There is more to telemedicine – the exchange of medical information from one site to another through electronic communication to improve a patient’s health – than virtual visits with physicians.
Specialists like dentists, orthodontists, ophthalmologists, psychologists, and even veterinarians are using telemedicine solutions during the pandemic.
Like their physician counterparts, many resisted virtual visits until it became the only way to continue to care for patients and stay in business, as stay-at-home orders expanded from weeks to months.
Here’s a quick run-down of telemedicine’s use in other specialties and what the road ahead could look like for each.
DENTISTRY
Where we are now
According to the American Dental Association, since early March, 79% of dentistry practices closed except for emergency procedures, and another 18% closed completely.
This isn’t surprising given how COVID-19 is transmitted but, for patients in pain, it can be hard to know what constitutes a true emergency and what can be managed at home. Helping patients figure out what needs immediate attention and what can wait seems to be tele-dentistry’s sweet spot.
“Research indicates that 80% of acute dental concerns can be addressed at home without an in-person visit,” explains Chelsea Acosta Patel, Head of Wally Experience at Wally Health, a dental care start-up based in Boston. “Using technology, dentists can triage issues and care for patients while keeping them out of the chair.”
Where we go from here
The bigger, long-term opportunity, according to Patel, may be in preventative care by creating and monitoring at-home preventive care solutions across the patient dental journey.
“Most dentists don’t have the tools to keep an ongoing pulse with patients. They just assume that if a patient has an issue or a question, they’ll call the office. Teledentistry solutions enable dentists to develop customized, ongoing touchpoints to help patients remain healthy and catch potential issues early. This improves the patient’s experience, drives loyalty and word of mouth (pun intended) for the dentist, creating a virtuous oral health cycle.”
ORTHODONTICS
Where we are now
While Dentists need a way to answer questions, triage issues, and provide follow-up care, Orthodontists have a more pressing need – to make sure their patients’ jaws continue to develop and their teeth continue to move in the right way.
“We serve a vulnerable pediatric population whose jaws are developing. The adjustments we make as part of their treatment affect that growth and development,” explains Dr. Adam Welmerink of Welmerink Orthodontics in Reno Nevada. “When we realized this would be more than a 2-week shutdown, we needed a way to keep our patients safe, make sure their appliances weren’t doing any harm, and ensure their treatment was progressing as planned,”
Through services like Orthodontic Screening Kit (OSK), patients receive instructions on how to take photos and upload them to the OSK site for review by their orthodontists. Of course, the orthodontist’s ability to assess the patient’s need is determined by the quality of the photos, but, at a minimum, the service creates an opportunity for orthodontists to reconnect with their patients and give them guidance on signs that could trigger an in-office visit.
Where we go from here
Telemedicine in orthodontics, like many other specialties, will likely continue to be used to triage issues or to serve patients in remote rural areas.
“Many of our patients live in rural areas, with some driving 2 hours for a 10-minute appointment. We’ll probably continue to use (OSK) to see if they need to come in. And I could see using it in a limited capacity to triage patients who call with an emergency to assess if they can treat the issue at home or if they need to come in.” Dr. Welmerink mused. “Honestly, time-wise, it’s quicker to see a patient in the office. But this is great for right now.”
OPTHALMOLOGY & OPTOMETRTRY
Where we are now
Telemedicine’s use as a way to calm patients and triage concerns, deciding whether or not an in-office visit is required, continues with eye care.
“It is certainly a way to reassure patients that we are there for them, which is most important in these scary times,” NYC optometrist Dr. Susan Resnick told All About Vision.
While reassurance is important, most eye care professionals agree that telemedicine’s use is extremely limited. Proper eye care requires pupil dilation and specialized tools to accurately identify problems like glaucoma or assess the health of optic nerves and retinas.
Where we go from here
Despite its limitations, Dr. Resnick sees value in continuing to use telemedicine, “We will continue to utilize this platform whenever necessary. We do not view it as a disruptor or threat, but rather as a way to bolster our practice.”
Not everyone agrees.
“I’m not terribly enthusiastic (about remote eye exams),” Illinois ophthalmologist Dr. Benjamin Ticho told All About Vision. “There’s going to be too many mistakes. Plus, it diminishes the warmth and personality of the interaction. For many patients, a good doctor visit is a pleasant social occasion, and for many doctors, that’s part of why we went into medicine.”
MENTAL HEALTH
Where we are now
The data is staggering.
Before the crisis, 20% of US adults lived with mental illness but less than half received treatment according to federal statistics.
In the last two weeks of March, 45% of US adults felt that worry and stress related to COVID-19 were harming their mental health. It’s likely that number has increased as stay-at-home orders extend, and job losses and furloughs increase.
Yet the adoption of telemedicine to address mental health concerns has been slow. A phenomenon that is far from new. Case in point – over a decade ago, Congress excluded mental health providers from a $30M investment in digitizing patient health records. Even now, as CMS, private insurers, and state regulators are easing restrictions and increasing reimbursement for telemedicine to treat physical concerns, similar attention and flexibility have not been shown to mental health concerns.
As a result, “(providers) are kind of trying everything right now and seeing what can work,” John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center told Politico.
Where we go from here
More than other specialties, the jury is out on what happens next with regards to telemedicine for mental health.
On one hand, “so much of counseling has to do with body language, being physically present in the room, intonation,” Lynn Linde for the American Counseling Association told Politco. “Sometimes, that’s lost when you don’t have a good internet connection, or one of your starts getting garbled.”
On the other, this could be a “tipping point for the way we practice,” said Peter Yellowlees, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Davis and former president of the American Telemedicine Association.
Optum, a division of UnitedHealth, seems to be betting on the latter. Last week it announced that it was in talks to acquire AbleTo, a New York-based virtual therapy provider for $470M, or 10x forward revenue.
VETERINARY CARE
Where we are now
If telemedicine is good enough for humans, it’s good enough for our animal companions.
A relatively new addition to the specialties offering telemedicine solutions, only a handful of companies are currently playing in this field. TeleVet, a “Texas-based, digitally optimized company focused on veterinary care,” is one.
Before the outbreak, TeleVet was in use in 1000 clinics across the US and even closed a $2M seed round in January.
“We can check for infections such as ear infections or drainage from either a still picture or a video, or even a live video conference with the owner,” Dr. Amy Garrou as Houston-area vet explained to Innovation Map. “The platform has been useful because we can do any of those consultations and get the information we need to manage the case without the pet owner having to come into the clinic.”
Where we go from here
Like dentistry, orthodontics, and eye care, telemedicine’s use in the Veterinary space is a boon for providers and patients at a time when it’s not safe to be in a crowded office. But as restrictions lift, like the other health care fields, it’s likely to be used primarily to answer questions, triage concerns, and perform post-surgery check-ups.
THE CLINICAL APPLICATIONS ARE DIFFERENT BUT THE ROAD AHEAD IS THE SAME.
Yes, telemedicine is an incredible tool to have in our collective healthcare toolkit. Its use across medical specialties is evidence that it fills a need for clinicians (provide care for my patients) and patients (address my concerns).
In “normal” times, those needs are well addressed by in-office visits, retail clinics, and urgent care. It is only in very specific circumstances, like when medical professionals cannot easily or safely see patients in-person, that existing solutions fall short and telemedicine becomes the most attractive option.
However, telemedicine only became an available option when regulators relaxed rules, insurers increased reimbursement, and patients accepted emails and video-chats as treatment.
It took a pandemic to create the confluence of circumstances required for physicians, dentists, orthodontists, eye care professionals, mental health caregivers, veterinarians, and other clinicians to begin or expand the use of telemedicine. It’s their experience, and the experiences and decisions of other players in the healthcare ecosystem, that will lead them back to the office and the hands-on care that is both desired and required.
It was a large rectangular room. Chairs lined the walls. A children’s play area was tucked into a corner. One half of the room was labeled “Healthy Visits.” The other half was labeled “Sick Visits.” The check-in area was on the healthy side.
Even as a kid, this set-up made no sense to me.
Today, this set-up can be deadly.
That, along with stay-at-home orders and a myriad of other policies and practices, has propelled telemedicine to adoption and usage rates that companies like Teladoc, Doctor on Demand, and American Well could have only dreamed of 6 months ago.
But is this a new normal or will we go back to choosing a side of the large, open room in which to sit and wait?
Before we predict the path forward, let’s look at how we got here.
Telemedicine, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), generally refers to the exchange of medical information from one site to another through electronic communication to improve a patient’s health.
First commercially used in the mid-1960s by Massachusetts General Hospital to treat employees and travelers at Boston Logan International Airport[1], telemedicine as we know it today didn’t take shape until the early 2000s when high-speed internet access became more widely available.
Between Teladoc’s launch in 2005 and early 2020, adoption of the service was slow, stymied by insurance companies’ fears that easy access to physicians would increase visits without improving outcomes and therefore increase costs, medical boards’ implementation of guidelines governing how and with whom visits could occur, providers’ and patients’ beliefs that diagnosis and treatment require hands-on care, and, most importantly, lower reimbursement rates for telemedicine versus in-office visits.
Reimburse office, hospital, and other visits furnished by telehealth to anyone, not just patients in rural communities, at the same rate as in-office visits
No longer conduct audits to ensure that patients have a prior established relationship with the provider, previously defined as at least one in-person visit before using telehealth
Waive penalties for HIPAA violations due to the use of unsecured technology, like FaceTime and Skype, assuming that health care providers were using the technologies in good faith to serve their patients
April 3: FCC initiated $200M program, with funds coming from the CARES Act, to fund telehealth
Spurred on by these changes at the national level, throughout April, 47 state medical boards have moved to allow care to flow across state lines by waiving the requirement that the physician providing care via telemedicine channels must be licensed in the state where the patient is located at the time of treatment.
These changes created winners and losers.
With new federal and state guidelines in place, telemedicine took off.
Cleveland Clinic went from 3400 visits per month to 60,000 in March
NYU Langone Health went from 50 visits per day to 900 per day during the week of March 23
Teladoc’s daily visits increased by 50% to 15,000 per day
Austin Regional Clinic saw 50% of its visits shift to telemedicine
On April 3, Forrester released a report predicting that, by the end of the year, there would be 1B telemedicine visits compared to only 200M for general medical visits. (EDITORIAL NOTE: I don’t believe this projection one bit as it doesn’t pass the sniff test, but it is interesting in terms of highlighting the order of magnitude change that could occur)
But, as with every market shift, there are winners and losers.
Sadly, telemedicine’s gains seem to be coming at the expense of hospitals, community clinics, and rural patients.
According to data from Quandl, hospital revenues dropped as much as 55% since early February as “discretionary” visits have decreased 51% while ICU and OR visits decreased 34% and 59% respectively compared to Childbirth visits (used as a control in their analysis) which only decreased 6%.
Source: Quandl proprietary data — revenue data from healthcare facilities nationwide.
Revenue and utilization decreases are hitting regional hospitals and community care centers especially hard.
Lifelong Medical Care in Berkeley and Oakland CA has seen a 35% drop in visits despite offering telemedicine visits
Most impacted, however, seem to be rural areas where access to high-speed internet and laptops or phones with cameras are spotty at best.
“I practice in a somewhat rural area, as do many other doctors. So half of my patients are university types and have the technology. The other half are out driving tractors, or welding, or in construction. These patients often don’t have a video capability,” Dr. Christopher Adams, a rheumatologist at East Alabama Medical Center told AL.com. In fact, he estimates that 80-85% of his patients can’t do video appointments and he received only $12 in Medicare reimbursement for a 40-minute phone visit, the same rate as a 10-min in-office visit.
Echoing this disparity is Dr. Justin Cooke, a primary care physician and co-founder of Community Urgent Care, also in Alabama. “A lot of our Medicare patients don’t have the hardware or the knowhow to participate in a video chat format for a visit.” The result? An 80% decrease in revenue since the crisis started.
This won’t last forever.
To believe that “The demand has shifted forever on virtual care, and we’re on the verge of a new era for virtual care in the healthcare system,” as Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic proclaimed in an interview with Jim Kramer on CNBC, you need to believe:
CMS and other insurers will continue to reimburse all currently covered telemedicine at the same rate as in-office visits
State medical boards will continue to allow patients to have visits with doctors they haven’t seen before and/or who practice in other states
Doctors and patients will prefer the convenience of virtual visits to the personal, hands-on experience of in-office visits
I don’t believe a single one of those things.
When CMS changed its guidelines for telemedicine in mid-March, it added 85 services to its list of covered telemedicine services. With hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic and NYU Langone Hospital reporting that 75-80% of their telemedicine visits are with people who have a cough or worried they have COVID-19, it’s hard to believe that CMS’s list of covered services will stay as long as it currently is.
State medical boards have a vested interest in supporting their constituencies, the physicians operating in their states. With some health systems strained to the breaking point by COVID-19 and others managing excess capacity, allowing physicians to operate across state lines during the crisis simply made humanitarian and political sense. But with one-third of physicians in a survey conducted by Merritt Hawkins, a physician search company, indicating that they plan to change or close their practices as a result of the pandemic, state medical boards will be motivated to act fast to protect their members and their practices.
In terms of physicians, one could argue that the current 50% adoption rate, as reported in a survey by The Physicians Foundation, means that we’ve passed the tipping point. But it’s important to remember that the jump from 18% usage in 2018 to 50% today was akin to a forced-choice rather than a voluntary one and, as a result, may not stick when circumstances change.
Convenience is often cited as a reason for patients to adopt telemedicine and it’s hard to argue with the fact that a virtual visit is faster, cheaper, and easier than a trip to the doctors’ office. But convenience matters most when you’re engaging a transaction, a functional exchange of goods or services.
Most healthcare visits aren’t transactions. What drives physician and patient behavior has less to do with functional jobs to be done (logical, rational tangible problems to be solved or progress to be made) and more to do with emotional (how I want to feel) and social (how I want others to see me) jobs. In Jobs to be Done research that I have conducted with physicians and patients over the years, I have consistently heard that the most important and satisfying part of the care experience is the personal and physical connection. Physicians say that the most gratifying moments of their jobs are when their patients hug them or shake their hands to thank them for care while patients talk about how office visits are akin to visiting lifelong friends and having conversations with people who truly know, understand, and care about them.
I also don’t believe that telemedicine will snap back to the pre-COVID normal.
I believe that some changes, like allowing physicians to treat patients across state lines or with whom they don’t have a pre-existing relationship, will revert to pre-pandemic positions. Other changes, like CMS reimbursement levels, will change based on usage data and pressure from special interest groups.
I believe that in-person connections and relationships will continue to drive physician and patient preferences. As a result, telemedicine will continue to be a more convenient version of retail clinics and urgent care, something patients use when their Jobs to be Done are purely functional (e.g. fix me, stop the pain, make me feel better) and convenience is the highest priority.
I also believe that, with the expansion of CMS covered services, the biggest change we will see is greater use in the management of chronic disease. For many patients with chronic diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even some auto-immune diseases, if their condition is properly controlled, the purpose of an office visit is to review test results and re-up prescriptions. All things that can be done more quickly, easily, and, yes, conveniently through telemedicine.
Yes, it certainly feels like we are in a “new era” of medicine.
But, when this is over, it will feel a lot more like a “new-ish” era, a variation on the theme of what came before.
“What happens next? You know, once all of this is over?” my friend asked. “There will be a new normal, but what will it look like?”
This is the question everyone is asking.
Lots of people proclaim to have the answer. Some are based on history, but history isn’t a great predictor of the future. Some opinions are based on trends and projections but rely assumptions which may or may not be true. Many are based on our hopes or fears, but those are grounded in emotions which can change from one moment to the next.
No one actually has the answer.
What we’re experiencing is a fundamental disruption to our way of life. It calls into question everything we believed to be true about ourselves and our worlds. It requires us to re-think things that we took to be inviolable truths. It is impossible to experience such a sudden and all-encompassing upheaval and emerge as if nothing happened.
We know things will be different once the restrictions (e.g. stay-at-home, limited gathering sizes, essential workers only, curfews) are lifted.
What we do not know is HOW they will be different and HOW LONG they will stay different.
I certainly don’t and that’s a terribly frustrating feeling. After all, I’m the person who reads the last page (or chapter) of a novel before I read the first because I want to know who is still alive and whether the ending is happy or sad. So, as you can imagine, I’m impatient to get at least a hint of what comes next.
Happily, there are ways to get that hint: Be curious, ask questions, seek input from a wide variety of sources, and observe how things progress.
Here are the questions I’m asking:
How will connection be different?
History says we’ll grow further apart. During pandemics, people choose, or are forced to, separate from one another, to stay at home, and to minimize contact with the outside world. Pandemics also highlight economic and social inequalities, disproportionately impacting the poor and working poor and inflaming class divisions. After the crisis passes, people remain wary of others and physically and emotional exhausted from the experience. They don’t want to re-live it by talking about it or, even worse, reflect on who they became during the experience.
OR…
We’re more connected than ever as the internet, social media, and video conferences make this a shared experience on a global scale. Yes, there’s a lot of crap on social media and Zoom-bombing isn’t helping things. But social media is also spreading good news — videos of people in Italy singing together and playing Bingo, people in various cities applauding healthcare workers, parades as substitutes for parties. Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and similar services enable us to see the people we’re talking to, engage in the conversation (because it’s hard to multi-task on camera), and connect in deeper and more effective ways than we could by phone or email.
I HOPE that…
Connection takes on deeper meaning, that we’ll care more about the quality of our connections than the quantity and, as a result, invest more time with the people we care about than we do in generating likes and followers.
Gratitude continues to be part of our daily social interactions, that we say, and mean, “thank you” to the people working in healthcare, retail, restaurants, delivery, and other essential businesses.
Empathy remains a part of how we think and act because we have all shared an experience of great uncertainty, witnessed how fragile our lives and lifestyles are, and realized that we actually are all in this together.
How will work be done?
People will return to the office because they have grown tired of staying in their homes, relying on technology for virtual meetings, and having their calendars filled with meetings that were once hallway conversations. Offices are suddenly a welcome respite from the home because they are purpose-built for work, establishing physical definition between our work and personal selves, enabling direct human interactions, and creating an environment where connections between people and between ideas effortlessly occur.
Or…
More people will work from home because they value the flexibility and control it offers. Employers will have a hard time arguing that physical presence in the office is essential for most jobs when people have been working remotely for over a month. And those employers that do mandate a return to the physical workplace risk sending the message that they don’t trust their employees which could, in turn, result in employees leaving for a different employer that does trust and respect them as adults.
I PREDICT that…
Employers and employees will work together to figure out what works best. Old school managers who once resisted letting people work from home for fear that no work would be done are experiencing the reality that people are as, or more, productive at home than in the office. While employees who clamored to work from home now miss the informal chats, hallway conversations, and sense of community that are part of working from an office.
How will learning and education occur?
School will look like it did pre-COVID-19. Kids want to be back with their friends and parents don’t want to be teachers, principals, hall monitors, and test proctors. As a result, kids will go to a school building, sit in a classroom with other students their age, and teachers will teach what the curriculum requires. Inequity will continue as the richest schools are able to attract the best teachers and the most and latest resources, while the poorest schools will scrap by, focused as much (if not more) on meeting basic needs, like food, clothing, and cleanliness, as they do on teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Or…
School is no longer a physical place but a set of activities and interactions. Learning happens when and how best for the student (within certain parameters, of course) and parents stay engaged in what, how, and when their kids are learning. Teachers will continue to find new ways to teach, including recording lessons once taught live to a full classroom and then engaging live with students one-on-one. Everyone will have more freedom to explore, create, discover, socialize, and learn.
I HOPE that…
This seismic shift in what it means to go to school will open people’s minds to what’s possible and increase their willingness to experiment as a means to reduce inequity and raise what’s “minimally acceptable.”
But I PREDICT that…
There will be innovation on the margins, that those who have the most resources will enjoy most of the benefits, and the majority will return to the pre-COVID-19 status-quo.
HOW LONG will the “new normal” last?
We’re human and we don’t like change. We especially dislike change when it’s forced on us. Even in the best of times, we want safety and security and we crave those things even more in periods of uncertainty. As a result, we will go back to the “old normal” as soon as we possibly can.
Or…
We have been fundamentally changed and therefore lasting change is inevitable. We see how hard healthcare workers work and the sacrifices they make. Parents are experiencing how hard teachers work and, if the tweets are to be believed, are willing to pay them millions to resume their roles. We appreciate the essential workers working grocery stores, delivering packages, and maintaining our infrastructure. We’ve returned to having conversations with family members, cooking and eating meals together, and reaching out to people who matter the most. We’ve been forced into a “new normal” but, by the end of it, it will simply be “normal.”
I PREDICT that…
The duration of the “new normal” depends entirely on how long the current situation lasts. The longer this situation — social distancing, stay at home orders, schools and non-essential businesses closed, the numbers of the sick and the dead leading the news — the greater the likelihood that things that felt new and different two weeks ago will become normal habits and expectations that endure. But, if the worst truly is over by April 30 and there’s no Round 2 in the summer or fall, we’ll return to the “old normal” as soon as we possibly can.
As I wrote in Part 1, I learned several valuable lessons about how to make requests when tapping into the wisdom of the crowd. These lessons aren’t unique to asking for input, though, the especially relevant for people working in and on innovation
But I didn’t start this journey to learn something, I started it to get out of writing an article (ironically, it resulted in me writing two).
This is the post I meant to write.
Innovation is something different that creates value.
“Value” is the key word in that definition. Something may be different, it may even be new to the world, but if it doesn’t create value, it’s not innovation.
How does something create value? It solves a problem.
Following are some of 2019’s innovations that solved problems, created value, and changed lives, according to the people who love them*
Kwikset Kevo to eliminate the need to carry keys and the fear of losing them.
“The main reason a blue-tooth lock for my house is life-changing is that I’ve always had a problem losing my house keys. There is nothing more annoying than leaving them at the office and having to call my wife or kids to unlock the door. Not only that, but it’s just so convenient to be able to swipe my smartphone to open the door.
As a techie, it’s a dream come true and gives me the feeling of living in a
futuristic world where I can unlock my door with an app. No more searching
for that familiar jingle in my pocket, but rather just my smartphone, which
should always be there!”
iRobot Roomba i7+ to save you time by cleaning your home and cleaning itself
“The Roomba i7+ has been profoundly game-changing to the cleaning of my
home, thanks to the introduction of the Clean Base. Although other robot
vacuums now have Automatic Dirt Disposal, the Roomba i7+ was the first from iRobot that could empty its waste into a bin. This completely took the
effort out of cleaning the home for weeks at a time, unlike other robot
vacuums where you have to empty the bin frequently. As it can hold up to 30
cleans worth of dirt, you can set it to schedule cleaning daily with
self-disposal lasting for many days.”
“I would say the product that has changed my life the most is Apple’s new
waterproof iPod shuffle. I had tried waterproof mp3 players in the past but
either the audio was really bad or they would only function a few meters
underwater. So I wrote off the idea of having music in the background while
diving a long time ago.
However, this tiny light-weight iPod shuffle was life-changing since it
allows me to listen to music up to 200 ft underwater. The device uses
earbuds to deliver crystal clear sound, including good bass, which was
lacking on other underwater mp3 players that I tried.
I didn’t replace any product that I had previously owned since I’m pretty
much used to diving in complete silence for many years now, which is a
privilege in itself. I was gifted this iPod shuffle by a family member and
instantly fell in love with it. Especially when I’m diving in shallow
waters under 200ft, classical music in the background makes the experience
even more epic when scuba diving.”
Torben Lonne, Diver, Co-Founder & Chief Editor at DIVEIN.com
“My mother is diabetic and this is something she can enjoy without throwing her sugars off. For me, since diabetes is hereditary, it’s a guilt-free treat with a glass of milk in the evening for my chocolate craving and I don’t need to worry about having too much sugar.
For my mother, it replaced products made with artificial sugars or real sugar desserts/ treats that impact her blood tests. For me, I don’t need power to stop from eating any chocolate candy, but I can still indulge.”
“The invention that change my life in 2019 is Gravity, a therapeutic
weighted blanket. Before I laid my hands on this product, I used to suffer
a lot from anxiety-induced insomnia. A friend introduced me to Gravity and it looked quite ordinary at first. However, from the very first day that I used this product up until today, I’ve not had any issue of insomnia at all! Gravity indeed transformed my life.”
Disney+ for saving time and money while giving access to the box office’s biggest hits
“Even though it was released, Disney+ has completely changed our buying habits forever. My family is pretty Disney obsessed, and we spend quite a bit of money renting and buying Disney TV shows from Amazon.
My kids want the ability to stream every single Star Wars, Pixar, Disneys, or Marvel movie that comes now. Now the entire Disney catalog is available on Disney+ for only $6.99 a month. Not to mention, every film released in the future will be streaming exclusively on the service after its theatrical release. This service is saving us tons of time and money searching for these shows and movies on various streaming services. Furthermore, 40% of this year’s box returns were produced by Disney. Disney+ is essentially a subscription to the box office’s biggest movies.”
“A great product that came onto the market in 2019 was Google’s Pixel 3a phone. The reason why it was so life-changing is that I rarely upgrade my phone. When I was forced to do so this year, it happened to be Google’s first budget phone with one of the best camera’s on the market.
I’m one of those guys who would rather invest my hard-earned money than to buy the next new toy, but this phone upgrade will provide me with long-term
value which is hard to pass up. As a hobbyist photographer, it allowed me to capture beautiful images without a bulky camera.”
What are the innovations that created value for you in 2019?
What do you hope to see come to the market in 2020?
Let me know in the comments!
*Quick note: this article is not an endorsement of these products, as I’ve never used them, and the links are NOT affiliate links, they’re just there to give you quick access to more info if you want.
Writing weekly articles is not easy and, I’ll admit, sometimes I just mail it in. That was pretty much my plan for December because, as I convinced myself, “no one has time to read anything this time of year.”
I drew up a list of lists. You know the ones, the lists of this year’s top whatevers. One of the lists on my list was “Top Innovations of 2019” but, when I sat down to write it, my mind went blank.
Undeterred, I decided to tap into the wisdom of the crowd and post a request on Help A Reporter Out (HARO).
That’s when things got interesting…
Here’s what I posted:
2019’s Best Innovations
What products or services came onto the market in 2019 and changed your life? Why was this so life-changing? What, if anything, did it replace?
Only complete responses please (i.e. NO “if this is of interest to you, please call me)
Please include in your submission:
1. Answers to the 3 questions above
2. How you would like to be credited (name, title, company)
3. ONE link that should be affiliated with your post (e.g. company website, LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle)
I received 32 responses within 8 hours!
An excellent start to my plan to not write an article.
Then, I started reading through the responses.
Here’s what I learned:
There is a lot of innovation happening in the adult personal care space. From camel-toe proof athletic underwear, to all sorts of menstruation products, to personal pleasure products, there is A LOT happening below the waistline. And I don’t want to write about it. Sorry.
Posting on HARO is a great way to get free stuff. Most of the promotional pitches offered to send me their products so I could try them out. It’s a nice gesture but claiming the SWAG seemed dishonest and, especially with regards to the types of innovations mentioned above, Thank You but No.
Be very clear about all the things you don’t want when asking for input. I clearly stated that I didn’t want a bunch of cliff-hanger responses, but it never occurred to me that I would have to say no promotional pitches. And no products that I can’t walk to my parents about.
That last lesson doesn’t just apply to requesting pitches for an article, it applies to essentially every aspect of a business, especially innovation.
Innovation thrives within constraints.
When entrepreneurs start companies, they face very real constraints — not enough time and money, no easy access to the talent and capabilities they need. Yet when intrapreneurs start innovation projects, they’re told that “the sky is the limit” or “do what you think is right and we’ll support you.”
Those are lies and they waste massive amounts of time, energy, and goodwill.
Instead, corporate leaders and innovators need to be clear about everything they DO NOT want. Many of my clients have constraints around the size of business they want (businesses more than $XM in revenue), minimum profit margin, target geographies and/or populations, and even acceptable revenue models.
By establishing constraints, leaders create the environment required for innovators to be creative and successful.
Without constraints, teams may find real problems and develop great solutions but come back with something that the company will never support. Like a medical device company with an innovation team that designed an app-controlled wearable vibrator*
Amongst the many pitches, however, there were stories from people who found innovations that solved problems and created value. You can read all about them here.
*Not a real story but, as I learned from reading the pitches, a real product
“What do you plan to do on vacation?” my friend asked.
“Nothing…”
Long silence
“…And it will be amazing.”
We live in a world that confuses activity with achievement so I should not have been surprised that the idea of deliberately doing nothing stunned my friend into silence.
After all, when people say, “I wish I had nothing to do” they usually mean “I wish I could choose what I do with my time.” And, when they do have the opportunity to choose, very few choose to do nothing.
Why does the idea of doing nothing make us so uncomfortable?
“driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.”
We didn’t always believe this.
For most of human history, we’ve had a pretty balanced view of the need for both work and leisure. Aristotle argued that virtue was obtainable through contemplation, not through endless activity. Most major religions call for a day of rest and reflection. Even 19th-century moral debates, as recorded by historian EO Thompson, recognized the value of hard work AND the importance of rest.
So what happened?
While it’s easy to say that we have to work more because of the demands of our jobs, the data says otherwise. In fact, according to a working paper by Jonathan Gershuny, a time-expert based on the UK, actual time spent at work has not increased since the 1960s.
The actual reason may be that we want to work more. According to economist Robert Frank, those who identify as workaholics believe that:
“building wealth…is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”
We choose to spend time working because Work — “the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle” according to an article in The Atlantic — is what we find most fulfilling.
It’s not that I like working, I just don’t like wasting time.
We tend to equate doing nothing with laziness, apathy, a poor work ethic, and a host of other personality flaws and social ills. But what if that’s not true.
What if, in the process of doing nothing, we are as productive as when we do something?
Science is increasingly showing this to be the case.
Multiple fMRI studies have revealed the existence of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale brain network that is most active when we’re day-dreaming. Researchers at the University of Southern California argue that
“downtime is, in fact, essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics — processes that depend on the DMN.”
The results of harnessing the power of your DMN are immense:
More creativity. The research discussed in Scientific American suggests that DMN is more active in creative people. For example, according to Psychology Today:
The most recorded song of all time, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, was ‘heard’ by Paul McCartney as he was waking up one morning. The melody was fully formed in his mind, and he went straight to the piano in his bedroom to find the chords to go with it, and later found words to fit the melody.
Mozart described how his musical ideas ‘flow best and most abundantly.’ when he was alone ‘traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep… Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.’
Tchaikovsky described how the idea for a composition usually came ‘suddenly and unexpectedly… It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.’
More productivity. According to an essay in The New York Times, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Less burnout. Regardless of how many hours you work, consider this: researchers have found that it takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail. On average, we are interrupted every 11 minutes which means that we can never catch up, we’re always behind.
That feeling of always being behind leads to burn-out which the World Health Organization officially recognized as a medical condition defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and manifests with the following symptoms:
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
Reduced professional efficacy
Doing nothing, quieting our minds and not focusing on any particular task, can actually help reset our bodies systems, quieting the release of stress chemicals, slowing our heart rates, and improving our mental and physical energy
Better health. Multiple studies indicate that idleness “produces many health benefits including, but not limited to, reduced heart rate, better digestion, improvements in mood, and a boost in overall emotional well-being — which, of course, affects everything on a biochemical and physiological level, thereby serving as a major deciding factor on whether or not we fall ill, and/or remain ill. Mental downtime also replenishes glucose and oxygen levels in the brain, and allows our brains to process and file things, which leaves us feeling more rested and clear-headed, promotes a stronger sense of self-confidence, and…more willing to we trust change.”
Fine, you convinced me. How can I do nothing?
There are the usual suspects — vacations, meditation, and physical exercise — but, if you’re anything like me, the thought of even finding 5 minutes to listen to a meditation app is so overwhelming that I never even start.
An easier place to start, in my experience, is in intentionally working nothing into the moments that are already “free.” Here are three of my favorite ways to work a bit of nothing into my day.
Make the Snooze button work for you. When my alarm goes off, I instinctively hit the Snooze button because, I claim, it is my first and possibly only victory of the day. It’s also a great way to get 9 minutes of thoughtful quiet nothingness in which I can take a few deep breaths, scan my body for any aches and pains, and make sure that I’m calm and my mind is quiet when I get out of bed.
Stare out the window. I always place my computer next to a window so that I can stare out the window for a few minutes throughout the day and people think I’m thinking deep thoughts. Which I am. Subconsciously. Lest anyone accuse me of being lazy or unproductive while I watch the clouds roll by, I simply point them to research that shows “that individuals who took five to ten minute breaks from work to do nothing a few times a day displayed an approximately 50% increase in their ability to think clearly and creatively, thus rendering their work far more productive.
Bring the beach to you. Research from a variety of places, from the UK Census to The Journal of Coastal Zone Management, indicate that our brains and bodies benefit from time at the beach. But, if you can’t go to the beach, there are lots of ways to bring the beach to you. Perhaps the simplest is to bring more blue into your environment. Most people associate blue with feelings of calm and peace and a study published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that the color blue can boost creativity. Even putting a picture of a beach (or your own personal happy place) on your desk or computer screen can trigger your brain to slow down, relax, and possibly trigger your DMN.
With so many benefits, isn’t it time you started doing more nothing?
