Tag: eCommerce

IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION MISSING THE POINT?

We focus on the upcoming IP Expo Europe Conference at Excel London  and ask the question – are consumers being left behind? 

If so, this would be a pity. It is no coincidence that IP Expo Europe is just a few days before the Chinese IRC Retail Conference also in London, whose view is;  With the challenge of slowing retail sales, international expansion is key to maintaining double-digit growth.

The emergence of the Chinese eCommerce market, in a country whose GDP is constantly growing, is a clear opportunity to Re:Generate retail. Today’s QiXi day – the Chinese equivalent to Valentine’s day – is poised to generate record growth in international eCommerce sales. In other words, ECOMMERCE can drive retail.

The problem is, that’s not how ordinary people are viewing this. It’s not just Consumers, although there is  a dawn of realisation in the minds of the general public that the great benefit of online retail might also be killing the social high street that binds society together.  Maybe going shopping wasn’t so bad after all?  When one third of all the things that people buy online, are routinely returned to their sender – and there are more charity shops than thriving retailers – perhaps we are missing something in the way we describe and market “digital transformation”. Transformation might not necessarily be for the better.

The same feeling is also spreading into our public sectors; increasingly we are seeing new “digital transformation” labelled projects, that are little more than typing our patient records into someone’s Windows 7 desktop.  The NHS has “ringfenced” (oh please, don’t be naive) – money for “digital transformation” that will simply throw money at projects its hospitals were going to do anyway.  Digital Transformation is great PR.

At a time when emails no longer carry the same immediacy as they originally did – and it is now better to communicate sending something called a Letter in the mail – are we missing the point in thinking that everybody of course knows what blockchain is? Or are we blinded by selling technology to ourselves, when we are forgetting that what people want are the benefits of said technology? What that  technology is  – is irrelevant.

And that’s the point. IP Expo Europe  is not addressing consumers. It is a platform for the vendors of said technology, to show us the best ways of delivering business benefit.  We as “consumers” of technology should know how to translate that into something our own customers will understand. But to get there – we need the face to face, the casual conversation, the in depth presentation – with our peers – that will show us better ways to get where we ourselves need to go.

This may in turn reflect back into our struggling retail market, as long as it is a catalyst for methodology change, marketing people to get together. In short, the key to overall success, is a mix of the two -ECOMMERCE drives face to face retail.

We expect the greater awareness of vendors and delegates at IP Expo Europe will bear fruit in the change in the way vendors market what they do, and organisations handle their consumer data, in particular, becoming more open to international business – which will in turn drive the very retail sectors that are under pressure. 

If so, then Digital Transformation can start to create social good in the very areas that have been left behind. 

Is the EHR in Terminal Decline?

We ask the question that nobody wants to admit..

When the slides failed during Mahad Huniche’s erudite address on the personalisation of healthcare at the recent HIMSS eHealth Europe Conference – he did what every speaker should do.  He ad-libbed, and carried on.  And in doing so – he said two things that were seismic in their importance.

The first – that we are entering an era of disruptive clinical IT – everybody “got”.  The second – that healthcare will now be driven by you and I as “consumers”, and as such, will be governed by eCommerce technology, rather than clinical technology – nobody got.

Whether we like it or not, the wearable technology that is ever more prevalent, will be the source of our own health data – and it will be transmitted, in real time, to wherever we want to send it – i.e., to places where they can monitor this and do something about it.  In short what this means is a reversal of the current necessity of a/having to travel to a place called a hospital;  and b/ having to use monolithic IT called “EHR Solutions” – to manage said information. It also means that the driver of future health improvements will be you and I, as we will insist that our healthcare givers can monitor us remotely; and that the hospital importance of people like CIOs etc, will fade into one of support. We just don’t need it any more.

This will do two things;  first, at a General Doctor level, fewer people will need to see their local GP – he will already know their info; this means that the GP (according to one that was discussing this with me on the plane recently) – can now spend as much time as they wish, sorting out the patients who are truly sick, as opposed to those who just “think”  they are.  It means less people coming into the A&E areas of hospitals (for the above same reason). And more important – less people requiring on demand beds in hospitals.  Our doctors will be able to tell us straightaway, remotely, if we need to be admitted as such.

The interesting point about all this – is that it;’s not like this technology is not available already,  Even places such as Turkey have their own regional connected patient record App, that will be the platform for the sort of enhanced personalisation we describe above – and this explains why Steve Leiber, CEO of HIMSS was already on a plane to Turkey even before the applause had died down from his opening Conference keynote speech.

The other interesting point, is that this consumer driven change – flies in the face of existing Hospital wisdom, who are continuing to invest in ever larger and all embracing “big patient record systems” – that will both be too cumbersome to give any actual clinical benefit, and too inflexible to cope with the personalisation that is not just required by the mobile wearable world we are all embracing, but by even now, some of the key modules that need to be stand alone in their own right – Theatre Management is a good example – if they are to cope with how individual communities want their healthcare.

What is worse – is that very few “communities”  are geared up at a bureaucratic level – to handle this. When we talked to several Kommuns in Scandinavia recently, their assessment was that it will be at least twelve months before they could look at a “Procurement” to put in place relevant services.

The result – is that not only will you and I start to define our own healthcare needs – but that we will go to places called Supermarkets, to obtain this.  The ICA supermarket  in Scandinavia is deep in expansion of its Apotek chain of walk in healthcare shops.  It can only be a matter of time before those services expand.

How so?

Because retail and supermarkets are the bedrock of eCommerce. And the very technology that drives the analysis of every purchase that you and I make in a store, is already being used to calculate the personalisation of Genomes and Genomics, as well as manage the health data wirelessly sent, all the time from yours and my Apple Watch.

Which brings me back to Mahad and his unfortunate slides. Sometimes you need to get to the horses mouth, the deeper vision. Who needs powerpoint anyway?

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Is There Too Much Data?

We look at the plethora of  Conferences in 2017, all focussing on the same Chief Data Officer market, and ask – why is life so complicated?
I don’t want to say we are not grateful. The specifically focussed “new generation” of Speakers and Vendors, all have something relevant to say. But this is the problem. Taken as a whole – there is just too much that people have to say.  It used to be just the one Conference, and the concept of the CDO was  twinkle in the eye. Now, we have the Chief Data Officer Europe 2017 Conference in London, from the 20th Feb, focussing on GDPR.  We have the Chief Data Officer Forum, from IQPC, in early May;  and then we have a Chief Data Scientist Conference, in September. I don’t know what a Chief data :Scientist”  is. All of which means that the whole area of expert opinion of a CDO, is diluted because from what we can see, there is no wrong opinion. What works for you, works for you.  But it might not work for someone else.
So where’s the value here?
The answer is in making it simple – and choosing the vendors, and venues, that intuitively make you feel at ease, and where the value is explained in something that mortals can understand. But “managing”  the process of your data is not just important for any corporate – it is vital and financially risky if you are not in control of the information which may reside anywhere in your ,multitude of databases.
Best up are the Adaptive Blogs, – you can register online at; http://www.adaptive.com. Their regular weekly Blog explains Metadata whilst giving you the options of digging deeper.
We talked a few days ago with Samantha Geenty at IQPC, who started the whole market in our view, just a couple of years ago; their “forum”  concept, which we have reviewed earlier on this Site – is a clever way of bringing people together at like levels of expertise and need.
And we are delighted to be reviewing the upcoming event in Covent Garden from Corinium, on the 22nd Feb.  As I said earlier, it’s not like I’m not grateful.