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Why do Apple, Google and major IT companies seem so much interested by our health suddenly ? What are they planning to do with the data ? Just selling it ? (life insurance companies ?)

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> Why do Apple, Google and major IT companies seem so much interested by our health suddenly ?

I have come to the conclusion that some of the tech visionaries recently are actually motivated, on the bottom-most level, by doing Good - in the old-fashioned moral sense.

As far as I can tell, Elon Musk is firmly in this category. Recently I've started to believe that Larry Page and Sergey Brin also belong here. Sure, they have companies and profits and board meetings to worry about, and of course they don't mind having their egos pampered a bit, but their prime motivator appears to be improving the future of humanity on a large scale.

Not everyone is like that, however. In fact, the list is very, very short. I'm only willing to put these three names on it, so far. Most of the others are energized by more mundane reasons, and of course there's also a minority of plain old villains out there.

Sergey Brin? The guy who colluded with Steve Jobs and others to drive down the wages of his own employees? He's genuinely motivated by 'doing Good'?

No doubt they have their skeletons in a closet, somewhere. The biggest paragon of morality is bound to have hurt someone, at some point. The obverse is certainly true of the greatest villains, too.

After a while, you learn to let go of details, step back, and consider the big picture. How will this person go down in history? That's what really matters. So far I'm getting very good vibes from these guys, overall.

Just to get this straight, you are under the impression that actually doing documented and premeditated bad deeds is irrelevant, but 'vibes' are important to developing an opinion on someone's character?

Yes, it's not very nice to collude. On the other hand, were programmers get very good salaries. To some, maybe even Sergey, it might not seem like an urjent and critical moral issue,in the way that saving lives is.

If it's not an urgent and critical issue, then he would have just let it be, and would have let the free market for wages sort itself out. Instead, he actively sought to impair the ability of his own employees, the people he can most directly impact in life, to earn a living that was consistent with the intellectual capital they had spent years gaining, and all for the sake of his own personal gain. You guys can put as much lipstick on this pig as you want to, but what he did was truly shitty and not the action of a good person. Maybe he's changed, but I haven't heard an apology or anything (not that I'd expect to given the legal liability that would expose him to).

You've named three unbelievably wealthy people who you believe are motivated to Do Good. Which is Iron Man? Which is Batman? And more terrifyingly, which is Ozymandius?

I think we're clear (or at least the press is) on who is Iron Man in this bunch.

Batman is still pretty cool, in my book. I've been around the block, and I've learned that to ask 100% kink-free moral perfection from human beings is a fool's errand. Stomp a few people's faces for the eventual greater good is fine, if you don't do it too much. Not sure if I could find an equivalent in real life, though. Maybe Bill Gates? No, he's more like the ruthless merchant turned philantropist.

Ozymandias is some famous media moguls, along with a bunch of finance tycoons for good measure. It's a far more popular archetype.

Not to "do good", but to "do innovation" and thus build a legacy for themselves.

>And more terrifyingly, which is Ozymandius?

Would any real-life Ozymandias play up a massive personal brand like that?

Sergey Brin makes the list but not Bill Gates?

I'm sorry, I used to be a die-hard Linux desperado way back in the day, I must have some sort of mental block against Bill Gates.

Yes, I feel inclined more and more to add him, too, to the list. I hated his business tactics in the past, but his persona after retirement is nothing short of awesome.

The thing about visionary technologists and supervillains is that it's pretty hard to tell the difference before the maniacal laughter starts. Still, I fucking love supervillains, so it's all good to me.

Tech companies these days have such massive cash hoards and low costs of borrowing: It's inevitable that any market with potential (or less cynically, any big problem that has the potential to do a lot of good) would be attractive.

Healthcare in particular is a Big Problem that can be attacked from many, many angles, and technology has a role to play in all of them (perhaps more than most other fields, since healthcare is notoriously slow to adopt technology/change[1]).

[1] To be fair, this is in part due to a culture of conservatism which has served the field well in general.

For the same reasons that a healthcare startup is willing to take on arguably more risk and longer lead times to sales compared to any other industry -- there's so much human impact that can be made (and money at stake) that even a small dent in the healthcare space represents thousands of lives (and billions of dollars). A company like Google or Apple can make more than just a small dent.

From a macro perspective, the US has an aging population with the Baby Boomer generation entering older adulthood. Older population = greater health needs. Financially, it makes a lot of sense for a large company with vast resources like Google or Apple to make a splash in healthcare. And now's the time to do it.

They also have a distinct advantage over startups when it comes to introducing change from outside the healthcare industry. They can withstand the long sales cycle that it takes to get approvals without needing to balance fundraising in the process. Not to mention their unique ability to reduce the length of those sales cycles. They're more likely to win pilots and scale, and faster, because of their brand recognition -- a key competitive advantage when you're talking about a risk averse space like the healthcare industry. Not to mention, you typically need to get a lot of stakeholders together (providers, payers, patients) and align incentives in order to get anywhere. Large companies have a huge advantage here and can influence change relatively quickly. Healthcare institutions are constantly discussing the need for technological disruption (and have the budget / financial incentives to foot it), but by nature they are highly risk averse to any major changes. Large tech companies are uniquely positioned.

SOURCE: I once worked on a healthcare startup, have been through a healthcare startup incubator program, have friends who are doctors and healthcare administrators, am familiar with healthcare investor thinking, and am connected to a spectrum of healthcare startups (both successful and early stage).

Because it's a multi-billion dollar business. Why wouldn't everyone be interested in this?

This is the right answer. It's a huge market with massive regulatory and compliance barriers to entry.

It's probably ripe for disruption from a larger company that can foot the fixed costs to enter it.

There's a spectrum. On the one hand, you have the notion that tech companies actually have a competitive advantage in attacking health related issues from a data driven (or robotics?) perspective. On the other hand, you have hubris. I think it remains to be seen where on this spectrum SV falls, but I'd say right about here:

Competitive Advantage |----------------------x---------| Hubris

Why not? Would you prefer another SnapChat?

These are important, world-changing unsolved problems.

I think there's a critical mass of people in power at these companies hitting middle age and being confronted with their own mortality. (And the death of Steve Jobs probably reinforced the same notes in the minds of a lot of people.)

They want to be gatekeepers for services every single person needs their entire lives.

Because IT is stable ? no growth in computers, smartphones are going flat too. Almost anybody has access to wonderful tech and gadgets. No more money selling magic. What's left ? real things like health.

>Why do Apple, Google and major IT companies seem so much interested by our health suddenly ? What are they planning to do with the data ? Just selling it ? (life insurance companies ?)

I'm surprised that posts containing not even outright cynicism, but merely questioning where this data may end up and for what uses, are being downvoted to the extent they are.

If we're simply going to be unquestioning fanboys of Google et al. then why bother opening such topics for discussion? To slap backs and shout a mutual "hurrah"?

This is a wild guess on my part - It might also have to do with the hacker mentality that tends to see the human body as a machine to be tweaked and optimized.

They are run by rich people who want to extend their own lifespans by pushing forward the top tier of what is possible in healthcare.

People are interested in their health. The people that work at these companies, and the people that use their products.

Because health care is a huge business.

I think it's(health) is a major concern of the Founders as well. You get the money. You get the right girl--sometimes.(A lot of these guys still rely on Hookers--paid in one way or another. You start to eat better--sometimes. You start to think about what you can't buy; the inevitability if death is the last line of code! "But I will fix that too?" My own concern for my cancer risk is two fold--I worry I drank too much in my younger days, and I didn't spend enough time outside in the sun? Anyway, I wish Google well. If anyone from Google reads this, I'm tired of using Duckduckgo. I would go back to you guys--if you didn't track my every movement.

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