Wellness Tech: It’s time to ADJUST our thinking

Be Well Lead Well® is committed to advancing the consciousness and capabilities for more inclusive, well, and wiser leadership. In support of these efforts, Be Well Lead Well® Director and Wisdom Works CEO, Renee Moorefield curates monthly content and resources for The Wellness Moonshot: A World Free of Preventable Disease, an initiative of the Global Wellness Institute. The goal: to bring together global wellness enthusiasts, from scientists and educators to health experts and business leaders, to eradicate preventable disease worldwide.

Each month, Renee explores wellbeing leadership through the themes of The Wellness Moonshot Calendar. Below is an excerpt from August’s Theme: ADJUST

August 2022 | ADJUST

We’re living in a transformative time where tech has the potential to accelerate wellness for all. Yet, as highlighted in The Future of Wellness 2022 Trends Report and the Global Wellness Institute’s new Web 3.0 initiative, the wellness industry has been notoriously slow to embrace technology. If we are to democratize wellness for the planet, it will require us to adjust how we think about wellness and transform our wellness leadership.

Leveraging tech to make wellness accessible for everyone is right in line with the mission of The Wellness Moonshot to create a world free of preventable disease. So I was eager to talk with Jesse Pickard, CEO of Elevate Labs, a tech company that’s helped over 50 million people improve their brain health, stress levels, quality of sleep, and more through its unique Elevate and Balance apps.

IT’S TIME TO ADJUST OUR THINKING TO TRANSFORM OUR WELLNESS IMPACT

In our conversation, Jesse brimmed with excitement about the unprecedented access to technology that exists for people today, unleashing untold possibilities for wellness. Consider that close to 6.5 out of our planet’s 8 billion people own smartphones. The overwhelming penetration of these devices on our globe, along with fitness, glucose, heart rate variability, voice recognition, and other biometric and behavioral smart-sensors alone, is providing new avenues for health and wellness data capture, integration, interpretation, early detection and prevention, delivery, and adoption at scale for governments, scientists, and health and wellness care providers.

Plus, for individuals, the smartphone has quickly become a tool of wellness self-empowerment—a “personal doctor” in your pocket, says Jesse. Through this kind of technology, you can become more aware of your mental, emotional, and physical wellness using personalized data and experiment with new approaches to elevate your own health and wellbeing.

THE ROLE OF APPS TO CREATE #WELLNESSFORALL

A meditation coach, therapist, or wellness retreat are not only intimidating prospects for some people; for many, they are inconvenient, unaffordable, and inaccessible. When it comes to wellness tech, Jesse believes apps are magical. Whether the topic is maintaining a healthy brain, managing stress, breathing, sleeping, eating, moving, finding a counselor, or stopping smoking, there is likely an app for it. Apps don’t fix systemic wellbeing problems, such as a toxic work culture, discrimination, and poverty. But they can provide personalized wellness insight, education, and tools for positive change for a low price point at scale. In Jesse’s view, apps are a wellness amplifier, reaching people that were unreachable in the past, such as marginalized groups at work and in our societies, along with people who have traditionally been ignored by the wellness industry.

Tech is a double-edged sword for wellness.

Listen to Renee and Jesse talk about the role of tech in making wellness more inclusive and how technologies, such as social media, can link to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and poor sleep—if these tools aren’t used mindfully.