Headed down to Redwood City, to catch up with a friend.
"Over here is Box's new headquarters," she said, pointing to a open walled, multistorey monolith, rising above a suburban supermarket parking lot. "They IPO next month, so.... Once I got lost and found Sandisk around the corner. It's like driving through the Internet."
Ahh, Silicon Valley and its beguiling suburban charm. It is a long way from the rest of the world: its own ecosystem, which makes looking for the edge a little hard if you aren't immersed in the action.
So, I'm here to learn where the edge is in neurological health solutions, both software, device and services. It's partly because my unique career has provided experiences in neurological surgery, business operations and IT market analysis. It is also because it is one of the hottest areas to come in the healthcare IT market. It also helps that I will then join the Abundance 360 mentoring circle and be part of Singularity University's kick off in LA in late January.
The "systematic disruption" of technology through the field of health has a beautiful double meaning: not only has it thoroughly revolutionized the way we practice medicine (remember when the only way to see a film was to fumble through the archive boxes, one by one?), speeding up and informing (?well) our decision processes. Technology is also moving through each system of the body. We see heart monitors on chests, then wrists, then ears, then woven into shirts.... We have musculoskeletal splints then crutches, then prostheses and exoskeletons. Now we can even wire it into the spinal cord.
The challenge with the brain? That we don't know what we don't know. The majority of the anatomy and physiology of the heart has been well documented for over 200 years. Neurosurgery as a specialty has been around for about half as long as that and as recently as three years ago we accepted that it really did have a lymphatic (or glymphatic) system to explain what it did with all its metabolic wastes.
So, neurological-oriented innovations stands as the Great Challenge because of the nature of the organ, what man has been able to comprehend of it and the complexity of its utility beyond the structure and function we can discern (the role of the mind, for example). Think of the possibilities!!
Looking forward to meeting as many companies passionate about neurological technology, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, EEG devices, virtual and augmented reality companies... Come one, come all. Maybe we can crack this code together.
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