Welcome to a short walking tour. Eight stops: where health systems stand today, what IEEE could make possible by 2032, a map of the mission, and an Adventure Guide for bringing your Section along.
Presented by Ravinder Dahiya · IEEE Boston Section · Professor of ECE, Northeastern University · IEEE Sensors Council Sensors@25
Session by Bruce Hecht · IEEE Boston Section · IEEE Brain · IEEE Industry Connections in Healthcare and Life Sciences
Four forces, felt in every Section's community:
Care needs grow faster than care capacity, in every region.
Long-term conditions now drive most of the global burden of care.
Devices, data, and care systems still don't connect.
Between regions and within them, care does not reach everyone.
Sections and Chapters aligned on grand health challenges — through mission-driven programming, interdisciplinary collaboration, and measurable impact. Local actions adding up to coordinated global health innovation goals, 2026 to 2032.
Chapter programs designed around a grand challenge — not one-off talks.
Shared missions, shared metrics, shared stories — carried Section to Section.
IEEE doesn't need to build the community — it needs to point it at the mission.
IEEE Sensors Council · EMBS · IEEE Brain · Industry Connections in Healthcare and Life Sciences.
IEEE SA Healthcare & Life Sciences — Clinical Health, Pharma/Biotech, and Global Wellness.
Trusted local convenors in every region of the world.
Industry, academic, and clinical collaborators already engaged.
Each names a capability and the health outcome it serves, so a Chapter can see the problem it is joining — not only the technology.
Restoring function and independence after injury or neurological disease. Launching with Prof. Ellis Meng (USC) and IEEE EMBS.
SDG 3.4Catching chronic disease earlier, and managing it at home rather than in hospital.
SDG 3.4Distributed sensing and rapid point-of-care detection, so communities see an outbreak coming instead of counting it afterwards.
SDG 3.dLearning across sensor modalities so the data becomes clinically meaningful — and interpretable enough to be trusted.
Underpinning both: sustainable, low-cost, printed sensing — the subject of the Sustainability Workshop presented at IEEE FLEPS — which is also what makes these technologies reachable in low-resource settings.
Select a point to see what happens there and which Sustainable Development Goal targets it serves. Green points are Sections that have joined — the map fills in as Chapters sign up.
Yours belongs here too — the Adventure Guide is the next stop.
Mission innovation aligns programmes already moving in the same direction, using IEEE SA's own workstream names:
Co-led by Bruce Hecht, Narendra Mangra, and Elizabeth Baker (VCU), with practice lead Maria Palombini.
Building trust in digital mental health — with Yuri Quintana (BIDMC).
Global Health Programme — resilient systems, biological risk, and preparing for emerging threats.
MIT's health and life sciences initiative, launched by President Sally Kornbluth.
Five steps, adapted from the IEEE Innovation Summit Pathway — each one something a Section, Chapter, or partner can start this year:
Ask your community which grand health challenge matters most locally.
Host a grand-challenge program — a workshop, not a one-off lecture.
Connect Chapters — sensors, EMBS, brain, computing, standards — on one project.
Partner — join the industry sessions in Rotterdam and Cairo, or sponsor the 2026–2032 innovation proposal.
Measure and share — report impact so local actions add up globally.
Every Section on that map started as one volunteer deciding their community's health challenge was worth a programme. Boston, Atlanta, Toronto and UK and Ireland have crossed. Yours is the next point on the map.
Leave your email and we'll connect you to the mission — no account needed. Naming your country adds a point to the mission map.
This tour speaks English, Spanish, and French. Which language should it speak next?
Or write directly: bruce.hecht@ieee.org
Companion apps:
IEEE HealthXBridge ·
IEEE Innovation Summit Pathway
Conferences:
IEEE Sensors 2026 · Rotterdam ·
IEEE Sensors@25 · Cairo