Saks Snacks #10: Health & Wellness Credit Card, Next-Gen Wearables, Healthcare Chatbots, & More
Saks Snacks #10: Health & Wellness Credit Card, Next-Gen Wearables, Healthcare Chatbots, & More
Incentivizing Better Health | Smart Clothing | Category Defining FemTech Company | Rockley Photonics | Interoperability & More
Hi friends from San Francisco 👋 ,
Thanks for supporting for the 10th edition of Saks Snacks. You’ll love the quick health tech content this week.
What’s different? Per your feedback, all “snack-like” content is front-loaded so you can easily skim through the punchiest, most relevant topics you’re interested in. Any deeper commentary comes after so you can easily read the in-depth topics that interest you most. Here’s what we’ll cover:
🥑 Snacks of the Week - next-gen wearables, smart clothing, & more
📡 Capital Raise Radar - a business incentivizing living healthier lifestyles and a category-defining femtech company
🏥 Healthcare - 3 interesting reads on Healthcare
Weekly Musings
🎙️ Pod of the Week: Connected, Gamified Rower & Fitness Trends
💡 Big Ideas - happiness & free time
💥 Spark Moment - asking questions & mirror effect at sunset
#1 🥑 Snacks of the week (6)
Apple Is Working on iPhone Features to Help Detect Depression, Cognitive Decline- this mental health / cognitive-decline research shows Apple’s health unit is looking at features for the company’s flagship product, in addition to its watch’s health monitoring features.
Next-Gen Wearables Will Be ‘Transformative’ as they evolve from smartwatches to more “smart clothing” solutions, seamlessly gathering more detailed data. This article covers the 3rd generation of wearables:
Get Ready for the Smart Clothing Revolution - a quick read exploring the future of smart, tech-integrated connected apparel
*The Rise of chatbots in healthcare* - featuring the top 12 Health Chatbots
*How AI and Blockchain Can Help Ease Interoperability Between Healthcare Systems*
*Additional commentary below in Healthcare section*
📡 #2: Capital Raise Radar Snacks
The quick bullets from 2 venture raises, with more details below:
Paceline raised a $29.5M Series A earlier this summer- the retail health and wellness platform that incentivizes consumers to live a healthy lifestyle.
Flo, #1 OB-GYN-recommended app for period and cycle tracking Announces $50 Million Series B Funding Round; Bringing Company to $800M Valuation
2.1 Paceline’s unique business model
Paceline’s mission is to bring the worlds of physical and financial rewards together by incentivizing people to be active with curated offerings from health and wellness brands that yield healthier people and more valuable customers to partners of all kinds.
Research suggests that the majority of chronic diseases could potentially be avoided through changing lifestyle factors.
We’ve known this. I think it’s great that Paceline’s innovative business model is attempting to motivate people to take care of themselves by reinventing traditional financial services models.
Thinking Bigger - health and wellness reward credit card?
Paceline’s vision is to leverage retail health and wellness brands and financial services to become the ultimate payer of preventative health in society. With strong existing user growth and engagement, the next step towards this vision is the upcoming launch of a health and wellness rewards credit card, where cardholders will earn tailored, high value rewards for their physical activity in addition to their spending. Paceline aspires to position the card to make health and wellness more accessible to the masses, as travel reward products have done for travel over the last several decades.
2.2: Flo - OB-GYN app for period and cycle tracking
The year is 2021. Information has never been more accessible. Yet navigating the web and accessing credible health information is seemingly impossible at times.
Too often, people encounter misinformation when searching on the Internet for signs and symptoms of conditions, especially when it comes to taboo topics such as menstrual and sexual health
How can you trust what you read? What should you believe? Why do Flo’s 42M users come back? According to VP of Product, Cath Everett Maclean:
“Our users often come to Flo for period or ovulation tracking, and stay for the wealth of science-backed content, expert-led courses and accurate cycle predictions. We’re fortunate to partner with the top universities and conduct cutting-edge medical research. With this funding, we’ll be able to further democratize access to credible health information, helping people better understand their unique signs and symptoms on an even larger scale.”
We’re seeing a shift in startups addressing specific subsets of health conditions. Flo “prioritizes safety and keeps a sharp focus on being the most trusted digital source for women's health information.”. Across health tech companies, this strategy holds up. Similarly, Levels is positioning itself as the trusted source for metabolic health, a misunderstood area without consistent, credible information.
These startups can continue bolstering trust by leading with a deliberate content strategy: creating high-value, educational content and maintaining science-based content, meeting consumers where they are on all mediums.
#3 🏥 Healthcare
Behavior change cannot be prescribed.
Wearables and health tech progress are inspirational, but how much are these devices, systems, etc. actually helping users be healthier? How can we change behaviors? How can we create systems that incentivize better decisions?
I don’t have the answers yet, but here are a few developments that will help improve our healthcare systems ranging from the blockchain, interoperability, and chatbots.
The Rise of chatbots in healthcare - featuring the top 12 Health Chatbots
Over the past years, smart algorithm-powered, text-or voice-based interfaces have multiplied, and they are also taking their place in healthcare.
These talking or texting algorithms will likely become primary care’s first contact point. There’s a delicate balance to achieve as unanswered questions leave patients stressed or confused, but many questions don’t need answering from physicians. (revisit)
These chatbots can help ease the burden on doctors in primary care, help patients learn to take care of their health responsibly, and offer solutions for simpler medical issues through better organization of patient pathways, medication management, and first aid assistance.
The general idea is that in the future, these talking or texting smart algorithms might become the first contact point for primary care. Patients will not get in touch with physicians or nurses or any medical professional with every one of their health questions but will turn to chatbots first.
Technology has the potential to transform the way healthcare works for patients, but right now, interoperability is difficult to attain.
For a long time, we’ve pushed this rock, trying to move it and get healthcare systems to think about interoperability as more than just connecting internal clinical systems to support operations... Rather, it’s thinking about how to “free the data and get it into the hands of other organizations and people who can do interesting things with it." - Michael Ames, Senior Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences, SADA
Technology has the potential to transform the way healthcare works for patients, but right now, interoperability is difficult to attain.
When used in conjunction with AI, blockchain technology has the power to help practitioners and organizations work together without security risks. Because the blockchain represents a transparent, single source of information that cannot be changed, it can store data from multiple sources and create a harmonized picture of truth that different users can access without bias
To overcome the data silos and leverage AI to diagnose and treat patients, a massive collaboration between developers, academics, operators, drug researchers, and an “interwoven stack of technologies” is needed.
Data is the engine behind AI, but it’s also becoming the engine behind healthcare systems and how doctors diagnose and treat patients. If we can aggregate and translate vast amounts of data into streamlined workflows, AI can be used to efficiently diagnose and monitor patients, detect illness, accelerate drug development, and seamlessly run clinical trials.
#4 Weekly Musings
🎙️ Pods of the Week - 1 of this week’s listens
Listen to Tom Aulet, co-founder & CEO of Ergatta, the gamified connected rower maker that recently raised a $30M Series A discuss the future opportunity for gamified connected offerings beyond instructor-led, boutique classes.
I’m a firm believer in the power of daily fitness/movement and recognize how difficult this is to make a lasting habit. Because of this, I believe in Ergatta’s mission to make daily fitness achievable by turning it into a competitive game.
New business models such as gamified workouts can expand the fitness segment.
Game-based fitness & workout content, with intelligent software, allow for unprecedented personalization. Expect companies like Ergatta to create truly adaptive workout classes that are tailored to user’s exact skill level so that they’re constantly challenged yet still tasked with attainable workouts.
💡 Big Ideas - free time & happiness
When are we happiest? What’s the sweet spot for the amount of free time we have? The study/tweet below got me thinking about when I’m feeling most fulfilled and how it relates to my free time and time to follow creative pursuits.
In addition to the study’s very low correlation, (R^2=.003), the study’s cultural sensitivity is worth noting. I wonder and would expect this to skew heavily across different countries and cultures.
💥 Spark Moment of the Week
Ask more questions. Preferably open-ended ones.
Open-ended questions are wells of innovation - they force people to think.
Questions are powerful because they create change. They create transformation. They focus our thinking and open our minds to what’s possible.
A bit of a dramatic intro to this simple “spark moment”, but by asking my friend what they liked most about the sunset, I gained a new perspective that I’ll cherish for the thousands of future sunsets I hope to soak in.
9/10/2021 Daily Moment: Wrapped up a road-trip down to SoCal and watched a sunset by the Malibu beach. I asked my friend what their favorite part of sunsets was and was pleased to learn something so simple… yet new to me.
I learned about and now noticed the "mirror" effect that appears when the waves crash and were subsequently washed up. You could see a larger reflection of the sun reflected on top of the flatter water.
As the waves washed up into the shore, it would temporarily disappear, and I’d never previously appreciated this beautiful visual before.
✨Endnote
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Adam