Intel, Safeway luminaries to address how tech can lower health costs

BERKELEY — Can technological innovation rein in our nation’s escalating health care costs? On Wednesday, Nov. 18, luminaries including Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel Corp., and Steve Burd, CEO of Safeway, will take up this question at the second annual A. Richard Newton Global Technology Leaders Conference, "Translating Technology into Cost-Effective Health Care." Hosted by the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Engineering in partnership with the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), the conference will bring together entrepreneurs and researchers to discuss cost-effective health care innovations and the emerging technologies that drive them, and to identify pathways toward new business creation, public policymaking and marketplace adoption. The day-long conference, at the Rutter Center at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus, is sponsored in part by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, an initiative co-founded by the foundation to promote entrepreneurship among millions of young people around the world. Global Entrepreneurship Week will be held Nov. 16-22 this year. In most industries, technological innovation leads to productivity gains. Health care has been a glaring exception.