The importance of EQ and collaboration in innovation

Greg Satell

Posted on 23/02/2017 by Idea Spies

 

In the late 1960’s, Gary Starkweather had a serious spat with his boss.  As an engineer in Xerox’s long-range xerography unit, he saw that laser printing could be a huge business opportunity. His manager, however, was focused on improving the efficiency of the current product line, not looking to start another one.

The argument got so heated that Starkweather’s job came to be in jeopardy. Fortunately, his rabble rousing caught the attention of another division within the company, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which wasn’t interested in efficiency, but inventing a new future and they eagerly welcomed Starkweather into their ranks.

Within a decade, Xerox’s copying business declined sharply, but the laser printer took off and soon became the firm’s main source of revenue. In effect, the work that was squelched in one culture, thrived in another and saved the company. We tend to think innovation is about ideas, but it depends on people even more. Here’s how you create an innovative culture.

1. A Focus On Problem Solving

When you think about an innovative culture what probably first comes to mind is a bunch of fast moving hipsters guzzling down energy drinks and pulling all-nighters, pausing only to play a quick game of foosball or frisbee. Or maybe Steve Jobs on stage with a devilish grin just before he wows the audience with “one more thing…”

Yet in researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that very few of the organizations I studied looked like that. Some were fast moving startups, but most of the successful ones were led by executives that were mature and thoughtful, not brash or erratic. Others were large corporations and world class labs that tended to be fairly conservative.

The one thing I found in common in every fantastically innovative place I looked at was a disciplined passion for identifying new problems. Unlike most organizations, which are content to struggle with everyday issues, the enterprises I studied had a systematic method of finding new problems to work on that would take them in new directions.

The approaches vary considerably. IBM creates grand challenges, like building a computer that can beat humans at Jeopardy. Experian set up a Datalabs division to find out what’s giving its customers “agita” and launch new business off the solutions they build. Google’s “20% time acts as a human-powered search engine for new problems.

We tend to think of innovation as fast moving, but the truth is that it usually takes 30 yearsto go from an initial discovery to a measurable impact. So the “next big thing” is usually about 29 years old. If you want to innovate effectively, don’t chase the latest trend, find a problem your customers will care about and solve it for them.

2. Create Safe Spaces

In 2012, Google embarked on an enormous research project. Code-named “Project Aristotle,” the aim was to see what made successful teams tick. They combed through every conceivable aspect of how teams worked together — how they were led, how frequently they met outside of work, the personality types of the team members — no stone was left unturned.

However, despite Google’s nearly unparalleled ability to find patterns in complex data, none of the conventional criteria seemed to predict performance. In fact, what they found mattered most to team performance was psychological safety, or the ability of each team member to be able to give voice to their ideas without fear of reprisal or rebuke.

Interestingly,  highly innovative teams can be safe for some ideas, but not for others. For example, two of the scientists at PARC, Dick Shoup and Alvy Ray Smith, developed on a revolutionary new graphics technology called SuperPaint. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit in with the PARC’s vision of personal computing, the two were ostracized and eventually both left.

Smith would team up with another graphics pioneer, Ed Catmull, at the New York Institute of Technology. Later they joined George Lucas, who saw the potential for computer graphics to create a new paradigm for special effects. Eventually, the operation was spun out and bought by Steve Jobs. That company, Pixar, was sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion.

Xerox PARC is now a shadow of its former self. As it turned out, anything that didn’t have to do with the researchers’ vision for the future had no home there. So if you want to innovate consistently for the long term, you need to create a “safe space” for all ideas, not just the ones that fit with your initial mission.

3. Foster Informal Networks

In 2005, a team of researchers decided to study why some Broadway plays become hits and others flop. They looked at all the usual factors, such as production budget, marketing budget and the track record of the director, but what they found was that what was most important was informal networks of relationships among the cast and crew.

If no one had ever worked together before, both financial and creative results tended to be poor. However, if the networks among the cast and crew became too dense, performance also suffered. It was the teams that had elements of both — strong ties and new blood — that had the greatest success.

The same effect has been found elsewhere. In studies of star engineers at Bell Labs, the German automotive industry and currency traders it has been shown that tightly clustered groups, combined with long range “weak ties” that allow information to flow freely among disparate clusters of activity results in better innovation.

So before you embark on your next reorganization designed to “break down silos” you might want to think about how informal relationships develop within your enterprise. The truth is that innovation is never about nodes. It’s always about networks.

4. Promote Collaboration

All too often, we think of innovation as the work of lone geniuses who, in a flash of inspiration, arrive at a eureka moment. Yet the truth is that research shows that the high value work is done in teams, those teams are increasing in size, are far more interdisciplinary than in the past and the work is done at greater distances.

Just as importantly, there is growing evidence that it is crucial how these teams function. A study done by the CIA performed after 9/11 to determine what attributes made for the most effective analyst teams found that what made teams successful was not the attributes of their members, or even the coaching they got from their leaders, but the interactions within the team itself.

In another, more wide ranging study, scientists at MIT and Carnegie Mellon found that high performing teams are made up with people who have high social sensitivity, take turns when speaking and, surprisingly, the number of women in the group. There is also a wealth of research that shows diverse teams outperform more homogenous units.

So the evidence is both abundant and clear, if you want to make your organization more innovative, don’t go searching for hard driving “A” personalities spouting off big ideas and interrupting others, but rather seek diversity, empathy and to network your organization so that teams interact more effectively.

As MIT’s Sandy Pentland has put it, “We teach people that everything that matters happens between your ears, when in fact it actually happens between people.”

by Greg Satell

Innovation Advisor, Author and Speaker

 DigitalTonto

An earlier version of this article first appeared in Inc.com

Google has shipped 10M Cardboard VR viewers, 160M Cardboard app downloads

BY INGRID LUNDEN

Feb 28, 2017

Google is putting a lot of its virtual reality focus right now on its Daydream VR framework, but today Amit Singh, the company’s VP of VR, also gave an update on its earlier (and still active) effort in the area, Google Cardboard. He said that to date the company has shipped 10 million Cardboard VR sets, and it has seen 160 million downloads of Cardboard apps, with 30 individual Cardboard apps downloaded at least 1 million times each.

The comments were made on stage at Mobile World Congress at Barcelona, where Singh is speaking today (see picture above).

It’s an interesting milestone and shows that even while Google is pushing the next iteration of its VR efforts with Daydream to hit a wider range of devices and users — Daydream-compatible mobile handsets can be turned into VR headsets (when inserted into an accessory to mount it on your head) — the very pared-down, free first version Cardboard continues to show momentum. It was only in July of last year that Google said it had hit 5 million headsetsshipped since it first launched in 2014.

He also gave an update on Daydream, which Singh described as a “more immersive” experience than Cardboard and the result of what Google has learned from the first product. He said people using Daydream-ready phones/headsets are watching about 40 minutes per week. There are now six phones and 100 Daydream apps to explore on the market, he noted.

Well over 50% of all content consumption on Daydream is of YouTube content, Singh said, and it’s going to put more focus now on providing more premium (professional not necessarily paid) content on the platform in the form of series.

“You will start to see significant series coming out this year,” Singh said. He said that there have been over 1 million views of an NFL series in the U.S. Now in Europe Google has partnered with Sky VR, he announced today, a VR initiative from Europe’s dominant pay-TV provider.

“Sky VR is coming to Daydream,” he said. Initial content will include both primary films and original series, as well as supplementary programs, Singh noted. Some will be a red carpet show for Star Wars, clips from the Jungle Book, and Sky Sports experiences with personalities like David Beckham and sports like Formula One. Other premium content partners on the Daydream platform include Hulu, Netflix and HBO.

In a separate blog post published after Singh’s stage appearance, Google also noted some new content for Tango, Google’s augmented reality platform. The Sims app now will let you travel around the Sims house; the Chelsea Kicker app will make a Chelsea football player appear in front of you for a selfie or to show you a trick with the ball; and (perhaps less exciting and more Minority Report) an AR app from the WSJ will let you visualise stock trends in midair.

I’ll be speaking to Singh later today and will update this post with more of his thoughts.

Updated with AR detail from blog post made public after initial story was published.

10 Personal Innovation Lessons of Gijs van Wulfen

 

Written by

Gijs van WulfenInspiring you to master innovation 

Yes, innovation is extremely difficult. That's why I love it actually. My personal mission is to simplify innovation so you, your colleagues and/or clients will be able to master innovation yourself.

"How can I become a successful innovator?" is the most asked question to me offstage, after a keynote on innovation. Most people are well aware that their organisations are not able to stand still in this fast paced business environment. But a lot of people don't know how to start innovation. Most of them are afraid to fail, ending up by doing nothing, until doing nothing is a bigger risk.

That's why I like to share with you ten personal innovation lessons to inspire you to become a successful innovator.

Lesson 1: "Organisations frustrate their most innovative employees." - Organisations are rules by best practices, procedures and regulations, which is completely understandable as they want to be the best in class in their current product-market combinations. As innovator you are continuously tweaking present offerings and coming up with completely new concepts. The unfortunate thing is that they hardly ever fit present best practices, procedures and regulations. Sometimes you get the impression that everybody within the company tries to stop you, instead of giving you a helping hand. Companies really know how to frustrate their most innovative employees. Innovation is always a struggle. My personal lessons learned was that I just needed 'to learn to love the struggle'. That helped a lot.

Lesson 2: "Most Managers behave like dogs. They bark at what they do not know." - Or should I say "Most people...."? How do you behave yourself when someone reaches out to you to tell a great new idea? Do you really listen? Do you ask questions to understand what it's really about? Do you postpone your own judgement? No. Most of us don't. Something new never fits in our known patterns and routines. When dogs see something they don't know the get frightened and start to bark. We humans are so alike :-).

Lesson 3:"Managers say yes to innovation only if doing nothing is a bigger risk." - The chance that a front-end innovation project actually becomes a success on the market is one out of seven. Why should a top manager say yes to innovations with a high risk as long as low-risk line/brand extensions will still do the job? He or she won't. No, most managers say yes to innovation if doing nothing is a bigger risk.

Lessons 4: "A manager want to control innovation and that's where it ends. A leader leads innovation and that's where it starts." - Managing innovation in a controlling way will never work, because per definition real innovation is a high risk venture with many uncertainties. If you manage real innovations like 'a normal project', it will never work. Getting an idea to the market takes a long time and the process is full of iterations. Trying to control it, in a conventional PRINCE-like structure will kill it for sure.

Lesson 5: "Real innovative leaders give both focus and freedom." - Leading innovation by giving both focus and freedom works much better. As leader make sure that your teams focus on the right strategic priorities and know what you expect from them. On the other hand, to be effective, you must give them freedom. Freedom to do it in an unorthodox way, with unorthodox partners, which keeps the passion of your innovators high.

Lesson 6: Innovation is not a person or a department. It's a mindset." - When you outsource innovation to a person or to a department most of the times nothing materialises. Innovation affects the total internal value chain, and everybody involved. It's all about creating an innovative mindset: an way of thinking open to the world around you, which sparks new ideas and gives you energy to to take action.

Lesson 7: "You can invent alone, but you can't innovate alone." - How many people do you need in your organization to get a new concept from idea to market launch? Right. A lot of people. You can come up with an idea on your own. but you need a lotto colleagues to develop it, to produce it, to do the logistics, to do the sales and of course do the invoicing for it. So connect your colleagues in your innovation project from the start. We they are co-creators they will be the strongest supporters.

Lesson 8: "The best innovators are need seekers." - Need Seekers, such as Apple and Procter & Gamble, make a point of engaging customers directly to generate new ideas. They develop new products and services based on superior end-user understanding. Studies confirm that following a Need Seekers strategy offers the greatest potential for superior performance in the long term. Need seeking is essential, because a good innovation is a simple solution to a relevant customer need.

Lesson 9: "Think outside the box and present your idea inside the box otherwise nothing happens." - Of course you are expected to break patterns. And originality helps. But when you present your idea it is wise to keep in mind that the rest of the organization is still as conservative as ever. Your senior management might praise you for your creativity. But, will they buy the idea and give you the resources to develop it after seeing a movie, a mock up or a flash mob? I have my doubts. Don't bring them ideas, bring them business and growth potential!

Lesson 10: "If there's no urgency, innovation is considered as playtime." - Most people in your organisation focus on the business of today. As, innovation will only pay off tomorrow. A lot of companies consider innovation as 'nice to have', although they will hesitate to said this out loud. it's considered by many executives as playtime, as long as there's no urgency. That's why in cost cutting programmes innovation will be one of the first activities to be killed.

I wish you lots of success on your personal innovation journey. Please share your own innovation lessons below, as a comment.

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Do you want to improve your personal innovation skills? Check out this hands-on training April 2017 in the proven FORTH innovation method. http://www.forth-innovation.com/training/ 

To read more from Gijs on LinkedIn, please click the FOLLOW button above or below.

picture credits: flickr.com - creative commons. Thanks you: Suncop8ted, Christopher Lance, Dermot O Halloran, Tom Conger, remi DU, David, Wiedz, Mobile Engineers, Hilde Sjkolberg, Gem66, Garett LeSage, Petras Gagilas, Adam Swank, Sarah G, Thomas Hawk for all your wonderful pictures.

Written by

Gijs van WulfenInspiring you to master innovation 

The Robots are coming - are our jobs safe?

 

Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. But which white-collar jobs will robots take first?

First, we should define “robots” (for this article only) as technologies, such as machine learning algorithms running on purpose-built computer platforms, that have been trained to perform tasks that currently require humans to perform. With this in mind, let’s think about what you’ll do after white-collar work. Oh, and I do have a solution for the short term that will make you the last to lose your job to a robot, but I’m saving it for the end of the article.

1 – Middle Management

If your main job function is taking a number from one box in Excel and putting it in another box in Excel and writing a narrative about how the number got from place to place, robots are knocking at your door. Any job where your “special and unique” knowledge of the industry is applied to divine a causal relationship between numbers in a matrix is going to be replaced first. Be ready.

2 – Commodity Salespeople (Ad Sales, Supplies, etc.)

Unless you sell dreams or magic or negotiate using special perks, bribes or other valuable add-ons that have nothing to do with specifications, price and availability, start thinking about your next gig. Machines can take so much cost out of any sales process (request for proposal, quotation, order and fulfillment system), it is the fiduciary responsibility of your CEO and the board to hire robots. You’re fighting gravity … get out!

3 – Report Writers, Journalists, Authors & Announcers

Writing is tough. But not report writing. Machines can be taught to read data, pattern match images or video, or analyze almost any kind of research materials and create a very readable (or announceable) writing. Text-to-speech systems are evolving so quickly and sound so realistic, I expect both play-by-play and color commentators to be put out of work relatively soon – to say nothing about the numbered days of sports or financial writers. You know that great American novel you’ve been planning to write? Start now, before the machines take a creative writing class.

4 – Accountants & Bookkeepers

Data processing probably created more jobs than it eliminated, but machine learning–based accountants and bookkeepers will be so much better than their human counterparts, you’re going to want to use the machines. Robo-accounting is in its infancy, but it’s awesome at dealing with accounts payable and receivable, inventory control, auditing and several other accounting functions that humans used to be needed to do. Big Four auditing is in for a big shake-up, very soon.

5 – Doctors

This may be one of the only guaranteed positive outcomes of robots’ taking human jobs. The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new UN DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) report. In practice, if everyone who ever wanted to be a doctor became one, we still would not have enough doctors.

The good news is that robots make amazing doctors, diagnosticians and surgeons. According to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, IBM’s Watson is teaming up with a dozen US hospitals to offer advice on the best treatments for a range of cancer, and also helping to spot early-stage skin cancers. And ultra-precise robo-surgeons are currently used for everything from knee replacement surgery to vision correction. This trend is continuing at an incredible pace. I’m not sure how robodoc bedside manner will be, but you could program a “Be warm and fuzzy” algorithm and the robodoc would act warm and fuzzy. (Maybe I can get someone to program my human doctors with a warm and fuzzy algorithm?)

But Very Few Jobs Are Safe

During the Obama administration, a report of the president was published (it is no longer available at whitehouse.gov, but here’s the original link) that included a very dire prediction: “There is an 83% chance that workers who earn $20 an hour or less could have their jobs replaced by robots in the next five years. Those in the $40 an hour pay range face a 31% chance of having their jobs taken over by the machines.” Clearly, the robots are coming.

What to Do About It

In What Will You Do After White-Collar Work?, I propose, “First, technological progress is neither good nor bad; it just is. There’s no point in worrying about it, and there is certainly no point trying to add some narrative about the “good ol’ days.” It won’t help anyone. The good news is that we know what’s coming. All we have to do is adapt.

Adapting to this change is going to require us to understand how man-machine partnerships are going to evolve. This is tricky, but not impossible. We know that machine learning is going to be used to automate many, if not most, low-level cognitive tasks. Our goal is to use our high-level cognitive ability to anticipate what parts of our work will be fully automated and what parts of our work will be so hard for machines to do that man-machine partnership is the most practical approach.

With that strategy, we can work on adapting our skills to become better than our peers at leveraging man-machine partnerships. We’ve always been tool-users; now we will become tool-partners.”

Becoming a great man-machine partner team will not save every job, but it is a clear pathway to prolonging your current career while you figure out what your job must evolve into in order to continue to transfer the value of your personal intellectual property into wealth.

About Shelly Palmer

Named one of LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Technology, Shelly Palmer is CEO of The Palmer Group, a strategic advisory, technology solutions and business development practice focused at the nexus of media and marketing with a special emphasis on machine learning and data-driven decision-making. He is Fox 5 New York's on-air tech and digital media expert, writes a weekly column for AdAge, and is a regular commentator on CNBC and CNN. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com or subscribe to our daily email http://ow.ly/WsHcb

Facial Recognition is becoming a game changer

Fmgfear srticle from Bob Pritchard 

Facial recognition systems that can verify a person’s identity have been around for several years now with security cameras and criminal databases. 

Now with the rapid improvements to big data analytics and artificial intelligence, facial recognition software is about to become commonplace and change the way we live and interact with the world.

 

Consumers will be able to use facial recognition  to make purchases, book tickets and unlock doors simply by looking into a camera lens and letting the software make rapid simultaneous measurements of the face that’s as distinct as a fingerprint. 

This AI-powered facial recognition software will be more convenient, far more secure, and create new exciting apps and hardware.   

At a time of uncertainty it will also allow security forces to track and identify people with far more precision.

The latest facial recognition software from Baidu, China’s version of Google is currently being used by Didi, China’s equivalent to Uber, to allow customers to confirm the identities of their drivers and is being deployed in high tourism cities to provide ticketless access to attractions. And Chinese security officials are deploying the technology to hunt down criminal suspects by drawing from its national ID database as well as images collected from public security cameras that dot the country.

 It is the new applications that facial recognition is making possible that is exciting. When you combine facial recognition technology with deep learning, the AI technique that’s emerged over the last few years, what you get is facial recognition that’s good enough to identify people even when video of them is grainy,  if the video is shot at an odd angle or even pick one person in a crowd of a million people in times Square on New Years Eve.

This is one of the profound advancements and also the most disconcerting. With extreme accuracy, the new technology can take a blurry image and identify what parts of the image should be used to create the fingerprint-like facial profile. The results have been extremely accurate.

Deep learning is a relatively new form of artificial intelligence involving a network of complex algorithms that are loosely based on the neural networks of a human brain. It’s basically a very potent pattern recognizer that draws from an immense amount of data that enables computers to do things like automatically add accurate colors to black-and-white photos or visually translate the text of a restaurant menu snapped by a smartphone camera.

This technology has the potential to make consumer life easier with ticketless train rides and transactions that don’t require a form of laminated identification, it will have increasingly significant ramifications for privacy and state surveillance.

The risks to privacy and civil liberties are substantial with technologies like facial recognition that can be used to identify and track people covertly, even remotely, and on a mass scale, for example, identifying individuals at lawful protests. The public should be skeptical of any surveillance technology implemented for consumer convenience that builds a mass surveillance network the government can appropriate for intentions beyond the scope of the original purpose.

As facial recognition technology grows more powerful, it will also heighten privacy concerns. Like many emerging technologies that rely on collecting massive amounts of data, it will be up to the public and lawmakers to decide how far they want to compromise privacy in exchange for convenience.  

To be really effective, the government must have the trust of the public.   Unfortunately, we have people in some parts of the US who are stocking up on guns and ammunition to protect themselves from the government, as crazy as that sounds.   So we are a hell of a long way from trust.

So it all comes down to the core value of TRUST

8 Ways Technology Is Improving Your Health

BY KAREN REED WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2017

We hear all the time about how technology is bad for us. Since the introduction of computers, we spend more time sitting at a desk than moving around at work. We have created this sedentary lifestyle that is causing havoc in our overall life.

What if I were to tell you that technology has produced benefits? Would you believe me if I said that technology is good for your health?

Most of you wouldn’t look at first. Well, you may be able to think of a couple of ways that the computer has helped, but you are still stuck on all the negatives that ‘experts’ have shared in the past. The problem with the ‘experts’ is that they are only focused on the negatives. They haven’t looked at so many of the benefits.

So, that’s what we’ll do today. We’ll consider all the ways that technology improves our health. We’ll discuss just how it has boosted results in certain areas of healthcare and what it does for us daily.

Technology Is Everywhere in Medicine

Before we do move onto all the benefits, it’s worth discussing just how technology is used. It is found everywhere in medicine. Think about the x-ray machines, MRI scanners, and even the research equipment used daily.

There are people using it every day of the week to find cures to ailments, discover why diseases spread and creating ways to prevent the diseases. There are individuals performing tasks far more accurately than they ever did before, with keyhole surgery now a popular option for some of the most routine medical needs.

And the technology isn’t just in the hospital. It’s used in your own doctor’s office and even at home. It’s used to prolong life and create a better quality of life for those on around the clock care.

The improvements don’t just lead to better physical health. They support better mental health, which in turn improves the physical health. Technology improves connections and relationships, offering support to everyone.

We can’t get rid of technology. If we did, we would suffer greatly. Here are just eight ways that technology is improving our health and our lives.

It Pushes Us to Do More Activity

Sure, technology has led to us sitting more. And sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health problems. However, technology has also helped to push us to do more activity.

We just must take the examples of the Fitbit, pedometers, and apps that track our steps. They all encourage us to meet our daily targets—setting personal targets to get us to walk more and meet the goals that we know are realistic to us. While there is the goal to walk at least 10,000 steps a day, that just doesn’t seem realistic for many. The pedometers and smartphone apps give us more control.

The chances are that as we get closer to a goal, we’re going to work harder to achieve it. We see how we do daily and look for ways to improve the chances of meeting those goals. They don’t mean getting to the gym daily. They just involve getting out and doing more. Some can involve doing home workouts and even walk on the spot to increase our step count.

There isn’t much that we need to do to set up these pieces of technology. Most of them involve some type of phone app or computer software just to sign up and create free accounts. We sync devices, and we get to go off and work our ways to being healthier and fitter.

The devices also come with different settings. Some are just designed to count your steps. They’re basic items to get you to do a little more throughout the day. Those who want to increase the amount of exercise they do and track their heart rate will be able to get more advanced options. Some will have exercise modes, count stairs, count calories burned, and even monitor your sleep.

The aim for so many of these new devices isn’t just to improve your activity levels. They are there to improve your overall lifestyle. Devices are set to help you live a healthier and more fulfilling life, helping you monitor your sleep patterns and make sure you drink enough water throughout the day. There’s more to them than just improving one element of your life and making sure your whole body and mind are working together to create a better quality of life.

These apps and devices can also monitor your weight loss efforts. They help you stick within a healthy BMI, so you focus on protecting your heart health. You will feel better for it, knowing that you can keep yourself from accidentally going over regarding calories throughout the day or over a certain weight. Of course, being within a healthy weight range is essential to help keep yourself healthy overall.

These are all personal devices. There’s no major cost for them, with many of them available for less than $200. Some of the apps are completely free to download, so you don’t even need to spend a penny on technology to improve your health.

Better Ability for Communication Between Doctors and Patients

With technology being widely available, there are chances that everyone has some sort of access to doctor and health websites. These sites can create chat boxes and instant messengers, where real doctors and nurses can monitor communications. When a patient comes on with a question, the doctors and nurses can provide factual answers and share their thoughts and advice.

Better ability to communicate is essential for keeping the health protected. It helps to keep the questions over information online to a minimum and reduces the number of people queuing up in the hospital with fears they are dying. The people online can read the symptoms and share their beliefs based on them, helping to minimize worry.

Individuals who do need to seek medical help will be able to get to the hospital or their own doctor right away. They can take the transcript of the chats to aid with a discussion of the symptoms and working through the reasons for certain medical beliefs. They also have a better understanding of how doctors or nurses come to certain decisions.

Those who don’t need to seek immediate medical attention can reduce their anxiety over their health. This helps to improve the health since anxiety leads to stress and that leads to high blood pressure and other health problems!

People who avoid doctors fearing that they are wasting time can get confirmation that they need to get the help. That’s that fear of people thinking they are silly for their thought processes eliminated, so they have more confidence in discussing all their health problems with their doctor.

When chat boxes aren’t available, telephones have made it easier to communicate and talk to a genuine doctor or nurse. This is the case with many emergency medical phone numbers, who can then arrange out of hours’ appointment when the case is necessary.

Getting people seen immediately protects their health. It also helps to reduce a number of times they will need to visit a doctor and keep the waiting times down since the minor ailments are taken care of before they can turn into something major.

More Ability to Do Research into Problems

The internet has certainly opened the ability to research. We all tend to turn to Google, calling it Dr. Google at times. The search engine allows you to input your symptoms or ask questions about a certain symptom to find out all the ailments that involve them/it. People can look through a list of other symptoms to determine the chances of suffering from certain ailments.

This is useful when it comes to determining whether to speak to a doctor. An individual can get the basic information and use it to decide whether their condition needs immediate attention. They can also use that basic research to get onto the chat boxes to get the advice from real doctors and nurses, as mentioned above.

Those that already have a diagnosis can take to the internet to do their own research into it. This is especially the case for a condition that they haven’t heard of before or that could be hereditary. They want to find out future symptoms, especially if it is a condition that doesn’t have a form of treatment or cure.

Individuals can find out if there are natural remedies that they can try and talk to others with the same condition. They can follow blogs for people who have that same condition and are living with it. They get to hear about success stories with treatments and learn about support groups in the area. This is especially important for treatments that are either terminal or lead to a lower quality of living.

Those caring for people with certain conditions can also get some support and help. There will be support groups online for carers and advice for people who care for individuals 24/7. Suddenly, the world doesn’t seem as isolating, which can quickly help to improve the mental health. People have more confidence in their abilities and find someone who can listen to vents or problems without judgment and with full understanding—friends are good, but they’re not always able to be the most supportive.

It is important to use the internet sparingly. Unfortunately, it can also have the opposite effect and make the health worse. You spend all this time researching conditions and fearing the worst, and you end up with problems with anxiety. You can end up researching more than talking to a real doctor, hearing about the horror stories of other patients. It’s important to take a step away and look out for success stories and real doctors’ opinions to help balance out some of the negatives.

When you are on websites, you will also need to check where the information is coming from. Who writes it and is it checked by someone in the medical profession? Does the person write a personal blog really suffer from the same condition? People can write absolutely anything, and there is plenty of misinformation online.

There are reputable medical websites. They usually include links to official studies and reports to help you get all the medical information that you could need. They will consider both pharmaceutical and herbal remedies to help you save money and put your health first. Check the reviews and reputation of any website before you start looking through the information and start trusting it!

There Are Devices That Keep the Body Working as It Should

Some devices are created purposely to help promote a healthy body. They are placed inside or outside to help keep the body working as it should. There are also other types of treatments that cause reactions in the body to support organs and the overall health.

The pacemaker is just one that will come to mind for everyone. This is a device created for those who have heart problems. The pacemaker helps to send electrical currents into the heart to prevent it from suffering from spasms. This little device is a lifesaver for so many people. It keeps the heart pumping as it should, which will support the rest of the body.

This is one of those small devices that you will barely know that you have. It can be used on the young and the old to protect the heart and make sure it works exactly like it is supposed to. In one episode of Grey’s Anatomy, a 16-year-old girl was fitted with a pacemaker to stop seizures, which turned out to be a side effect of a heart defect rather than epilepsy.

The small electrical device is battery-less and powered by the heart’s rhythms. Those without it would live shorter lives and must restrict the things they do, as there will always be the risk of the heart’s natural rhythm and beat getting out of sync.

Pacemakers aren’t the only devices that help to keep the body working as it should. Bypass machines also help to sustain organ health while waiting for treatments or transplants. They are also used throughout surgeries to protect the health while undergoing some transplants and operations. For example, heart bypass machines are regularly used during some cardiac operations and for heart transplants. Without them, there is a higher risk of bleeding out and death on the operation table.

Bypass helps to change the flow of the blood. It isn’t just used for the heart and can be used for the kidneys for operations that involve the intestines, colon, and other organs around this area. Bypass helps to keep the other organs working as they should while going through the operations to ensure a fully healthy life afterward.

There is now technology that keeps organs working while they are outside of the body. This helps to keep organs working while they are in the middle of transplants, which is exceptionally important when it comes to heart transplants.

This is another side of medicine that was touched on in Grey’s Anatomy. Cristina looked after a heart that was in a box—the technology kept the heart pumping until the time came to place it into the recipient’s body. It is a very real side of medicine that is being adapted and improved. Without it, there would be people on the transplant list that would need to wait longer for a replacement. They could end up dying or others lower down on the list would lose out on transplants because they can’t be moved up.

The use of technology to keep organs alive outside of the body will also help to reduce the problem of long donor lists. While the donor organ may not be a match for anyone immediately or anyone within a hospital immediately, the organ can be kept alive while waiting for a recipient to become eligible.

But can’t organs be used without being ‘kept alive.’ There is the use of ice, and organs are sent around countries without being kept alive by a machine. However, there is a risk that the organs won’t work when they get into the recipient’s body. They have lost the blood flow during transition causing other problems. The technology eliminates that issue.

Without the advances in technology, there would certainly be people who are left without. The transplant list would grow longer, and people would remain on the lists until they die.

Better Treatment Options for Various Ailments and Diseases

It’s no secret that treatments have advanced in recent years to the point where some ailments are virtually unheard of. Vaccinations and various medical advances have completely eradicated the likes of smallpox and led to the point where polio is now less common and far more treatable.

Some of the advances have only come in the last few years, and are all due to technology. We’re able to do more research and test without the use of animals and humans. There are ways to create vaccinations and treatments without putting people at risk, increasing the chance of a better quality of life. Just look at how HIV treatments have changed since the disease was noted in the early 1980s. It is now at a point where the virus doesn’t have the chance to develop into AIDS.

There are treatments for small and major ailments. Even cancer patients have better life expectancies than they would have done in earlier years. There is the technology for earlier diagnosis and treatments to eradicate the cancerous cells. While not all is successful, there are certainly some positive steps—and that is all because of technology advancements.

Some of the treatments are to help keep the body working until a cure or transplant is possible. For example, dialysis is used by many patients waiting for organ transplants. Dialysis helps to remove the waste from the body when the kidneys will no longer do the work for them. This is an intermediate treatment option to keep someone alive while they wait for a kidney transplant.

Others will be on other machines and treatments while they wait for aliver, heart, and other transplants. Technology has helped to prolong life, allowing them the time that they need. Some technology has even helped them live some sort of life outside of hospitals, rather than be hooked to machines.

There isn’t just a physical benefit to these treatments. The benefits have helped to support the mental health. Being stuck in a hospital bed forever is boring and depressing. Patients start to worry about the bills that are mounting up and the loss of time with their friends and family members. When they are in a positive mindset, the patients are more likely to fight against the ailments that are keeping them tied down to machines. They are in a better state to accept transplants and focus on fighting infections and diseases. Their positive mindsets help the treatments work, and this is all because of the technology advancements.

And we can’t forget about the ongoing research. This isn’t just about the treatment options but how the viruses work and adapt. While there are vaccinations and treatments available, there is always something new that comes out. Viruses adapt to their environment to avoid being wiped out completely in some cases. They mix with other viruses or bacteria to create a far more superior virus.

Technology helps to assess when this happens. Scientists can locate the newly created viruses and get to work almost immediately on a cure. There is the ability to transform some viruses into cures and help to create vaccines and treatments that have never been heard of before. It’s because of technology that the medical field can keep adapting.

Better technology has also made scans clearly. People can get better angles and catch problems early. Doctors can perform surgeries and use treatments that were never possible, simply because they couldcatch conditions before they advanced too far.

To top all this off, technology has opened the chance of developing organs and valves. While Grey’s Anatomy is just a TV show, it does rely on the current medical research and ideas. There are studies into 3D printing organs and heart valves to help support the health and life of an individual. The printing would use a person’s own cells to reduce the risk of rejecting organs, improving life expectancy and treatment of conditions.

There is still a long way to go until all the research is finished. In fact, it will never be finished. However, technology is opening doors to improve the health in ways that wouldn’t have been imagined just 50 years ago,

Improved Prediction of Diagnosis and Life Expectancy

Ever wondered if you could get a disease later in life? Maybe you wonder if a current symptom is a sign that you could develop a condition. You could even wonder just how long you have left to live when you are diagnosed with a condition.

Technology has helped to improve the prediction process of a diagnosis. Doctors will have information all in one place and can see all the symptoms at the same time. They have formulas to work out averages of when a condition occurs.

You get this type of risk assessment, and doctors will be able to predict if you are more likely to suffer from a certaintype of disease or ailment.

We just must look at the pre-diabetes checks. You may have been told that you are a pre-diabetic. This doesn’t mean that you currently have it but that you have a high risk of developing it if you continue in the way that you are going. Before technology advances, you would have only found out about diabetes once you started suffering from it. There wouldn’t have been the warning signs to help you change your lifestyle to prevent it from occurring.

In some cases, you wouldn’t have even known that you have the side effects. You wouldn’t have known that you had a disease until is cause a serious medical issue and even death. Doctors didn’t have the ability to predict anything because it was so difficult to get all the information.

Technology has made it possible for information to be kept in one place, updated in real life. Once blood test results come back, they can be added directly to your file; a file that is visible by any doctor by looking up your own details. Your family doctor has your hospital records, even if the records have nothing to do with a current ailment.

While looking at all this information, doctors can see similarities and warning signs earlier. They can see symptoms that crossover and lead to specific conditions—similarities that could have been overlooked due to loss of paperwork or not having all the information in one place.

At the same time as predicting a condition, doctors can use technology to work out how long you must live. There are plenty of cases in history where individuals have lost out on events because they have been given a life expectancy that isn’t right. Doctors give people six months to live and then find out three years later that they are still alive and could have done some of the things they wanted. At the same time, people are given years to live, and then their health deteriorates within six months because the doctors got it wrong.

Technology has allowed for the creation of algorithms. Doctors can input certain figures and information into the algorithm to get the information that they need. There is more information stored about other patients with the same condition to help ensure that the algorithms got it right. There is just far more accuracy to help with the life expectancy prediction because of technology.

With better prediction, people aren’t just living healthier and changing their overall lifestyle. Their mental health is supported. Patients find that they can act and are more interested in doing so.

Gene mapping has also become a technological advancement to help with the prediction of conditions. Patients no longer need to have early symptoms to make changes to their lives. Doctors can look at the genes to determine if they are at a risk of developing certain health conditions.

This has become popular for some of the most damaging conditions for the whole family. People want to know if they have the genes that put them at a higher risk of breast cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.

Angelina Jolie is just one celebrity that stands out when it comes to this technological advancement. She found out that she had a high risk of developing breast cancer and decided to take preventative measures to avoid it by having a mastectomy. Many patients before her have had to wait until cancer has occurred and hoped there is a treatment, but she could prevent the heartbreak for her family and protect her health because of technology.

Cervical screening for women has improved thanks to technology. Researchers will see when cells are abnormal between tests to make sure that there are no earlier signs of cancer. While the cells could be abnormal for other reasons, patients get the help they need immediately to avoid lifelong and potentially terminal diseases.

Faster and More Accurate Diagnosis of Conditions

While the prediction side of diagnosis is improved, technology also improves the accuracy of a diagnosis. Like before, doctors gather all the information in one place and will be able to keep an eye on results more closely. They can also put together symptoms and signs sooner than before, meaning an earlier diagnosis for many people.

There have been many cases where doctors just haven’t had all the information. In some cases, the conditions are so rare that doctors haven’t even bothered considering them. Instead, individuals are treated for conditions that are more common or more believed to have. The treatments do nothing, and by the time they are diagnosed with the rightcondition, there is nothing they can do.

People lose out on time with their family due to a lack of diagnosis or incorrect treatment. They lose out because the diagnosis has just taken too long—and not because of inaccuracy for the doctors.

In some cases, the technology hasn’t been fast enough to get blood work back. Technology has been too poor to assess all the symptoms, or the waiting list is too long, so patients lose out. Scans aren’t clear enough, so earlier symptoms aren’t picked up in time.

This slowness of diagnosis means that people don’t get the treatments soon enough. Their conditions advance and may become untreatable and terminal. This is the case with some cancers, as it takes so long to get the diagnosis that the treatments spread.

The accurate diagnosis means more accurate treatments. There are cases where treatments can make a condition worse if it is used in the wrong way or has been given the wrong diagnosis. For example, some over the counter medications can make the chicken pox virus far more severe and cause hospital admission.

Technology Improves Recording of Information in Real Time

Many of the benefits mentioned above rely on an accurate and timely recording of information. There is no denying that recording of symptoms between doctors has led to issues of conditions not being diagnosed and the right treatment not being administered.

Before computers, doctors would write all the information on charts. They would document it through paperwork, and that paperwork would need to be sent to various doctors. If you changed family doctor, there was a chance of the information going missing. If you went to see a different doctor in between visits, such as at the hospital or a locum, you ran the risk of the information not being sent to your regular doctor.

Some key symptoms are often missed. It’s up to the patient to remember to share the previous symptoms with their regular doctor to make sure all the information is up to date.

Blood work information and other paperwork would take thetime to be sent through practices. Individuals were left waiting for phone calls for diagnosis and treatments, and we’ve already looked at how that could lead to problems.

Technology has made it better for the recording of information. This initially started with the use of larger computers. While paperwork would still be used, the information could be typed up, and doctors around the country could get the information and any symptoms. They could make a more accurate diagnosis.

However, this didn’t help when it came to immediate diagnosis needs. There were also issues with inaccurate reporting. Some doctors wouldn’t do their paperwork or would miss out things that patients said. Others who were trying to transcribe notes may not have been able to read handwriting, so elements were missing.

This is where technology continues to advance. Many doctors will now update the information on tablets and smart devices. They all have the software that allows for easier and far more accurate reporting. The information is updated in real time, meaning other doctors will be able to get the information later.

If you return, doctors will be able to see how often you are in. They will be able to look at previous visits quickly. This means they can spot any precursors or underlying problems, as we’ve already discussed above.

There is the ability for the software to alert doctors to a problem. Doctors may have set the wrong dosage for medication, or there may be an issue with crashing medication. Doctors can stop themselves in their tracks and make sure your health is put first.

The better recording also helps with communication between doctors and patients. Patients feel like their health is being put first, so they are likely to be more forthcoming. They don’t feel ignored or like certain symptoms are being dismissed.

There Are Two Sides to Technology

Technology has helped to improve the health. It will continue to do this as there are more advancements made.

There is no denying that technology can be bad. We are at a point where we sit more because we don’t have the need to go outside anymore. Socializing is possible online, and recreation is often spent watching TV shows and movies. ‘Experts’ tend to focus on all these negatives of technology, without really focusing on the ways that technology is helping us.

While a lot of the advancements have meant that doctors have it easier. These advancements have helped us as patients. We will find it easier to get a more accurate diagnosis, and the treatments are more likely to work. It’s easier to make changes to our lifestyle because technology has noted the warning signs that we are more likely to suffer from something if we stick to our current paths.

There are ways that technology helps us daily. Smartphone apps and small devices have led to the ability for us to track our health and any symptoms. Fitbit and pedometers track the steps that we take, encouraging us to do far more exercise than we usually would. Food tracking apps help us to keep our calorie intake under control or boost the amount of water that we drink. Symptom trackers make it possible to keep an eye on potential health problems.

We can also get in touch with doctors and nurses much easier. We no longer must pay a fortune to see our family doctor and clog up the waiting room, feeling like we are wasting someone’s time. Technology opens the doors to discuss symptoms online and get advice immediately. This could make all the difference in getting the treatment we need.

And it’s not just about the physical health. Technology opens the doors to getting the mental and social support when it comes to living with a condition or caring for someone. There are support forums online and places to go to do our own research. We feel far more control in life and with our condition, and we can focus on holistic approaches. A better mental health will help to improve our physical health since we have a better chance of fighting infections.

Don’t just write technology off. This is something that really can improve our lives and our health. It just must be used in the right way.