The 2025 HealthKey Summit brought together nearly 200 healthcare executives, thought leaders and changemakers for an honest and insightful look at the most pressing challenges — and promising solutions — impacting the industry today.
The event, convened by Brian Communications and catalyzed by the "Independence Blue Cross Foundation", featured more than 20 speakers sharing their bold ideas and talking candidly about what it takes to make healthcare work both now and in the future.
As Brian Tierney said, “We believe the future of health is not just about breakthroughs in technology or medicine. It’s about the people behind them; the innovators, the caregivers, the advocates, and everyone working tirelessly each day to make sure that we evolve and grow.”
“Healthcare is complicated enough without all of us working in silos across the region,” said Steve Fera, executive vice president of public affairs at Independence Blue Cross. “We have incredible organizations doing amazing work, but we’re leaving opportunities on the table to solve the biggest problems together. HealthKey is about unlocking what’s possible.”
In panel discussions, fireside chats and flash talks, speakers emphasized the technological and social forces that are shaping consumer expectations, care delivery and workforce recruitment – and how the industry can effectively respond.
Here’s a glimpse of our speakers’ insights and key takeaways:
Thanks to social media and AI, consumers have access to more health information than ever before. But there’s still an education gap when it comes to navigating the healthcare system and finding trustworthy information.
We’ve done a lot of focus groups here in Pennsylvania, and people don’t know what they can get from a health plan. They don’t know that they can get preventative screenings. And we’ve actually had several people who enrolled through Pennie say, ‘I got an early preventative screening. I found cancer and I’m still here today.’
Devon Trolley, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Health Insurance Exchange Authority (Pennie)
“The noise out there in healthcare is deafening. The number of things that my patients come to me with that they have picked up just from social media is remarkable. And you know that not everything is true. I think there’s tremendous opportunity for reputable physicians and healthcare providers to reach people in those same airwaves.” — Dr. Tiffany Troso-Sandoval, Founder, Winning the Cancer Journey
“You come into your doctor’s office today fully equipped with incredible information. You’ve already researched and determined what your diagnosis is before you go in. The doctors of today have to be ready to really partner with the people we take care of. That creates authenticity and trust and allows us to actually collaborate in finding treatment plans that will actually be effective.” — Dr. Leon McCrea, Vice Dean, Drexel University College of Medicine
“Instead of being the authority like we used to be, we are now the interpreters of healthcare information.” — Dr. Louis Levitt, Chief Medical Officer, MedVanta
Technology continues to offer incredible potential throughout the industry, but it’s up to us to design successful systems and ensure it’s making a meaningful difference at the end of the day.
“What concerns me is there’s so much coming at us, whether you’re on the management side or you’re on the consumer side, that it’s going to get hard to discern ‘useful’ from ‘cool idea.’ I think success will be defined by us figuring out how to deliver medical care in a way that people feel like is truly beneficial, truly different.” — Ed Jimenez, President & CEO of Main Line Health
"Rather than just collecting data [from wearables and remote monitoring], we’re orchestrating it properly. We have a fall risk score that lets people know where they’re at based on their mobility or inactivity, and it’s critical that we pass that information through to the primary doctor and other professional caregivers. It’s not only preventing bad outcomes, but significantly reducing healthcare costs. Just to give you an idea, there’s 14 million senior falls a year, with a reported $80 billion in healthcare costs.
The success of technology in healthcare comes down to adherence and engagement. And I think we can help people get better, stay at home longer, and take care of their own health, but they need to opt-in too. And that’s a big challenge. Simplicity is really important when we talk about serving up solutions that are scalable, that people will use frequently and adopt and adhere to.” — Geoff Gross, Founder/CEO of Medical Guardian and President of Connected Health & Safety Association
“We’re already starting to see some really powerful results from AI tools applied to large sets of healthcare data in terms of predicting risk or identifying patients where early intervention is more appropriate, or even identifying mistakes like misclassification of certain diseases. I think it’s really exciting times for the application of these aggregated data assets with AI tools to find the right tool, right time and right intervention for the patients.” — Greg Liptak, Vice President of Research & Innovation, HealthShare Exchange
Flexibility and open communication will be a strategic advantage.
“It’s not necessarily the strongest or smartest organization, but the one that’s the most adaptable that’s probably going to survive the changes of the next decade. That’s really the energy right now: How does this health policy evolve? What do we need to be working on to be the Wayne Gretzky, to get to where the puck is going?” — Martin Graf, Ph.D., Senior Partner, Oliver Wyman
“The most dramatic way for us to drive change is through the business model. I focus a lot on the question of, ‘What are going to be the changes in our business model that will help us transform care, and at the end of the day, make healthcare sustainable?’ You’ve got to have some long-term vision that is flexible enough to allow you to pivot.” — Jennifer Schwartz, Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel, ChristianaCare
“I’m a lawyer by training, and it can be hard for clinicians to have people like me talking about strategy for making people healthier. So one of the things I, and a lot of our executives, are doing is spending one day every few weeks with one of our clinicians.
I assure you, no one is coming to Temple Health to get their lung transplanted because they have this tall, charming lawyer over there. They’re coming because we’re the world’s leading lung transplant center, and it’s the physicians who do that. Talk to your docs, listen to your docs, and get perspective from your docs. Make decisions on that. They’re smart people; you can’t go wrong.” — John Ryan, EVP & Chief Administrative Officer, Temple Health
Solving the healthcare labor shortage will require powerful collaborations and a willingness to rethink the pipeline itself.
“There are social determinants and blockages for the workforce of the future. And I think it would be really smart for all of us to rethink how to solve that problem instead of thinking of traditional ways to bring people into the workforce. This is a generational issue and it will take bold, bold moves to fix it.” — Ryan Hummel, Head of Health Services, Vynamic
"There are several bottlenecks that get me antsy, including finances — a fear of the debt you have to take on for education — and scarcity of clinical placements. I also think many of our teaching models are based on antiquated models of what preparedness is. We need to continue to evolve what those core competencies are going to be for this evolving society.
That’s why I’m so excited about our partnership that is re-imagining medical education. We’re developing a three-year model for medical education instead of the classic four, and some other places around the country are starting to do this as well. We’ve got to get people into the workforce faster.” — Dr. Leon McCrea, Vice Dean, Drexel University College of Medicine
The vitality of our health workforce directly influences the health of individuals and communities. I feel really lucky that our work isn’t just on the healthcare delivery side; it’s also preparing nurses and growing that pipeline. We care a lot about program design, because that is really what drives success. As an industry, we can spend a lot of time putting more fuel into the system — but we also have to be paying attention to where the friction is.
Heather Falck Major, Executive Director, Independence Blue Cross Foundation
Tomorrow’s healthcare leaders are already here.
“You hear the stat that one in four clinical providers have been trained or educated in Philadelphia. And if you think about just the little dot on the map that is Philadelphia and the Delaware area –– that is incredible. Philadelphia’s export is not really cheesesteaks; it’s clinical expertise!” — Ryan Hummel, Head of Health Services, Vynamic
Special thanks to the The Independence Blue Cross Foundation for catalyzing this event and to our HealthKey sponsors: AmeriHealth Caritas, Caron Treatment Centers, MedVanta, Morgan Lewis, and Belong Health.