Corporate wellness is more than an exercise on behalf of promoting the benefits of exercise. It is more than the promotion of fitness and nutrition, with incentives (financial or otherwise) to lose weight, or reduce the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack or early onset of diabetes.
Those things are good goals - they are necessary ones, too - but they do not capture the dynamic nature of the term corporate wellness. To bring that title to life requires, ironically, the opposite of what we call life. It demands the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which can dissect huge amounts of data; which can convert so many ones and zeroes, the language of computing, into the vernacular of everyday speech; which can enable business advisors and consultants to interpret that information; which can allow these experts to identify trends - to make accurate forecasts about the future, and issue action plans for the present - for the good of companies with a commitment to corporate wellness.
According to Nick Chini, Managing Partner of Bainbridge, a global strategic consulting firm that delivers high-value data and analysis to Fortune 1000 companies: "Many AI-based technologies are revolutionary, and all of them are evolutionary, in terms of the solutions they reveal to otherwise insoluble problems. From hospitality and healthcare to real estate development and corporate acquisitions, we use AI to distinguish between the signal and the noise."
The insights we produce would either be impossible to achieve, or prohibitively expensive to uncover, with conventional tools. Put another way intelligent technology yields a great deal of intelligence. To be relevant, you must have the wisdom to make sense of that material.
"I second that comment because the complexity of healthcare requires more than a series of restatements of the obvious. It involves more than a collection of PowerPoint presentations, in which the slides, no matter the beauty of their arrangement or the impressive nature of their design, reinforce what we already know - what we should already know - albeit with the stamp of approval from alumni of the Harvard Business School, who work for some "prestigious" consulting firm.Other experts agree with that sentiment, as they seek to explain the ways AI will reshape corporate wellness."
Healthcare is as much a matter of medical advances as it is an issue of technological achievements. AI best represents this union between the two because it will be responsible for - it already is at the forefront of - transforming the way doctors, hospitals and clinicians deliver services. The customizable offerings that will ensue are many, from personalized care to greater productivity to enhanced efficiency.
We should welcome these changes, now more than ever," says Melissa Thompson, Publisher of Harcourt Health. At a minimum, we need to have a candid conversation about this topic. Companies must prepare themselves for this moment, so they can make sense of the data that at their disposal. With the right support, backed by the right proprietary technology, AI can usher in a new era - an exciting period - of wellness for all.
Photo - Copyright: pogonici / 123RF Stock Photo
About the Author
Lewis Fein is a writer and commentator, whose work addresses a variety of issues involving healthcare, technology and leadership. You can reach him at feinlewis@gmail.com.
