The DISH Project
The single greatest challenge facing humanity today is the COVID pandemic.
And so, FutureLab has de-emphasized its consulting services because we have joined the front line and going "all in" to develop software for COVID response.
This is the DISH project: the Digital Immune System for Humanity.
FutureLab envisions a future in which our society not only recovers from the COVID pandemic, but one in which all of society learns to develop the collective skills and processes to make pandemics much less likely to occur in the future. America has sadly become the cautionary tale of how to not succeed at pandemic response. The goal is for society to dramatically improve its latent potential for coordination and collaboration in effective pandemic management. And there is no better time than right now to begin this process of societal learning. This is about learning how to invent the future, together.
When we look deeper, we will find that the breakthrough isn’t really in the technology, it has more to do with shifting our collective mindset to make it possible to adapt more effective strategies for societal success.
And so, let us imagine a year or two into the future: a number of COVID-19 vaccines have been deployed and after long last, the world is finally moving forward into a post pandemic world. But in many ways, the aftermath of the pandemic continues, forcing everything to change. There will be a “new normal” coming for everything from the way people receive health care, to how they work and learn, to how they travel and shop, to how they socialize and express what it means to be human. But before we talk about the profound societal changes facing us, let us provide a quick overview about our proposed platform for manifesting change: DISH is an intelligent, decentralized pandemic response management system.
A Platform for Change
The following non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are known to be effective in containing COVID: testing, contact tracing, masks, and social distancing. However, no truly effective technology solutions have emerged for digitize NPI - for example, governments developed and deployed mobile contact tracing apps, but they simply have not proven effective, for many reasons, one being that they required an unrealistic adoption threshold of over 70-80% of the population to be effective. What the world needs are intelligent digital tools that can make a difference in the management of pandemics, and we posit that COVID Defender can make that difference, especially in the United States.
What will work in the United States is to use user-centric design thinking that addresses unarticulated human needs that blend community interest with self-interest. All within a context and a next generation framework for personal infection risk management. This is exactly what we’ve done with our app – we have implemented an innovation-forward, user-centric approach to pandemic mitigation that goes far beyond contact tracing. And doing so without abdicating our responsibility to ensure user privacy.
We will formally announce this project in early 2022, so stay tuned. If you’d like to find out more about this project right away, please contact us via the contact form below.
Contact FutureLab Ventures now if you'd like to find out more.