The Personal Computer revolution is evolving. Having shrunk down into a pocket-sized device we carry all the time and everywhere, it is about to evolve into a fundamentally new thing, the Personal Carer.
At the end of next week I will be flying to the USA (if it still exists as a constitutional republic) to help chair the HyperWellbeing conference in Mountain View, CA on November 14-16.
Many of you will have seen the first three articles I published from an interview with event founder Lee S Dryburgh (1, 2, 3). I never finished publishing that series as Lee had an epiphany midway that finally integrated all those thoughts captured way back in April.
The realisation was that not only was a major new industry forming, but also that it was unnamed, and the term that accurately captures this activity is Wellness as a Service. This is distinct from Digital Health, which is an optimisation of the institutional “sick care” model that waits for bodily failure to happen before (very profitably) intervening.
If you are involved in strategy or product development in any technology-related industry, then I recommend you read Lee’s recent article “The 3 Pillars of Wellness as a Service”. It proposes that the decentralised wellness industry is set to bypass the current centralised health care model in a way comparable to how “over the top” services transformed telecoms.
Furthermore, there is an “iOS and Android” moment where the core platforms form that define and control the future. These will control the allocation of the profit pool of the whole wellness ecosystem.
This aligns with the findings of my own independent research done under the guise of the Hypervoice Consortium. In particular, we identified that sensor revolution would be used to engineer feeling states and ethical outcomes. Wellness as a Service perfectly describes such a thing.
In our research, we identified the Guardian Avatar as a core technology platform, the “browser” for this augmented reality world. In how I personally see this in wellbeing terms, the Personal Carer is new ubiquitous Personal Computer platform.
There is a good case to be made that this will be a much larger industry than the current PC/mobile one, since human wellbeing is a bigger need than office productivity, search and lifestyle media. The next Microsoft or Google may well emerge from those speaking or in attendance.
This is a transformational change, and to miss it is comparable to failing to grasp smartphones or social media. Now the good news: as co-chair, I have two free tickets to give away. If you would like one, contact me at hwb@martingeddes.com.
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