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Hey Alexa, What’s Next for Voice Tech? Five Insights into a Voice-First World

Category: AI, Technology and Innovation

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This happens hundreds of times a week, according to Al Lindsay, Amazon’s VP of Alexa Engine Software.

With 80,000 skills and growing, marriage is maybe the one thing Alexa can’t do.

This year, the smart speaker industry will grow to be worth an estimated $7 billion, and demand could potentially surpass that of smartphones.

A Canadian voice tech pioneer, Lindsay joined us at RBC Disruptors, our monthly conversation on innovation and technology, to share his insights into a voice-first world.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

Here are 5 takeaways about the future of voice:

1. Voice Tech Is Making Smartphones Look Dumb

A lot of people ask, “Why do I need voice tech? I can do everything I want on my smartphone.” For Lindsay, his ah-ha moment was listening to music: “I’d say, play songs from Sting and two seconds later music would be streaming from the speaker.” No more taping on glass, navigating through apps and waiting. We used to see smartphones as the ultimate convenience. Now, voice tech has usurped them, eliminating the need to pull out your phone — and possibly get even more distracted. Voice could allow us to get back to being humans again.

2. Personality is Everything

In the beginning, Lindsay and his team were focused on making a voice tech assistant that was smart and helpful — those seemed like the obvious selling points. But customers leaned into Alexa as a persona. “It turns out fun and a sense of humour are appreciated as well,” Lindsay said. The company started adding quirks and funny responses, realizing the more natural interacting with voice tech feels, the easier people will adopt using it.

3. Voice Tech Is Disrupting Every Industry

When asked about what industries voice tech is disrupting, Lindsay was definitive: “All of them.” He predicted major changes from health care to hospitality. For hospital patients, smart speakers could handle simple requests like turning on the television or adjusting the bed, saving time and labour. When people go out to dinner, they’ll use voice to order a drink, and to charge the bill to their Visa — “or to the table over there,” he joked.

4. Every Business Needs a Voice Strategy

As we move to a more ambient world, small and large businesses alike will need a voice strategy. Similar to deciding on brand colours and slogans, companies will need to ask: Is our voice soothing? Young and fun? More serious? Sound adds a powerful new dimension to brand identity. It also opens up new opportunities. You don’t need to have speech team to have speech as an interface. Anything that has a computer interface, you can replace or augment with voice.

5.Voice is the Great Equalizer

Every interface before voice had a learning curve — it takes time to learn to type, or navigate an app. Lindsay said the distinction for voice-tech is that if we can truly achieve a natural conversation experience, technology will be immediately accessible to everyone in the world with language skills.

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A lifelong entrepreneur, he’s also seen what it takes to succeed in business — and how failing is vital to learning how to get things right.

Today, the company pulls in $370 million annually in revenue and boasts 250 franchises around the world.

“We wouldn’t have gotten there if we didn’t fail,” Scudamore said. “We would never have gotten to where we are today if we didn’t continue to have the courage to make mistakes, and then learn from every one of those.”

One early mistake? “I realized that I was a terrible leader.”

At RBCDisruptors, our monthly conversation on innovation and technology, Scudamore talked about being willing to fail and the leadership lessons he’s learned along the way.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

Here are some of his insights:

1. Ask Questions

When Scudamore set his sights on franchising, he went out and talked to 12 people. All 12 of them told him not to do it, that the junk removal business wasn’t franchise-able. He took the opportunity to ask questions, make changes, and tweak the model to make sense as a national business. Entrepreneurs need to have the boldness and the brashness to stand up and ask.

2. Paint a Clear Picture

Focus on what the future looks like, write it down, and share it with everyone. When Scudamore decided to scale 1-800-GOT-JUNK, he told his team the goal was to be in the top 30 metros. The naysayers left. Those who stuck with the company understood the goal, believed in it – and helped him to pull it off.

3. Make Tough Calls

Scudamore says the toughest thing he ever had to do was fire best friend, the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Together, they made rash decisions and almost bankrupted the business. “The right decision is usually a hard one.”

4. Be Out Front

Scudamore didn’t always know how to mentor. “I was hiding in my private office, not spending time with my team,” he said. “I didn’t want to. I was afraid of them, afraid of conflict.” He learned to put himself out there, and realized that leadership isn’t just about growing a business – it’s about helping people to grow.

5. Hire People You’d Want to Have a Beer With

“I learned how to build a team and culture through failure,” he said. Five years into the business, he had 11 employees — and 9 of them were “bad apples.” The workplace became toxic. He called a meeting, apologized – and let everyone go. He rebuilt by finding the right employees, hiring people who wanted to be friends with – who shared his passion for growth, and would represent the company well.

6. Get Out of the Way

Scudamore committed to a bucket list goal on the company’s vision board: be featured on the Oprah Winfrey show. It was clearly there for all to see, and an eager young employee took up the challenge, reaching out to the show and developing relationships until the call came in: there was an opportunity for 1-800-GOT-JUNK to be featured. “I did nothing to make that happen,” Scudamore said. “Tyler got out there and did all the work to pull it together.” You know you’ve gotten leadership right when your team can handle the execution.

Every entrepreneur makes mistakes, but you can’t beat yourself up when things go sideways, Scudamore said. Take a breath, and ask yourself what’s the one positive thing that can happen from this seemingly challenging situation. He finds the list is often longer than you’d think.

“Failure should be your friend,” Scudamore said. “Every single mistake we made we had to make to get to the next level”.

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“I like to fix things. I always liked to fix things,” Chen said at the latest RBCDisruptors, our monthly conversation on innovation and how technology is changing the way we work, live and play.

He’s had plenty to fix at BlackBerry, the iconic Canadian tech company he took over as executive chairman and CEO in 2013. One of his first tasks back then was to announce a record $4.4 billion quarterly loss. The company got back in the black after a pivot to software and services, which now drive 90% of its revenue. The numbers are far below the good old days — but they’re climbing.

BlackBerry’s CEO says he’s driven to do what others think isn’t possible. Pulling that off takes a clear head and a sharp understanding of the larger trends around you.

He spoke to our audience about trade tensions between the U.S. and China, the future of mobile devices and how artificial intelligence is changing cybersecurity.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

Here are some of his insights:

1. Huawei Will Have to Open Up

In the emerging cold war of technology, 5G is the latest battleground. Chen says China’s Huawei will eventually have to surrender its code for examination if it wants to win access to Western markets. “I see no other way for Huawei to get back in the game, without doing that,” he said. The reality is, Huawei isn’t the only supplier of emerging technologies like 5G routers and modems, and Western governments can move on without them. They can turn to other firms like Ericsson.

2. We May Have Seen Peak Phone

Chen says Apple got the inflation curve wrong, and the $1,000 phone isn’t going to be the next big thing. There’s not enough innovation to justify the eye-popping prices we’ve seen on new models.

3. Cars Are the New Smartphones

Vehicles are increasingly technology devices — and they’re going to need secure software to protect them. Chen sees this as BlackBerry’s big opportunity. Its QNX technology is already being used in 120 million cars. Amid concerns about hackers driving cars into ditches and drones into plane engines, BlackBerry’s goal is to make QNX the standard automotive operating system — what Windows is to PCs.

4. The Cyber Battle is Going From Defense to Offence

If you’re focusing on your most recent hack, you will lose. Security is a cat-and-mouse game that’s top of mind from the armed forces to hospitals to major banks, and both the hackers and defendants are turning to artificial intelligence to get them ahead of the other side. BlackBerry made its offensive play last fall, spending $1.4 billion to acquire Cylance — a cybersecurity company that uses AI to predict future attacks.

5. BlackBerry Doesn’t Want Your Data

Going up against giants like Apple and Google means focusing on your strengths. For BlackBerry, that’s security and privacy. It’s the heritage of the company, and its bet for the future. Unlike its competitors, BlackBerry isn’t trying to manage and monetize data. “We don’t take a look at any of the data. We don’t use it, we don’t care about it. We actually have an algorithm to discard it.”

6. Relish Your Losing Hand

Chen’s approach to business borrows from his love for contract bridge. He likes the game because it’s not about having a lucky hand. You get points based on how well you play the hand you’re dealt. “It’s really about, could you do better with what you’ve got.” That’s the challenge that drew him to BlackBerry. It’s a tougher road, but play it well, and it’s a higher playoff.

Smarter technology doesn’t mean we can sit back and let Alexa take the wheel. It means making our own pivot, and ensuring our society is not only tech-dependent but tech-savvy.
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Between Toys “R” Us shuttering all its U.S. stores and tech-savvy toddlers playing with mobile devices, he might not be feeling too jolly about the future of toys. How can an Etch-a-Sketch possibly compete with an iPhone?

Right here in Toronto, we have a monster truck of a toy company who says it can be done.

Spin Master was founded in 1994 by three friends fresh out of university. They had early hits with the Earth Buddy and Devil Sticks; but it’s when they started investing heavily in R&D that their toy company took off. Today it’s one of the top five toy companies in the world, with sales exceeding $1.5 billion last year.

The global toy market is growing at 3–4 percent a year, mainly in Asia. In the U.S., parents spend an average of $350 on toys per child per year. And with R&D investment, toys can be every bit as innovative as our digital devices. Look no further than Spin Master’s Hatchimals — toys that peck their way out of egg when cuddled and rubbed.

I recently sat down with Spin Master Co-Founder and Co-CEO Ronnen Harary for our December session of RBCDisruptors.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

Here are 6 lessons for innovators everywhere:

1. Build Your Own Empire

Spin Master created the cartoon phenomenon Paw Patrol by working backwards. About one-in-four toys is a licensed product, associated with a hit movie or show, but the bigger brands were always beating Spin Master for the rights. So instead of competing for rights to a franchise they didn’t own, Spin Master created an empire.

2. Use Tech As a Value-driver

A few years ago, the interactive technology to create a Hatchimal would have put its price point at $250 — way too high for the toy aisle. Today, you can buy one for about $80. Use technology to do things that haven’t been done before, at a price the market likes.

3. Respect Your Talent

Toy inventors are hard to find — there are only a couple hundred worldwide. Those relationships need to be nurtured. The duo who developed Zoomer, a voice-activated dog that responds to its name, have continued to create new toys for the company. Unlike many toy companies, Spin Master encourages inventors to stay involved in the process, and to share in the glory — including onstage when Zoomer won the 2014 Innovative Toy of the Year.

From left to right: Spin Master’s Zoomer, Hatchimal and Bakugan toys.

4. Stand Out From Your Competition

In the 1990s, Spin Master created “Key Charm Cuties” to compete head-to-head with Mattel’s Polly Pocket; but they couldn’t lure customers away from a trusted favourite without a significant point of difference. The lesson? Kids won’t settle for anything less than new and awesome.

5. Always Have Something in the Pipeline

Spin Master had a blockbuster hit with Bakugan, growing from a $450 million company to an $800 million company in just 21 months. But when interest in Bakugan dipped, it led to a major downturn for the company. Kids grow up, fads fade, and you always need to have your next great idea in the pipeline.

6. Don’t Obsess Over Your Failures

Not every toy is going to fly off the shelves. When something fails, no one person should be blamed — just like no one person should take credit when something succeeds. “Don’t ruminate about it,” said Harary. Move on to the next thing.

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At the Toronto Global Forum this week, I sat down with Shuman Ghosemajumder — a Western grad turned Silicon Valley star — to talk about how Canada can harness our strengths in a rapidly changing world.

“I think Canadians are disproportionately talented,” he said.

When Ghosemajumder joined a no-name company called Google in 2003, he was one of a small army of Canadians working there. As the company grew — he helped develop AdSense and launch Gmail — he came to see Canadians as uniquely positioned to succeed in Silicon Valley.

We have the advantage of a strong public education system, high quality and affordable post-secondary institutions, and we’re close enough to the world’s largest economy to understand it, yet have the distance to analyze it, he said

And one other thing: When you grow up in snowy London, Ontario — as Ghosemajumder did — you end up spending a lot of time indoors. He started learning to program a Commodore 64 when he was just five years old.

“There’s a lot to be said about cold climates and productivity,” he said.

In Canada, there are no afternoon siestas. But despite our strengths, we still haven’t matched what’s happening in Silicon Valley.

Ghosemajumder is now the Chief Technology Officer at Shape Security, the fastest growing cybersecurity company in North America. He admits he doesn’t see himself leaving Mountain View. But he did share his insights on how Canada can harness its strengths, and why we shouldn’t be quite so fixated on creating another Silicon Valley anyway.

Here are 4 takeaways:

1. Don’t Forget the “A” in STEAM

Science, tech, engineering, math — and arts. As we equip our students with the technical skills they need to succeed in 2020 and beyond, we can’t forget about the arts. It’s our well-rounded curriculum that makes Canadian graduates stand out, Ghosemajumder says. Canada’s software engineers are the most creative in the world — they’re one of the reasons Shape Security is opening a Toronto office.

2. Show Canadians the World (and Show the World Canada)

Ghosemajumder visited Palo Alto as a high school student and competed against the world’s top debaters as President of the Western Debating Society. Seeing the world’s best, in any field, changes your horizons. We also need to show top talent from around the world why they would benefit from experience in Canada. Bright young students still look to American colleges to realize their grandest ambitions — we need to offer them something the U.S. can’t.

3. Embrace Our AI Potential

With our more centralized government, Canada has the power to go all-in on an investment — as the feds are doing with the $125-million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. It’s a smart bet, Ghosemajumder says. We have the money and the talent to go far in this field. Now Canada needs it ingrained, culturally, that we are an AI nation.

4. Don’t Fixate On Physical Concentration

A confluence of factors has made Silicon Valley the place to be — and also difficult to replicate. There will always be something special about working in the same place as the biggest players, but talent can live anywhere — and increasingly, it will. We’re already seeing that with the global success of Ottawa’s own Shopify. “There’s no question that talent is going to be far more distributed over time,” Ghosemajumder said.

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For the solar winds and ions swept into our earth’s magnetic fields, it’s an explosive end to an incredible journey. But for those catching the energy, it can be a beginning, a kind of positive recharge.

Inspired by the extraordinary polar lights, about 150 members of the Banff Forum – community leaders, business executives, policy makers, academics, journalists — gathered in Yellowknife recently to discuss Canada’s own incredible journey, and how we can convert some of our illusions into opportunities.

Here’s some of what we debated:

1. The illusion of consensus, in an age of division

The TransMountain pipeline debate is just the latest reminder of the challenge of consensus. While meaningful consultations are critical to any sound decision, Canadians know consent can be illusory. We sat down with the premier and speaker of the North West Territories to better understand their approach to decision-making, as the legislature here operates free of party politics and seeks consensus on major issues. They require a lot of talk, and listening. But when decisions are made, they tend to be accepted by future governments. Policies here are rarely torn up, as is politically vogue now in the south. The northern approach seems to work well for a small population — 120,000 or so in NWT — but would be harder in more populous and diverse regions. The deliberative nature could also lead to deeper divisions among those who feel slow decisions mean no decisions. Can a balance be reached?

2. The illusion of innovation, in an age of disruption

Despite a lot of government money over the decades, Canada still struggles with innovation — even how to define and measure it. Do we focus too much on commercial outcomes, like the value of startups? And do we overly obsess with software, and what gets stuffed in our smart phones? Some of Canada’s most important innovations revolves around the physical economy and trees, oil and gas, agriculture, fisheries and health care – things you see a lot of in the north. Up here, ingenuity is the uber of survival.

3. The illusion of business growth, in an age of scale

We’re a nation of Mom and Pop enterprises – good at starting businesses, not great at growing them, and even worse at shutting them down. There’s something like 1.1 million registered businesses in Canada, and yet only 2,500 of them have 500 employees or more. More than 75% have fewer than 10 employees and 55% have only 1-4 employees. The number of large Canadian businesses has not grown since 2005, while our business creation index has dropped in recent years, even as the rate of U.S. business creation rose. To help those businesses grow, we may need to see more businesses die. While Canadians tend to blanche at the idea, the death of firms — like big trees falling— is often what allows all those small firms to grow.

4. The illusion of financial stability, in an age of volatility

Financial volatility returned this year to global markets, and Canadians shouldn’t feel immune. Just because we’re not Turkey or Argentina doesn’t mean we’re not going to feel the pain of rising U.S. interest rates and a stronger U.S. dollar. We all know we’ve lost out habit of squirrelling away acorns for a harsh winter. Our household debt exceeds $2-trillion – five times what it was in 1990 and more than we collectively produce in a year. About three-quarters of that is in mortgages. That’s not necessarily bad, at least for those who can afford their mortgage payments. But incomes, over a generation, have not kept pace – rising from about $50,000 for a typical family in 1990 to $76,900 in 2015. How did we get away with it? The illusion of low interest rates. Yes, winter is coming, and the impact on household finances could be chilly.

5. The illusion of global trade, in an age of protectionism

The near north is not the most obvious place to discuss the future of trade, but that may be a signal that we’re looking in the wrong places for opportunities. In some respects, the two big economic issues of 2018 – Nafta and TransMountain – are rooted in the trading infrastructure of the 1800s, which was built along the 49th parallel. We may now have the chance to carve some equally historic infrastructure to the north, with an Arctic Ocean corridor. While the idea has been around for decades, it’s regaining steam, with hopes for rail lines and pipelines to the north, where new ports could connect them to the world. There’s also the option for new population centres. to help decongest Toronto and Vancouver. Yellowknife, which is only is one third of the way from Canada’s south to the north pole, is home to just 20,000 people. And the North West Territories is home to just 40,000 or so — about the size of a good crowd at a Toronto Blue Jays game. As they like to say up here, there’s room to grow. A signal of hope: flights into Yellowknife this season are crowded with Asian tourists, looking beyond borders in a world that’s changing faster than Canada. Without illusion.

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The Canadian entrepreneur spent his early childhood without electricity, taught himself to code, and studied philosophy at Cambridge before falling into a tech career that’s now pitting him against Microsoft and Google.

Butterfield’s biggest business success, Slack, is a corporate communications tool that arouses the kind of devotion that brings to mind Blackberry’s early days—and is aimed at reducing some of the 269 billion emails sent around the world each day. In person, Butterfield is soft-spoken and thoughtful, as one would expect from a guy who once contemplated a career as a philosophy prof. He joined us at RBCDisruptors earlier this week, where we had a chance to talk to him about effective communications, the merits of Silicon Valley and why corporate values are important. Here’s some of what we learned.

An Accidental Success Story

Stewart Butterfield didn’t start out to create either of his startups, Flickr and Slack. They were by-products of his efforts to create web-based, multiplayer games. The gaming ventures went nowhere. But in trying to build shared fantasy worlds, he came up with the photo-sharing software that became Flickr, and later the chat tool that morphed into Slack.

While he knew he was onto something with Slack, Butterfield didn’t initially think the tool would work for large organizations. Slack has 9 million users and counts IBM and Oracle among its biggest customers. While the path may not have been planned, building Slack into the company it is now—a challenger to the mighty Microsoft—was no accident, Butterfield says. “It’s a lot of work.”

An Antidote for Email

Butterfield’s luck with startups shouldn’t obscure his big ambitions. He wants to fundamentally change the way people collaborate, whether they work at IBM or as wedding planners. His solution is Slack, an alternative to the ubiquitous office email that Butterfield says is a “terrible choice” for intra-company communications. To illustrate, Butterfield describes a new hire signing onto corporate email and staring at an empty inbox. If that employee joins an organization using Slack, she or he has access to all the work that’s been done on a given project, right on Day One.

With the average 1,000-person company sending out an estimated 40,000 emails each day, it isn’t surprising that Slack has a community of evangelists.

Slack’s greatest advantage, Butterfield says, is that it provides a high degree of transparency across an organization, and quickly. That gives individuals and teams the clarity and alignment they need to perform their jobs.

The Valley Still Wins

Butterfield said more than once during the event that he’s a “patriotic Canadian,” and he believes Canada has all the talent it needs in terms of engineers, designers and marketers to staff Canadian startups.

So if given the choice, why would he start his next company in Silicon Valley? Butterfield’s answer was one we’ve heard before from entrepreneurs: It’s still the place with the deepest bench strength for recruiting specialized executive tech talent.

Corporate Values Matter. Like Playfulness

Butterfield took a page from Netflix’s playbook in assigning Slack some core values. But he wanted to make sure those values set Slack apart, reminding employees both how they should act and how Slack views them. He suggested any company should think carefully about its corporate values and ensure they tell employees and customers what makes it unique.

In case you’re wondering, Slack’s values include courtesy, playfulness and craftsmanship. Courtesy, for Butterfield, means empathizing with the client and always being open to understanding his or her needs. By emphasizing playfulness, he wants his employees to “look at the world sideways” in order to find creative solutions to problems. Craftsmanship is more than a call to avoid shoddy work—it’s Slack’s way of telling employees their individual work has meaning and value.

China’s Off Limits. Everywhere Else is Fair Game

When it comes to the massive and lucrative Chinese market, many tech companies want in. Slack isn’t one of them: Butterfield said the company isn’t prepared to give Beijing access to the company’s messaging data. But he is targeting the 600 million or so knowledge workers around the world that aren’t in China. He’s doing that by making Slack available in other languages and ensuring it supports specific industries and regulatory environments.

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That was the theme of the latest #RBCDisruptors in advance of Mental Illness Awareness Week, which runs from September 30 to October 6 in Canada and the U.S.

Our conversation brought together former Olympian and mental health advocate Silken Laumann with two entrepreneurs — Sam Duboc and Dan Seider who believe technology can be harnessed to monitor mental health and provide more accessible treatment options.

Here’s some of what we learned:

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

Stigma Remains a Major Obstacle to Seeking Treatment. Technology May Help.

Laumann, who revealed childhood emotional abuse in her 2014 memoir, Unsinkable, said she was hesitant to share those details for fear people would think differently about her. Until her book came out, Canadians’ perception of Laumann was one of a steely, world-class rower who overcame a horrific leg injury to win a bronze medal in the 1992 Barcelona Games. The stigma associated with mental illness is still one of the main reasons many don’t reach out for help. And that’s a problem, because one in five Canadians will experience mental illness at some point.

Duboc says he has a possible solution. His company, Beacon, is a digital platform offering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — a well-established approach to treating depression, anxiety and other mood disorders. By providing affordable CBT online, Duboc says his company opens the door for those who would hesitate to set foot in a clinic.

Technology Provides an Answer to the Accessibility Challenge.

Our public health system is designed to deal with mental health when it becomes a crisis, but many sufferers don’t ever fall into that category because their illness is in a mild or moderate form. Others have trouble accessing treatment because they lack the funds, or live in remote areas. And then there’s the problem of long wait lists for a relatively small number of healthcare professionals in most Canadian communities. For some of these people, an app to track wellbeing or to communicate with a healthcare professional is an appealing option.

Data Has a Big Role to Play.

Seider was diagnosed with bipolar disorder eight years ago. Though he received effective treatment in the form of drugs and therapy, he says he got even better when he began to focus on how his behaviour affected his wellbeing. He taught himself to code and built a tool to track his moods — an effort that eventually led to Stigma, Seider’s mood-tracking software.

While the thought of using AI to tackle the problem of mental wellness might scare some people, Seider and our other panelists were more sanguine. AI is about recognizing patterns, and that means it holds the potential for many to recognize harmful mood or behaviour patterns as a first step in addressing them.

Ensuring Privacy Is Key.

Harnessing mobile technology to treat mental health poses a range of privacy concerns. With some 48,000 wellness apps out there, how can one be sure every one of the parties behind them has our privacy interests at heart? Regulation in this emerging space is scant, and more public conversations are needed about the protection of individual data, the rights of patients and the potential risks of harmful advice.

There’s a Business Case.

Mental illness is the number one cause of disability claims in Canada. For employers, mental illness represents a cost — in terms of lost productivity and increased benefit payments. The possibility that technology can provide a more economical solution to assessing and maybe even treating mental health is catching companies’ interest. Duboc says his virtual psychotherapy platform is being used by some large Canadian insurers and universities. As Laumann put it, a mental health problem shouldn’t be “a sentence to a non-productive life.”

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Now, entrepreneurs and innovators are turning their sights on mental health, hoping to transform the way we treat our minds just as technology has changed how we treat our bodies.

The potential market is huge: One in five Canadians experience mental illness in any given year, and more than half do over their lifetime—but less than half of them seek help, according to Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

“There’s a dire need to offset the burden of mental health,” said Dr. Ajmal Razmy, who heads the acute mental health program at the three Trillium Health Partners hospitals in the Toronto area.

New apps such as Headspace, which offers directed meditation from a former Buddhist monk, and Talkspace, which offers psychotherapy by video and text chat, aim to ease that burden.

BEACON provides greater access to mental health care via its technology platform. It provides Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), a psychotherapy approach that helps develop skills to change negative and anxious thinking. A user is matched with a dedicated therapist (not a bot) that will provide a customized care plan, digitally, at a much reduced cost to traditional in-person sessions that are also time-consuming.

Razmy said such consumer-focused care is a necessity when it can take months to see a psychiatrist.

“If you make an appointment and you’re waiting nine months or a year to see somebody, that crisis is gone and a new one might be there,” he said. “The apps are needed in terms of having that accessibility bridge for our patients.”

Like the Apple Watch and its ECG, he said, apps and devices that track mood and sleep habits are key to a new model that empowers patients in their discussions with doctors.

One app doing just this is Stigma – an automatic mood tracking and journaling tool. Inspired by the founder’s own personal struggle with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, Stigma helps you build a support network, journal your feelings, and track your moods.

And while mental health apps show great promise, proper oversight and professional consultation are still a necessity. Apple had to submit its Watch and ECG design through the FDA certification process for a medical device—no easy feat. Mental health apps, on the other hand, are unregulated.

Razmy cautioned that even the Apple Watch is still only a device for data collection, and consumers need to know that data isn’t a diagnosis.

“An ECG on its own doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “But if it means you can talk about these things a little more meaningfully with your provider, I think it’s a win for both sides.”

The rise of social media has given Canadians a new awareness about mental health, with people more willing to share their emotional experiences. Celebrities too have embraced advocacy: Olympic rower Silken Laumann has spoken out against the stigma around mental health, and Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles spoke frankly about self-doubt following his team’s NFL championship victory.

The spread of smartphones has also helped improve awareness—after all, phone addiction is now a common problem.

Professor Carolyn McGregor, Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics at University of Ontario Institute of Technology, said it’s possible to use the addictive nature of mobile apps for good.

She’s working on apps that build resiliency—allowing people to concentrate, centre themselves and perform tasks under stress. Her research focuses on firefighters and front-line military personnel, the kinds of people that need to maintain focus and calm in the face of danger.

“We’re trying to use that interaction mechanism to create space for mental health, for self-reflection,” she said.

And mental-health apps have the same problems as running apps or the Bowflex in your basement: sticking to it. In May 2018, Statista counted nearly 48,000 health/fitness focused apps available in the Apple App Store, most of which are discarded after just one use.

There is hope: “If people can maintain a habit for three weeks, that’s enough for a long-term change,” McGregor said.