Disruption Amplified

Reset. Rewire. Reimagine Everything.

Abdullah Verachia

• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781776260829
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Automazione in ingegneria

The world has entered a period of accelerated change. This has everything to do with the disruptive events of 2020, the cognitive rewiring which each of us is going through, and the profound macro shifts reshaping the world as we know it.

We are living through an unprecedented period of rapid and pervasive transition. Every aspect of our reality is shifting, from how we work and play, to how we educate our children and care for the health and wellbeing of our families, ourselves and our neighbours.

How does this affect the future of strong, dominant sectors such as tourism and travel, consumer, retail, property, education, health, automotive and financial services, among others?

Can we rewire these and other sectors for a new reality?

Do we even have the wherewithal to reimagine the future?

How do we start the process of pressing the reset button?

Can we reimagine the world we live in and take proactive steps to play a part in it?

Do we have the tools to shift our business strategies?

Are we primed to take advantage of the opportunities on offer?

Can we sidestep our fear of the unknown and open our minds to exciting new possibilities?

Transport yourself into the future with global future strategist, speaker and disruptor Abdullah Verachia as he leads you through the fundamental shifts taking place at every level and how these will reshape the world as we know it. Envisage a new reality, new cross-border opportunities and new avenues for personal and business growth.

Unlock key insights revealed in Disruption Amplified that will inspire your own rethinking during this remarkable and transformative time, and step boldly into a new tomorrow.

IMPACT ON SOCIETY

HEALTHCARE:
THE RISE OF WELLNESS

Soft scenario: Healthcare capacity is improved somewhat, but changes are insufficient to cope with another pandemic of this nature.

Middle ground: Countries around the world roll out universal healthcare supported by embedded wellness tools.

Extreme impact: We move heavily as a world into digital healthcare solutions which remove the humanity from wellness and which monitor our every move and every habit.

Likely outcome: The next steps will be highly country dependent. Some will have the resources and political will to shift to universal healthcare, coupled with at-home and wellness models to support healthcare resources. Others will fail to learn from the pandemic, putting systems under constant stress.

The health explosion is front and centre at the moment. Around the world our collective attention is being absorbed by this critical sector and we are being asked – no, forced – to imagine a world in which we move from a state of reactive healthcare and a mindset embedded in the notion that healthcare is only important when something goes wrong, to a focus on prevention. We are starting to see the value of considering wellness as a critical component in healthcare. As a result of that realisation, many of us are starting to consider the interdependence of the entire healthcare and human wellbeing environment.

What we are witnessing is both a fundamental shift in thinking about healthcare and a reimagining of how a new, more efficient and effective system might look.

I ask you to imagine for a moment what healthcare might look like in a society where prevention and early monitoring are in place. Instead of only visiting the doctor or the dentist when something goes wrong, envisage a sector that taps into health technologies such as prescreening and body scanning, one where analysing genetic predispositions and putting preventative measures in place is a standard way of operating. Everything from healthy eating, to issues of hygiene and the interdependence of the healthcare system would become the norm, and the associated uptake of digital tools to support a more efficient system would enable practitioners to roll out wellness monitoring in underserved and rural areas, by making use of mobile and tele-connectivity technologies.

This sort of approach would also be premised on the fact that our individual health and wellness has a deeper impact on broader society. As a result of this overwhelming link to our collective health and wellbeing, it is critical that we take the lessons from the COVID-19 crisis to build more inclusive healthcare systems; where the already poor, vulnerable and underserved are not disadvantaged even further as a result of poor healthcare access. What has become starkly apparent is that public healthcare is under considerable pressure; it is under-resourced, under-appreciated and under attack. And that needs to change. As individuals it is also time we acknowledge that we may, personally, enjoy a healthy home environment, but the impact of your community’s health, the economics of the region in which you live and the lifestyle you lead, all need to be plugged into the dataset of your health experience to guide you on your journey through life.

This taps into another future predication which links to the health-economics discussion: the rise of universal healthcare. The bigger focus on the longevity of citizens and workers will require a more sustained and equitable system, a debate that will inevitably boil down to access and funding. Data opens up a number of avenues for linking data scientists to personal healthcare information which, in turn, will put those big tech abilities and predictive abilities to work for the benefit of all individuals. The depth of this information will, in time, allow us to pinpoint outbreaks in certain hubs, to understand health frailties of specific groups or neighbourhoods, such as hypertension or heart disease or diabetes, and to act early to put pre-emptive measures in place. Governments, riding the wave of increased nationalism, will argue that this sort of oversight and data collection is designed to benefit society as a whole. Some may rail against this view, but in this sort of scenario, the sophistication of data will have a powerful role to play in enabling healthcare modelling.

Modelling will evolve beyond the purview of healthcare practitioners alone and will become broader, encompassing those who work in the spheres of predictive behaviour, as well as policy makers, alternative medicine and academics.

During the 2019 Emerging to Converging Technologies: The Future World conference held at GIBS, in association with US university Georgia Tech26, South African specialist urologist Dr Evangelos Apostoleris delivered a presentation about the potential to revolutionise healthcare across Africa by tapping into digital tools. This, he argued, would also create a more cohesive and collaborative system. Apostoleris discussed Australia’s roll out of a digital ‘My Health Record’, a compilation of data which every citizen is entitled to and which they can delete if they do not want this facility. ‘This is health information accessible whenever and wherever, which is high quality and which is secure,’ he explained.

Using Finland as an example, he cited the impressive Kanta Services digital health and social care innovation. Apostoleris explained that, through Kanta Services, patients agree to share healthcare data and information which can then easily and quickly flow between healthcare professionals. Ultimately this ensures better treatment for the patient, but it also means that trends and tendencies and test results are all available on a single platform. But, of course, this relies heavily on trust: Both in the state to safeguard information and with respect to the ethics of the medical professionals involved.

Whether we like it or not, big tech and data in healthcare are here to stay. Some telling examples emerging during the COVID-19 outbreak, including one from the Western Cape in South Africa, where closed surveillance of hotspot areas was rolled out in areas such as Khayelitsha and the Cape Town CBD to track individuals in these areas. So specific is this approach that individual ‘cells’ within the hotspot regions could be targeted in order to monitor developments. That’s both impressive and scary at the same time, but it’s an approach that is taking place across the world as tech companies and governments join forces to harness smartphone location data to track COVID-19 spread. It has also raised questions around privacy and whether the data collected will be sold on to other companies to mine for business opportunities.

But what if we took this out of the COVID-19 pandemic setting and applied this thinking, this monitoring and modelling approach, to reinforce better health behaviours more effectively? South Africa already has a marvellous example of what could be achieved by more widespread use of the Discovery Vitality approach – one that rewards wellness behaviours among medical aid clients. We saw clearly during the South African lockdown how this actuarial model towards health and wellness was being utilised by Discovery to keep people at home, active, eating well and monitoring their stress.

On the day South Africa went into lockdown, Discovery Vitality announced a range of additional benefits: vouchers for Netflix, BoxOffice and gaming; cash back for healthy food and wellness purchases from selected retailers; free access to customised online learning for Grades 4 to 12; and the ability to donate rewards towards curbing the spread of COVID-19. The group made up to four specialised fitness training sessions available daily, offering fitness tutorials with leading local athletes such as Caster Semenya and Chad le Clos. This type of approach to empowering individuals to stay healthy by offering them a carrot approach could well prove the model for future programmes, and it certainly has merit27.

Beyond finding innovative ways to encourage people to take greater responsibility for their health and wellbeing, companies in this space will now be faced with a pressing need to redefine how healthcare is rolled out to all individuals, irrespective of them holding private medical aid or insurance policies. The pandemic has clearly illustrated the need to focus on local supply chains for critical medicines and protective equipment and vital ICU machinery.

The announcement that the African Union (AU) had established a continental medical supplies platform as part of its response to COVID-19 is the sort of supply-chain innovation we are likely to see more of throughout the pandemic and into the future. The initiative, the result of a partnership between pan-African finance institution Afreximbank and the AU, created a single source of vital medical supplies for Africa’s 55 member states. The non-profit body would be run through the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and would prioritise Africa-made supplies and support of African manufacturers28. This also talks to the regionalisation of influential ties and country affiliations, which makes this an interesting precedent to watch.

Certainly, the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of ensuring that each country has sufficient beds and hospital infrastructure to care for the size of its population. And this, as McKinsey has explored, calls for ‘fundamental shifts across the care continuum. These shifts include the design and construction of facilities, the training of healthcare workers, sourcing and inventory management of critical care equipment and personal protective equipment materials, and the optimal settings for care delivery and how it is reimbursed. Some of these shifts were underway before the pandemic was declared and likely will now be accelerated.’

In an assessment which focused strongly on the healthcare delivery chain in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, McKinsey’s Axel Baur, Panco Georgiev (MD), Imraan Rashid Munshi (MD), and Marek Stepniak, outlined how new paradigms for infrastructure and the use of physical resources should shift, allowing for the...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Imprint page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Macro shifts
• Impact on society
• Building new companies for a new context
• Building a personal adaptive mindset
• Practical tips for navigating change
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Endnotes