Commercial Real Estate morning News Show
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Commercial Real Estate morning News Show
CRE Morning News Show - Dec 17, 2024 - Global Sustainability and Healthcare Real Estate
Join us as we embark on a fascinating journey through the realms of global sustainability, healthcare innovation, and cutting-edge prop tech. Our guests, Paul, CEO of Unified, and Dini Taylor, CEO at Landmark Healthcare Properties, bring a wealth of expertise from London and beyond, sharing insights that bridge continents and industries. Fresh from my Nordic travels, I share intriguing energy-saving practices witnessed in Denmark and Sweden, like the nifty hotel key card systems that conserve energy. By discussing the cultural intricacies and business strategies of the tech-savvy Nordic regions, we emphasize the power of a global perspective in driving sustainable innovation.
Our conversation shifts to the healthcare landscape, where AI is revolutionizing building technologies and challenging conventional practices. We tackle the unique approaches American and European companies take when entering international markets, exploring AI's role in occupancy planning and privacy-preserving technologies like fall-detecting cameras. With input from a promising Swedish startup, we highlight strides in water quality monitoring, alongside the slower yet persistent progress in air and water quality improvements within the healthcare sector. The dialogue also touches on the ethical dilemmas of data sharing and AI integration, with a comparative lens on the UK and US healthcare systems.
As the episode unfolds, we recognize the urgent need for sustainable transformation reminiscent of the rapid vaccine development during the COVID-19 pandemic. From drive-up healthcare facilities to nuclear energy debates, we explore the evolving landscape of healthcare and environmental responsibility. With the holiday season upon us, we send warm wishes and invite you to anticipate our New Year's Eve morning episode, where future aspirations and hopes for 2025 take center stage.
Did the magic button work? Oh yeah, okay, we're live. All right, everybody, we are back. This is the Commercial Real Estate Morning News Show and I've got my friends in the house and we're going to talk all things commercial real estate. So welcome to the show. All right, I'll let you all introduce yourselves. Go ahead, paul, since you're calling in from across the pond.
Speaker 2:Hi, paul Paul, I'm here from London, ceo of Unified. Make a building smarter.
Speaker 1:Yay, oops, I just dropped something, all right, and Dini.
Speaker 3:Dini Taylor, CEO at Landmark Healthcare Properties, private medical building developer across the country.
Speaker 1:And where are you calling in from Dini?
Speaker 3:I'm calling in from Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, you're always on the road. It's like where's Deanie? You're always on the road, that's awesome. Well, I am Amy Polvino. I'm the chair of the US Prop Tech Council. I always forget to introduce myself. I think everybody knows who I am and then I'm calling in from Austin, texas. I am back. Last week we didn't have our show. I know everybody was heartbroken.
Speaker 1:We didn't have our show last week and so nobody knows what to do until they come to our show. I'm just saying out loud no, I'm just kidding. I was in Denmark and Sweden last week as part of my master's program with the University of Texas, hook and Horns, and yeah, it was really interesting. I know where Paul gets his sustainability thing from. No, I'm just kidding, it was. All they talked about was sustainability. This sustainability that the hotels oh my gosh, like they would cut.
Speaker 1:I never did the key card thing where you walk into a hotel and you have to put the key card in for the electricity to go on like this is how they do the hotels there to save energy. Yeah, so as soon as you pull the key card out, none of the lights work, nothing works. Well, I thought that was for the whole unit. I didn't realize they was like they left one of them on, like there was a outlet, so I was like I can't charge my phone while I'm gone. I can't do do anything Like this is like dumb. And then I kind of figured it out. But yeah, so it was really.
Speaker 3:You've got to go down to the desk and tell them you lost the key and get another one, and that's the one you leave in. That's why you get two. Come on, amy, you've got to learn to travel, amy you can put anything in there.
Speaker 2:You put a plane, car in there.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, alright, y'all. Where were you? I should have called y'all last week. I was like having a whole person problem that's it.
Speaker 3:We've done that forever over there. That's just the way you do it alright.
Speaker 1:Well, I was definitely a rookie traveling to Europe totally a rookie. You're right, jamie, seriously you should be teaching these tricks traveling to Europe.
Speaker 2:Totally rookie At your age, Amy. Seriously, who should be teaching you these tricks?
Speaker 1:What are you?
Speaker 2:24, 25 now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, it was actually my first time to Europe. I had never been, so I will love next time.
Speaker 3:Get an extra key.
Speaker 1:Get an extra key. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm such a dumb american and I lost the thing, whatever. Oh, the other funny story was I'm going to the airport and I start taking my shoes off oh, lord they're like do you want some covers for your feet?
Speaker 3:and I was like I am such a dumb American, paul, she's the people we talk about when we're going through line in the airport. That's exactly who she is.
Speaker 1:Exactly, I learned all too.
Speaker 2:I do laugh. I took a photograph where I was in America I think it was in Dallas, california. I said you must remove all the bullets from your gun before you put it in your case. I don't know California and said you must remove all the bullets from your gun before you put it in your case.
Speaker 1:I'm like what you can travel with a gun. Yeah, I don't know, I've never seen that, but okay, all right. Well, all right, that's interesting. Usually you can't travel with a gun.
Speaker 2:Anyway, yeah, we'll teach you all the tricks. Were you impressed with Denmark and Sweden in terms of where they're going in sustainability?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was part of my master's program and so it was very tech-related and the Nordics have a lot of prop tech. So we did visit several of those places and one of them was this really, really cool guy and I'm going to butcher his last name so I'm not going to even say it, it's michael or mikhail something, and he runs, um, he runs innovate sweden and he has a couple of co-working spaces there and he had the park and they also had like sub 46 and a lot of the lot and he's been doing it for about 20 years. So a lot of the things and I didn't realize sweden had, but like spotify started in sweden and, um, a lot of different places has started in in stockholm, sweden. The cool thing about it was and this was kind of an interesting thing to learn was when, when you develop anything in europe or even in sweden, you have our uk. Sometimes you can get away with the uk, but you have to think globally right.
Speaker 1:In the? U sometimes you can get away with the UK, but you have to think globally. Right. In the US, we can get away with just you know, doing something in the US or even in Texas, right, like we're just gonna start locally and just develop in small markets In Europe? You can't think that way, do you? Whatever you build or whatever you do, has to be a global reach. Right, the markets are too small. And so I was just like fascinated by that and I was like man, you know, in the US we need to think that way too. I mean, you know, we don't have to necessarily, we're just such a huge market, but we would proliferate. I mean, we thought that way and took at okay whatever it is we're developing, how can it be used?
Speaker 1:you know, say, in Sweden, or say in UK or whatever it might be, it would be really, really super interesting. But yeah, it was, it was definitely, and that's why they have like so many unicorns, because they think that way, right, they think, okay, how can we build something that can be used every day? Like, we met the CEO and founder of this really cool tech company called Humani, so it's human with an I at the end and apparently it's Latin for built for humans or something, and so it was all about how you can prepare for an interaction with an employee or somebody, interaction with one of your team members, using a profile that's built, that so for your whole team, they can all build out a profile and then you know your preferences on communication, you know what their preferences are in communication, and it uses AI to say okay if you're going to talk to this person.
Speaker 1:You need to talk to them this way. This is how you're going to get through to them, Right? And so I was like, well, that's super interesting and I can see for very large teams or new environments, that can be really super useful. Or if you're going across, if you have a large organization, you have to go talk to somebody you don't talk to on a regular basis, you don't know them really well. That would probably be useful. So it was, it was interesting. It was interesting all just around on how people prefer to be communicated to. It was really like, if you're going to talk about this, you need to approach it this way. So it's really using AI that way.
Speaker 2:And bring some questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah so they're a new startup, they're in Denmark, and then we met some others. But yeah, that was very prevalent was they had to think globally and they had to think and they were like think and they were like, when they were developing their models, they were like, oh, we could do this, but then people would only interact with it like once a quarter. Is that that's not good enough. We need something where they're going to interact with it or they have to interact with it every day. What do we do? What do we build? What's the use case? So it was really kind of it was. It was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:I will say I didn't enjoy Denmark as much as I thought I was going to, because I was just so cold. I was just like I was miserable. I came from Texas and it was like 80 degrees when I left and I got there and I'm like F this, like it's cold, it's wet, I'm by the water, it's like going right through me and I'm like, no, I, I can't do it y'all. And they had like four layers on. So, by you, but you acclimate, you used this and by the time we got to Sweden, it was great and I was like walking around and I was fine.
Speaker 1:It was no big deal, so I enjoy. So I didn't do Denmark justice, because every time I talk to people in Sweden I'm like oh, we love Copenhagen, Copenhagen is so cool.
Speaker 2:And I was so cool and I was like, oh, that's horrible, I hate it, but I think it was just because it was so cool. But the good people of the nordics, you find that there's a real common sense about them. They're, they're, they're very stable.
Speaker 1:It's a very stable type of very safe um yeah yeah, but the bikers in in denmark would give you the side eye if you got in their way. Like they were really mean, like so they, they turned into new yorkers. Like you got in the bike lane, like that was really kind of like. We got off when we first got there and like one of my, like zach, was like getting out of the car and he's like the guy driver's, like get out of the bike lane and the guy was like going by them and uh, and yeah, I gave him a little, give him a little.
Speaker 1:Stare down, like you americans get out of the bike lane. But I mean, other than that, they're very nice, very nice people for sure. Oh, I learned about the, the swedish um, you know, personal space thing, and I didn't realize that because I was talking with somebody. You know, we're americans, we like almost italian, we're like on top of one another, we're like talking fairly close in sweden. He's like, and he was like going like this, and I'm like, am I offending you? Do I have to have breath? I was like, what's going on? He goes. No, in Sweden we're very much the six feet, we don't worry. You know, covid was no big deal because we always stay like four to six feet apart anyway, and I was like, oh, okay, well, cold't think, so I didn't have any garlic. So, yeah, I was like, yeah, it's a great country.
Speaker 2:Great tech comes out of there and it's usually very well thought out. I find Even design. I have to say you can almost tell a Danish designer they have a certain you know language in how they design things. They're quite brilliant at doing simplicity very, very beautifully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the architect.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've seen many of the buildings, some of the architectures were quite fantastic, oh, yeah, the building that they built the last one we went to was this technology center.
Speaker 1:I was totally jealous. It was like this big co-working space for a bunch of tech startups, all different kinds. They had life sciences, they had all different kinds of tech startups in there and it was totally. They were like, yeah, so when they launched it I guess it was earlier in the year they had the Royal family from Denmark and the Royal family from Sweden there when they opened it, because it was a Danish architect, danish architect that built the design of the building. It was beautiful. It's just absolutely, and the way they laid it out and, yes, simple but super functional, super inclusive, super just the way it was really well thought out and you got to give your nod to somebody who, like, can design a building and it's super well thought out, like how?
Speaker 1:they design common areas and how they design different things in the building, which is super cool. But yeah so yeah, and I totally forgot about that, they have royals there. I am such an American, I'm sorry. It was like oh, you have royal families in Denmark and Sweden. Okay, all right, there's that.
Speaker 2:They do simplicity so beautifully.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I've seen some buildings over there and it's almost as nothing there, but the nothing is done with such thought and perfect perfection. When I was over in Dubai at their expo in 2020, each country had a space and I remember the Danish or the Swedish expo and I've never seen such beautiful wood. There was nothing really ever there, but it was just executed with brilliance. Whereas a lot of the rest of them were very over the top in terms of how they posed it, the look and feel of each building, but the Danish were just nailed beautifully. Simplicity, awesome.
Speaker 1:Sorry, my thing wasn't plugged in the look and feel of each building, but the data just nailed beautifully in simplicity. Yeah, awesome. Sorry, my thing wasn't plugged in. Yeah, and actually what?
Speaker 2:you just said earlier on about this whole globalization is quite important. On sunday we became the uk became a member of the um, cptpp, with a bit of a mouthful um, which is the uh, the comprehensive and progressive agreement of trans-Pacific partnership. So there's a Pacific like you'd have the Eurozone, etc. The UK somehow managed to become a member of the Pacific zone, which I thought was quite fantastic. And again that's again opening up markets, lowering tariffs and all the rest, and that's why probably a big difference between where I am even is I'm always thinking about whatever we're building in technology how is it going to work in Hong Kong? How is it going to work in?
Speaker 3:Kuwait.
Speaker 2:So that is something we I think I met one of the ambassadors at Dubai Airport one time I think it was actually in Sweden, believe it or not and he was saying that how the UK just nails how they export globally and we don't tend to see that a lot. We don't tend to see as many, considering America is such a huge country and so far ahead in technology. On trade missions, there are not the same sort of trade missions for American companies to all these overseas markets as we tend to have here, definitely in the UK, but it's a fairly prevalent thing across Europe to try and bring technology companies into markets like Vietnam or wherever it might be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you, I mean as far as like cross-border commercialization y'all, yes for sure, right, cause you have to do languages and you have to do all sorts of different cultural things and you have to like you're starting to get really, I mean, in the U S we don't, we're not that good at it. I mean eventually we get there right when we kind of figure it out.
Speaker 2:But you get there when you're, when you're almost, when you're corporates, then you start doing it, whereas we would do it at the very, very early age, very early stage, sorry, like even startup stage. We would be. We'll be going into it into overseas markets and at least you know getting a, getting a pulse on how they look and are they are.
Speaker 1:The ideal fits first yeah, for sure, so I did wait, so the um obviously go and cross upon uh recognizing that there's uh different um healthcare systems.
Speaker 1:I'm glad, so glad, danny's here, because they were talking a little bit about um and I wanted to talk about this a little bit as around the ai in like in the healthcare space, and so I'm glad that you two are on, because one of the big things that they we did visit one of the life sciences and a couple of a couple of other healthcare kind of real estate folks over there and it was more along and I don't know if this is kidding here, dini, but it was along.
Speaker 1:How are we going to kind of integrate occupational technologies, if we can, with the building technologies and kind of using AI in a good way? Some of it's around people movements, some of it's around occupancy sensors, some of it's around space planning. You know, adjustable space planning depending on you know whatever it might be. Or how can we build a medical office or a hospital and it can be scalable. You know, quicker, depending on what you know pandemic or something arises, or do we do? Do we have the ability to do pop-up clinics? I mean, it was a really kind of interesting thought process around all of that. I don't know if we're doing what's the latest here in the US?
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things and I saw it out there at the conference in New York is in the US we're big about confidentiality on healthcare, so gathering data or using cameras that pick up on things that then lead to AI decisions and stuff is a real problem because of the confidentiality.
Speaker 3:But and I think it's Sony has finally developed some cameras that do not actually show the images to who's looking at them and they now can detect falls or also actually anticipate falls from the movement of people in medical buildings so that you can try to prevent them and if they happen, you don't identify from the data source that person as a person falling. You just identify that a human fell and then you can and an AI can use that to say there isn't a problem in your building in that particular area. That needs to be corrected up if they have all the confidentiality issues that we do. But it's extreme about in healthcare, not identifying obviously because of HIPAA and all anything about a patient when they're in a outpatient medical building or a hospital. So it makes it difficult for AI to collect data if you can't review or see what and get a history. But these cameras now work that way and I saw those in New York at the.
Speaker 1:Cretec.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was really neat. It was really neat. But the other thing is and it's the same, this has been around for retail we're finally learning how to use telephone, sell telephone data on movement of people and numbers of people in a medical space to anticipate when there is a problem, volume-wise and space-wise in a building filling up the occupancy of an area, and so there's some of that going on. But you know, health care has always been slow to adjust. It's just we are the last to accept change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, everybody says that, though about themselves.
Speaker 3:I think that's hilarious, but construction you know, everybody kind of says that about.
Speaker 2:I guess, except for I think that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:But yeah, construction, you know everybody kind of says that about.
Speaker 2:I guess I'm super I guess that's not true, I mean.
Speaker 1:But yeah, no, I got you. There was, uh, there was a um in sweden. There was this really interesting new startup that was around legionella, uh, and water quality, which I thought was really super interesting. So, and you know, and we talked about this a couple of times on the prop tech council about, okay, how can we use it? And obviously there's air quality sensors and getting those and I'm sure in the hospitals or medical you'll have have some of that where you're you're monitoring air quality and then the water quality. What was cool about them was all they were doing. It was like super simple. It was like a, you know, you like take a COVID test at home or whatever. You take a, whatever it might be right, so they have those water quality tests. So, like, as a person, it doesn't even have to be the building itself or the manager itself. The person or the tenant, whoever's in there, can stick the stick in the water, see if there's a problem.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you know, like I don't know. Y'all don't know this, but sometimes when you have a pregnancy test, you can't tell what the F it's saying, because it's the two lines You're like am I pregnant or not? Right, Like I don't know. And then you have to go to the doctor because it's like faint, You're like I might be pregnant, I don't know. Those are the same tests and everybody can't read them all the time.
Speaker 1:So what they do is they use your phone over the test and it tells you and not only does it tell you, it tells you the exact percentages of whatever is in that water. And so I was like, oh, that's pretty sick, that's kind of awesome, and so, yeah, so that was one of the starters we met over there, but it was all around water quality and managing the water right, Because I know when we had our conversations on Legionella, it was that most incidents of people getting sick from buildings or building in the built environment is from water, it's not from air, so, or at least they can't trace it to the air. It was interesting it was interesting.
Speaker 1:How about that Going back?
Speaker 2:on the health-.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the healthcare side of things and AI. The NHS is well known for being a bottomless pit of money. So no matter how much money the government pour into the NHS, it just gets like a sponge. It'll just soak it up anywhere.
Speaker 1:I love how you think about us Americans, paul. It's so warm, it's so hot.
Speaker 2:I won't say to the soldier this time Keep going, paul, keep going.
Speaker 2:So with the NHS here, no matter how much money they put in, it just gets used up and it's gone. And you know, I think it's getting to the stage where the efficiencies aren't there. Certain things are going quite well, but what the new? Thankfully, what they're now doing is there's actually more data on UK patients than any other country in the world because it's got one system system and they're now looking at really really crunching those numbers using AI and working out how long term. Do we start thinking about what we have to do when we got to do it?
Speaker 2:And education I've been pushing for quite a long time. I've got a lot of friends in the medical field and you see patterns of especially when women have the first baby, for example, they're at the doctors all the time and my whole piece has been why don't we do a weekend away for when women are pregnant, where they go and they're taught about? This is what happens at bay. These are all the things you need to be worried about. These things you have to go and see a doctor. These things have to bring the baby straight to the hospital. These things you solve for yourself or you go to a chemist and get get sorted out, but educating people on what is going on with them is really important, because we cannot.
Speaker 2:I mean, the issue is we literally are in a horrendous long-term situation because people, as I said before, are taking too long to die, not living longer, um, and we have got a growing aging population in most countries I mean, you know, africa, india, whatever, some countries where it's got a young population but most of our sort of Western countries Japan, us we've got aging populations and the economics don't work any longer in terms of pensions and long-term health care. And I really think this is where I hope this government now come in and just you know, while they have a vast majority go in there and really shake up the sector and try and look at that data that we're going to have rich data for decades and decades now and work out how they go forward and what they start trying to sort of in the earliest stages of people who may have a high propensity to prostate cancer or breast cancer or wherever it might be. They filter them out and find them very early on and start getting them in for testing more than the general population to try and make sure you don't get to the point where you get detected at three or four of cancer and getting there early and trying to get the sort out.
Speaker 2:What I did see many years ago with an incredible AI team was in Shenzhen with a company called Ping An, and they have literally tens of millions of people on their health insurance and they were getting to a stage where they were looking at every single piece of data from your blood type you name it to try and foresee, based on your diet, your blood type, whatever it might be. Is there a reason why certain people get certain types of cancers? Now what they were looking at was building hospitals with speciality hospitals in key areas where the data showed there was enough of a population within a radius to justify having a specialist cancer hospital or stroke hospital or heart attack hospital in these areas, with just those focus sort of skills in that place. So AI, I think, in healthcare, is really the way forward If we're going to be able to afford to actually keep going at the rate people need protection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean Dini can talk about this, but in my brain I know so you were saying NHS and I totally thought you were digging at the Americans. That's why I said what I said. But you're talking about in Britain, right? Yes, I'm saying that, okay, all right. So us Americans, we are so skeptical of anybody with our information that we're all going to do, oh, hell, no.
Speaker 2:We don't want to.
Speaker 1:We don't want you to know that. We cause you remember back in the day with Obamacare and everybody's like there is going to be these death panels and like I mean we're so, we're so afraid of the government knowing our information that I think, well, all of that is makes sense and it's all very altruistic and it's awesome and I think it would be great. It's going to be really. We're going to fight that in america. We're going to.
Speaker 1:We're going to be like I don't want you to know what I have, because then I'm going to get charged more because we don't have universal health care, so then our systems be like oh, they're going to know everything I have, and so my insurance costs are going to immediately triple because they know that I'm going to, I have a, I'm susceptible to cancer or whatever it might be, and so, yeah, that's what we fight over here, am I wrong, amy?
Speaker 3:No, not at all.
Speaker 2:There's lots of other European countries where you know Germany especially we find that very, very skeptical about sharing data, yeah yeah, and find that it's very, very sceptical about sharing data. Yeah yeah, very. It's culturally and I actually think, because the government funds the NHS and because that is a system and that data is so, so rich that really they need to force through and get around. I mean, they can get around these. You know a lot, a lot of the anonymisation of, but really the data is so rich. This is like a golden moment for healthcare here. I think what they build here and what I'm trying to push them to do is say, if you nail this here.
Speaker 2:You can then take these learnings and go and it becomes a service we then export around the world.
Speaker 3:But it's important. The other part of that is on the provider side. We're probably a generation at least away from physicians accepting AI readily in the treatment, diagnosis and prevention of all kinds of health problems. The physicians coming out of school now I'm sure are much more receptive, but the vast majority of physicians still are 50 plus and it's going to take that generation shift to really accept AI. We've seen it over and over. As technology has improved to treat patients, it takes a while for physicians to accept it. They just and and and but. Once it's accepted I think it'll take off unbelievably fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, I mean I guess it has good use cases around like triage, right, when when you get somebody coming into the ER and then they can, you know, have people while they're on the way fill out what like the what are your symptoms? Or or even telemedicine from like I don't, or even telemedicine from like I don't know if telemedicine is the thing, but I've just kind of you know, webnd, everybody thought webnd was kind of in the patient doctor.
Speaker 1:You're like I don't need to go to the doctor, I have webnd, and that webnd said everything is like you, you could die, like I was like I don't know if y'all know, paul, you know about webnd, but it was like online internet like this is this. It was always like it could be everything you know, by the way, you're gonna lose a limb or you're gonna die like they were covering everything, and so it was sort of helpful.
Speaker 2:But everybody thought that they.
Speaker 1:I think what it did was it drove everybody to doctors because they all thought they were gonna die. It was like you, like you know it could be this, or it could be something simple oh, you just have gas, you know, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a big issue now with obesity over here. It's becoming more and more prevalent. I mean, I know America's had an issue with obesity for a long time, but that's you know. Obesity is probably the big number one killer or cost of running a health system. It's just.
Speaker 2:It is just bad and I think, they've brought in things like sugar taxes over here, and it needs to. It needs to go further all the time. I think we have to sort of educate people that you can't just eat kfc or mcdonald's or whatever it might be every day and expect to have a great outcome. It just doesn't work like that, um, and I think that sugary taxes and all the rest are probably really good things to sort of try and stop people from going on that route, and a lot more needs to be done. But we've got to educate people far more. But also, I think the AI side is really the golden bullet here for it.
Speaker 3:Well, a classic example that's always used in health care is how, where you are, paul, hospice has been so well accepted. It's really made a difference in the cost of end of life care In the US. We look the other way. We've got every excuse why England won't work in the US at end of life because that's where all our money is spent and we continue to do it. It is almost a society and cultural issue for us to do what is accepted and is very patient and family-oriented in England. We will not do that in the US. We won't accept it and it's very few physicians that will accept the type of hospice care readily that is well accepted there and is very successful. I mean it makes a difference in families. We struggle with that here.
Speaker 1:What are you referring to, dean? What are you talking about? Well?
Speaker 3:I'm talking about end of life. I mean if you look at a patient that is 80, 85, even 90, the extremes we go to you would not do that in England you would not, and they got all kinds of data of what little benefit you get for the patient and the families to go through to try to treat something that is just not going to make a difference. We will go to extremes and it's not just the money, it's the impact on the patient and the family and what they go through, when you could make that end of life much more comfortable Comfortable that's the word comfortable, and we have a hard time with that.
Speaker 1:We have a hard time with that, with people for sure. We have to try everything under the sun in order to save them.
Speaker 3:Right, right, but there's a point where you've got to say, and, and the data proves it, that you are not doing a benefit. And oh, by the way, you're just adding millions to the health care system in dollars. So anyway, we could. We could talk all day. We've debated it in school, we've debated it in the organizations everywhere, and it's hard in the US.
Speaker 2:One of the important things that happened here the last week or so was we had a bill that went through the Parliament. Now it has to go ratified through the House of Lords and back to the Parliament again. So it's not a done deal but end of life. They've brought in end of life legislation where you can decide to actually end your own life when certain criteria have been met. You've got less than six months to live. Two doctors have said he's completely understands the whole consequences, etc. Um, so that was a big step, a really, really big, in fact, a big moral step in the country to agree to um in the end of life, um treatments, so that you're given drug to pass away when you decide to.
Speaker 2:And very recently I had a really dear friend of mine, really really dear friend of mine, an old guy who had gone like a house in firewood. He died of cancer a few months back and I was pretty much looking after him to the last day actually, and I found the last couple of days were very, very hard, last day actually. And um, I found the last couple of days were very, very hard. Um, really, he knew, I knew, we all knew that he just had to be given some heavy medicine to drift off because he was in a lot of pain the last two to three days and that was cruel and I think that you know it's a moral issue because really when you bring an end-of-life care where you can decide you want to go early, there is there are moral reasons why you have to go early. There is there are moral reasons why you have to be careful about that, that particular one.
Speaker 2:But certainly I've seen now two cases firsthand my father in his last few days and this friend of mine who died a few months back where really three to four days before they died they were really just, you know it, it was. It was quite cruel. Um, and I think too many people are seeing that now first hand and going actually we morally wouldn't let a dog or a cat or anything else die like that and I think it's a big shift and it's happening more and more. I think in Texas you're allowed to do it. In Texas, I think as well, is that right? You're allowed to actually take your own life at the end through a lethal injection sort of situation. It's quite rare.
Speaker 1:There's definitely one state in the states You're allowed to actually take your own life at the end through a lethal injection sort of situation Not that I know of, there's definitely one state in the States that you're allowed to do it.
Speaker 3:They tried that in Oregon for a while but I don't know if Oregon had that law, but I don't know if it's still in place.
Speaker 2:It's still in place.
Speaker 1:It is Oregon yeah, but it's still in place. Yeah. Yeah, I remember Dr Kevorkian and all the stuff about him in the US and he was basically Dr Death and when people wanted to, he would just you know, and that was really controversial here in the US Like everybody is a murderer and it's a cultural thing for sure. My dad, talking about Texas, my dad's like if I ever get to like this and this and this and I can't, you know, do whatever he goes, just take me out of the backyard and shoot me. My dad says he's 81.
Speaker 1:He's like just take me out of the backyard and shoot me. My sister who works in medical fields, she goes. Dad, I can't shoot you, but I could definitely poison you. You know I could do that and let you drift off this leaf. Yeah, poison all that, because I got.
Speaker 3:You know I'm in hospitals all day long.
Speaker 1:I can, I can, I can take care of that. But I mean, it's a joke, they're a family, but my dad's 81 and it's just like you know you, you think about that with your folks and um I can't you know, my mom passed suddenly, you know, and and I really thought she was going to be around to be a pain in my ass for another 20 years, but she wasn't.
Speaker 1:She just kind of passed suddenly. So there's, you know, there's, there's grief with that, there's also blessings with that. She was in a lot of pain, so I get that, but I can't. You know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting concept. I mean, it's we, and as we have it more, I guess it's going to be super prevalent or super, you know, topical, because we're going to have more. We are aging, everybody's aging, everybody's living longer, as we talked about before.
Speaker 2:Except you, amy. You always are glamorous.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do, I know, but I'm still.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it is a big issue. It's a big issue globally. I mean, if you look, if you look at the Far East, especially like countries like Japan, where child birth rates are so low now, um, it's a really big problem. And I see the same happening in China where, you know, we've got a big old, old, old population, very few people reproducing anymore, and it's we see it in certain countries where it's more prevalent. But in the next 10 years, 20 years, it's going to be a massive problem in a lot of countries.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's definitely. I know Elon wants to repopulate the Earth, but with his 12 children or whatever it is. But I guess I have to make fun of him Moving on.
Speaker 2:So AI and buildings, let's get back on the subject matter. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Squirrel. Let's talk about like okay, so is.
Speaker 1:So on the healthcare side, say we have another everybody freaks out where every time it becomes winter because we think there's going to be another COVID right or whatever it might be. There's going to be another COVID right, or whatever it might be. So how can AI help the healthcare community? If there's some sort of freaky, weird pandemic again, what would they look to AI to be used for? Is it from a scalability like to, you know, come up, come down? Are the pop-up clinics really a thing, denny? Can we do those things? Or how would they handle it? We had another pandemic, what would we do?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all and this has been done in a few markets you have to separate what is acute and from a need of healthcare versus non-acute. And it's not pop-up, it's more of a drive-up, and I have seen the conversion because bank branches are gone. Bank branches drive up are on the decline. I have seen in markets where they have transitioned those into drive-up healthcare facilities where you can get as much as possible from driving up and being cared for, and that came about through COVID, because that's how they got the vaccines. They drove up and it was fast and it kept people separated. All of that. They now talk about how that could be used for routine examinations of things. That that works.
Speaker 3:Now you can't do a drive up and fix a broken bone, that's not going to happen. But it separates patients that are high risk, that just need a drive-up concept that would work, and so that's one thing. Now AI didn't help on that. That's real estate using bank branches. It's another use for bank branches. More on the AI side has been what technology is being developed in the building to separate and protect patients if there is an epidemic of some sort? We now pretty much in all buildings talk about how you would separate, if you had to, patients and providers in the event of an epidemic. We've learned from the mistakes, so to speak, of COVID, and I think AI is helping develop various systems and devices to help us do that.
Speaker 1:I would imagine remember that like that I don't know what it was that it's usually on Mission Impossible Terminator like they're walking through and they can see people. Can you imagine somebody walking through this thing and they go oh, you have COVID, go over here, or? You have this go over there.
Speaker 2:We built a whole system where we could detect who you were even with a mask on.
Speaker 2:Did you have COVID? I built that in like three months, yeah, during 2020, yeah, yeah, I think globally, a lot of countries did a lot of things great. A lot of countries did mainly did a lot of things very, very, very badly, and I think there'll be more consensus globally about how we handle things going forward. During COVID, I was in India and I was in China. I was one of the few people traveling. Actually, the Chinese allowed me to fly into China, but even Chinese people are not allowed into China and I saw, culturally there, a complete polar opposite to the UK and Ireland, where I ended up being in November, october, december.
Speaker 2:I was over there in October and literally the quarantine measures would just be extraordinary, extraordinary and everybody knew it was for the greater good. And again, this is where culturally, things were different. Over here, nobody really gave a damn because it was old people dying, which I think is quite morally disgusting. But they're like, yeah, but it's only old people dying, whereas over in China, they're like, yeah, but we have to do this because old people are dying, because they culturally respected old people and we did, um and but, but it was just culturally. Nobody was walking around, going I'm exempt. There was nobody saying they were exempt, whereas here this is fact as a fact there were people going to doctors, surgeries, getting through the receptions to get it, get a face-to-face meeting with a doctor during covert, because they said it was affecting the makeup it was affecting their makeup.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wearing having to wear a mask. So could it be? Could they have an exclusion?
Speaker 1:we have these exclusion lines because the mask is affecting their makeup and they didn't want to wear a mask.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, I've never seen the pictures of the their makeup and they didn't want to wear a mask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm never seeing the pictures of the nurses afterwards and they have bruises all along their face because they had to pull it so tight. They were so scared of, like you know, getting whatever it might be. But we didn't know. I mean it was crazy town, but there are a lot of learnings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, I think. Go back. Going back to the um converting I always like a cool adaptive reuse stories, converting bank branches into drive-up stuff. How much of health care could somebody get up through a drive-up scenario like I mean I can imagine like testing, like I used to get not anymore but UTI and kidney infections, and you're just doing it like all they're doing is you're going in there and you're giving them a urine sample. You could do the urine sample at home and bring it up.
Speaker 3:Right, right.
Speaker 1:Right, so anything with blood or urine or whatever it might be. However, they're testing you like a nose thing, like they're testing you for whatever you could do all that. Is that a good portion of the care? Is that like a quarter of the care?
Speaker 3:I never saw any numbers percentage-wise. I just saw them happening in various markets and, like I say, it was driven by COVID, but they didn't shut them down afterwards. They now continue to use them and they've expanded them to some and put procedure rooms in them that can be used, but they still. I mean, if you think about it, there are a lot of things. You can, as you said, drive up and have a test done that you don't have to get out and be exposed to something else, and that is what people worry about as soon as there is publicly an epidemic. And Paul's right, we didn't take it serious. I mean I lived in Florida, we didn't. You know COVID didn't come to Florida, it didn't. I mean we didn't have it. You know, we all were on the. Everybody kind of did what we always did and it was crazy. It's just crazy to think that way.
Speaker 1:Florida and Texas the same way. Our governor basically said COVID schmovid, it's like Voldemort, don't you dare say the word word and don't you dare force people to wear masks. And don't you dare. I mean, he made it, he like, made decrees, like you, like the business owners couldn't force people to wear masks inside their businesses.
Speaker 3:Well, we had it, we had, we made, we made national news with a grocery store, just that way, he said. Matter of fact, he had signs don't wear a mask when you come into shop.
Speaker 1:It was like it was the fight between who could keep up with who, between DeSantis and Pat.
Speaker 3:It was crazy, it was absolutely crazy, but I, you know, I think it'll be different the next time. The next time, the kind of the review after the fact is sad how it was done and I think the next time and there will be another one, you know there will be another one it will happen again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we live too tightly packed now, absolutely yeah, I mean if it's not something like that that's spread by people sneezing or whatever I mean. But's, if it's not something like that, that's spread, you know, by people sneezing or whatever I mean, but it just I don't know what it's spread by, but you know. But, yeah, I mean it's, it's sad, it's sad, but we've had, you know, and do you think there'll be cause? We have the, I guess the latest. Well, I mean, are they accelerating between time periods, between pandemics, or because the last big one we had was when, I don't know y'all, I don't know mine was a long time ago, but it will be much shorter this time you're not gonna wait 50.
Speaker 3:You're not gonna wait 50 years.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that oh, all, right, okay, so it so it was in the late 60s, early 70s yeah. Yeah, so so we're preparing real estate, or real estate understanding, and preparing for the next pandemic. I mean I hopefully there vaccine. Yeah, wow, it was meant.
Speaker 2:I mean that was absolutely, as it was incredible how, in in a year, all the pharmaceutical companies got into bed together. They went right, we gotta. We gotta jump on this and the speed and work that went in and we could not have got away with this if three, even three years earlier, there's no way that that vaccine would have been brought to market in the UK Impossible. But actually this is what frustrates me about climate change, and that now, because that is as big an issue as what COVID is. It's a slower burning cancer. It's not a sudden heart attack like we have with COVID. It's a slower burning cancer, but we're not taking it seriously and if we wanted to, we could get things done rapidly and a lot of what I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:I had some big meetings again yesterday and this group of companies I'm putting together, where we're all singing for the same hymn sheet, is literally working out how do we get in there and how do we make dumb buildings smart and save you money, not cost you money and save you money, not cost you money.
Speaker 2:And you know I'm herding sheep at the moment trying to get everybody on the same. But I have got the insurance sector now on board. I've got the insurance sector saying look, if all this technology can go into a building, then we completely de-risk the building, so insurance costs by 20%. So if we can keep on this momentum of energy savings, insurance cost savings, asset prices increasing, et cetera, what we're trying to do here and I'll tell you what it's killing me I mean I'm trying to get this whole coalition of people where we put in the smarts and you save money and your asset goes up in value, because we've got to change the narrative around. I think this is where we differentiate between grade A, grade B, grade C and I think we can start talking to the grade Cs and say, look, you do this.
Speaker 2:Boom, you're getting up there with the A boys quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we're working on that here in the council, in the US too, around that whole concept and trying to put together a coalition of insurance companies and researchers with the universities and how can we build this out in a smart way to kind of save. And it's all through technology. Technology is going to save, you know, from an insurance cost and all those other great things. But yeah, now we're working on that here too.
Speaker 1:It's kind of an interesting wonderful fun little thing in 2025, but you know, christine mcquee, she's been on that too. She's just, uh, it's one of the things. But from sustainability, from insurance cost savings, from, you know, energy reduction, all these different things, you know, project can really save the planet. Um, because we use from the built environment, use so much energy, right, and with data centers more and more data centers getting built, using, consuming even more energy we kind of have to figure out how the technology can kind of, you know, help the real estate operators operate better.
Speaker 2:It's great to see Brookfield now again them jumping aboard in nuclear as well, and I think this is where they, this is where finally, we'll start accelerating our push. I mean, the US alone has got so much nuclear waste that it's got enough nuclear waste to run on these new nuclear power stations to last the next 125 years or something just in the way it already has.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's incredible. The us is in an amazing position, amazing position to really sort of take its nuclear waste and with the new, with the sort of terraforms stuff that bill gates will be working on, really transform how the us goes to zero fossil fuel emissions by moving to smaller nuclear solutions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so funny. When I was in Sweden they were totally like you can't go nuclear, nuclear is bad. And there was this one guy and I'm just kind of laughing. I go, dude, everybody thinks nuclear is green.
Speaker 2:Now I mean, nobody thinks nuclear is bad, so I don't know, don't be wrong, it's still bad, but we're gonna have to use energy anyway, as I tried to get true to humans, we're the only ones who are the issue. I don't see horses or donkeys or cows needing electricity, just us just us?
Speaker 1:yeah, for sure. Yeah, we're not as tough as cows are, for sure, yeah, no, we're a little. We're a little thin skin. All right, awesome, all right. So, uh, um, any other? Um, okay, so next week is christmas eve. We're not having a show, so y'all spend time with your family all right perfect, happy, merry christmas to y'all.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be, uh, really good. And then the week after that is new year's eve, I probably will have one, just so we can have a party. But, um, you know, but christmas is christmas, so be with your families, that'll be all right, all right. So, uh, last parting thoughts. Go ahead, denny parting thoughts. Oh, go ahead, dini parting thoughts.
Speaker 3:Well, I have to agree with Paul. We've got to get serious about all this climate and controlling energy. It's just hard In the US, it's hard for us to take it serious when I was in Europe with ULI and saw all the sustainability they were doing over there this past summer. We're way behind. Eventually we'll catch up, but it's going to take a while.
Speaker 2:It will for sure, and Paul I mean, it was John Kerry who said to me that here we are, the home of Elon Musk and Tesla, and yet we have 4% of people in America using EVs. I think if you look graphically at where America is right now on its emissions, I think if you look graphically at where America is right now on its emissions, it's right up there. I mean Canada's worse, saudi Arabia worse again, but America's really sort of way off the kilter and I think it's going to take a cultural change for people to realise actually hang on. The rest of the world is going here and I don't know how long those two egos, trump and Musk, will be in the same room without falling out, but I hope they can stay in the same room long enough, because I do see Musk realizing from his travels around the world that actually we do have to change and he obviously wants to push Tesla very hard. So I think this is an area where I think a lot will happen. I think 2025 will be interesting.
Speaker 2:Uh, we have no globally. We are all sitting here ourselves about what's gonna happen in the january onwards, praying that there's some common sense around there. But I mean, I have to say that that cabinet is a little scary. Um, good luck to you all, um, but we do hope. We do hope um common sense prevails and I hope he sees sense and actually leads on this, because it would be great for America to start being first, start putting this really first and make it an industry that it can then export, rather than having to do it after everybody else. So let's hope for the best, okay.
Speaker 2:But let's make 2025, a year where we just change things. Okay, let's just make it happen.
Speaker 1:I feel you there.
Speaker 2:We've talked enough in 2024. Okay, I don't procrastination, let's go make it happen Okay.
Speaker 1:I feel you yes for sure. Well, thanks guys for coming on the show All right, being great Happy holidays.
Speaker 1:All right, that has been the commercial real estate morning news show. Thanks for Paul Sheedy and Dean Taylor for being on my show and talking about all things AI and healthcare and climate and all those great things. This is a weekly news show of the U S prop tech council. If you're interested in joining the prop tech council, feel free to go to prop tech councilcom. I PropTech Council. If you're interested in joining the PropTech Council, feel free to go to proptechcouncilcom. I'm Amy Palito. I'm the chair and the PropTech Council.
Speaker 1:As always, we have to say thank you to our sponsors, lerner Associates. They are a mergers and acquisition consultant for the prop tech industry. Ben Lerner is a good friend of the council and we're so happy that he is our sponsor. All of y'all have a happy, merry Christmas and a happy holidays. Happy Hanukkah, whatever it is you celebrate. I hope you have that and spend a great time with your family. Next week we will not have a show and then I will have our New Year's Eve show in the morning, talking about with some really good friends, and we're going to talk about the 2025 and what we're looking forward to in the coming new year. So y'all have a blessed one, and I hope you have a fabulous time with your families. Have a good one, we'll see you.
