT biomaterials professors, Zen co-founded 3D-Matrix Medical Inc., serving as the first CEO for the venture-backed MIT regenerative medicine company whose injectable gel drug delivery products are treating patients and enabling new regenerative medicine research, with a successful IPO in 2011. He has managed and led new ventures for Harvard Medical School, Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Bioengineering, NetVentures and Hewlett-Packard. Zen earned a Masters of Public & Private Management from Yale University and a BS in biomedical/electrical engineering from SMU. He’s married to a serial entrepreneur/venture investor and they are raising three aspiring entrepreneurs in Brookline, MA.
Ayesha N. Khalid is a fellowship-trained ENT practicing surgeon specializing in sinus and allergic disease and a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical School. As an otolaryngologist, Ayesha pioneered groundbreaking research in sinus disease in ciliary beat frequency, biofilm formation and outcomes following sinus surgery.
Ayesha believe that systems thinking in healthcare is a powerful method to re-energize the doctor-patient relationship and that this is accelerated through the thoughtful usage of digital health technologies, As a healthcare innovation enthusiast, Ayesha recently completed an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management focused on Global Leadership and Innovation. During her tenure at Sloan, Ayesha researched mechanisms to accelerate research-funding paradigms at academic medical centers. She joined MIT H@cking Medicine and helped organize several innovation events in Boston, BIO 2014, and in Doha, Qatar. Ayesha co-founded the Hacking Medicine Institute to engage stakeholders in working collaboratively to accelerate the effective utilization of technology in healthcare service delivery.
Ayesha is passionate that disruptive innovation in healthcare requires collaboration, not competition. In her recent TedXBeaconStreet, Ayesha asks us to suspend our belief that a systemic view will add back “health” and “care” to a broken system. Ayesha is working as a consultant in projects involving digital health and telemedicine investments to advance the surgical experience from a patient perspective.
Ayesha completed her medical school and surgical residency at the Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine and her surgical fellowship at the Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.