As healthcare is undergoing a major revolution, we are witnessing a period in history, where medical science is not only advancing at a rapid pace, but also becoming more accessible to masses. Medium of access being a ubiquitous internet connectivity and use of smartphones. No one imagined the ways in which this high mobile proliferation would bring out new behaviours and patterns of usage. Today we don't stop at just accessing a piece of information on health, but we are able to also look at health expert's appointment calendar and make a booking if we wish to.
Along with the technology difference, we are witnessing one more kind of a revolution in healthcare. This is Natural Health, or preventive health awareness that is driving today's generation. Our advancements over the past few decades haven't made us healthy; instead it has on the contrary worsened. Lifestyle diseases like obesity, depression, high cholesterol and many more have become so common that you find one in every family today. On the other hand, conventional medicine has limitations and doesn't have answers for many of such lifestyle related problems. Hence, today's generation is aware of all and have started embracing natural health as they want to do everything that can lead a very healthy life.
This anytime access to information & knowledge residing practically in our pockets added to the openness and awareness about other non-conventional health disciplines like Yoga, Ayurveda, Naturopathy and many more is creating a massive change across the overall Healthcare Domain. We are seeing startups like Lantern, which are offering mobile based remote counselling for Anxiety and depression, where patients can reach out to the experts / psychiatrist with just a tap of their finger.
Similarly, you can take yoga lessons from the instructor who would be sitting thousands of miles away. Today, there are Nutrition apps like Rise, which basically try and monitor your daily activity and then suggest a meal based on your activity levels. On the other hand, the whole new world of wearables is becoming your sensors to capture your routine activity data. This data can then be stored or passed on to a relevant healthcare service. This is immensely valuable to so many health services that can personalize the offering based on your data.
Well, we are seeing that there are great many startups and companies offering great solutions, we are far from the utopian state where common health problems of today become a thing of the past. Entreprenuers today are in the best times in history to start something new or solve an existing problem, especially in healthcare. Because health is so fundamental to all of us, the impact of even small innovations and solutions is very large.
With all this happening, I think we are just getting started. As an entrepreneur, one can decide to solve an information access problem or be a matchmaker between health care services and consumers. There are also many opportunities around building utilities for self diagnostics. Smartphones are becoming a great instrument for this. For example: Eye test via a phone.