Category: Scandinavia

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH MAKING DECISIONS?

We look at the increasing lack of leadership in our UK Public Services, and its negative impact – and we say; its time to do something.

The question really is; “why”, – is it necessary to do something? Public Services are not going to disappear overnight. Whether you take a week to do nothing at all – or a year – will not necessarily impact on your own job. It might, however, impact on someone else’s life – but as a Clinical Director told me recently – “I have a nice house, and nice holidays; why am I putting myself on the line?”

Lack of decision-making means that the people who we entrust to look after us, provide our essential services, and who we had hoped would go the extra mile – have no need to do so. This results either in a lack of engagement, where – according to a colleague of mine recently moved from the private sector into local government – that her colleagues already had their coats on by 16.58 each day… or an increasing level of stress related absence through the paralysis of moving things forward, in times of increasing pressure and demand for the very services they feel unable to deliver.

It’s not our job here to tell others how to do their job. But it is our job to explain the damage that simply putting things off, keeping things the same, and hoping that maybe tomorrow things will work out – doesn’t fly. Particularly as we are moving, and have moved – into an arena of “personalised service”, where our individual use of personal data, our smartphones, our iPads, our fitness trackers – means that technology exists to deliver great improvements in quality of pubic service.

As Bogi Eliasen of the CIFS in Copenhagen said at the HIMSS Conference almost one year ago – by harnessing the data that is flowing, in realtime, across our desks every minute – we can better employ our people, enable them to make decisions related to the data that they themselves have access to, reduce the stress in our places of work – and actually do what the public are asking us, and expect us – to do.

Because – the fact is – we no longer have the option of simply throwing more people, and more cash, to continue doing things the way we always have – because it just doesn’t work any longer. There are just too many people living longer, with too many orthopaedic ailments, exponential rises in diabetes sufferers, that having a few more nurses, a few more clinics, some more phone-lines – can never hope to keep pace with the needs of society that are getting worse.

It is for this reason that the recent PR from NHS England, about its new Diabetes Partnerships, – is like adding an Elastoplast to cover my broken leg. It misses the fundamental point. Hospitals that prefer to use in house resources rather than engage with specialist IT help, are simply putting off the moment of truth – that we have reached a tipping point.

What we have seen is that, due to the new personal focus of our provision of services, we need to move out of the “silo” mentality of me doing my job, and you can do yours. We need to start looking at how we treat society as a whole, in particular the mix of Community based solutions linked to (say) hospital services.

In the same way that “if you always do what you always did – you will always get, what you always got~’ so it is obvious that our current ways of doing things, at just about every area of Management that we have looked at for this Article – simply do not deliver the results that society is increasingly asking for.

This means investment in new technologies, that are proven, and that can link performance to results and to costs. The technology exists and has done for some time. The question tho – is whether our Social and Public Service leaders can take the lead and deliver what the rest of us are asking. After all – they have nice houses and nice holidays to go to. We wouldn’t want them to risk all that, now would we?

Is it already too late for GDPR?

We look at how industries are preparing, and ask – have businesses already moved on?

For the past two years, whole industries ranging from Conference Organisers, to newly articulate Vendors – have sprung up professing abilities and proficiencies to help us manage the data compliance of GDPR – coming live in just a few months.

And their message may have been getting through. In Scandinavia, you cannot find any free Consultants able to take on any new projects. In our calls to UK vendors, few even answered our calls.  If past history is anything to go by, companies typically leave things to the last minute – so maybe there will be this rush to the final hurdle when the deadline May comes around.

Or maybe there won’t. According to Richard Copland, Partner at The Future Shapers – those companies that were going to do something – have already done so. The concern over GDPR among the large corporates where this can matter – has already been dealt with and life is moivinbg on to more important areas of data handling.

This mirrors our own experience. In interviews we have had in the Financials and Insurance areas, the need is not for data compliance.  The concern is how to identify key bits of customers information that can  make a commercial difference. In other words, technology  and IT is not the problem any more;  we are getting back to basics of – what drives our businesses and above all, what will give these companies a commercial edge.

Interestingly,  Trade Conferences per se are no longer seen as the giver of new comparative information, because it is rare to find vendors who genuinely have anything new to say.  Whilst there are exceptions to this,  their importance is in the casual networking of vendor to delegate and delegate to delegate.

Where this takes us in the future – is that 2018 will be the catalyst for specific vendors who genuinely have a new vision and a new take on their market. Linking technology to commercial benefit, will be the difference.

Is Brexit a Total Con? And can we Rise Up and be a Nation of Small Shopkeepers Again?

If so, we better get a move on… before we have no shops left that ordinary people can afford to shop in..

Apparently, Napoleon never said his ill-fated and probably correct remark above. The phrase was first used in an offensive sense by the French revolutionary Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac on June 11, 1794 in a speech to the National Convention.

But it’s true nonetheless. The secret sauce of the commercial success of England – is down to to the innate work ethic of ordinary British people, building their little businesses, into larger businesses.

And yet, if you believe the analysis on last night’s UK TV – the Brexit vote to Leave will not deliver, and has never been designed to deliver – the protection and job security for the masses. It will create precisely the opposite, where the very rich become even richer – at the expense of the middle class, who will become lower class, and (as seen on this programme) – Local Councils will no longer be able to afford to house their poorer residents, the single mums, the people who have fallen on hard times, the homeless. The non-availability of affordable housing for our sons and daughters, is a key plank of strategy for enticing very rich non Dom residents not the UK, with the now proven fallacy that their wealth will trickle down to the rest of us.

Because the fact is – no it won’t, and no it doesn’t. In reality it is the opposite. Unless you are very lucky, and happen to work in the key financial and legal sectors, our hard work for the larger corporations or the coffee shops and public services, – simply serves to enlarge the financial gap.

This is due to the fact that non Doms are placing their money into property, at ever increasing prices, – because it is a sound investment – but it takes that property and available pricing, away from the middle class on which Britain depends. Similarly, the low or negligible tax regime, only benefits those who can afford to exploit it. The rest of us don’t have the money to do so.

So why Brexit?

Because the Leave campaign of Brexit is financed by the very high net worth individuals we have discussed above. Leaving the EU will remove us from the social protection that is Europe. In fostering a climate of low taxation, we are deliberately supporting the very people whose interests is theirs, but not those of the UK.

In short, the lower and middle classes who voted to leave – far from voting to protect their jobs, have voted to ensure their own demise.

A key and well referenced Article by Anna Williams, explains this in a nutshell;

https://tweetydoesdemocracy.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/welcome-to-new-britannia-our-green-pleasant-land/

This has gone way beyond simple envy or jealousy. This is now about the key attributes of our valued psyche, the reason that ordinary people still love to come here. The day that only the very rich people can afford to shop in our West End playgrounds of boutique labels, will be too late for our next generation, on whose income we depend for our pensions and other social costs.

The question is – as we walk by the streets of empty shops in all of our local High Streets – is how long will it take us, to understand this Con. Or are we the victims of Fake News indeed!

How Advanced is UK Healthcare?

We take a look at the upcoming eHealth Europe HIMSS Conference in Malta, and ask; where does the UK figure?

According to  the Independent Newspaper recently,  UK Healthcare provision, is on a par with some of the “lesser” countries in Europe.  It is now no better than places  such as; Poland, Turkey, etc.

This is  both a kick in the teeth to the good people of Poland and Turkey, and it  is also misleading. It is not the case that the UK is falling downwards.  It’s just that other places are doing better. Turkey in particular, ever since Mehmet Atasever, former VP Health Ministry in Ankara,  met me at a HIMSS Conference in Brussels, and handed me his 5 year Plan – has been progressive and focussed on new solutions, custom built, but (despite recent politics) – open to European links. Key areas of advance are the provision of Insurance based treatments, to help finance the general population access to five-star hospital Treatment, etc.

And it is not the case that the NHS is completely underfunded. We have shown in earlier Posts, that Hospitals can usually find the money when needed. The question may be that surprising answer, which is;  maybe Hospitals don’t actually “want”  to find the answer?

To get to that conclusion, you need to compare UK Health provision, with that in Scandinavia.  Because of the growth of Medical Science Parks, in Sahlgrenska Gothenburg; and Pharma, in Lund and Gothenburg – there is a stimulated market in acceptance of new technologies, to help drive better care, which is now regarded as the top area in Europe (including the UK).  This explains why some 20% of Visitors to eHealth Europe in a few weeks, are from Scandinavia – but only 5% are from the UK.

The UK has its own Health Conference, the week before, in London.  Our question is therefore  – why so? It surely has to make more sense to bring everyone together under one common roof?  As we have seen above,  going our own way is not helping us in terms of keeping up with better services.

Nevertheless, things might be changing. Although we ourselves will be Moderating the Nordics session of eHealth Europe, on “bridging data and genomics” – the Genomics England organisation has just appointed a new Commercial Director.

There are key and specific areas of clinical provision, where the UK is expert. What is now needed is to bring this acceptance of new processes – into other areas, particularly IT.

 

 

How Safe is the IoT?

We look at the recent situation at Abbott, and get a comment from new kids on the block, Tridentify AB (www.tridentify.se) –  Sweden.

At a time when Abbott Laboratories have been the subject of a stinging criticism from the US FDA, for  failing to properly investigate and resolve risks related to its implanted heart devices, including cybersecurity threats and a battery malfunction linked to two patient deaths – it’s important to take a measured view, and ask; are all devices that contain a battery, and can send info  – likely to run into these same problems.

Not according to new Tracer developers,  Tridentify. Based in Stockholm and Gothenburg, their CIO Leif Sandvik.  It all depends on whether you have actual patient data. Simple tracking of info and pure functionality, should not be an issue. This is what he says and how Tridentify solve these aspects:

“It is correct that we use AES-128 for all communication in QTA Tracer System, but the most important is that we do not use any patient data in the system for the moment. This mean that we actually do “not have any” data to protect even if we do it.😬

If a battery should fail, the tracer will reset and the red LED will flash. If the battery is drained no LED will flash and according to the manual the product should be handled as expired.”

But Johan Snis,  former Abbott Marketing Manager and new Commercial Director at Tridentify – goes further:he says there will always be some element of risk – but this is manageable;

“I would say that secure data is an important topic when entering IoT or IoMT as med tech has their own abbrevation.
Hospitals was one of the last “industries” to internetify themselfes and still they are a bit behind in knowledge and technology, including security. But patientdata is now, in most countries, in digital format on databases accesible from interhospital networks. So if healthcare already has accepted that evolution they cannot void themselfs against IoT. And they shouldn’t, since this is the most prominent way to personalize healthcare and keeping patient at home or specialist clinichans on remote locations.

However, data security is important. All data transfered to and from QTA is done using AES-128, Advanced Encryption Standard. The encryption uses a 128 bit key and it gives 3,4×10^18 possible key combinations.
If we would use the fastest supercomputer in the world it would take it approx 1 billion billion years to crack the encryption. The universe is 13.75 billion years old as we speak.
If we assumes that every person on the earth has 10 computer each and all of them would be used to crack the encryption it would take 77,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

So data transfer can be secure. The above argument doesn’t say that it cannot be broken but that it will be tough. On the other hand it is possible to break into a hospital, it is possible to disguise as a doctor and give poison to a patient. Paper journals are possible to steal and forge…and so on.

For me the discussion has to be open minded. Yes it is very important to have secure future system! On the otherhand, the system used today are not foolproof or “pentagon” secure.”

 

 

Bridging Data and Genomics, for Personal Health.

We look at how healthcare provision is moving from a one size fits all approach – to a personalised and more insight driven delivery

We are delighted to say that we will be moderating the above session at the prestigious eHealth Conference, in Malta later this May.  The specific time and date is 12.15 – 13.15 on the 10th May, the first day of the Conference.

Hosted in the Nordic Community, the session brings together key speakers from Pharma and Government, to look at how we deliver a personalised healthcare to each one of us.

We will publish deeper details as soon as these are made public.  But in meantime – do make a point of meeting us at the Session. Please register your Comments below, so we can include as many of these as possible in our time together.

How to sell in a Digital Market. Get back to basics.

We learn a timely lesson on how to make retail sales.

It’s so easy to forget, in this ecommerce world – that sales go to real people. When people go online and fish out their credit card – we are dealing with the same influences as if that person was sitting in front of us.  In fact less so – because they are not sitting in front of us.  And that process is more difficult because of that.
The eCommerce Show just a week or so ago in London – and this is similar to all of the others across Europe and USA – has increasingly forgotten that the “sales process”  is not about fulfilment, as important as this is. It is about the man relationship, or the semblance of this – during the virtual ordering process.
One of the key reasons why so many eCommerce companies bite the dust and do not have a long life expectancy, is their failure to get alongside their customers, face to face, and do this repeatedly, so that they both build up a relationship, but they also get a sale.
How do we know this?
We spent a day last Saturday signing copies of our own new Book, that was published by Austin Macauley and earlier launched at the London BookFair.  We travelled to a lovely market town in Wales, the shop owners gave customers small glasses of mulled  heated wine, and we did our magic engaging with customers. We sold ten times more books in one day than the average daily turnover.
The moral of this little story is;  get your “good customer sales process”  right – and you keep your customer for the long term.   Hide behind your digital process – and the customer will not come at all.

post