Healthcare, Work and COVID-19

In conversation with June Angelides, Maren Bannon, Ingrid Odegaard and Lindsay Jurist-Rosner

COVID-19 has clearly heightened existing needs for change in many industries. Yesterday, in a webinar hosted by June Angelides of Samos Investments and Maren Bannon of January Ventures, we explored the trends accelerating in work and healthcare as a result of this ongoing pandemic.

We were joined by Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, founder and CEO Wellthy and Ingrid Odegaard, Founder and CPTO Whereby. Here is my attempt at capturing the inspired conversation that took us from leveraging video to drink in Tokyo, to driving social change and diversity through tech.

What struck me as both founders spoke of their story was the materiality of the impact their organisations have on their customer’s lives. Take Wellthy, founded out of a period in Lindsay’s life described as the “hardest, loneliest and most stressful” as she cared for her mother with MS. Before college, in her lunch break, in the evening, across weekends. Through democratising access to social workers through tech, they’ve been able to unlock this time, take away huge amounts of stress and allow people to be more present at work and at home.

Whilst recent events have dictated the need for a wholesale pivot to remote, Whereby have been remote-first from the start, and on a mission to enable people to work from anywhere. It comes as no surprise that Whereby has experienced a 10x increase in volume as more products leverage video in lockdown.

But what about stickiness in behaviour change? How are we seeing employers respond to the changing needs of their employees? How are healthcare systems adjusting and to what end?

Quick-Fire Emerging Trends | Future of Work

🏢 Business owners in Europe are seeing the productivity benefits of remote working and are expecting to make changes to policies and office usage

• >80% of those surveyed are considering changes to enable remote working
• 65% are considering down-sizing their offices

🌴 Employees see the productivity benefits of remote working and over half want remote flexibility after the pandemic

🔐 A different approach to security is required as technophobes come online using tools not originally intended for their use. An example of this is with video chat rooms — Whereby used to have open rooms as default and have since swapped

📹 In-person is pivoting to video, including but not limited to:

• Social workers using video to update families on the state-of-play with loved ones
• Drinking with friends in Tokyo
• Nursing homes integrating video into daily routines, connecting families
• Slow-adopter hospitals moving online for GP consultations as the pace of change in healthcare ratchets up to record levels
• Education moving online
• Viewing and buying historically view-only products, such as cars and property

Quick-Fire Emerging Trends | Future of Care-Giving

The phases of care-giving during coronavirus

🚑 COVID-19 has exacerbated poor care-giving infrastructure and has heightened a need to re-imagine delivery

• Before the pandemic we were seeing an ageing population, people living longer and increasingly complex healthcare needs emerge and it was starting to rear its head in the labour force
• Employers started to recognise the growing impact of care-giving commitments and with COVID-19, in a matter of weeks, the system’s ability to care fell through the floor
• Consider an old parent who relies on in-home care to get dressed, wash, eat, socialise and receive medicines. In COVID, the family may no longer be comfortable that a carer comes into the house and they’re left with arranging how they get meals, supplies, medicines and physical support to the parent

🚲 The emergence of virtual assisted living, as new start-ups emerge to sit alongside existing companies to meet (close to) a full spectrum of needs

• Basic examples would be meal delivery, subscription medicine, social connectedness, care consultation and therapy

💪 Employers recognise the need to step-up in supporting their teams with complex care-giving commitments, including parenting, whilst confronted with a crowded digital health landscape

• Wellthy has seen a 50% increase in employers seeking their help as care-giving takes its place in the employee benefits limelight

🙌 Offering effective care-giving support to employees has has been shown to play a big role in helping attract more women into the work-force

🏃 When families are navigating a health crisis, they’re often looking for the shortest path to resolution, not necessarily the most engaged

• Wellthy found that customers didn’t want video embedded in their product, but instead wanted pace of delivery

Tips on Leading a Team Through COVID-19

A common thread for Lindsay and Ingrid as they continue to support businesses and individuals in navigating the crisis was the importance of team. What did they have to say about things leaders can do to build morale, stay connected and maximise productivity?

1. Check-in regularly with the team as a whole, through daily stand-ups
2. Engage individuals, tuning into their mental health and individual situation
3. Continue to provide visibility to the whole team of how the business is doing, through town-halls
4. Set up an appreciation channel in Slack, to recognise team-mates and share customer testimonials
5. Every week is different; keep listening, keep iterating

As the session closed, we alighted on perhaps the most important topic of all, diversity and inclusion in tech. There’s a lot of amazing content out there exploring these topics, for example here, here and here, but a few statements resonated with me…

• There are under-served communities in which tech is underutilised and could play a big role
• Without a diverse team, you don’t see all the problems that need solving
• A diverse team solves more problems, better

P.S. Kudos to Whereby for offering free access in the US, in aid of supporting conversations around race and helping drive social change.

With great interest comes great Medium volume… there’s a lot out there on the future of work and health, but here are a couple of sources I recommend:

• There’s perhaps no better place to start than Pietro’s capture of the Future of Work eco-system — also on twitter
• Gian Seehra of Octopus Ventures, part of the Future of Health pod, has been posting under #healthhighlights
• For an expansion on funding activity in digital health more broadly, check out Rock Health, a digital health focused fund
• Climate change and energy transition are threaded throughout the change we’re seeing in work and health. Tommy Leep is one of the best out there, bringing clarity to this challenging topic. You can find him on twitter here, and his new blog here

Thanks to June Angelides and Yvonne Bajela for reviewing drafts.