Fill your craving for Thai food—and your prescriptions.

Fill your craving for Thai food—and your prescriptions.

Our Culture Briefing on Healthcare tackled the questions around what happens as traditional consumer brands try to enter the healthcare space. Following a successful delivery pilot in Seattle and Dallas, Uber recently expanded its on-demand prescription delivery service to New York City. Customers can manage their medications directly from the Uber Eats app and follow their prescriptions from the pharmacy to their doorstep. But while people may be comfortable with Uber tracking their weird late night cravings, they may feel less comfortable releasing sensitive healthcare information. sparks & honey Editorial Director Anna Martin ties this to our Elements of Culture, Privacy Rights and Access Economy, which have become even more relevant in the past year as we’ve seen increasingly personalized delivery methods accelerated through technology. 

Uber isn’t alone in their foray into healthcare. It is reported that Facebook is working on a wearable health tracker that would launch next year. Spotify filed a new patent that suggests they want to listen to your emotions in order to better recommend music. Which begs the question; are consumers really ready to let brands into their bodies and minds?

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What’s the deal with killer robots?

American culture seems to have an obsession with killer robots. Popular films like Avenger’s Age of Ultron and Ex Machina speak to a human fascination with control – and lack thereof – in the robotic revolution. As technology rapidly advances, we are being confronted with the reality of robots and A.I.-driven software. As our cultural strategists discussed in our latest briefing on Sci-FI IRL, not all Sci-Fi is fun. Weaponized A.I. has become a key facet of U.S. security strategy, and some existing weapons systems already include autonomous capabilities based on A.I. These machines could potentially make decisions to harm and kill people based on their programming without human intervention.

Perhaps the deep fascination around robots is connected to the age old story of Frankenstein—the existential fear of a monster we’ve created and lost control of. As SVP of Data Science and Product Development Kendra Clarke mentioned, “We often forget that we gave A.I. all the pieces of the puzzle that got it to where it is. A.I. is making life or death decisions based off of our set of rules.” This similar fascination is also apparent with self-driving cars. Humans crave agency, and the idea of a car making decisions over who to save in a crash has provoked many ethical debates.

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Meet the latest weight loss fad—DNA diets

Our Precision Consumer 2030 report, published in November 2019, examined the intimate relationship between humans and data, with implications for many industries, including healthcare. That relationship has proved to be as vital as ever in 2021, with the rise of precision nutrition. Digital health company ClickFit recently released a new product called the DNA Diet Plan, which integrates data from AncestryDNA or 23andMe and provides weight loss recommendations—based on your DNA.

While these DNA diets may seem compelling to those seeking a definitive, personalized answer to their health issues, the science behind it may not be quite there yet. "DNA is important, but it plays a pretty minor role in making personal decisions about food. For basic healthy living, it's not about your genes, it's about your behavior," says cardiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University Dariush Mozaffarian. The DNA diet also fails to consider the complete clinical picture of one’s dietary needs, existing health conditions, and medications. So far, genes only explain about 5 to 10 percent of the risk linked to diet-related diseases such as obesity and type-2 diabetes. As with many health and nutrition practices, a holistic approach is often most beneficial.