This One Time At the Galien Patient Summit

The inaugural Galien Patient Summit pulled off something rare. A first-time event that could have easily become another “patient-centered” spectacle with zero patients ended up doing what almost no one else does in this space: course-correcting in real time.

They realized the obvious in that you can’t host a Patient Summit without actual patients. (Cue: Jeff Goldblum’s “No dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour.” retort) Instead of papering over it, they fixed it in real time at the 11th hour with nary an obvious sweat bead.

They brought real people to the table: advocates, survivors, scientists with scars, and lived-experience experts who know the system from the inside out. The eleventh-hour pivot was bold and genuine. It changed the DNA of the entire event.

Getting to Keynote that room was a privilege. I told them empathy isn’t charity. Instead, it’s infrastructure. Patients are not marketing copy. We are stakeholders, co-founders who own our intellectual property.

You want growth? Start there. You want trust? Earn it.

The energy felt different. Conversations that would’ve been sanitized at any other conference got a little messy (in a good way).

Were there rookie mistakes? Absolutely. Inaugural (And *not* 1st Annual BTW) events always carry trim around the edges. If you walked out of here wanting more, perfect. Because more is what we build, together.

If you landed here thinking they nailed every detail, we’re fooling ourselves. As Reid Hoffman once said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Bravo to everyone who built it, showed up, and embraced the pivot. You pulled off something the industry desperately needed. Let’s make it the new standard, not the exception.

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