We Can’t “Innovate” Against Current Cultural Realities

It’s impossibe to innovate against current cultural realities.

Certain kinds of innovation have their time. And we can’t force innovation or push against the culture.

If we try it, we will almost always fail.

There are so many examples of investors, creators and innovators who thought that with their big ideas, plenty of cash and an army of researchers, experts and brilliant minds, they can push the hand of the time and make people love and welcome their innovations when the time has not come.

Many of them started with a lot of marketing, hype and promises.

People were excited about the product or service.

But, after some years, the idea or product just quietly died because its time had not come, and there was no culture to feed its existence.

The Private Computer (PC) era survived because its time had come, so investors and innovators at that time could ride on the high waves of cultural hunger.

Innovators like Bill Gates of Microsoft could secure their place in history because they came at a time when the culture highly favoured their ideas.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon also came at a period where that innovative idea easily matched the cultural hunger and development of the season.

Now, we have innovators like Elon Musk trying to introduce a new era of ideas, products, and services, from his electric cars to space travel/services, robots, and brain-computer interfaces.

Talking about space tourism, it seems to me that time has come. A budding space tourism sector is already thriving, though only for the ultra-wealthy who have enough money to spend.

Well, it’s natural.

If the world is ready for all these new things, the ideas, products and services will survive.

But if the world isn’t prepared, it will take a long time before society evolves to that point where the culture can accommodate those ideas.

Is The World Ready For Artificial Intelligence?

Yes, the world is ready for AI, and that’s why we are seeing an AI boom! If the world weren’t prepared, we wouldn’t experience this amazing adoption of AI technologies today.

The culture had matured, and the time was ripe.

We have already settled into the digital culture with advanced computers, GPUs, etc. These advancements have made it easy for AI to settle among us.

The same pattern applies to other forms of advanced technology, such as virtual reality, blockchain, and even quantum computing.

The cultural landscape needs to be ready enough before advanced technological ideas can settle.

The world needs to be ready for your ideas before those ideas can survive.

Is Healthcare Ready For Artificial Intelligence?

AI in healthcare is still in its early experimental stages and isn’t yet an idea we can fully embrace.

There is still a lot of research and studies to be done before we can even start to fully accept AI into the healthcare ecosystem.

There are a couple of pocket areas where AI is doing marvellous things in healthcare and showing much promise. However, we may still be decades away from seeing AI fully integrated into healthcare practice and delivery.

Talk about safety, regulation, financing, and many other concerns, not to mention how AI will be utilised in developing regions that do not have the advanced infrastructure developed countries have already built for years.

Also, considering that healthcare is one of the most conservative and closed-ended industries that absorb innovation slowly, we would need to have excellent and fail-proof AI products and services that will be accepted. We can’t rush innovation in healthcare. It takes a lot of time.

In addition, our mindset and approach to healthcare innovation need to align with the spirit and nature of healthcare.

Many of these “Silicon Valley” tech gurus approach healthcare as if they are building iPhones or coding software.

You hear them say, “It’s time to replace the doctor with AI and technology.” Or “Let’s eliminate the doctor’s room and replace them with sleek, shiny, expensive Carepods.”

Well, with this kind of mindset, we may never fully experience the full potential of AI in healthcare simply because you can never replace the people in healthcare with artificial intelligence.

It’s not possible.

The warmth in healthcare can only come from human beings and not machines or codes or sleek, shiny, expensive CarePods.

Case Study: Forward Health’s “AI Doctor Health Kiosk/Pod”

Forward Health’s story is the most recent example that accurately depicts this reality.

Forward, a San Francisco-based health tech startup was once worth millions of dollars. At one time, the company was valued at over 1 billion dollars!

Forward was founded in 2017 by Adrian Aoun, a former Google employee. Aoun headed special projects for the CEO of Google. While he was with Google, he founded Sidewalk Labs. He spent some time with Google building their AI division.

Forward’s Carepods were designed to disrupt traditional healthcare that relied “too much” on conventional healthcare providers.

Powered by artificial intelligence and telehealth, the pods used biometric sensors to harvest patient physiological data.

These kiosks/pods were generally placed in malls and around areas where people could easily enter like you were entering a phone booth to make calls; they would have their blood pressure checked or have samples taken, mimicking a small clinic, but this time powered by AI and can be found anywhere.

The idea only lasted a couple of years, and it died.

Its website currently shows a shutdown notice, notifying the general public of the company’s current status.

The closure occurs just a year after the San Francisco-based company secured $100 million in funding, raising its total funds to nearly $400 million.

According to reports, about 200 employees are set to lose their jobs.

The founder compared their approach to what Elon Musk has been doing at Tesla. As per reports, he said in an interview that patients were being “abused” by a healthcare system stuck in its low-tech ways.

So, he and his company wanted to build healthcare the same way you would make a Tesla or an iPhone–Phew!

It sounds so interesting, exciting, and futuristic; however, they didn’t fully and deeply understand that they are dealing with healthcare, not cars, phones, or TVs.

According to reports, forward launched its first CarePod in Roseville in the summer of 2023, but despite plans to launch 3,200 CarePods, they could only launch five before shutdown.

Various sources cited that the company was struggling to set up more CarePod kiosks, which cost more than $1 million each, and reports also noted that the functioning kiosks occasionally trapped patients inside, automated blood draws routinely failed and a host of other technical malfunctions (Three former employees reported that the scanners often recorded wrong information. This caused clinicians to have to retake data like a patient’s blood pressure or heart rate.)

All the pages on Forward’s website have the same interesting message: “Much like the healthcare system, this link is broken.”

See screenshot below.

More Thoughts:

• Healthcare innovators, especially those creating and designing solutions for patient and provider use, have to be very thorough with their research. They must put themselves in the shoes of the patient or the healthcare provider to deeply understand their needs beyond the surface.

• Healthcare in a box? Why would anyone want to see an AI doctor in a box/pod/kiosk when they can easily check the internet for what they want or book a virtual consultation from the comfort of their homes? And there are so many sensors today that can convey the most basic physiological data and parameters to a healthcare professional for interpretation. Same data you want to collect using very expensive AI Pods.

• Healthcare services are expensive. Who pays for the services I will use in the Health Box or Kiosk? Will it be integrated into my healthcare insurance? (mind you, Forward didn’t have insurance) If it’s not, then I don’t think I want to incur extra costs.

• Healthcare is very personal. The “patient-professional” relationship can almost be likened to the natural relationship between a mother or father and their children. It’s very personal. Forward focused too much on the technology rather than the clinical care. When designing or creating healthcare solutions using advanced technologies like AI, we need to be careful not to dilute empathy with technology. Technology will never be able to express human-level empathy.

The company is closing down operations, closing all its health box locations and cancelling schedules.

This is the perfect example of an idea trying to defy cultural paradigm shifts.

It doesn’t work, especially in healthcare, where innovation is absorbed slowly and carefully.

In the future, there might be a time when we may accept AI CarePods or kiosks.

It’s a brilliant idea and might have its place in the future.

But for now, it may not have any place.

Could These AI Pods Be Useful In Developing Countries?

Would these pods be a viable solution in developing or low-to-middle-income countries where everyone can not afford to buy expensive devices and gadgets, especially in deep rural areas where access to healthcare is poor?

Well, it looks like it may be something to consider. However, we need to consider many factors, like whether these countries have the required social infrastructure to accommodate technologies like these in terms of economic stature, power, government commitment and support, etc.

Carepods powered by artificial intelligence capable of providing the most basic healthcare services are very expensive to maintain.

Do you want to set up a multimillion-dollar Carepod somewhere in Kano? Where they don’t even have clean water and enough food to eat.

I have personally heard of health kiosks in India and even Nigeria, but they aren’t ubiquitous yet (and are not as sophisticated enough to provide any meaningful and community-impacting healthcare service).

Bringing us back to our theory. Maybe the time hasn’t really come.

Final Thoughts

Innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders need to be bold and courageous and think into the future.

However, they also need to understand times and seasons.

Forward wanted to dilute the human presence in healthcare. An almost impossible thing to do. They ended up among the trash pile of ideas that have tried to eliminate the human factor from healthcare.

Instead of approaching digital technology with the intent to replace healthcare providers, we should be thinking of how it can augment and enhance healthcare delivery.

Selected References

• Council, S. (2024, November 15). SF “AI doctor’s office” company, once worth $1B, abruptly shuts down. SFGATE. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/forward-shuts-down-doctors-office-19917488.php.

• Forward took humans out of healthcare. It didn’t fly. (n.d.). https://www.rezilienthealth.com/insights/forward-health.

• Torrence, R. (2024, November 13). Inside Forward’s failed attempt to revolutionise the doctor’s office with AI. Business Insider Africa. https://africa.businessinsider.com/news/inside-forwards-failed-attempt-to-revolutionize-the-doctors-office-with-ai/h7fwnn5.