23 Sep Don’t Just Sit There and Watch Your Prostate Grow

Breakers are the true innovation superstars in the healthcare arena. They are destroying outdated and inefficient clinical models in favor of decentralized, patient-centered solutions. They are leveraging game mechanics to drive pharmacological compliance while encouraging health and fitness.

By the year 2020, one third of all hospitals will be bankrupt because the iPad is now becoming the primary care physician. Decentralized telemedicine pods are popping up everywhere. Wearable technologies that resemble the technical prowess of the tri-quarter from Star Trek are emerging. Monitoring key biomarkers can anticipate disease and intervene before emerging conditions become serious and costly.

Game mechanics are now being used to address the epidemiology of obesity, which represents about 70% of all healthcare costs, by socializing behaviors so as to modify them. Incremental innovators are “Makers” and breakthrough innovators are Makers, but it’s the “Breakers” who invent solutions that destroy what came before.

I’m in my mid-50s and when I attend Maker Fairs, I feel like a complete idiot. The good news is, I’m willing to lean into my stupidity. I’ve recently decided to learn how to write code so I can take advantage of the many exciting open platforms available for robotic design. I have also become a 3D expert with 3D printers littering my home and office. While many of my friends who are my age would rather think about retiring so they can, I suppose, sit on their porch and watch their prostate grow, I am getting involved in the Maker Movement. When I talk with them about these things that intrigue me so much, they look at me as if I’m speaking another language, despite the fact that many of them work for technology companies.

You can’t really understand or grasp this rapid growth and where it’s coming from by sitting in your office any more. Technological advancements are simply gaining too much inertia. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, catalogued this increase in speed years ago in ”Moore’s Law,” which suggests that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers, will double every two years. Yet even the rate of change is changing. So here are your options: Hide out or lean in. The choice is yours.