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The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Sterile, isolating, and stressful: Todays hospitals can kindle deep discomfort. Because they must be designed adequately for everyone, theyre designed perfectly for no one. So, what would our healthcare experience look like if physical hospitals were to disappear altogether? Artificial intelligence that is generative, predictive, and integrated, combined with the power of edge computing in every background device, will transform our very notion of hospitals. Healthcare will become a lifestyle so seamlessly woven into our daily experience that it will be invisible. Why is this the future of healthcare? The trends are already apparent: Evolving economics: As baby boomers transition to Medicare, millennials, Gen X and Gen Z are emerging as the primary healthcare consumers. These groups place an emphasis on convenience and personalization, and this social shift is influencing how we access care. Modern living: Biometric data collection is being increasingly integrated into our homes and daily routines, and predictive AI is streamlining diagnostics and preventing diseases. Converging technologies: Healthcare delivery has traditionally required specialized devices for every test and procedure, but the limitations of cost and size are fading. Advances in computation will converge functionalities, revolutionizing the patient experience in the process. Strategies for success In light of these trends, my firm has recently explored strategies for success in a changing healthcare landscape. They reflect our belief in a gradual transition toward decentralized healthcare and the integration of AI technology, celebrating our gradual societal progression towards an improved future, rather than a utopia that appears overnight. Here are some of these strategies. Lean into wearable technology. Soon, health data will be paired with pattern-recognition AI to identify and predict all risk factors for disease. This is a future inflection point where almost all healthcare becomes preventative medicine. For example, instead of learning about our heart disease after a cardiac event, AI will accurately warn us of our impending heart attack decades before it happens. Treat mental health as a community endeavor. The human body emits numerous indicators of psychological stress: elevated heart rate, tense muscles, and insomniawhich can be read by advanced biometric devices like an open book to our minds. Combined with large language model and diffusion model AI, a radical change in behavioral health could be at our fingertips. With AI-driven behavioral medicine available anywhere, anytime, communities could invest in public infrastructurelike augmenting parks to combine mental health with public green spaceto increase accessibility and fight social stigma. Repurpose obsolete infrastructure: By 2051, gas stations may be obsolete, and diagnostic equipment that is expensive today will be cheaper, smaller, and more powerful. Repurposing existing gas stationsand other outdated infrastructureinto neighborhood health stations could efficiently disperse essential health services throughout communities. Create personalized care environments: Unbound by location, cost and data availability, we can enjoy more personalized healthcare. For example, combining a labor and delivery room with augmented reality will make birth more comfortable by bridging the personal environment of a home birth with the medical sophistication of a specialty clinic. Floor-to-ceiling digital screens that respond to cortisol levels to create a calming atmosphere while displaying critical health information would have positive health impacts and improve patient satisfaction. Integrate diagnostic screening into the home: Households will become data collection centers and bathrooms can become labs of the future by integrating AI into existing buildings. For example, imagine household appliances that track the type of food you keep on hand as a marker of your overall health or screen your biowaste for signs of sickness in real time. Your own digital health avatar will be updated every time you cook a meal or brush your teeth. Today, a visit to the hospital entails finding a place to park in a busy lot, picking the right door to enter, and winding your way through confusing corridors past services you dont need, and ride elevators with people who cough without covering their mouths. Designers and architects have an opportunity to design a better way of doing things. Its a safe bet the future of healthcare will be a messy evolution of technology, culture, and economy. Markets are demanding more personalized on-demand service, technology is getting smaller and cheaper every day, and AI continues to advance. As designers, we believe this leaves us free to envision healthcare first and foremost as experiences rather than buildings or places. By embracing solutions that are opportunistic and incremental, we can create a future where healthcare is invisible and omnipresent. As we move into a future where technology will diminish the constraining power of location, cost and data, designers must resolve to increase our commitment to human flourishing. We must work together to deliver healthcare that delights. Mike Sewell is director of innovation at Gresham Smith.
Category:
E-Commerce
Which came first: the up-for-grabs blame over inflation or the meme about it? Either way, both have lately caused a stir on social media, where news about rising economic anxiety is now often yoked to three cheeky little words: Trump take egg. One of the first major political memes to emerge on Bluesky in the Trump 2.0 era, Trump take egg, is a pithy, grammatically fraught way to assign ownership over a leading economic hardship. It can be found accompanying photos of empty store shelves, astronomically high prices, and signage about egg rationingthe kind of photos that haunted Bidens entire inflation-ravaged presidency. Egg-ception The idea for the meme hatched with Daytime Emmy-winning editor for TV and film Michael Tae Sweeney, who made the first recorded Trump take egg post on February 4. Sweeney got the inspiration for it not online but out in the wild, where he witnessed firsthand the sweeping panic over rising egg prices. During a weekday morning trip to a Costco in Southeast San Diego, he noticed the vibes were off as soon as he walked through the door. Every single cart besides mine already had two cartons of 60 eggs in it, the most you were allowed to buy in one trip, he recalls. I bee-lined to the dairy section and was lucky to get some of the last eggs available that day. Other guys were pulling out their phones to take pictures of the empty egg case. It felt like it was all anyone wanted to talk aboutthe cashiers, the other grocery shoppers, my neighbors, the security guards at my kids’ daycare. That was weeks ago, and it’s only gotten worse since then. Indeed, egg prices have soared over the past few weeks, as farmers have had to kill more and more of their chickens in an effort to contain an ongoing outbreak of avian flu. The average wholesale price for a dozen large white eggs broke the $8 threshold on Thursday, a new record, up from $6.55 on January 24. Although it may scan as goofy, Trump take egg is an organic, free-range rallying cry, holding the presidents feet to the fire for his lapsed pledge to bring down food prices on Day Oneas he attempts to shift blame for it again and again. The message is starting to spread too. Not only has Trump take egg taken over Bluesky, where theres a dedicated account reposting some of its usage, its migrated to X and has also begun to hit TikTok. A meme takes flight Though the bird flu outbreak may have preceded Trumps term, some official acts on his watchin particular, the Department of Government Efficiency accidentally firing the USDA workers tasked with curbing bird flulikely did not help matters. Because the meme caught fire during a series of weeks in which egg prices soared, social media users now had a shared vocabulary to call out Trump for firing those workers in real time. And though Sweeney has played ringleader to his own creation, posting it alongside egg news as often as possible, Trump take egg quickly took on a life of its own. Within days, random Bluesky users began tagging him in replies to their posts about eggs (and who took them). Some even started using the same cadence to assign blame for other consequences of Trumps presidency, posting comments such as Trump cause traffic after the president sought to end New York Citys congestion pricing program earlier this week. The message seems to be resonating because it applies a refreshing light touch to a serious issue. So far, a lot of political and financial news in 2025 has had a bleak aura for many Americans, and tends to hit social media with doomsday gravity. Slapping Trump take egg on an entire segment of current events, though, has the disarming effect of wearing Groucho glasses with a doctors smock. It also helps keep attention and ownership on a pressing issue during a chaotic time. Americans are angry and confused by the high price of eggs, understand it’s wrong, and understand that, on some level, Trump and the incompetent people running the country are responsible for it, Sweeney says. Being able to express all that real emotion in a tight three-word slogan just makes it easy for people, even if the slogan’s broken grammar is a little silly. Although for now, the message is mainly restricted to left-leaning Bluesky, the sentiment behind it seems to be taking hold all over. A new poll from the Washington Post and Ipsos released on Thursday shows 53% of Americans disapprove of Trumps handling of the economy, his worst economic numbers since 2017. Another poll released the same day, by CNN and SRSS, reveals 62% of respondents say the president has not gone far enough in trying to reduce prices. Despite Trumps efforts to deflect blame, it may now be harder than ever to wipe the egg off his face.
Category:
E-Commerce
Siri Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Iris Bohnet is a professor of business and government at Harvard Kennedy School and co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program. Whats the big idea? Fairness is not merely a choice; it is a way of moving through the world. For life and work to exhibit more fairness, people need to embed fair behavior into everyday choices, routines, and systems. Everyone can show up in ways that allow for a diversity of people to be seen, heard, and valued at the table. Below, co-authors Siri and Iris share five key insights from their new book, Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results. Listen to the audio versionread by Siri and Irisin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Fairness must be embedded in our systems. At some hotels, room key cards both unlock doors and control the lights. This little bit of technology makes it more likely that the lights are off when leaving the room. This is our vision for fairness as well. We want to embed it into everything we do. Fairness is not a program, it is a way of doing things, but it does not happen automatically. Only a few years ago, Swedish engineer Astrid Linder and her team developed the first crash test dummy built in the form of a womans body. And during COVID-19, personal protective equipment (PPE) was not made for everyone: not for those with small hands or large feet, and not for cultural dress codes that did not correspond with standard overalls. Unfairness can creep in anywhere: cars, protective gear, artificial intelligence, data for decision-making, and workplace procedures. A few years ago, we were approached by one of the largest employers in Australia. People had applied to positions of leadership at this organization and they sent those who were not chosen an email inviting them to reapply. They found that men were about twice as likely to reapply than women. Why was this and what could they do to not lose that talent? We asked the organization, who exactly are you writing to? They responded that they only asked the top 20 percent of applicants to reapply. This was our opener. Given that women have been found to be less self-confident, we suggested that we run a randomized control trial. Some applicants still got the email that was normally sent, but for others, we added one sentence sharing that they were among the top 20 percent of applicants. This edit completely closed the gender gap in reapplication rates. We fixed the system and equalized the playing field for all. 2. Make fairness count. Ros Atkins, a TV presenter at the BBC, made fairness count when he realized he had no data to know if he featured women and men with equal frequency as experts on his nightly primetime news show. Atkins and his team decided to generate that data. They began spending two minutes at the end of each nights show counting how many women and men had appeared on screen during their one hour on air. This counting exercise illuminated that women made up only 39 percent of experts on aira much lower share than they had anticipated. They set themselves a target of reaching 50:50 gender representation and became more thoughtful about featuring a diversity of experts on air. Within four months, they hit their target and maintained it for years. They also inspired hundreds of other BBC content-creating teams to join them in what has globally become 50:50 The Equality Project. Even though it wasnt an organizational mandate, Ros Atkins and his team made fairness count in their work. They simply knew that for journalism to be of the highest quality, it needed to represent the world they reported on. They tweaked their everyday ways of working to better deliver on that goal. Even though it wasnt an organizational mandate, Ros Atkins and his team made fairness count in their work. Another great example is Google, which discovered a few years ago that women were leaving the company at higher rates than men. A deeper dive into the data revealed that new mothers drove this pattern. Google tested a solution: increasing the length of leave available to all new parents from 12 to 18 weeks. Google continued to monitor the data and discovered that this solution worked to close the gender gap. To make fairness count, we need to use the same tools we rely on to manage our daily work on incentives and accountability. Accountability, in particular, is critical because research shows that its one of the most powerful influences on behavior. For the 50:50 project, this meant that all participating teams could see each others data. When humans know that our actions are being watched, were more likely to be on our best behavior. 3. Make fairness stick. For fairness to stick, we must build changes into existing practices and procedures. Consider the resume: perhaps a benign document describing our educational and work experience, but whoever decided what a resume should look like? Two of our collaborators, Ariella Kristal and Oliver Hauser, took this to heart and tested the impact of a redesigned resume. They were interested in one specific issue: how we describe work experience. They explored the impact that different ways of framing work experience on resumes have on the likelihood that an applicant will be invited to an interview. They responded to job postings by more than 9,000 employers in the United Kingdom and presented job history either by displaying a single number indicating how many years a job was held or (as it is commonly done) by indicating the dates during which the applicants worked in a given job. The change in framing made the applicants acquired expertise salient while obfuscating employment gaps. When prior work experience was shown by the number of years worked, without any dates, it increased the likelihood that a candidate would be invited to an interview by 15 percent. This finding held for women and men. While this reframing is gender-neutral, it will disproportionately benefit those more likely to have had career breaks: women. 4. Make fairness normal. Before the pandemic, flexible work was typically a special accommodation available only by request and not always granted. For decades, research has shown that providing flexible work options for everyone improves retention, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Studies in the U.K. and Switzerland even showed that job postings advertised as flexible received up to 30 percent more applications, especially from women. It took COVID-19 for most organizations to accept flexible work as a default option for all their workers. Closing perception gaps shifts what people view as normal and, therefore, what they end up doing. Employees and job seekers pay attention to company signals about their norms and culture. Drivers do the same. In Montana, 85 percent of drivers reported using seat belts, but they estimated that only 60 percent of other drivers would do so. In Saudi Arabia, married men similarly underestimated the share of other husbands who support their wives working outside the home. Eighty-seven percent of Saudi men said they were supportive, but they believed only 63 percent of their peers would be. Closng perception gaps shifts what people view as normal and, therefore, what they end up doing. Like in meetings, if your workplace has a culture of rampant interruptions, it can be hard to get the full benefit of everyones ideas. One simple way to shift this norm is to interrupt the interrupter like this: I look forward to hearing what you have to say, but please let Nicole finish her point first. Soon, interruptions will likely become less common because they are no longer tolerated or viewed as normal. 5. Make fairness personal. In the film Hidden Figures, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan were three brilliant mathematicians who worked for NASA during the space race in the 1960s. Jackson became the first female African American engineer at NASA, Vaughan was the space agencys first African American supervisor, and Johnson conducted crucial research on flight trajectories for various space shuttle missions. Role models matter. Seeing is believing. A few years ago, India amended its constitution with the provision that a third village head position had to be held by women. Seeing women in leadership changed what women in these villages thought was possible for themselves. They became politically active, spoke up in town hall meetings, and were likelier to run for political office. The role models inspired parents who reported that one of the core career aspirations for their daughters was to become a politician. You can be one of these role models. You can also change the portraits on your office walls to ensure they represent everyone. You can inspire others to dare. The crux of making work fair is that it must be part of every single persons job. No matter your role, seniority, or activities, there is something that you personally can do to make work more fair. We liken this to communications. Most companies have a dedicated corporate communications department that handles high-profile press releases and CEO speeches. But simultaneously, every employee writes emails, speaks in meetings, and creates slide decks daily. Make small changes in the way you work and share them with others. Shift what people see as normal or what people expect as the way to do things. Together, we can get further faster and see real results unlike ever before. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
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