LATW 2026 Recap: Our biggest summit yet!

October 14 we hosted our 2nd Annual Health & Wellness Innovation Summit as a part of LA Tech Week 2026. Founders, clinicians, researchers, investors, and brands in one room: sharing ideas, making deals, and having the kind of light-bulb moments we set out to create.

"There's a sense of wonder in my heart. You could see the electricity… that light-bulb moment we were creating on purpose.” - Jennifer (Azar) Burnham-Grubbs, founder and CEO, ionava

Wellness and wealth belong in the same conversation

We heard it all day: health tech is getting better and better. But people still need a way to pay for it.

Speaker Amanda Henry, founder of Well, Honestly, said it perfectly:

“I think it’s a disservice for us to talk about wellness without talking about money.”

That’s the gap ionava fills. It’s a new way to pay for your health so your money can actually go toward the innovation that helps you stay well.

And we had news of our own: ionava is officially live (woooohooo!) Starting on October 14, members can use their ionava Wallet for everyday health and wellness spending.

Wallets and Vaults are live.

See what a Vault costs you, and whether you qualify.

The day, by the numbers

• Close to 1,000 RSVPs
• 350 people in person—in baseline of attendance rates seen across Tech Week events
• The largest event of LA Tech Week 2026, and the second-largest Tech Week by a16z event in the country this year
• 10 speaker sessions and 25+ partners and brands under one roof at The Kinn in Venice—the event brought in their most well-attended day so far

If you couldn’t make it, every session is on YouTube. Watch the full lineup →

What we learned

Your body is already telling you something

Some of the most useful health signals are ones most of us were never taught to read.

Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, who has spent more than 20 years at Stanford studying how light affects the whole body, shared a number that stopped the room: the average American spends fewer than 13 minutes a day outside. A typical indoor room gives you around 100 – 150 lux of light. A nice day outside gives you 20,000 to 50,000. You don’t feel the gap right away. It creeps in over time as low mood, brain fog, and sleep that won’t settle.

Then Lucas Wen Tang, an engineer formerly at Apple and Meta, unveiled Bluebird onstage: light-therapy glasses he built with Dr. Zeitzer, so you get that light indoors without sitting in front of a lamp.

Nick Garrison of Pearl, the dental AI company, called your teeth “the front door to your body,” with links to diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis. He shared a study where 140 dentists reviewed the same patient’s X-rays and came back with treatment plans ranging from $300 to $30,000.

And Carine Carmy, who has grown Origin from zero to 21 clinics in five years, lived with pain for nearly a decade before she found pelvic floor therapy. Her advice: get to know a part of your body most of us were never taught about.

“Just understanding your baseline, I think, is so critical.” —Carine Carmy, Origin

Understand more, optimize less

Peter Ward, Oura’s former head of commercial operations and a self-described recovering biohacker, named something a lot of the room recognized: optimization fatigue. Turning your life into a score to beat every morning isn’t the point.

“Wearables are awesome for long-term trends, not for what you did.” —Peter Ward

Ben Parens of Nestwell, a retired biohacker himself, made the case for the basics: clean air and clean water. Otherwise you buy the organic groceries and wash them in dirty water. Nestwell maps the environmental risks around your home, sends you the right test kits, and points you to fixes, because “dumping data on people and saying good luck” doesn’t help anyone.

Arpan Parikh, MD, a double board-certified physician, built Kin Health after he and his wife navigated his mother-in-law’s cancer care from across the country. Great care doesn’t matter if you can’t understand or remember what your doctor said. So Kin comes with you everywhere, and writes its visit summaries at a fifth-grade reading level, in English or Spanish.

“The patient is the most important stakeholder in healthcare, but patients have been treated like second-class citizens.” —Arpan Parikh, MD, Kin Health

Amanda Henry, part of Therabody’s founding team and now founder of Well, Honestly, told the room to get the annual physical, track their data over time, and trust what they feel: “I live in this body, and I know my body better than you.”

And Anna Gudmundson of Sensate reminded everyone that the goal isn’t a life without stress. It’s a healthy way to come back down.

“Life has stress. It comes and goes… The pursuit is to have a healthy way to regulate the nervous system.” —Anna Gudmundson, Sensate

Thank you

To our co-hosting partners, VSP Global Innovation Center and The Kinn—with special thanks to Zach from VSP, and to Chaya, Michael, and Tory at The Kinn.

To the brands who made the space come alive: Kin Health, Nestwell, Sensate, Minarosa, HempLA, Açaí Superbowls, NUR Protein, HigherBar, Ritū, hiyo, Rosé Vibes, Hoot, Orcha, High Ground Elixir, DairyPill, Bodi, Hoopsy, Withings, Oura, ANI, Marchon, Zenitary, Well, Honestly, and Dr. Christy Evans—a board-certified OB-GYN.

And our community partners (Women in AI, MATTER, and YorkSeed) who helped us reach 100k+ people with Livestream invitations.

What’s next

That gap between what insurance pays for and how you actually invest in your health is why we built ionava. It’s a financial platform designed around health and wellness—a Wallet for the health you already invest in, and a Vault reserved for the 'Big What-Ifs'.

Some ways to keep going from here:

• Get Started with our 5 min Health Score.
• Missed the summit? Every speaker session is on YouTube. Watch the full lineup