In the third episode of the Facebook Zero Friction Future series examining the quest for frictionless experiences, nib Chief Executive Officer, Mark Fitzgibbon tells global futurist Anders Sörman-Nilsson how data, science and technology is altering the face of the sector
As the second decade of the 21st Century draws to a close, our approach to health is becoming ever more futuristic.
Through innovation in science and technology, including the rising sophistication of wearables, people can trace, plot and tackle health issues often before they arise.
The market has also witnessed the rise of Insurtech, and we can even harness our past to predict the future by looking at our ancestors, and analysing our DNA to assess where health issues may lie.
In short, the health sector is facing widespread innovation and immense change.
“The healthcare industry is going through a massive era of digital disruption,” global futurist Anders Sörman-Nilsson says. “All these new consumer based technologies are enabling us to make smart decisions about our health. The question is, what new technologies are in the workplace today that can actually enable us to become augmented as talent.”
Yet Mark Fitzgibbon, Chief Executive Officer of health insurer nib, prefers to identify such changes as evolutionary, to which traditional players must simply adapt.
In the latest interview in the Zero Friction Future series with Sörman-Nilsson, Fitzgibbon opens up on these challenges: “I think evolution is a good choice of words because we don’t see these technologies as disrupting our business. We just see it as imperative for us to adapt to whichever shape the world is taking.”
And those changes are as necessary internally as they are externally as we head towards a future where nib members and employees expect frictionless interactions at every touchpoint.
See more interviews from the Zero Friction Future series and find resources to help your business start to tackle these challenges by clicking here.
To keep abreast of these evolutionary changes, nib has set about investigating its internal friction in the workplace, addressing it through the adoption of technology, Workplace by Facebook among them.
Fitzgibbon reveals how it has turned its workforce into a community, enabling them to collaborate and contribute to the success of the company, while providing the ability to socialise with colleagues.
“These communications platforms are allowing us to show all our employees where they fit in the system and how they contribute towards the finished product and the greater purpose of the business,” he explains.
"Another benefit is the socialisation factor. The fact that they feel more comfortable at work surrounded by people they know, respect and appreciate.”
Such technologies dismantle barriers among its 1500-strong workforce and engender an environment of fulfilment, togetherness and pride in the company and its work, Fitzgibbon adds.
“Our employees jumped on Workplace by Facebook and they are now sharing their experiences and their lives in general. You can feel it is helping to create a sense of esprit de corps which just wouldn’t be as strong without that kind of communication platform.
“Courtesy of communication platforms like Workplace by Facebook they can co-ordinate with their colleagues, share ideas and experiment and deploy all those other mechanisms to innovate and improve the way the business operates.”
Internal developments have also included the introduction of video conferencing which, Fitzgibbon says, has allowed the insurer to communicate in ways previously unavailable, particularly internationally.
“We have operations in Auckland and Sydney, Newcastle, Beijing, Shanghai and Ireland so the video technology has made that all the more seamless.”
The vision for nib and Fitzgibbon, is to move beyond what he describes as the historic one-size-fits-all “sick care system” which only kicks in when health begins to suffer.
Over the next decade and beyond, Fitzgibbon predicts the health insurance sector will harvest data to move towards a structure of prevention and pre-emptive detection.
“You have to believe that technology is going to contribute towards a healthier population and wellbeing, and it’s being assisted by the amazing advances we’re seeing in data science,” Fitzgibbon says.
“If we are going to be a health care company rather than a sick care company, we are going to have to be very good at understanding who people are biologically, psychologically, genetically and socially and interpreting that data, understanding the consequences and making informed judgments about their health.”
The future, he adds, will see health insurance companies “at the front end”, assisting patients and their GPs to predict and prevent the risk of disease or managing and more effectively treating conditions when they do arise.
“Today, our role only cuts in once you are sick. You pay for the doctor, you pay for the ambulance. And that’s fine. It will always be important. But we certainly see ourselves as having a role more at the front end with people and their doctors in identifying their own personal risk profile.
“It’s emerging today and certainly as a company we’re hopping on.”
Sörman-Nilsson describes the futuristic outlook portrayed by Fitzgibbon as belonging in the “pre-world”.
“It’s a fascinating insight,” he says “It’s almost like we’re living in the pre-world that is increasingly predictive, pre-emptive and even precognitive. And it’s courtesy of the data science that we’re garnering.”
Among nib’s “strict world view”, Fitzgibbon says, is that whatever market conditions emerge, firms must experiment and adapt.
With that, comes a company-wide commitment to innovate and accept that an experiment, by its very definition, may not turn out as hoped.
“It’s not an experiment if it’s guaranteed of success,” Fitzgibbon points out. “It starts with culture. In order to experiment you have licence to fail. And in order for people to innovate they need to be clear about the general problem they are trying to solve.”
See more interviews from the Zero Friction Future series and find resources to help your business start to tackle these challenges by clicking here.
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