Google’s Gemini AI is a lesson for storytelling in healthcare
Google announced it’s much anticipated Gemini AI model just yesterday, breaking the monopoly OpenAI has had on technology airwaves in recent weeks. Much of the announcement was what was expected, which was largely of what sets Gemini apart and it’s performance against its rivals. While there are questions as to how well it actually performs and when it will be available (a detailed dive in the video here), I was, like many, particularly struck by the quality of storytelling.
Let’s dive into a few examples:
Mark Rober, is a former NASA-engineer turned YouTuber who is known for his science-themed infotainment videos, having nearly 30M subscribers to his channel. This was undoubtedly a smart choice on the part of Google — using a combination of relatability, lightheartedness and the benign arc of a storyline involving making the best paper airplane possible.
It was the next video, however, that really struck a chord:
In this montage of “favourite interactions with Gemini”, Google presents what initially appear to be mundane uses of their AI — like locating a hidden paper ball or playing simple guessing games. However, this approach is a stroke of genius in communication. Google demonstrates the power of their innovation without departing from the everyday and familiar, avoiding futuristic or high-tech visuals and instead focusing on the nostalgic charm of simple interactions.
Sure, the counterargument can be made that most of the examples shared do little to show real business or functional usefulness of Gemini, but I argue that that’s the point. With the goal of wanting to inspire developers and their ecosystem at large to build end-user tools using Gemini, Google leaves the actual real-world use cases to the imagination of a community.
I often compare this to how AI is often pitched in healthcare. All too often, we see companies being either prescriptive about what needs to happen or otherwise making it all about the technology. It’s about “an entirely new way of delivering care”. A good example is the CarePod by Forward Health, telling us that we get all of our primary and preventative care in a tin can with no humans in site. Is that our idea of a desirable outcome? Of a future we want to build?
One of the many reasons why healthcare has been daunting to disrupt is because it’s incredibly heterogenous in delivery — there are vast and deeply entrenched systems that are often deeply rooted into communities, albeit at times feeling as though they are taped together. A tapestry of independently run clinics, pharmacies, home care providers, supply chain networks, support care providers, vendors etc — all doing what they can to keep the system going. When it comes to technology, we have spent much of the last two decades with one-size-fits-all solutions that have been delivered top-down into many environments, and this is especially true in primary care.
This next wave of advancements in AI may allow us to do things differently — to focus on giving the necessary degree of agility and capability that many parts of healthcare systems are desperately needing. This however requires us to rethink how we communicate the future to healthcare providers and systems. We need a brighter story to give us all something to work towards.
