The "Great Acceleration" and the Future of Healthcare

One year ago, the world was just a few months into lockdown, but we had already experienced a lifetime’s worth of change and upheaval. 

Vast political friction, social tension, health crises, and economic strain caused slow-moving trends to be put on a fast track, and some people started to take note. In July 2020, D.C. lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas released a report that put name to face: The Great Acceleration.

The report, spearheaded by the firm’s founder, Bruce Mehlman, helped me clarify my thinking about the unique quality of change that was occurring around the world. One year later, its contents feel more relevant than they did last summer. So, I caught up with Bruce to reflect on his predictions and discuss what’s next.  

“There are so many things that have yet to play out that we'll just have to wait and see.” Bruce said. “But [The Great Acceleration] was a natural response to the political and social climates of the time, so the trends that I observed while entering into 2020 are the same trends I see now in the middle of 2021, just accelerated.”

Now, our focus is matching that speed of acceleration, which has been our animating philosophy at Johnson & Johnson over the past 18 months.

A year on, we’re working in radically different ways. We’ve continued our massive shift toward digitization as we break down silos and work in new ways. Our teams are more comfortable using data science and intelligent automation to spot and respond to changes in the marketplace, helping to ensure business continuity and foster necessary innovation.

The million-dollar question is whether the world’s embrace of telehealth and eCommerce changes will last.

Bruce argues that yes, it’s all part of the hyper-digitization of the fourth industrial revolution.

“As machine learning and artificial intelligence enable so many new technologies, there are extraordinary new opportunities,” Bruce said.

Many of these new opportunities are coming to fruition in healthcare. The increasing availability of big data and advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have given us an incredible opportunity to transform how we discover and develop medicines, devices, and consumer products.

For instance, Johnson & Johnson's Medical Devices team is working to develop a next-generation digital surgery platform that will make procedures safer, less invasive, and easier to reproduce by offering insights and capabilities that surgeons have never had before. We are also building a digitally connected supply chain that anticipates and automates orders to improve customer service, optimize inventory, and improve quality. And to top it off, the Janssen Research & Development team is using a visualization tool to provide insights for global development and therapeutic area teams.

But that’s not where our story ends. Changing the ways we think about our work has helped underpin and unlock the potential of the trends accompanying the Great Acceleration. This Great Acceleration has the potential to evolve into a Great Transformation, or a Great Opportunity, as I’ve come to think of it. By introducing data science and automation as core aspects of our work culture, we’re showing all employees that they are a part of this revolution.  

I can’t fully predict what the next year will bring, nor can I anticipate how other industries will respond to these changes, but at Johnson & Johnson, our number one priority remains: providing innovative medicines, life-altering medical devices, and trusted consumer health products to those in need around the world.

Thank you to Bruce Mehlman for the great conversation, and of course, your transformative report.