What inspires your big ideas?
Can digital health technologies make us more human?
In the good ol’ days (about 12 months ago in innovation-speak) BTC was 20K+ and early crypto-coiners were rejoicing while HODLing around the fireplace. Year end reflections are important to help evaluate what you learned and predictions help act as an on-ramp to a new year, although we rarely wind back to see how all of those predictions panned out. Often, the many predictions are statements from emerging trends from a previous year, ie. low-risk/low-res predictions.
This is not your typical year-end summary post. This post poses a simple question to ask yourself for the new year- where will your ideas come from?
While all of our social feeds are packed with inspirational reflections and moonshots, it’s a super interesting moment in the year to look across sectors and industries to assess how we are “progressing”and the intersectionality of the various industries.
Many industries have radically flipped on their heads in very short periods of time and this rapid transformation typically occurs due to converging tech and market timing which materialize into seemingly overnight new consumer experiences and business models, but the building blocks were actually being built all along the way.
Advancements in healthcare are marginally visible to people and patients. Transformational breakthroughs and scientific discoveries are happening in careful and controlled settings, mostly in academia, research labs and incubators. The gap however continues to widen because we like to organize healthcare into a neat vertical, the reality is that health is the most horizontal aspect of our lives, hiding out in every nanosecond of our day. We don’t always make this connection because we don’t tend to think about health until we are reminded by the first symptom. Healthcare today is still very much reactive sickcare.
Human health challenges are also constantly churning, we are working on solutions to problems which have stemmed from the creations which were supposed to make life better. Antibiotic resistance, sedentary lifestyles, fast-food, screen-time matched with chronic and age related conditions, mental health disorders, depression, obesity, diabetes… While longevity is increasing and humans are living longer than ever, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are aging well and generally healthier.
In our fast paced gig-economy lives, humans no longer hunt for food or move for survival. It’s totally acceptable to netflix and chill for 5 hours and order tacos from Alexa. We schedule time in our calendars to make sure we don’t forget to exercise, which stresses us out because we are already multi-tasking and wondering if we should do it before or after Fortnite. Multi-tasking sucks btw.
We know that health is local, it’s so local that we can narrow down life expectancy based on zipcode. Are the building blocks for transformational health innovation happening on a local level? See more on social determinants of health. I love the vision of Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of BU SPH who promotes the idea that we should all have the goal of dying healthy. Think about that one for a minute.
While many futurists find their inspiration for innovation and radical transformations from science fiction and think-tanks, I thrive on two very specific perspectives i) where I live and ii) where I am from. Born and raised my whole life in the Boston Area and working in Kendall Square for well over a decade, I have had the fortune to belong to an immersive innovation community in Cambridge, Massachusetts being in the zipcode with the highest IQ on the planet. Much like the many other innovation ecosystems around the world, the consequence is a high tech society which often doesn’t reflect reality. Our regional heritage of higher education serving as talent and innovation factories, have pioneered many breakthroughs, continue to build the future of medicine, science, and technology, while being surrounded by access to great healthcare and quality of life. (ok the winters are really really cold)
In addition to travels throughout the world and volunteer work, my core balance is returning to the village of my ancestors in Puglia (Southern Italy) to spend time with relatives and connecting with my roots. In this small village of population 1000, it’s like stepping back in time. With major cities only 30 mins away, the village lives as if time never passed. Food quality, local industry, social life, the number of centenarians, kids playing in the streets, walking everywhere, laundry drying from balconies.. all normal . While the town has an ancient lifestyle, it’s totally “with it” even having their own social media group which has become the new virtual town square of politics and local gossip.
What I love the most of this village and the many villages of Italy are the smiles. People are generally happy. They are not glued to their phones. The hospitals do not have surgical robots, they do not have driverless vehicles, instacart or 24 hr stores.
In this village, the customer is always wrong and there are certainly no refunds. The few businesses run the economy and people adapt to what is available. The social structures of when you eat, what you eat, work and fun are a massive contrast to places like Silicon Valley and Cambridge, MA. The young generations are educated and live continuously intermingled within multi-generational settings.
I find my inspiration for innovation in Digital Health, caught in between the balance of a fast paced connected society where we are trying to shop organic, quantify sleep, digital phenotyping, reduce screen time and improve human performance, — and the happy simple healthy lifestyle of my small town family village with spotty wi-fi where living to 100 without major surgeries or multiple medications, is completely normal.
In my role at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, I evaluate thousands of technologies every year and find it critical to ask “how human is this technology? Does this drive a healthy behavior? Can this tech fit naturally into someones life? What would the women in the cover photo of this article, say to it?” Also important to ask, does this health technology get us closer to the lifestyle that these women live ? Would the technology create the village life experience where the doctor knows your name and comes to visit you (after his afternoon lunch and nap of course, he’s def not burnt out but if you’re sick you need to wait until he is ready and rested — trade-offs).
So how do we create the best of both worlds? My favorite healthcare innovations are often invisible, think of the use of voice technology to diagnose and detect disease. Imagine wireless signals detecting elderly falls or changes in gait, imagine facial recognition software or typing patterns detecting neurodegenerative diseases early. These are all technologies that are built today. In these scenarios, there is no longer a notion of “behavior modification” or gamification or training. Adoption is already built in, data generation and modeling are solid and getting better as they learn from more data.
Automation and machine-learning-ization of everything is beginning to transform the world. From fully automated restaurants to banking, to navigation systems, to space exploration, humans have teamed up with machines for over a century. I think of how AI could be particularly useful in democratizing health care, improving access to care, enabling disease prevention and early detection and also consider the utility of it in the village setting.
While many still find it trendy to debate if digital health is a thing or not, this is typically a conversation point for those who work on the edges of digital health. People who work inside digital healthcare have a zillion definitions with super specific sub-market segmentation. All of the vocabulary, while confusing at times (health IT, healthtech, digital health, health 2.0 etc.) gives rise to venture capitalists and entreps helping catalyze areas that need more work. This is not just “health” it is the whole technology enablement of healthcare, give it a name, give it many names, but it’s not just “health” (off soap box).
So while healthcare innovators spent 2018 pounding out news articles, slides, experiments, technologies, keynotes and cash to improve human health, we stop and ask — are things heading in the right direction? The answer is obviously a big fat YES. Genomics and digital diagnostics, voice technologies (a particular area of excitement for me) and conversational interfaces, digital therapeutics and VR/AR are all offering some exceptional options and I am particularly excited to help catalyze many of these technologies out of pilot mode and into full implementations. Let’s make 2019 count!
In the cover selfie from this summer, these local town matriarchs had lots to teach me about innovation and health care and barely had any time for me due to their busy social schedules, go figure.
So, again I ask you, what’s your source of innovation and inspiration?
Here’s to health, innovation and community.
-Cris
About: Views expressed in this article are those of the author. Cris De Luca is currently the Global Head of Digital Innovation for Johnson & Johnson Innovation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is responsible for identifying and fostering transformational high-tech external innovation solutions across J&J’s Innovation Centers, JLABS incubators, and JJDC corp ventures supporting the Pharma, Consumer and Medical Device businesses. De Luca is most notably known for his role in the innovation economy since Co-Founding Ultra Light Startups, the oldest and largest startup-investor pitch accelerator in Boston and New York City. Cris is a Venture Fellow at FundRx and serves on the advisory boards of SXSW Health, AARP Health Innovation and VOICE Summit by Amazon Alexa.
