October 21, 2026
Hosted at Baird Center
See some of our 2025 highlights here!
About +Venture Health
+Venture Health is Wisconsin’s premier venture and innovation event focused on healthcare, life sciences, biohealth, and medical technology.
Hosted by NVNG in partnership with BioForward, this year’s event brings together leading venture capitalists, healthcare systems, corporations, startup founders, university researchers, and innovation leaders from Wisconsin and across the country. Building on the success of the sold-out inaugural event in 2025, +Venture Health 2026 returns this year and expects to convene approximately 300 curated participants for a day of connection and innovation.
Featured Sessions
- Venture Capital Perspectives: Life Sciences – This VC investor panel will bring together venture firms from across the country to share their perspectives on today’s investment environment across life sciences.
- Venture Capital Perspectives: Digital Health – This VC panel will cover changes and trends across the digital health ecosystem and features investors from across the country.
- The New Drug Engine: How Chinese Biotech Innovation is Repricing Western Discovery – With a growing share of Western drug pipelines originating from China, this conversation will examine how asset density, development costs, and licensing are changing the economics of biotech innovation and where discovery value is created.
- Tech for the Next Generation of Drug Discovery – Computational-first teams and outsourced wet lab capabilities are materially reducing the capital and time needed to reach a fundable scientific signal. What does that shift mean for how biotech companies are built, financed, and valued?
- Cutting Costs, Not Care: Practical Tech and Operations for Affordable Health – This session explores practical, high-impact strategies driving down healthcare costs right now. Experts will share real-world examples of technology, policy shifts, and care delivery models that make medical services cheaper and more accessible while improving the quality of patient care.
Keynote
Jonathan Bush
CEO and Co-Founder of Zus Health
Session Speakers
Amy Kobe
General Partner at InVivium Capital
Andrew Bouldin
Managing Partner at FCA Venture Partners
Andrew Wegrzyn
Principal at SixThirty Ventures
Ben Spektor
Director of Venture Investing at OSF Ventures
Brian Lindstrom
Partner at HealthX Ventures
Carrie Thome
Managing Director at NVNG Investment Advisors
Christina Jenkins, MD
Co-Founder and General Partner at Convergent Ventures
Daniel Fleming
Managing Partner at RC Capital
E.J. Reedy
Director of Platform at PACE Healthcare Capital
Elizabeth Hagerman
Chief Innovation Officer at UW Health
Eric Berry
Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Averin Capital
Eric Horler
President and CEO of AIQ Solutions
Erik Phelps
EVP, Chief Administrative & Legal Officer at Tempus AI
Faraz Choudhury, PhD
CEO of Immuto Scientific
Goutham Narla
Chief Scientific Officer at Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
Jason Buchwald
President and Chief Commercial Officer at MedServe
Jessica Martin Eckerly
CEO & Co-Founder of Forward BIOLABS
Jocelyn Ulrich
Vice President, Innovation Policy at PhRMA
Jonathan Bush
CEO and Co-Founder of Zus Health
Justin Nicols
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sift Healthcare
Kalpa Vithalani, PhD
Executive Director of Technology Transfer at Marquette University
Katie MacFarlane
Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Arkayli Biopharma
Kevin Boggs, MBA, PhD, RTTP
Director, Office of Technology Development at Medical College of Wisconsin
Lance Lange
Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets at Baird
Laura King
Founder & CEO at BiaCure Therapies
Mark Bakken
Founder and Managing Partner at HealthX Ventures
Marwa Bassiouni
Director, Partnerships & Operations at BioForward Wisconsin
Matthew Anderson, MD, PhD
EVP and Chief Medical Officer at Versiti
Michael Widlansky, MD
Co-Founder of Sanacor; Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin
Paul Weiss
Partner at Venture Investors Health Fund
Sulabh Agarwal
CEO of KeyCare
Agenda
Event Kickoff
Carrie Thome
Managing Director at NVNG Investment Advisors
Marwa Bassiouni
Director, Partnerships & Operations at BioForward Wisconsin
Healthcare & Life Sciences: The Market View
After several challenging years, healthcare and life sciences capital markets are beginning to shift. Lance Lange of Bairdwill share a market-level view of valuations, IPO and M&A activity, investor appetite, and what companies across therapeutics, medtech, diagnostics, and digital health need to demonstrate to attract capital today.
Lance Lange
Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets at Baird
Investing in Innovation: Insights from Life Sciences VC
Life sciences investors are navigating a changing market for therapeutics, diagnostics, platforms, and emerging technologies. Leading VCs will share what they’re seeing across the market, where they’re finding opportunity, and what it takes for new science and companies to stand out in today’s funding environment.
Christina Jenkins, MD
Co-Founder and General Partner at Convergent Ventures
Paul Weiss
Partner at Venture Investors Health Fund
Speaker Coming Soon!
Working with Epic
Having Epic in Wisconsin’s backyard is a unique advantage, but there can also be a mystique around the company and how best to engage with its growing ecosystem. As Epic expands beyond health systems into areas like life sciences and clinical trials, this session will demystify tools and capabilities including Nebula, Cosmos, Curiosity, Agent Factory, and more, while sharing practical insights for getting Epic’s attention, navigating the right entry points, and working effectively with the company.
Sulabh Agarwal
CEO of KeyCare
Brian Lindstrom
Partner at HealthX Ventures
Drew McCombs
CTO & CISO at Cylerity
Erik Phelps
EVP, Chief Administrative & Legal Officer at Tempus AI
Investing in Innovation: Insights from Digital Health VC
Digital health continues to evolve as AI, changing care models, and new approaches to healthcare delivery reshape the sector. Leading VCs will discuss where they’re seeing meaningful opportunity, what has changed about how they evaluate digital health companies, and which technologies and business models are attracting attention—and capital—today.
Mark Bakken
Founder and Managing Partner at HealthX Ventures
Daniel Fleming
Managing Partner at RC Capital
E.J. Reedy
Director of Platform at PACE Healthcare Capital
Andrew Wegrzyn
Principal at SixThirty Ventures
China & the Future of Biotech Innovation
Half the molecules in Western pipelines this year were licensed from China and most allocators still treat it as a footnote.
The story isn’t cheap labor, it’s asset density per dollar — more shots on goal, faster, at a fraction of the cost structure. The discovery productivity gap is now large enough to reprice the entire early-stage value chain. Averin’s Eric Berry will present the case then engage in a discussion to address the topic. When you can in-license a de-risked asset for less than it costs to run your own Phase 1, the whole “”build vs. buy”” math in pharma inverts. The next decade of licensing deals doesn’t just add pipeline. It reprices where discovery value is created.
Eric Berry
Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Averin Capital
Goutham Narla
Chief Scientific Officer at Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
Jocelyn Ulrich
Vice President, Innovation Policy at PhRMA
Keynote
Healthcare spent decades digitizing the medical record. Jonathan Bush believes the more interesting question now is what happens when we finally make that information usable. The co-founder and former CEO of athenahealth and current Founder & CEO of Zus Health, Bush has spent more than two decades challenging how healthcare information is captured, connected and used. Today, Zus is building a shared Common Patient Record designed to assemble a patient’s history across providers and data networks and deliver that information directly into clinical workflows. Now AI is creating an entirely new set of possibilities. What happens when technology can not only find the patient’s complete history, but understand it, summarize it and help clinicians act on it? At +Venture Health 2026 on October 21st, Bush will explore where AI and healthcare are heading, what becomes possible as fragmented healthcare data becomes increasingly connected, and what the next generation of healthcare technology may look like.
Jonathan Bush
CEO and Co-Founder of Zus Health
Beyond the Wet Lab: How AI Is Rewriting Early-Stage Drug Discovery
The old playbook in biotech is changing. Today, artificial intelligence, generative molecular design, and in-silico validation allow lean teams to pinpoint novel targets on a fraction of traditional budgets. By moving early-stage failure from the wet lab bench to the algorithm, biotechs are fundamentally altering the cost of scientific validation—even as they navigate the critical limits of AI, such as data scarcity and the ultimate necessity of physical biological testing. This shift has the potential to rewrite life science venture dynamics.
Join leading founders and investors to explore how AI-driven drug discovery is compressing timelines and reshaping biotech venture structures, while separating the computational hype from biological reality.
Faraz Choudhury, PhD
CEO of Immuto Scientific
Amy Kobe
General Partner at InVivium Capital
Speaker Coming Soon!
Decoding Health System Innovation: From Idea to Successful Adoption
Health systems take very different approaches to evaluating and adopting new technologies. Leaders from academic, regional, and rural health systems will share how they prioritize innovation, evaluate early-stage companies, structure pilots, and navigate internal hurdles—from finding the right champion to IT, security, procurement, and clinical review.
Ben Spektor
Director of Venture Investing at OSF Ventures
Speakers Coming Soon!
From the Source — Emerging Innovations from Wisconsin Research Institutions
Wisconsin’s leading research institutions are advancing discoveries with the potential to shape the future of healthcare and life sciences. In a series of rapid-fire talks, leaders from UW–Madison, Medical College of Wisconsin, Marquette University, and Versiti will spotlight emerging research, technologies, and opportunities moving from the lab toward real-world impact.
Matthew Anderson, MD, PhD
EVP and Chief Medical Officer at Versiti
Kevin Boggs, MBA, PhD, RTTP
Director, Office of Technology Development at Medical College of Wisconsin
Elizabeth Hagerman
Chief Innovation Officer at UW Health
Carrie Thome
Managing Director at NVNG Investment Advisors
Kalpa Vithalani, PhD
Executive Director of Technology Transfer at Marquette University
Cutting Costs, Not Care: Practical Tech and Operations for Affordable Health
This session will explore practical, high-impact strategies driving down healthcare costs right now. Experts will share real-world examples of technology, policy shifts, and care delivery models that make medical services cheaper and more accessible without hurting the quality of patient care. Key Topics include smart technology – how artificial intelligence and virtual care cut hospital waste; fair pricing – clear cost lists and payment models based on patient health results and finally; better operations – ways to stop extra tests and cut office paperwork.
Andrew Bouldin
Managing Partner at FCA Venture Partners
Amanda DeMano
SVP, Venture Creation at Abundant Venture Partners
Eric Horler
President and CEO of AIQ Solutions
Startup Showcase
Celebrate bold ideas and big breakthroughs! The 11th Annual Startup Showcase spotlights Wisconsin’s most promising start-up biohealth companies as they share how they’re transforming the industry and driving our thriving ecosystem forward. From medical devices and diagnostics to digital health, therapeutics, and advanced manufacturing — discover the next wave of innovation and meet the visionaries shaping the future of biohealth in Wisconsin.
Jessica Martin Eckerly
CEO & Co-Founder of Forward BIOLABS
Jason Buchwald
President and Chief Commercial Officer at MedServe
Laura King
Founder & CEO at BiaCure Therapies
Katie MacFarlane
Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Arkayli Biopharma
Justin Nicols
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sift Healthcare
Melissa Tran
CEO, Renaissance Holdings & ProsperityEHR
Michael Widlansky, MD
Co-Founder of Sanacor; Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin
2026 Healthcare Innovation Pitch (HIP) Event
Arriving the night before? Our sponsors and partners at CU Ventures are hosting the 2026 Healthcare Innovation Pitch (HIP) Event on October 20 from 5–8 PM.
FAQs
Do I need to register to attend +Venture Health?
Yes, as all guests need to be pre-registered.
Are there hotels in the vicinity of the event?
Reservations, group rates and room types are subject to availability. Please confirm your arrival and departure dates before completing your reservation.
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
333 W. Kilbourn Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Reserve a room at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
The Marc Hotel
640 N. 6th St.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Reserve a room at The Marc Hotel
SpringHill Suites by Marriott Milwaukee Downtown
744 N. Vel R. Phillips Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Reserve a room at SpringHill Suites Milwaukee Downtown
Will parking be available?
Indoor parking is available in the Baird Center garage. Garage entrances are located at:
Wells Street entrance:
500 W. Wells St.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Kilbourn Avenue entrance:
501 W. Kilbourn Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Additional garages and surface lots are available throughout downtown Milwaukee. Advance parking reservations may also be available through the services linked on the Baird Center parking page.
What is the Wisconsin Biohealth Summit hosted by BioForward?
NVNG invites you to join our partners at BioForward for the Wisconsin Biohealth Summit (see here) on October 21-22 at the Baird Center, Milwaukee, WI. Building on the conversations from +Venture Health and starting immediately after at the same venue, the Summit will bring together industry leaders, innovators, investors, and partners with sessions exploring emerging technologies, commercialization, artificial intelligence, and the companies and partnerships driving Wisconsin’s growing biohealth ecosystem. Register here.
Getting to the Baird Center
October 21 and 22 events will take place in the South Building of the Baird Center.
South Building entrance:
400 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53203
For the most accurate navigation, use the South Building address as your destination.
About the Organizer
