Insights, Wins, & a Future of Promise

Ciao peers, colleagues, family, and friends! Welcome to another edition of my monthly roundup of interesting industry trends and insights. If you’re a first-time subscriber, welcome! This month we’ll be exploring interesting new developments in the world of health tech investing, medical cannabis, and leadership, three promising topics poised to elevate patient care worldwide.

Big Data Gets A Checkup

If you’re a savvy healthcare investor, then you may be aware of the growing need for AI-enabled IT services to power back-office and administrative tasks. This is a crucial endeavor to take on, especially considering how impactful these systems can be in terms of compliance and in the face of the changing technological landscape.?

With AI on the rise, practitioners and hospitals will soon have more sensitive patient data than ever before. One possible cloud-based data solution that may arise is specifically designed to store random pieces of information across a number of distributed servers. By randomizing and decentralizing data, hackers will have an extremely difficult time piecing together information as it becomes a much more complicated process – which is wonderful news for us! Artificial intelligence will work to distribute sensitive patient data across broader “attack surfaces” to allow for greater peace of mind for healthcare payers, providers, and patients.??

Japan legalizes it!

Good news - Japan has approved the use of medical cannabis in a historic win for the future of healthcare. Known for having some of the strictest drug laws in the world and an extremely traditional society that balances formality with boundless tech innovation and creativity, it will be very interesting to see what the future holds for THC and CBD-related patient care in the land of the rising sun. However, the actual wording of the parliamentary ruling doesn’t fully legalize THC and CBD, it recategorizes them as regulated narcotics (like opiate-based painkillers, for instance) while tightening laws around the recreational use of the substances.

While the ruling is a very positive signal to cannabis entrepreneurs, patients, and healthcare providers, it will be interesting to see how the legalization is received long term. Regardless, there is plenty of evidence to support that, when properly administered, medical cannabis is far safer than other pain management medications.

Telling Stories That Make An Impact This article in Forbes highlights how one of the most powerful leadership techniques is learning how to tell compelling stories. It does a good job breaking down this crucial skill into its five key components:

1. Know your audience - Every performer or customer-service professional will tell you that the first thing you need to know, above all else, is who it is you’re talking to. A purchasing manager over the phone who is about to head out to lunch is going to slam the proverbial door in your face unless you can get them on the hook for a callback later that afternoon. Anyone who has ever published an article knows that you can’t submit whatever you want to any magazine or journal - nor would you want to. t The nuanced response received from your audience will always influence your story in ways you couldn’t have anticipated on your own.

2. Use vivid imagery throughout the narrative. Not many people can do math in their head. Still, most experiences can be universalized if told in a compelling enough manner that elicits the listener or reader to picture something in their head. If I were to stand in front of a room full of people and attempt to describe a bar chart I’d seen somewhere, although it would make perfect sense to me, to the room I was addressing it would come across as some kind of bizarre corporate satire staged by an experimental theater company. Don’t talk about “impactful metrics.” Use sentences that convey information in a way that people can see in their mind’s eye.

3. Tie Story To The Mission - Here is a prime example of what I just mentioned above concerning“impactful metrics.” This bit of advice is utterly meaningless when taken at face value.

Picture the Apollo 11 astronauts sitting three abreast in the capsule high atop the Saturn V rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

Neil Armstrong turns to Buzz Aldrin and asks, “So… we’re going to the moon, right?”

“Yup,” replies Buzz, tapping on one of the hundreds of gauges laid out on the control panel in front of him.

After a long pause, Neil goes, “Hmmm…”

“What’s that?” Buzz says. “Like, what’s the point?”

Neil asks, truly baffled. “The point of what?” Buzz says, turning as best he can in the crowded capsule to look at the guy he’s going to be walking the face of the moon within less than three days.

“Like what’s the point of… you know? The mission?? Like, do you ever wonder why we’re going to the moon in the first place?”

Neil ponders. Buzz’s eyes glaze over: “Oh my god. Neil. You’re totally right. What the hell are we doing?”

But you see, that didn’t happen because every mission is the story.

Present A Challenge and A Hero

Now we’re drifting into Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero With 1000 Faces’ territory. Yes, it’s good to present your ideas in a format that conveys threats and challenges as much as the reward to be won, but you don’t need to march all the way to Mordor to get there.

Sometimes, presenting yourself or your goals as heroic can backfire - like that time Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was a big online community after the news broke he’d sold billions of data points to Cambridge Analytica to sway the 2016 Brexit Referendum and Presidential Election.

The heroic and noble cause of uniting people sounds hollow if you’re uniting them in order to sell what you know about them to a political strategy analytics machine. Master Your Delivery - Throw away the first two drafts, and saying your speech in front of a mirror doesn’t count. Practice makes perfect!

It’s the end of the year!

Thank you all for allowing me to share my thoughts with you. I truly enjoy writing these newsletters and I’m excited to see what the year ahead will bring. If you miss my next installment because you’re out of the office with family for the holidays, then I’ll see you in the New Year!