Dr. Joel Selanikio, MD
Co-Founder and CEO of Magpi & Physician at Georgetown University
Dr. Joel Selanikio, MD
Co-Founder and CEO of Magpi & Physician at Georgetown University
Biography
“Dr. Selanikio delivered a mind-blowing message to our audience, illustrating with a unique view how innovation and technology is disrupting the healthcare industry and rattling legacy systems of care. He inspired our audience to think differently about their current systems and practices, and power and potential of consumerism on the future of the healthcare delivery system.”
-Director, Healthcare Finance Policy, Physician and Clinical Practice, Healthcare Financial Management Association
Dr. Joel Selanikio has spent his career at the intersection of medicine, technology, and disruption — and he argues that healthcare's future looks nothing like its past.
A practicing physician, former CDC epidemiologist, and technology entrepreneur, Dr. Selanikio speaks to healthcare boards and executive leadership on AI, consumer health disruption, and the forces quietly dismantling traditional models of care delivery. He most recently keynoted The Governance Institute's national conference for healthcare board members and executives.
His career spans clinical medicine, global health, and crisis response. He created Magpi, the first cloud-based data collection platform for global health, winning both the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award for Healthcare and the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainable Innovation. As a CDC epidemiologist and emergency responder, he served as lead physician at the IMC Ebola Treatment Center in Sierra Leone, Chief of Operations for the HHS Emergency Command Center after 9/11, and consultant epidemiologist to FEMA and DC Health during COVID-19.
He has spoken at TED, Davos, MIT, Stanford, Google, the American Hospital Association, and the Royal Society of Medicine, and has been profiled by The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Wired, Forbes, the BBC, NPR, and the Washington Post.
Dr. Selanikio lives in Washington, DC with his family.
Speaker Videos
TED: The Surprising Seeds of a Big-Data Revolution in Healthcare
Information Technology Trends and Their Effect on Health and Healthcare
Speech Topics
Better & Smaller: The Coming Healthcare Demand Collapse
For the first time in modern history, healthcare faces not just disruption from competitors — but the elimination of demand itself. GLP-1 medications are removing entire service lines. Autonomous vehicles will empty trauma bays. AI is handling clinical decisions that once required appointments. This talk gives healthcare boards and executives a clear framework for understanding which service lines are most vulnerable, which forces are accelerating the collapse, and what a sustainable institution looks like on the other side. Leaders who understand these forces now will be positioned to adapt; those who don't will be managing a slow decline.
Doctor You: The Migration from Exam Room to Living Room
Smartwatches detect atrial fibrillation. AI interprets lab results. Direct-to-consumer platforms prescribe medications without a physician visit. The migration of clinical capability from exam rooms to consumer devices is already underway — and accelerating. This talk gives healthcare leaders a clear map of which capabilities are migrating, how fast, and what it means for patient volume, revenue, and institutional relevance. The question is no longer whether patients will become self-navigators — they already are. The question is whether health systems will find new value in a post-gatekeeper era, or be left managing what consumers can't yet handle themselves.
Stop Asking the Wrong Question About AI & Healthcare
The conventional debate asks whether AI will replace physicians. It's the wrong question. The right question: can a less-expensive human — a nurse practitioner, pharmacist, technician, or informed consumer — equipped with AI do what doctors currently do? The answer is obviously yes, and it's already happening. This talk moves past the replacement debate to what actually matters for healthcare leaders: as clinical tasks migrate to lower-cost humans and consumers armed with AI, what happens to revenue streams, workforce models, and institutional role? Audiences leave with a practical framework for anticipating task migration and repositioning their organizations ahead of the shift.
Crisis Thinking: What Emergencies Reveal About Leadership
Most leadership training prepares you for normal. Crises aren't normal. Drawing on firsthand experience leading clinical operations during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, serving as Chief of Operations for the HHS Emergency Command Center after 9/11, and consulting to FEMA and DC Health during COVID-19, this talk examines how institutions make decisions under radical uncertainty — incomplete information, collapsing assumptions, no time for consensus. What separates organizations that adapt from those that freeze? How do leaders maintain trust when the situation keeps changing? And what do crisis-tested models of resilience look like when applied to the slower-moving disruptions healthcare faces today?
Testimonials
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Associate Professor in the Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University and Founding Member for TIME’S UP Healthcare