The Healthiest Healthcare Conference of the Year

I just wrapped up another J.P. Morgan Annual Healthcare Investment Conference. At first glance you would think it was the unhealthiest healthcare conference of the year. A four day (plus) conference, each day with eight cups of caffeine, lunches on the run, servers schlepping variations of chicken-on-stick for dinner, followed by what seems like endless free cocktails . To the contrary, it may very well be the healthiest. The average industry professional in San Francisco for the conference last week trekked 4.39 miles per day – that’s scientifically sound data.

I always joke with others about how much walking goes on at this conference. As you know the conference has metastasized beyond the confines of the Westin St. Francis, resulting in running from hotel to hotel to make it to satellite meetings with clients, investors, media and other industry movers and shakers. The “more fortunate” have back-to-back schedules of meetings at their meeting suite, and are lucky to see daylight.

I wanted to find out how healthy the conference really is so this year, we conducted a rigorously designed scientific study to produce real data. We sent pedometers to industry executives, members of the financial community and the media to find out how much ground was covered by foot. We of course had multiple arms in the study. One group was covering ground via satellite meetings around the conference. Another group was holed up at their suite the majority of the week. We also had a control group – those not at the conference. I guess you can even say we had a placebo group, for the one pedometer that didn’t work (I’d attribute to poor compliance for failing to reset the device). Let’s call it a Phase 2 proof of concept study, enrolling approximately 25 subjects, evaluating safety and the rationale for advancing into a larger Phase 3.

Top line results (miles per day):

*Satellite Meetings Arm: 5.13mi/day

Holed Up in the Hotel Arm: 2.44mi/day

Control Arm: 1.66mi/day

*One subject logged 19.13 miles in 3 days.

Data is still being reviewed, but the study appears to be a success. No one was injured. Only adverse events were anxiety and sore feet. No sign of cardiovascular risk. A larger study next year will be necessary to verify results.

Ok, enough joking around. The study wasn’t just about walking. We traced the steps of CEOs, investors and media to capture breaking news, anecdotes from hallway chatter, and reports on mood and sentiment. Since the J.P. Morgan conference is seen as the barometer for the performance of the industry in the coming year, stories and sentiment from the conference are usually closely followed. The mood was an improvement over 2009 doom and gloom. Optimism reigned but uncertainty still remains, keeping the financial community in check for the time being. The conference felt smaller, but perhaps just more spread out. Receptions were more lavish than 2009, indicating that banks are once again willing to spend. The jury is still out on the news flow. There were some headlines, but there was also a lot of noise, reminding us to seriously consider the value in holding news to issue the week of the conference. This also reminds me of a lesson learned several years ago about Monday morning press releases the week of J. P. Morgan. Avoid them. Two top ten shareholders were on a plane to SFO that Monday morning, and they didn’t see the release pre-announcing financial results until Wednesday.

We also made this a social media experiment, observations of which I’ll share in a future post. Thanks to all of the “subjects” that played along.