Experiences shape us. They are emotionally powerful, memorable and significant. In humans, it’s often the combination of experience + emotion that drives our behavior, including changes to that behavior. So why is healthcare void of emotional experiences but rife with behaviors that need to change?

In his talk, Aaron Gani will present the link between emotion and motivation, and why we should be leveraging the emotional power of storytelling + technology to shape experiences for behavior change and health. Aaron Gani is the founder and CEO of BehaVR, LLC, creating digital therapeutics for behavioral health through the unmatched psychological power of Virtual Reality. Gani has been creating applications and experiences with technology throughout his career in healthcare and financial services, up to and including serving as Chief Technology Officer of Humana, a Fortune 50 managed care organization. After a decade+ in healthcare leading technology development of population health, utilization management, disease management programs, pharmacy, primary care, urgent care, Health IT, and clinical analytics, and constantly working on ways to improve and empower consumer health with technology, data and analytics, Gani identified the crucial gap between knowledge, tools, and activation of healthy behavior, and believes Virtual Reality experiences can close that gap. Gani is a founding member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Digital Medicine (DiMe) Society, and a founding advisory board member of the International Virtual Reality Healthcare Association (IVRHA). Gani holds a Master’s in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University, an MBA, General Management and Health Sector Management from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a BS in Management/CIS from the University of Louisville. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx