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I had a chat with the @nytimes yesterday about NHS, Alexa and Matt Hancock’s enthusiasm for innovation nytimes.com/2019/07/10/wor…
@nytimes I want to go back to the biggest reason this is concerning: NHS content has been produced for and paid for by tax payers. Amazon’s analytics and logistics are unparalleled. The NHS is broke. As NHS waiting times get longer, Amazon will get better at instant gratification.
Yes there are privacy issues. Yes there are point of use issues around accuracy and accessibility. But the market opportunity this gives to Amazon - whether for retail, pharmacy, a new domiciliary care offer, pay-per-consultation advice, who knows? - is significant.
The real value of this is not the “free” public service of accessing reliable medical content via voice, it’s the underlying behavioural analytics. Plus, access to NHS content will make Amazon Echo more attractive to ppl buying it because they have health concerns.
I’m partly going on about it because (1) it’s the NHS and (2) it can’t be casually innovated out of existence, but also because the first order consequences of technology are rarely the ones to watch. It’s the second and third order ones, hidden from view, that will be important.
Which makes me wonder if we shouldn’t repurpose the @doteveryone Consequence Scanning Kit for policy makers? doteveryone.org.uk/project/conseq… What will your cool, announceable innovation actually mean in 6 months, 18 months, 5 years?
