Every Business Will Become a Healthcare Company
Digital and financial innovation has transformed how companies look at themselves and what services they offer, thanks to Covid-19, the same is already happening in healthcare
Last week, I walked into a business and saw for the thousandth time, a poster detailing public health measures of mask-wearing, hand washing and social distancing. Once restricted to just healthcare establishments, these signs have become ubiquitous since the pandemic. As I walked in on this occasion, I had the striking thought that’s now progressed to a belief that every company will be a healthcare company in the future! This may sound ludicrous now but so did the statement “every company is a media company” when it was first mooted by Tom Forenski and popularized by the energizing Gary Vaynerchuk over a decade ago, yet today, virtually every (successful) company is indeed a media company.
To maintain a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced digital world, companies have had to evolve past their traditional areas of focus. Whereas in the past, they needed a narrow skillset to thrive, they now need multiple expertise beyond their historical primary focus areas in order to excel. This trend started with the advent of e-commerce where companies had to create digital storefronts and learn digital advertising or die. Following e-commerce was the influence of social and digital media that demanded every company create media in order to engage and relate with customers and stakeholders. Today every company is essentially a media company. The companies that mastered digital ads and the world of new media are now more successful than their peers who didn’t.
Today it appears that embedded finance/ financial innovation is the new paradigm that companies must adapt to outpace their peers. Buy now pay later (BNPL) models, credit, insurance etc, now provide a veritable means for differentiation and growth. Moreover, Fintech companies have simplified the tools to enable this, shortening processes that historically took months to complete into hours or days via an API integration in many cases. Companies that can seamlessly provide fintech-related services to their customers look set to gain outsize returns. Following fintech, what industry or expertise will provide the next big opportunity for companies to find growth? The answer is healthcare, especially with the advent of covid-19 and the massive effect it had on our lives. Healthtech companies and entrepreneurs can facilitate this with the right products and approach.
Every Company a Healthcare Company
With the advent of the pandemic, every company is essentially now engaged in the business of public health. Businesses now enforce social distancing, tell people to wear masks, and provide health-related material to educate their customers and keep them safe. This pandemic enforced practice has altered people’s view of what’s permissible for a company to offer them. If in the past your shoe retailer giving you health advice was weird, it might not be anymore seeing as they now tell you to wear masks, wash your hands and social distance.
Having tasted this, many companies are now actively considering the health of the people they serve to demonstrate the care they have for them. The ubiquity of health, from birth to death, means that companies are starting to see the opportunities in strategically positioning themselves alongside healthcare to create more value.
Healthcare is however complex and many companies don’t want to stray too far from their core into something so fraught with risk. This is where healthtech companies and entrepreneurs can help. Just as in fintech where the tools are only a 2 hour API integration away, health tech entrepreneurs can provide similar solutions that enable companies to plug in a solution and quickly have it available to the people they serve. The challenge today is that these (tech) tools don’t yet exist to turn every company into a healthcare company.
A way to approach this for every company is to insert them into an ADT matrix. ADT stands for, Awareness, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Using this model it’s easy to see how virtually every company can offer a healthcare solution within one of these domains.
A few examples:
Activision - a gaming company, can improve the awareness of sleep and mood disorders and connect its customers to management options
Nike - a sportswear company can provide awareness and diagnosis for foot disorders like diabetes foot, ischaemic foot and more while also targeting specific wears to defined conditions
Ikea - a furniture company, can provide awareness, diagnosis and treatment options for back pain via its furniture and sales channels.
FMCG - Toothpaste - Packs with a number to consult with a dentist for dental disorders
FMCG - hair cream - Tubs with access to information on hair loss and alopecia with a route to receive minoxidil treatments where appropriate
A consumer company that has somewhat successfully morphed into a health company is Apple. Its Apple watch in particular has several health-related features such as heart rate monitoring, ECG tracing and fall detection. It even reminds people to stay active.
Companies can drive awareness, provide financing, and help diagnose and treat consumers all within their ecosystem. Just imagine how much more value companies can extract in this scenario. Imagine also how much more value and affinity consumers will get from businesses that can connect them to better healthcare and improved lifestyles. The potentials and upside are limitless. Companies became digital ads specialists, then media companies and now fintech businesses, healthcare is the natural next progression for companies to seek outsized returns. I’m convinced that the next vista in the evolution and growth of companies is healthcare-related, it’s up to health tech entrepreneurs to make this possible.
Awesome write up Doc Neto. A good next step will be for more health companies to approach non-health companies to work out partnerships like this.
I hope the non-health companies see the value it adds to their products/services and they will be willing to go the extra mile for their customers.