“Healthcare will change more in the next 5 years, than it has in the past 50,” says Jeffrey Bauer, a medical futurist I was privileged to hear speak at this week’s annual Benefitspro Conference. While he shared some individual ideas about what is coming, I have my own take. The Megatrends that we can expect are:
LLM-based AI engines will touch every single aspect of the healthcare process from a patient selecting a physician, to a provider selecting a procedure or analyzing colon cancer, to an insurance carrier underwriting risk, to a TPA processing claims payments and uncovering fraud, waste and abuse, AI will be in the center of it all. Already we are seeing reports where AI is diagnosing patients more accurately than most physicians, that will only improve over time, of course.
3D Printing will begin rebuilding our bodies from the inside out … with our own tissue. Stem cells taken from a single body will be available to the increasing curve of development in the 3D printed technology space. Need a knee replacement? Stop in to the hospital, give a stem cell sample, come back three weeks later for the surgeon to install the knee they produced from your own cells. Some of these companies are looking into the possibility of printing organs, connective tissues, and even cellular nanomachines for implantation.
Genetics-based medicine will individualize how a specific person experiences a specific instance of a disease and responds to a specfic pharma regimen. Bespoke treatment will be with us very soon, and health outcomes will improve as a result. When combined with AI as a diagnostic and recommendation tool, the final Megatrend emerges:
Longevity will increase. People will live longer—much longer. By the end of my life, I think we will see human life projections into the 130s to 150s with outliers even higher than that.
Sounds like science-fiction? So would Zoom meetings, Apple Watches taking my pulse, and hundreds of other technologies that we take for granted today, seem to someone in 1980. The future isn’t coming, it’s here.
“Strategy is the purposeful response to anticipated change.”
Jeffrey Bauer
Simplicity is Velocity. The brain trust at Category Pirates (you DO know Category Pirates don’t you?) has a new track touting the merits of reducing complexity in business as a way to grow revenue and define a category. They use as a case study, Google Glass, where the product was hotly anticipated, the TAM was massive, and the execution was crap. Their analysis: too many features, too much know-how required, meant that the adoption curve never even took off. Google Glass isn’t a thing today because of it.
I see this in my life and business every day. Some with smaller minds criticize my insistence of finding the three main points of any presentation, book, magazine article, keynote speech, or zoom meeting that encompasses 80% of the value of the interaction. By finding the three things, I am able to implement more projects—and more efficiently—than someone trying to do far more. The companies I most invest in are trying to do something really simply, really fast.
When I design products, or consult with others who do in the insurance, instech, and fin tech space, I like to take the path of throwing all the proposed features from the roadmap on the whiteboard and delete every single one that isn’t mission critical. Very often we are left with 3-5 items that must be done, and cancel the noise and interference from the others. That’s an art, and one that if you can’t perform for yourself, should find in others.
“Why are you waiting on others to co-sign your dreams. They’re your dreams!”
—Molly Bloom
I once attended a conference where the speakers were so bad that I founded a Speaker’s Academy to teach people how to take a stage, share a message, and make an impact. In working through that process, we had people telling their most vulnerable stories in ways that affected audiences and engendered real behavior change while healing their own traumas and stepping into a larger version of themselves.
I’m often stunned by how little preparation most speaker’s put into their time on stage. This week I’ve seen amazing presentations where the speaker commanded attention and showcase the fact that they had done the work—and I’ve seen the opposite, too. Paid stages where a sponsor buys an hour for an informercial are a mainstay of corporate conferences, without them we wouldn’t have conferences, but they really are terrible.
Invariably the highest ranking person in the company is given the spotlight and rarely is he the person most capable fo delivering the message to the audience most affected by it’s impact. Droning on and on, telling “speakers jokes,” while theVP of Sales laughs too loud in the back of the room is so frequent as to be cliche. It’s disrespectful to the audience, the conference organizer and the team that could have done a better job. And it should stop.
“When faced with drama, ask yourself: ‘So what?’ People do hurtful, insensitive, self-serving things every day. Why choose to let it affect you? And it is a choice you’re making.”
-Tonya Towles
3 years ago my firm deployed a progressive new solution in the employee benefits space. We designed a simple product, deployed it aggressively in a non-traditional distribution channel, and have prospered mightily in the business because of it. It was—and is—work that I am proud of my team for doing.
In the midst of the initial rollout, many incumbents in the space lost business to us. None of them responded with grace and professionalism. The coin of the realm was innuendo in the best of times, and outright lies in the worst of times. A specific person that I knew took specific umbrage about the innovation and instead of trying to understand it, chose to spread lies and misinformation, going so far as to threaten state action against us.
He was wrong—factually and morally—and I called him up and told him so. He was so nervous at that meeting that I’m sure he took 3 weeks off to recuperate from the message that hit him specifically hard as I told him “There is a way to do things and a way not to do things.” I was hot, but not mad enough to lose my dignity.
Last night he came up to me at a cocktail party and said “I am so sorry. I did wrong and should’ve called you to understand before spouting off and trying to hurt you. I did it from a place of fear and I hope you’ll forgive me.” I forgave him and had long ago. I don’t carry burdens any longer than I have to, and I wish he had the opportunity to put down that load long ago.