In this blog article I do not want to talk about being patient when you link this word with the idea of time. I want to talk about the feeling of being a patient when you relate it to healthcare. I was the moderator of a 2 days conference in Paris on Innovation in Healthcare that made me realize that actually I am a patient myself. I tend to forget this from time to time.
In one of the panels we talked about virtual reality, how this technology can also help patients.
The most important question however remains why and where will we use this technology, we need to use it to create experiences. Especially in a world where the attention span of people, especially younger people is so short, what if we can capture them with a true feeling thanks to a virtual reality.
If we can educate and create a gamification environment thanks to VR, patients would have the opportunity to experience upfront what reality will look like.
One of the speakers mentioned how in theory we often say that theory and practice are the same, but we all now in practice that this theory is anything but true.
What if we can bring content to patients that resonate more in an engaging way, in a more sexy way, one of the fantastic speakers mentioned. Do we not agree that we all learn more quickly with appealing content then rather on a theoretic and hypothetical basis?
Before this panel during the break I met an inspiring lady entrepreneur and founder, Yael, with a PHD, coming from Israel and traveled even in these critical circumstances especially to meet up with peers, with stakeholders that believe in healthcare for all, where we always keep the patient in the center, from prevention to life saving cures. After asking her some questions it was clear to me that for many of the people in healthcare working on new solutions it is often based upon a personal experience. Her unique therapy for unique people is based on developing innovative autologous personalizes cell-therapies for degenerative micro vascular diseases, with the goal of helping millions of patients, but the first one she wanted to help was her mother suffering from diabetes.
Sometimes I wish I was a brain scientist so that I could work on prevention for strokes, as I suffered one about 10 years ago.
What if as a patient you would be able to go through your operation upfront as a pilot trains with a flight simulator?
We know that knowledge is power, that technology can help us in many ways, also in Healthcare. I heard people working with AI specifically in Healthcare share their vision, which was enriching as after 2 events last week as moderator where we also talked about AI, in totally different contexts, it is clear that working with a human cohort as well as a digital cohort might bring a lot more insights.
Think about creating a virtual twin before an impactful surgery on the heart for example.
With all the knowledge we already have what we want for founders, innovators is that they dare to start from a blank page, think and create with a focus on possibilities rather than constraints.
Yes sometimes we need to be patient, but when you are a patient, or a parent or a child of a patient the only thing you want are solutions.
Patience as a patient is the hardest burden out there.
