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Healthtech
What is healthtech ?
The healthcare sector is often considered somewhat of a laggard in industry. As rapid adoption of smartphones has enabled digitisation of consumer engagement in many sectors, healthcare systems have resisted the trend. The slow evolution is partially explained by challenging regulatory requirements, limited pull from providers, as well as complexity and fragmentation of the end provider base. More recently however, this evolution of the healthcare sector has been accelerating as a growing number of tech developers and entrepreneurs are capitalising on opportunities in the space.
HealthTech is one of the terms that encapsulates this evolution, clearly referring to the intersection between healthcare and technology. Although HealthTech is a seemingly intuitive buzzword, considering the breadth of the term technology and other similar terms – such as ‘digital health’ and ‘healthcare IT’ – understanding exactly what HealthTech refers to can be confusing. Furthermore, little consistency exists in how HealthTech, digital health, and healthcare IT are used in literature, making it challenging to understand whether these terms are fully interchangeable or alternatively, to understand what each of these terms cover and how they differ from one another. Our first aim is thus to provider a more precise definition for HealthTech, and clear up any confusion surrounding terms.
HealthTech is the broader term which covers any technology or offering within the consumer care, medical care, or broader healthcare system that has been enabled or revolutionised by modern computing and/or engineering. Underlying technological enablers include: smartphones & applications, digitisation & electronic records, machine learning / AI, data security & encryption, nanotechnology or 3D printing, blockchain, and more. Ultimately HealthTech is an umbrella term, which encapsulates digital health and healthcare IT, and other revolutionary technologies that were developed outside of the scope of healthcare but which are now finding application within this space. This is represented diagrammatically as follows.
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HealthTech includes all software, data, and physical solutions that are enabled by revolutionary innovations outside of the healthcare sector but which, in turn, support new opportunities for data generation & analytics, or digital diagnosis or treatment
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Digital health includes includes technology and computational approaches associated with generating and analysing large datasets in order to build knowledge or optimise outcomes
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Healthcare IT refers to software solutions that support optimisation of operations through digitisation of historically offline systems and processes (predominantly for providers)
Agrotech
What is agrotech?
AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY, ALSO KNOWN AS AGRITECH OR AGROTECH, COMBINES CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES WITH FOOD PRODUCTION. OPPORTUNITIES IN THIS CLEANTECH SECTOR DEAL WITH IMPROVING AGRICULTURAL YIELDS, EFFICIENCIES IN OPERATIONS, AND PROFITS.
As the global population keeps climbing and climate change continues to impact food production, ensuring that everyone around the world has enough nutritious food to eat is another significant area of concern. By improving crop production and efficiency in farming operations, more food gets produced, without also increasing waste or emissions rates. Using biological processes to improve or manage industrial operations is another way of applying technology to agricultural activities.
From agriculture to horticulture to aquaculture, agrotech helps increase food production or solves the problem of growing food in challenging environments and conditions. It can also facilitate better, more efficient use of existing facilities and processes to ensure optimal performance. Cleantech opportunities in this sector include sensor, drone, and hydroponics technology, weather forecasting and monitoring, light, heat, and automated irrigation systems, pest and soil management, and advances in biotechnology.
Buildings
What is smart buildings?
A building is considered smart when it can satisfy in an automated and controlled way, the different demands among which are security, energy, or comfort, to achieve greater efficiency and lower operating costs," he added. A smart building is intercommunicated. It has sensors that transmit signals to a control center that receives and decodes the information, and according to the predetermined programming, can give timely orders and execute a particular function or task, a key feature for a smart building is interoperability, where several systems coexist together and transmit information, creating a better experience for tenants and / or visitors.
Any building is likely to become smart if it meets five essential characteristics:
1. Efficient consumption. Having energy and water saving systems that optimize the supply based on the information collected on consumption.
2. Integrates control systems. That is to say, it has a main system that includes different devices to make management and operation more efficient in an automated way.
3. Security. It adopts innovative tools to ensure the safety of its users.
4. Flexibility. A flexible building allows for continuous technological improvements and changes.
5. Ergonomics. Provides comfort and a more comfortable environment that enhances the user experience.
Focusing smart innovations on wellness will help companies to have a better connection with their employees by providing them with options that contribute to their quality of life, which will ultimately be reflected in job performance. In this sense, indoor environmental quality is one of the essential aspects. And this includes factors such as thermal comfort, air quality and cleanliness, acoustic conditions, or lighting, which, when optimized, improve the habitability of spaces and user productivity, in addition to reducing energy costs.
Phydigital
What is Phydigital?
Phygital (acronym for Physical + digital) is a concept that was born in the 21st century and specifically refers to the presence of the same person in both the physical and digital worlds.1 It does not refer only to a combination of elements or data from the physical world (obtained from many people) and the digital world (obtained from many other people), but refers to the fact that it is the same person who is present in the physical world and in the digital world, and therefore the behavior in both worlds does not involve two separate entities but is part of the same reality, which must be able to be treated jointly or phygital, and can be analyzed person by person.
Therefore there must be the capacity to identify the presence of each person in both worlds. For example when a person browses the website of an online store and when they are physically in the physical store. All this leads to understand the physical and digital as a single reality of each person and not as two separate entities.
