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Is Blockchain the Antidote to COVID-19 pandemic?

Posted on 07/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

The victim-count of Coronavirus has increased to 28,276 while taking 565 lives already.

With the virus epidemic being on the verge of becoming pandemic, there is a cloud of concern hovering over not just the affected nations but also the rest of the entire world.

The grim picture of Coronavirus is not just of the virus making its way around the world, but also of the lack of crucial medical supplies. Red Cross China has also come under fire for failing to deliver urgent supplies to the front line hospitals. In its apology, Wuhan Red Cross mentioned that it has called for an overnight emergency meeting for discussing internal problems and have pledged to hold people who are in charge of relief distribution, accountable.

The fund shortage has led to a number of hospitals in Wuhan who are looking after coronavirus patients to seek charities on social media platforms. Many of them said that they are in dire need of basic protections against this contagious pathogen. While on the other side, people from all corners of the world who came together to donate money to the coronavirus patients and to aid treatment creation, expeditiously, are outraged at the unfair distribution of their funds.

To solve the challenge of unfair donation distribution in real-time, Hyperchain, together with Xiongan Group, Fuxing Group, and other well-known establishments, is taking Blockchain’s help.

Utilizing everything that Blockchain in Healthcare has to offer, Hyperchain is building a platform which would ensure that the entire Coronavirus donation process is traceable, immutable, and reliable. Announced in a press release on 4th February, the platform will act as a medical supply donations portal for supporting medical institutions operating in central China.

It is going to be a transparent portal that will also act as an information exchange enabling donors to see where their donations or funds are going. Through the platform, the donors will get proof of receipt and proof of need which would ensure that their funds have reached the intended party in real-time.

Hyperchain, Hangzhou Qulian Technology Co., Ltd , formed in 2016, is a tech company providing blockchain solutions. It excels in the development of underlying blockchain platforms, security platform and data sharing, supply chain finance SaaS platform, BaaS platform, and digital evidence services.

The lack of transparency and censorship are often two of most debated challenges that emerge during every epidemic outbreak. What happened with Red Cross China is simply a wake-up call for the dire need of the inclusion of a Blockchain development company in every world-affecting event and process.

There is a need for credible and transparent mechanism based society and Blockchain is the answer.

How CI/CD saves up to 20% of mobile app development time?

Posted on 07/06/202107/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery has grown to become a software development practice which brings down not just the effort but also the app development cost that goes behind.

Through the CI/CD for mobile apps process, businesses can avail a plethora of benefits, straight from the one time setup: Automated builds, improved communication, automated shipping, and zero server maintenance.

In a sans CI/CD world, some mobile app development companies release their apps manually, by handing them off from one team to the next.

There is almost always a delay at every stage which leads to irritated teams and unhappy clients. And the app ultimately gets live via a tedious and error-full process which delays the entire revenue generation possibilities.

Now if you look at the continuous delivery pipeline illustration below, you will get a different picture.

It depicts how the developers write their code and commit them to a source code repository once/multiple times a day. Following which, testing, staging, and production happens inside the CI pipeline and is deployed to the customers directly.

What is CI and CD?

Let us first answer what is mobile continuous integration before moving on to filling in the details on what is continuous delivery and what is continuous deployment.

Now before we go on with defining what the approach stands for, let us put something out in the open.

Even though there are a whole lot of different mobile app development process sets operating in the market today, the answer to what is Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery in devops and what is CI and CD in agile would be exactly the same.

With that clear, let’s head out with the explanation.

Continuous Integration

Custom Integration or CI is the custom mobile app development practice where regular integration of code changes happen in a shared code repository. Usually, the practice happens at least once and maximum of multiple times in a day. This encourages committing of small changes often compared to committing of large changes less frequently.

Every commit then triggers a build in which tests are run which helps in identifying if something is broken.

Continuous Delivery

It is all about the capability to regularly deliver the integrated code to production. The end result of this stage is that you have green builds that are ready to be released in one click.

Continuous Deployment

This process goes one step ahead for it enables automatic deployment of every main branch change which passes the CI pipeline. However, it is better to avoid doing this, for you would need to perform testing which are not limited to automated.

Stages of CI/CD for Mobile Apps Development

The process of integrating CI/CD for mobile apps can be divided into seven sections or stages.

Code: Code is the backbone of any application. The process of writing them which starts with the development phase goes on to the maintenance phase. In the continuous integration and delivery approach, developers write code for CI components, which in turn, prepares it for automation in the next stages.

Build: This is the part where the app is built. Multiple developers work on the process happens every day. What is different in case of CI/CD for mobile apps is that once the developers have finished their work, they add them in the CI application.

The output of the stage is a URL.

Test: Once the code components are entered in the CI platform, the next step is to see how the app performs with inclusion of new updates. The CI software here gives developers reports on how the app is performing, in addition to some useful analytics.

Even though it is automated, it helps to involve someone from the mobile app quality assurance team in the stage to ensure that the changes are acceptable.

Package: Once the performance and quality tests are made, it is time to deploy the application. The stage is applicable both for the new apps and the existing apps whose new version is going to be released.

Release: The next stage of the incorporation of CI/CD for mobile apps is applying the new URL for the app on devices for release.

Configuration: The next stage is configuration of the infrastructure. You would need to format the entire coding and management tools, which would enable people to regularly access the CI platform.

Monitor: Once the app is running, you would still need to continue monitoring its performance. The developers, at this stage, ensure that any additional code written for improving the app has gone through the CI stages first. Doing this, lowers the chance of any bugs or problems emerging mid way.

Getting started with Continuous Integration and Delivery

It is not difficult to get up and running with Continuous Integration. Here are the steps that mobile app development companies generally follow to start using CI/CD for mobile apps smoothly.

How to Implement Continuous Delivery for Mobile App

Implementation of a version control of choice – SVN, Git, or Bitbucket
Writing test for critical elements in the code base
A suitable CI/CD service which would enable running the tests on every push to repository.

Let’s look deeper into what the implementation of continuous integration can offer to the everyday software development process. The realization of these advantages and the answer to how continuous integration and delivery helps translates into reduction of risks attached with building and paving the road to get the features out to the customers.

Business Benefits of Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery

1. Faster feedback loop

In application development process, not knowing can really hurt. One of the primal things that slows down the software development process is the lack of feedback on the impact of changes and the quality of work. It is easy to get disillusioned that you are moving too fast if you are commiting codes frequently and moving to other tasks without running any tests. While the reality is that it’ll get extremely difficult to figure out what changed in the code and by whom, when there is an issue.

CI/CD for mobile apps solves these issues by giving you prompt answers on the question if something broke in a commit.

2. Increased visibility & transparency

When the CI/CD pipeline has been set up, the whole team would know what is going on with the builds in addition to getting the latest test results. This means, they would be able to plan their work in context and would get a clear idea of which changes tend to break the builds more often.

3. Avoidance of integration mess

If you look at software as legos where each of the pieces are created by developers individually, the whole software development picture becomes one where different legos meet to become one giant piece. What eases this process is the lack of friction.

Even if a lego piece is fine, you will still have to make sure that it fits well with the entire system – Continuous integration does exactly that by connecting the pieces of software together everyday.

4. Identification & solving of issues early on

An obvious phase of software development is bugs. Now, the more bugs pile on, the harder it then gets to identify and solve them. With different kinds of automated tests running in the continuous integration pipeline, you’d get to know what is to be fixed the moment a test fails.

5. Improve testability & quality

The easier it would be to test something, the more convenient it would become to test the quality. The simple rule is that the more your code is written in a way that it can’t accommodate writing tests, the more difficult it would be to make it bug free. The testability efforts ultimately depends on how easily the new builds are made available and the kind of tools you work with, plus the control you have on the test environments.

Top Mobile Continuous Integration CI/CD Tools

Jenkins

Founded in 2006, it is the top open-source continuous integration server. Developers have developed over 300 plugins for adapting Jenkins into different build, test, and automation based workloads.

CircleCI

The tool enables developers to release codes by automating the build, test and deployment process. It allows them to identify and fix bugs much before it reaches the customers.

Travis CI

It is another top mobile continuous integration tool operating in the market today. It is a distributed, hosted services used in the development and testing of projects which are hosted on GitHub. It also offers custom deployment of proprietary version on the client’s hardware.

Bitrise

It is a continuous integration & delivery Platform as a Service which focuses on mobile app development. The developers, through the tool, are easily able to automate the test and deploy phase of their apps within a few clicks.

Visual Studio App Center

The Microsoft backed tool brings different services, usually brought into use by developers in an individual, integrated product. It enables mobile app developers to build, test, and deliver, monitor their apps, while allowing them to create an installable app package with every push made to the repository.

While these are just five, there are a plethora of different continuous integration and delivery service providers available in the market. Here are a few things to consider when researching the choices:

How to select the best CI/CD tool for your app development needs?

1. Proprietary vs Open Source

On the basis of context, there can be instances where open source tools might be off the table for some clients. But at the same time, investing in proprietary tool can be a little costly side.

If going with open source tools fits in the context and budget, there are a number of options present in the market.

2. In the Cloud or Self-hosted

If you are willing to host the CI/CD service yourself and have the time and resources for setting it up, configuring, and maintaining it, you should go with Self-hosted services. But, if you are looking for crossing off build infrastructure maintenance off the work list, go with a Software as a Service solution.

3. Ease of setting up

A frictionless adoption of CI/CD is the secret to getting everybody on board. So, going with a tool that takes a lot of time in setting up can backfire your intention of choosing the approach.

NFT – A Comprehensive Overview

Posted on 01/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Being tech-savvy and digitally social-friendly, we share many memes, infographics, jokes, artwork, and other digital assets with our peers and family either for the purpose of entertainment, to gain information, or to make the public aware of some event.

But have you ever wondered, who is the creator of those assets or where is the real origin of that digital property? The answer to these debriefs lies in NFT.

It all started in 2017 when the first-ever Non-fungible token was released named Crypto Punks on the American Studio Larva Lab’s Ethereum Blockchain. It was a two-person team back then which consisted of John Watkinson and Matt Hall. In the same year, another project was released named Crypto Kitties that went viral immediately after its arrival. It’s said to generate an investment of a whopping $12.5 million.

In this article, we will dive into non-fungible tokens and how did it start along with its popularity among masses, how to create non fungible tokens, characteristics that make NFT different, its benefits, risks and the upcoming future.

What is NFT

Fungible assets or fungibility denotes an item or an asset that has the ability to trade or get exchanged with a similar type of asset or good, whereas non-fungible assets tokens are unique digital assets whose ownership can be tracked on a blockchain development like Ethereum.

Non-Fungible Tokens aka the NFTs are digital assets or a type of digital certificate for owning goods or an asset that represents a great variety of intangible and tangible items such as paintings, virtual real estate, postcards, videos, and so on. NFTs cannot be replicated or equated with an asset that is similar, because every NFT asset is unique on its own.

To make things more clear to you, let’s take an example of a game ticket. If you give someone a baseball game ticket, then obviously you would take the baseball game ticket. Right? If that someone returns you a movie ticket, will you accept it?

The answer: No, you will not, because a movie ticket will not be as equally valuable as a baseball game ticket. If we place this example in place of NFT, then the game ticket (which is an NFT) cannot be replaced or traded with any ticket, as every baseball game ticket has its own unique identity.

The same is the case with NFT, where you cannot just exchange or trade NFT tokens with similar value tokens, as each token is different from one another and has its own uniqueness and rarity.

Non-fungible Tokens Examples

Owning a digital collectible has its benefits over a physical collectible like a stamp or rare coin. Each NFT consists of distinguishable information that makes it unique from other NFTs and makes the verification of authenticity for a collectible easier.

Like, for an artist, it makes the circulation of fake collectibles useless because the original item can be easily traced back to its legal user. Also, in comparison to other cryptocurrencies, you can’t exchange NFTs directly with anyone and the reason is the same – they’re all non-identical/dissimilar. For example, if you’ve got two NFCs on a single platform, they still won’t be the same despite being a part of the collection or having the same size and color. Let us see some examples of NFT Projects:

Blockchain Heroes– It is an original trading card series highlighting the similarities between personalities in the crypto and blockchain space.

Decentraland– In this game the players are allowed to buy the virtual world owned by the users. The owner of the virtual space can monetize their world with shops, advertising, etc.

Prospectors.io– It is a blockchain-based game, where the owned assets by the players are given to them in form of blockchain, and players earn NFT based on their gameplay.

Gods unchained– It is a digital collectible card game or online collectible card game, where the cards are in the form of NFTs that can be freely bought and sold.

CryptoKitties– It is a famous NFT game that includes breeding and collecting cats. These digital cats took NFTs to the mainstream with each token having distinctive ”cattributes”.

The History of NFT – How and Why Did it Start?

There are some arguments around the first appearance of NFTs. Colored coins are speculated to be the first NFTs to exist. Colored coins are depictions of real-world assets on the blockchain.

The mention of Colored Coins originated from a blog post in early 2012 by Yoni Assia, titled “bitcoin 2.X (aka Colored Bitcoin) — initial specs.” It is said that Colored Coins supported experimentation and laid the groundwork for NFTs.

Then came the trading of Rare Pepes on Ethereum and after this finally the first-ever Non-Fungible Token was released named Crypto Punks.

Afterward, a company named Rare Bits emerged as a marketplace and exchange portal for NFTs and raised $6 million in investment. The ideology of NFTs made possible a collectible card game that’s known as Gamedex nowadays and raised more than $800,000 in the initial days itself. Presently, a digital artist in America named Beeple launched his work named “Every day. The First 5000 Days”, which got sold for $69 million (42329.453 ETH). It’s one of the first artworks with NFT to be listed in some of the most important auction houses.

Additionally, in a recent deal, NBA and Dapper Labs launched the beta version of NBA TopShot Collectible and Tradable NFT-based apps in partnership. They’ve been working on this since 2018 and launched it in the first half of 2020. The collectible contains tokens with data and multimedia smashed together in the form of packs.

Reason Behind NFT’s Sudden Popularity

Throughout time, the NFTs are used across numerous industries and today they’re known commonly as Ethereum Tokens based on ERC-721. Several amazing features make NFTs popular these days:

The complete data of NFT is stored securely in Blockchain which means the tokens can never be removed, destroyed, or replicated no matter what.
The main source of value for NFTs is their scarcity. Although NFT developers can make an infinite number of tokens, they’re kept limited purposefully to maintain their value.
NFTs are entirely indivisible which means they can’t be divided like Bitcoins into smaller denominations.
With the capabilities of Blockchain, NFTs can be easily tracked back to their real owner and eradicates the need for third-party verification forever

*Fun Fact* Bitcoins are completely fungible and can be traded while maintaining a standard value even after the exchange. NFTs cannot be directly exchanged with anyone else unlike regular cryptocurrencies such as Monero, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.

Distant Characteristics of NFTs – What Does it Include?

1. Non-Interoperable

As NFTs follow the standard ERC-721, they’re considered to be non-interoperable which means the information stored in them can’t be exchanged or used in any manner.

2. Rare

Presently, the total number of NFTs is very less in the world and they’re very scarce. This not only makes them rare but also makes their value high. In simple terms, the lesser the number of NFs, the pricier they’ll be.

3. Indestructible

The NFTs are stored and managed through Blockchain that results in a greater level of security for them. This means they can never be destroyed or removed at any cost.

4. Indivisible

You can’t send a portion of non-fungible tokens to anyone (unlike other cryptocurrencies) because they’re non-fungible and don’t have a defined value. For instance, one bitcoin will possess the same value after transfer but NFT won’t.

5. Unique

Resonating with real artwork, NFTs use blockchain to stay apart from the crowd and determine the authenticity of a state of art. It also allows you to distinguish original items from their replicated copies.

The Working Methodology of NFTs

NFTs are unique crypto tokens that are managed on a blockchain. Thus, blockchain acts as the decentralized ledger that traces the ownership and transaction history of each NFT, which has a code and a unique ID, and other metadata that no other token can duplicate.

The process of creating NFTs can be done through contract-enabled blockchains with the help of appropriate tools and support. Ethereum was one of the first widely used EOS, NEO, and now it also includes NFT standards. The tokens along with their smart contracts allow adding detailed information such as the owner’s identity and so on.

This process provides NFTs the attributes of scarcity and royalties that make it attractive when coupled with digital media:

Scarcity

When we talk about scarcity, we mean that the owner gets to decide the scarcity of their assets. For example, if we take an example of a ticket to any sporting event or a concert, then there the owner decides how many tickets to be sold. Same way in NFT, the creator can decide how many replicas should be there. So these replicas are there with a slight difference to each one of them.

In another example, the owner can create NFT token only one, making it a special rare collectible. In any case, each of the NFT will have its own unique identity, such as a bar code on every cloth or ticket that looks similar to each other but is uniquely different.

Royalties

NFTs are coded with software code (called smart contracts) that governs the prospects such as verifying the ownership and managing the transferability of the NFTs. Also, NFTs can get programmed beyond the basics of ownership and transferability like any software application that incorporates a variety of applications and functionality (which also involves the linking of NFT to other digital assets).

For example, a smart contract could be created in such a way that some NFTs automatically allocate a share of the amount paid for any sale of the NFT, that is pay the royalties to the original owner.

When somebody creates an NFT, they are composing the smart agreement code that administers the NFT’s characteristics, which are added to the blockchain where the NFT is managed. Numerous blockchains can be used to handle NFTs, including Ethereum (with its established ERC-721 and ERC-1155 smart contract principles), Flowchain, and Wax, all of which make use of similar processes. Prominently, certain NFT marketplaces function with certain blockchains, thus the choice of blockchain to be used for NFT can have real implications for the seller, if not taken proper decisions.

Non-fungible Tokens Use Cases Across Multiple Industries

1. Gaming

Majority of the games have their virtual currency within their ecosystem that helps users make their progress easier. With that said, accounts with numerous purchased commodities have a great demand in an ever-expanding unregulated market. The different uses of NFTs will allow players to easily trade in-game collectibles with proper validation and security.

2. Digital Assets

For digital assets like house plans, mock-ups, themes, and domains, NFTs are certainly a perfect match. Moreover, digital real estate in games like Decentral Land is getting popular these days. They allow players to purchase and develop a set of spaces in a virtual world. The addition of NFT can make sure original creators can be traced back to these items.

3. Identity Theft

The things that represent identity and can be digitized such as medical records and academic qualifications can make use of NFTs to prevent identity theft. Furthermore, digital artists can also use it to convert their artworks and establish unique copyright for them. It also helps in separating counterfeits from the original.

4. Digital Collectibles

It’s a no-brainer that NFTs are rare and they find their major use in collectibles and art. With the addition of this token, the authenticity and ownership of a collectible or artwork can be easily verified. This also allows an artist to prevent their work from being misappropriated or pirated. NFT has already started to be used in cards and merchandise.

5. Identification and Certification

NFTs contain a unique set of information about an asset or a good programmed into them. This makes them a perfect match for issuing certificates, identities, qualifications, and licenses. The identification or certification can be issued directly through the blockchain as an NFT to make it traceable back to the source.

When the concepts of NFT are clear, we can clearly see the benefits of a blockchain of smart contracts that become a potent force for change.

Non-fungible Tokens Benefits

Ownership Rights

A non-fungible token can be utilized to address something extraordinary, both in the digital world and in reality. This has been utilized for collectibles and gaming in the digital world (demonstrating someone claims a particular CryptoKitty or item), yet it could similarly be applied to unique items in the real world – like houses, vehicles, craftsmanship, or potentially even personalities. It could likewise be utilized to allow specific access, giving access to Airbnb at specific occasions or for air travel tickets.

Customization Approach

Non-fungible tokens can be safely unlike other tokens that can’t be. Smart agreements/contracts and fungible tokens could possibly enact a portion of the functions of non-fungible tokens. However, in the non-fungible token market, all the information is held by the token itself.

The token can have additional information allocated to it which could incorporate standard options like the name and the ownership, but could be extended to areas like the history of the token and related data – an image of the house the token represents, the previous owners of a vehicle the token represents, or the count of character skins in a game with a similar model type the token represents.

Secure Trade

Generally, transferring the ownership of physical or digital items is at risk of fraud, and as such is either difficult in its execution or sometimes it is basically not permitted. With the security of blockchain and the uniqueness of non-fungible tokens, exchanging anything addressed by the token would be a much less complex and more effective process. As a token, it might actually permit the responsibility of ownership of items to be transferred across platforms or even be interoperable across various services like games or NFT marketplaces.

There is a mixed bag of characteristics when it comes to the characteristics of NFT. With every benefit there are risks that have to be taken into account to prove it.

Risks Associated With NFT

Valuations

Purchasing an NFT, similar to any collectible is a risky bet with its value going up. Unlike Blockchain asset tokenization trading cards or buying a real asset, NFTs are an up-and-coming market so there is no guarantee that there is going to be a similar kind of demand on digital assets.

If there is no demand for the NFT you buy, you could end up paying an enormous sum for something that decreases in value or is simply un-sellable. You could also make your own NFT however there is no assurance of a buyer which could lead you to waste your time and money.

Storage

Sales in NFT are recorded through blockchain technology, which demonstrates ownership. The real NFTs are made and stored through marketplaces and platforms like Open Sea or Rarible.

If by any chance these platforms get shut, there will be no assurance that you would have the option to access the work. This makes it less secure than having a physical art hanging on a wall or gaming tickets or trading cards that won’t just simply vanish.

Regulation

There is no regulation of NFTs so there is a lot of trust required. You need to believe that the NFT you are purchasing is a unique piece of art or work and hasn’t been replicated from somewhere else or you could face a copyright issue.

Also, if regulators and administrators get concerned regarding this thriving business, then there could be crackdowns on platforms and limitations on how much collectors can contribute. This could lead to decreasing the NFT token market value.

Hot Potato Effect

NFT games can have a ”hot potato” effect. Meaning that the players buy an asset to sell it for a profit, but if the market collapses, it can lead to a huge loss.

For example, you have a gaming sword and you are longing to sell it for a higher price than it was previously. Now the thing is, as long as someone is willing to buy, you will make a profit, but if there is no one to purchase the asset or if the market collapses, then you are at loss.

Future of NFTs

Whatever the risks, the future looks promising for NFTs as the total market for them crossed a whopping $100 million by the end of July 2020. Experts in the crypto industry even speculate that 40% of new crypto users will use NFTs as an entry point.

With the decentralized finance industry surpassing $4 billion in value, it is evident that the NFT space is set to grow exponentially in the days to come.

The Takeaway

You may have already figured out that it’s still in its early stage of development. Therefore, you can easily expect numerous cutting-edge platforms based on NFTs in the coming years.

Talking about the present, it’s transitioning from Crypto Kitties and gaming to digital identity, painting, and other use cases. This means that the market is still raw in terms of experimentation. For a new-age entrepreneur, this would mean a sea-full of opportunities to enter and rule the space in their sector. We are here to help. Share your NFT-based project idea with us.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Pivot Your Startup Successfully

Posted on 01/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Slack was not always the messaging platform that we have grown to love and use. The platform, compared to what it is now was born as a very small feature of a Tiny Speck game called Glitch.

After seeing the success and demand for the in-built messaging feature, the founders chose to launch it as a brand new application, while bidding adieu to Glitch.

This route which they took was an example of a lean methodology concept that we call startup pivot. Let’s get you some perspective into what is a pivot in a business model, why should startups consider it, and the best growth hacking strategies for startups to go about pivot business.

Table Of Content

What Is A Pivot in Business?
Know When Should You Pivot In Startup
What are the Different Types of Pivots?
Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories
How To Startup Pivoting: The best strategies
Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas
What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

What Is A Pivot in Business?

A pivot is primarily a shift in the business strategy which is applied for testing out a new approach related to the startup business model after receiving feedback. It is one of the core concepts of the lean startup method – a reason why it is also known as pivot lean startup. When we align lean principles in our software development process, we always consider making a scope for app pivot.

Many times, companies only have one question to address and need only one aspect to be changed (details in our pivot business pyramid below). To delve on it further, here are some examples of pivoting which you would have not considered a “pivot”

Turn one product feature into a new product itself
Turn one product into a feature of a bigger product
Change a platform from app to web app or vice versa
Focus on a different customer set
Use different technology to build a product

Know When Should You Pivot

With a number of hot-shot tech giants like Instagram, Facebook, and Slack, etc. having popularized pivot success, the new-age founders have grown to believe that pivot can be a great success formula for them too. But the truth is that pivoting must only be considered when you have exhausted all the other options. Here are the factors that can help you decide when to absolutely pivot in business model.

Your company is always trying and failing to overrule competition
There is only one aspect of your business/product that is getting the most attention
There is no response for your offering in the market
Your business objective and expectation has changed.

What are the Different Types of Pivots?

1. Pivot In Your Existing Market

It is one of the most common pivot business types. Businesses tend to change the direction in the market they are already in without offering any new market information or creating a new consumer segment. It is also the one of the pivoting business strategy that is most likely to fail. Since, businesses remain in their market in place of finding new areas to expand in.

2. Reposition Your Product

At times, an element of your product might show greater adoption potential compared to your entire application. This is what led to the creation of Slack. What makes it difficult for businesses in this situation is whether or not to let go of their legacy business. There are two approaches to handle the situation when you are looking for pivot in business strategy:

Launch a new branded service or product, keeping the legacy business intact
Launch a new business altogether and shut down the old business.

The choice of it depends on the cash flow situation. If your legacy business is profitable and seeing a constant inflow of customers, you can think of keeping it intact.

3. Do Something Entirely New

This is the last type of pivot business model and the most extreme. In this case, you let go of your idea to explore something new altogether. But if you are married to the idea of bottoms-up start, it would be worth considering shutting the present company and using the money for funding the new business.

Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most famous pivot software startup stories.

Instagram is today one of the biggest social media platforms. Owned by Facebook, it is estimated to be over $100 Billion. But before becoming a social media behemoth, Instagram was a prototype known as Burbn that was made with check-in features, photo post options, and the capability to gain points, in addition to other capabilities.

The founders, Mike Krieger and Systrom soon realized that the UI was too cluttered and thus they pivoted. They limited their Instagram startup software development to posting, commenting, and liking features – making it one of the most simplistic visual platforms in the market.

Twitter

Twitter was launched as Odeo back in 2005. It used to be a platform for finding and subscribing podcasts. But with iTunes making it a concentrated space, Odeo chose to pivot.

Jack Dorsey, the future co-founder of Twitter then came up with the idea of a microblogging platform wherein the contacts could share and read each other’s updates in the real time.

Today, Twitter has become a more than 355 million users’ brand that is being used to not just share updates but also for citizen journalism, social activism, and live tweets.

YouTube

YouTube as a brand needs zero introductions. With over 2 million users coming on the platform every month, the brand is the ruler of the video sharing platform market.

However, YouTube did not start as your homely video sharing platform where you go to watch DIYs or follow A-listers. It was a dating website which enabled singles to upload their videos – sharing whom they were and what they were looking for in a partner.

The founders soon pivoted and allowed people to upload videos of all kinds – something that makes YouTube what it is today.

Slack

Stewart Butterfield’s company Tiny Speck started creating a game known as Glitch. The idea after a brief launch was announced unviable. Its internal communication tool, however, developed to establish communication between Canada and US offices emerged out as a real opportunity.

The messaging platform, named as Slack was founded in 2014 and went on to become a unicorn in the first year itself.

How To Pivot Your Startup: The best strategies

1. Develop a prototype before you pivot

If you are thinking about pivoting startup, develop a prototype first and see if people would use it, find it valuable and give feedback. Feedback at the beginning stages is important for determining where the impact of the product would be the greatest. The prototype would also enable you to identify whether the product is a good fit for the brand.

2. Pick goals which align with your business vision

As an entrepreneur it’s important to know how your vision statement is changing. Gone is the time when there used to be one mission and vision statement. With the changing market, the statements are also frequently changing. It is important to reevaluate what needs to be done and then draw a business model pivot to meet the new objective.

3. Ensure your pivot give out growth opportunities

Pivoting is a useful next step when you have encountered roadblocks. But if you pivot in a completely new direction without giving much attention to the plan, you would fail again. To ensure you don’t hit another roadblock, we would recommend two things – A. not expanding in the current market, since you have already explored it and B. perform an extensive market research. In case you find the market to be too small, the customer base too diverse, and a lot of competition, it won’t be beneficial to pivot. One way to go about this that we recommend is hosting a product discovery workshop.

4. Consider alternative technology

The technology world is not what it used to be a decade ago, even 2 years ago. For a startup to pivot, it is extremely important to be on top of the technology trends. Only when your business is able to incorporate the latest technologies you would be able to pivot with the probability to succeed.

5. Keep the investors in loop

At every pivot stage and when you are taking the decision, make sure the investors are kept in the loop. In case you think the company’s mission and objective is going to change, start talking about it with your internal stakeholders including investors in advance at least six to eight months in advance. Any drastic change without any discussion with the investors can harm the relationship and make pivoting unachievable.

Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas

Over the course of our establishment as a startup app development company, we have held a number of pivot business consulting sessions with our clients looking to make a difference in how they have been conducting business or in their value set.

We make use of a Pivot Pyramid to help our partnered founders evaluate which business area to change in order to drive maximum growth. This is the same pyramid that investors use when measuring up your business.

Layer 5: Customers

The customers are the base of any startup. Everything – from the issue you solve, product you develop, and the technology it is built on, depends on who the customers are. You can change and pivot the customers, but doing this will make you re-evaluate the entire pyramid.

Shopify started out by selling snowboards online before realizing that the tools to develop modern day ecommerce platforms are not enough – thus giving birth to the modern day Shopify that has helped more than 100,000 SMBs sell online.

Layer 4: Problem

There can be instances where the customers’ choice is right but the problem that you are looking to solve does not matter much or is not existing. If you pivot here, you would have to relook at the solution, tech, and growth plan.

Criteo began as a recommendation engine for the online retailers. They then went on to become a successful brand which helped online retailers perform retargeting campaigns.

Layer 3: Solution

If you have identified the problems which your customers are facing, the next step is to develop a product which would resonate with the customers than the ones in the market. The changes made at this stage, like in case of other elements of the pyramid, should be growth focused.

Meerkat achieved growth through this route when they began live streaming videos on Twitter.

Layer 2: Technology

The technology choice is the key to develop your solution – one that we focus heavily on when performing app development for startup, even if the products relate with the customers the technology choice should be hindering your retention and growth.

An example of how technology setbacks can affect a business growth in the Friendster failure. The brand failed becoming a mainstream social network because they were not able to keep their servers up with the demand.

Facebook pivoted this way when they let go of Python language.

Layer 1: Growth

Every change in the pivot pyramid should be growth driven. But a great number of experiments does not call for any change in the technology or product. This is why marketers tend to experiment with the startup growth strategies to avoid the growth channels from becoming saturated or overly expensive.

Airbnb took the growth route for pivoting by posting their listings on Criaglist. This, in turn, boosted visibility and led to higher demand.

What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

Value Iteration

Sometimes all a business needs is a tweaked product or offering iteration. While Mac and MacBook are one of the hottest commodities now, remember the time when analysts predicted Apple’s demise because of a stale hardware set in the ‘80s and ‘90s? Apple then added newer product lines like iPhone and personal computers.

In instances where you don’t have a product or it matches the market trend, you can think of revisiting your brand message – ensuring that it is aligned with your brand’s value.

Develop a spinoff brand

A spinoff company, by definition, is a division created by a parent company, which even though being an extension of the original brand is treated like an individual entity.

Take an example from Shelter Insurance. It was established in the 1940s – a time when the insurance market used to be extremely relationship-driven. But with the advent of the internet, the consumers could now interact with the insurance companies. However, if Shelter Insurance abandoned the model, it would have lost a massive number of their customers.

What Shelter did is that they created their spinoff company – Say Insurance – for delivering an online-first experience. Both of the brands provide auto insurance, but Say Insurance is completely focused on the Gen Z and Millennial user base.

Their strategy worked quite perfectly. The parent company continued to grow in the established market, while the spinoff brand tapped into the new digital market.

Relook at your mission plan

Trying to grow too fast almost always ends up bad for any startup. It can be a better option to relook at your mission strategy and see where you deviated. Following that, realign your present efforts with your planned stage.

But doing this can get difficult.

To realign with its mission of “the only short haul, low fare, high frequency, point-to-point carrier in America,” Southwest Airlines went on to cut down a number of their routes. The decision was taken to free up the planes for the routes that were in greater demand.

Afraid of Machines? Chill! Don’t Be.

Posted on 30/05/202103/06/2021 by Blogs

When water cooler conversation turns to movies and lands on The Matrix, what scene first comes to mind? Is it when the film’s hero-in-waiting, Neo, gains self-awareness and frees himself from the machines? Or Agent Smith’s speech that compares humans to a “virus?” Or maybe the vision of a future ruled by machines? It’s all pretty scary stuff.

Although it featured a compelling plot, The Matrix wasn’t the first time we’d explored the idea of technology gone rogue. In fact, worries about the rise of the machines began to surface well before modern digital computers.

The rapid advance of technology made possible by the Industrial Revolution set off the initial alarm bells. Samuel Butler’s 1863 essay, “Darwin among the Machines,” speculated that advanced machines might pose a danger to humanity, predicting that “the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy.” Since then, many writers, philosophers and even tech leaders have debated what might become of us if machines wake up.

What causes many people the most anxiety is this: We don’t know exactly when machines might cross that intelligence threshold, and once we do, it could be too late. As the late British mathematician I. J. Good wrote, designing a machine of significant intelligence to improve on itself would create an “intelligence explosion” equivalent to, as he put it, allowing the genie out of the bottle. Helpfully, he also argued that because a super intelligent machine can self-improve, it’s the last invention we’ll ever need to make. So that’s a plus — right?

There are other perspectives on the matter — that fears of a machine-led revolution are largely overblown.

Like technological advances that came before, artificial intelligence (AI) won’t create new existential problems. It will, however, offer us new and powerful ways to make mistakes. It’s smart to take some preventive measures, like putting in alerts that tell you when the machine is starting to learn things that are outside [of] your ethical boundaries.

Autonomous Driving Using AI

Posted on 29/05/202103/06/2021 by Blogs

Tech companies and the auto industry are working hard in tandem to make autonomous driving a reality by the early 2020s. Driverless cars with various levels of human participation will roll out in stages over the next few years, with fully-autonomous SAE Level 5 driving on the scene by 2030.

Today, most automotive manufacturers have achieved Level 2 assisted driving where the car can manage simple scenarios, like active lane centering and parking assistance, itself. Fewer manufacturers provide Level 3 autonomous driving where the car can autonomously navigate a traffic jam or roadways to a destination. For both levels, human drivers can take the wheel if they choose.

The limitations of AI that prevent advancement to fully-autonomous driving

From an engineering standpoint, Level 3 autonomous driving is powered by two things: hard-coded structured programming models mostly written for embedded systems and deterministic rules that make decisions supported by neural networks.

These two things combine to build AI driving agents, but with at least five important limitations:

Lack of perception and behavior intelligence compared to humans. Unlike existing AI agents trained with machine learning (ML), humans don’t need thousands of images of trees, for example, to recognize a tree or identify a driving situation.
Low accuracy performance. With existing tools, the probability of steering accuracy decreases as more autonomous driving functions and components get added. The complex real driving system will deliver only about 60 to 70 percent accuracy performance on motion control for steering and acceleration, well short of what’s required for fully autonomous driving.
Inability to cope well with complexity. Deterministic rules are usable in closed environments, such as a contained driving course, but can’t capture the complexity of real-world driving situations.
Require too much data. Usually ML models require enormous amounts of data, which are too expensive and difficult to collect and move over existing corporate networks.
Take up too much run-time, CPU/GPU processing and address exabytes of storage resources. It takes a lot of time and power to process the large volumes of automotive data and learn from them – and that’s often not cost-effective.

For the industry to evolve toward fully-autonomous driving, technologists have to develop an AI model that mirrors human driving behavior. In doing so, we need to guarantee a deterministic behavior that always produces the same result from the same input. The industry needs a new approach.

The big question then remains: How will the car act autonomously and intelligently in real time, in the real world?

We believe a big part of the answer lies in adapting knowledge of the human brain to AI – and we have drawn much of the inspiration for our new approach from brain science research conducted by Danko Nikolic at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) in Germany .

Adapting innovative brain research to AI and the production of fully autonomous vehicles has emerged as one of the more exciting technology innovation breakthroughs we’ve seen in the past couple of years.

While it will take time, the benefits to society of producing self-driving vehicles – and simply learning more about how the brain works along the way – holds great promise for human progress.

Finest Diagrams Explicitly Demonstrating Product Management Concepts

Posted on 27/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

There are a lot of things product managers are accountable and responsible for. A product manager is not only liable to strategize by creating a roadmap but also needs to articulate the release cycle of a new product to the team along with everything that comes in between.

They are also required to have the expertise in knowing how to identify the priority tasks and manage the team accordingly. Not just this, but mobile product managers are also given the responsibility to analyze the features added to a product (mobile app) and whether they are in sync with the client’s goals.

All in all, every process, activity, and decision associated with a product is synchronized and aligned by the mobile product manager. What helps these product managers achieve their KRAs is a certain set of skills.

Now, obviously they will be required to explain certain product management ideas to their team members so that they all are on the same page. But, the thing to wonder is – how do they explain all the product management concepts and key ideas?

Well, I think a few useful diagrams for product managers do the trick. If you are interested in knowing what these diagrams are and how and when they are used by mobile product managers, stick till the end.

Diagram 1 – Communication bottlenecks

It is understood that as a manager, you need to be aware of what is going on in your team and how the team members are managing their tasks. But, it is ludicrous for any person to be involved in every communication and decision – one person cannot handle all the things on one’s own, right? Isn’t this why the delegation was invented?

Now, it is natural you would want to be included in all the important inter/intra-team conversations, but you need to reflect on one thing – is it necessary? Is it something you should do by putting aside your other responsibilities?

The answer is – analyze whether the team is capable of communication which is not dependent on you. And if it is, you need to make some conscious decisions to ensure that important things like fluent communication are not solely dependent on you. A diagram that can effectively explain the case in point is given below.

Let’s say, a Web Engineer needs to discuss something with the Product Analyst and then the PA says they need to discuss something with the iOS developer in this regard. Now, the Web Engineer should ideally approach the PA and iOS developer directly, instead of being dependent on the PM (as shown in the image on the left).

The diagram on the left shows the dependency of the team on product manager to communicate with other members of other teams – something that adversely affects the workflow and slows it down. And on the right is the diagram displaying an efficient communication flow that is not dependent, instantly eliminating unnecessary points of contact.

Diagram 2: Waterfall vs agile

Though there are many resources out there on the internet participating in the debate of the Agile vs Waterfall approach, it may still seem like a vague concept in relation to product management. So let’s clear the fog of ambiguity.

It is generally known that the cost of mobile app development is calculated on the basis of hours it takes to develop that product.

Now, if the product manager of that mobile app development company chooses to use the Waterfall approach (i.e., a large release of the product), this would mean that the product will be launched all in one go.

Now, when a product is released, it is expected to become an instant hit – something which won’t be easy in this instance, since the product is launched all at once and is definitely a home to some issues. The value that they will get from this release won’t be equivalent to the investment (time) made by the developers. It is because they would require to fix the issues from the start.

On the contrary, the agile approach supporting small releases and iterations would show instant value results, since you are simultaneously identifying errors and fixing them. The diagram above clearly shows the difference in the end result of choosing these product management approaches.

Diagram 3: Representation of delivery size

When it comes to delivering a product on time, it is a very crucial part of the whole development process. It can literally make or break the future of any mobile app. If time-to-market is too long, some other app could capture the market and it would render the mobile app in question futile.

Here is a representation of the sizes of initiatives taken when developing an application –

The diagram on the left shows the throughput of the delivery size that only deals with working on big projects (large chunks of work at the same time). It is absolutely clear that working only on big projects of a product would create a blockage at one point of time in the future, since these projects would require more time, attention, resources, etc. And if anything goes wrong, the impact would be devastating on the whole process, inevitably increasing the time-to-market.

{Also read our article on “Project Managers vs Product Managers: Difference, roles & challenges”}

The diagram on the right is a classic “to do”. The advantages of adopting the Agile approach have rippled down to this stage in the product management process as well. This approach advocates the mixture of performing small tasks with large chunks of work (blue), something that we also follow at Anteelo.

As visible in the diagram, unlike the one on the left, here small chunks of work (Pink) can easily pass through the funnel (can be done easily). If these prove successful, the product managers can carry on with this idea (yellow circles) and invest completely. And if otherwise is the case, then they can iterate again and invest accordingly.

{Check out this extensively detailed article on “10 most important documents product managers must prepare”}

Diagram 4: Level of leadership involvement

The diagram below comprises two models for elaborating this product management concept. One on the left displaying the initiative size, number of tasks done at a time, and the risk factor in them, and the other concerned with the level of involvement of the product managers (leadership) correspondent to these tasks and initiatives.

The one on the left is a pyramid of tasks/initiatives to be performed by the team. The bottom of the pyramid means many tasks being performed at once, and the diagram on the right shows the amount of involvement with respect to these menial tasks having low to none risk.

As we move to the top of the pyramid, the number of tasks decreases while the risks associated with these tasks increase as well, this is where the product manager MUST be consulted, while in the formed he/she can be just informed. This diagram would help not just help mobile product managers but also the team members in knowing when to depend on the leadership.

Diagram 5: Analyzing segmentation value

There are a few practices that organizations are accustomed to following. One of them being the habit of optimizing for the average instead of a segment. Meaning, they tend to focus on the average instead of particular segments that need improving.

In the circumstances where the targets and hypotheses are fairly broad, it becomes challenging for the product managers and development teams to create an impact via product. It is because you are here trying to satisfy a variety of targets at the same time, which is not at all possible.

Diagrams, such as given below are a way to analyze each segment for identifying which ones are impacting the performance of others. All this to resolve the prevailing issues.

The diagram above consists of three hypothetical experiments 1,2, and 3 with segments A, B, C, and D. Out of three experiments, in the first case, there was an uplift in the segment A, followed by a decrease in the second case, and third with no change.

Taking an individual look, in experiment 1, segment A performed well with others, except segment B. Now, the diagram has highlighted the decline in this segment juxtaposed to the others. This could help product managers in finding the reasons for this happening which will eventually improve the average in the longer run.

A similar situation occurs in experiment 3, where segments A, C, D underperform in opposition segment B which showed significant change. Again, a study would clear out the reasons for this happening.

These useful diagrams for product managers can easily be customized to one’s needs, irrespective of which industry the product managers are operating in. As far as Anteelo is concerned, I think these models really help our teams in simplifying the process and maintain open communication between inter/intra-teams.

Embracing Digital Transformation in Healthcare

Posted on 26/05/202103/06/2021 by Blogs

Healthcare in digital transformation: digital and connected healthcare

Data-driven digital transformation opens opportunities for healthcare providers, policy makers and patients to move toward personalized healthcare by collecting and sharing new kinds of data. The next wave of productivity gains will not come simply from the delivery of information and messages from one place to another, but from the cross-linked aggregation of a more complete body of information. While the transition requires an investment in new technologies and new ways of doing business, the tools are rapidly maturing, and costs are coming down.

Denmark has been at the forefront of health data exchange for more than two decades. It began in 1994 with the creation of Med Com, a nonprofit organization owned by the Ministry of Health and various local government entities, which designed a range of healthcare data exchange standards. Med Com also enforced a strict policy of compliance, which led to countrywide adoption.

The initiative established Denmark as a global leader in data sharing and in empowering patients to be more involved in their own treatment. A key aspect of the country’s digital health initiative is its web portal, Sundhed.dk (or health.dk), which gives patients secure access to health data, including information on their treatments, visits to their doctors and notes from their hospital records.

Now the rest of the world has caught up, and the old standards are competing with those that have global reach, such as Health Level Seven International (HL7)’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard. The new standards offer new data-sharing options and provide a far richer and more impactful set of options to healthcare providers.

While messages to and from clinical applications still have relevance, data sharing capabilities that enable true and actionable insights are growing in importance. The new data sharing models have the potential to transform healthcare, supporting digital transformation and moving healthcare toward progressive business models. The ability to share clear, consistent patient data is integral to driving patient-centric care, since patients now demand that healthcare organizations interact with them through multiple communication channels and have a deep understanding of factors that may affect their health.

But is this paradigm shift from messages toward rich data consumption easy for providers to adopt? Well no, if you still treat your electronic health records (EHRs), radiology information system (RIS) and laboratory information system (LIS) as big monoliths and data repositories where isolated and specific data is shared as messages.

Let me give an example. When I was a hospital chief information officer and wanted some new functionality in our EHR system, I needed to go through several hospital and vendor approval processes. In the end, it might take 2 years to get the change implemented, since the development roadmap didn’t leave much room for my innovative ideas. What I needed — but did not realize at the time — was access to data outside the applications where the data resided. The problem is that the apps themselves are not built for data sharing purposes and yet they contain vast amounts of invaluable data from across the enterprise — clinical, administrative, logistics, infrastructure, etc. In the past, medical use cases tended to be drawn from a single source, such as the EHR, but today’s use cases draw data from apps, medical devices and perhaps even sensors.

Here’s a problem that hospitals encounter — the outbreak of a contagious disease. To quickly mitigate a health crisis, the hospital needs to know within 12 hours what items and which people have been exposed: medical devices, staff, relatives, etc. To gain that insight, those managing the problem need data from a real-time location system, booking data, clinical data and data from a medical device database. But how do you make sure that the data is accessible outside of those apps? This is what digital transformation is about in healthcare — to set the data free and transform through innovation, with actionable insights, advanced analytics and other cutting-edge capabilities that are built upon your data.

It’s not only hospitals and clinicians who need these advanced insights. Today’s empowered patients require those insights to improve and manage their own care — whether that’s insights from digital devices for remote monitoring of their conditions or communicating with clinicians to help drive personal
health goals.

I believe it is time for health economies to look at how they will integrate and connect their existing systems with new digital technologies and merge the data locked inside to generate meaningful, actionable insights — both to inform personalized, patient-driven clinical care and to push the development of new treatments, pathways or services. Organizations that embrace change and transformation will emerge as winners in a world that demands first-class clinical care, better patient experiences and reduced costs.

While Denmark has led the way on health data exchange, advanced global standards and new digital technologies create the landscape for all health economies to embrace patient-centered care initiatives enabled by connecting data across the broader health ecosystem.

Digital Trends in Insurance Industry – Significance

Posted on 26/05/202103/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

The health insurance sector is finding itself in a whirlwind of change. For insurers, this means getting an understanding of the domain’s benefits and tech stack powering the change.

New-age healthcare space or digital health ecosystem, as it’s usually called, is engineered to keep patients on a pedestal. The transformation of healthcare has created an ecosystem where every medical industry stakeholder and process has been operating to keep patients at the center stage.

While this patient-first system is coming organically to the caregivers, insurers – the third key stakeholder of the healthcare sector – are finding the transition a bit challenging. In this article, we are going to look into the capabilities that payers need to inhibit to survive the growing competitiveness in the digital health insurance world.

The insurance industry is staring at a cultural shift that will put people’s well-being at a primary stage. The shift has forced the sector to move from paying financial compensation to injury, illness, or loss towards the end goal of mitigating or preventing them.

A key role in bringing this shift to health insurance digital transformation has been brought along by technology adoption by every custom healthcare software development company.

In this article, we will dive into the technologies insurance companies can adopt in the digital health services landscape. But first, let us look into the benefits that would make the domain an active participant in the changing landscape of digital transformation in healthcare.

The Benefits of a Digitalized Insurance Sector

1. Digital solutions help people make healthy decisions

Digital healthcare solutions powered by wearables and insurance-inclined apps help people: prevent diseases, better diagnostic, manage a chronic condition, limit lifestyle risks. A number of modern users expect their health and care providers, insurers to provide them digital wellness solutions.

New-gen insurers, by offering consumer-centric programs like health quantification, etc. can meet this consumer expectation.

2. Digital platforms help insurers connect with the users

Digital tools and digital health platforms provide insurers the ability to give their clients a welcoming, interactive platform using which the insurers can create an ‘I care’ strategy. The platforms do not just act as a mode to have positive interactions with the customer but also gather data that can help make processes and values efficient.

3. Insurance digitalization help lower risk and cost

Digital healthcare services help make a detailed picture of users’ overall health. Upon the data, the insurers can create an approach that can be used for personalizing premiums through dynamic pricing. The data-driven approach also enables risk assessment that enables accelerated underwriting.

According to a Capgemini report, the use of data-driven assessment helps insurers adopt a more value-driven care model where the digital tools provide a transparent picture of the dynamic pricing model.

4. Digitalization in the insurance space optimize customer experience

Digital space helps healthcare insurance service providers optimize the customers’ experience by increasing the number of touchpoints and providing new services. Here are some of the use cases of how it happens:

Digital health insurance plans for managing personal health
Virtual healthcare delivery
Connected vehicle and smart-home solutions
Voice technology for advising customers.

5. Digital tools can secure data dominance

The insurance sector is producing more data than ever before. They have been building and scaling big data ecosystems to create visualized data sets that can suggest benefits plans according to the success factors.

Providers and healthcare app developers that are best able to use big data are delivering personalized customer experience, bettering retention, and are creating more accurate quotes – all at a lot faster speed compared to traditional approaches.

These and a plethora of other benefits are a guarantee that is dependent on the adoption of a new-gen technology set. Technology in health insurance has become a driving force that can take the domain towards end-to-end digitalization.

Let us take a closer look at some of the technologies we suggest our insurance sector partners, in our capacity as a healthcare app development company USA and India, to integrate into their solutions.

3 Technologies Aiding Insurance Digitalization

Machine learning

Insurers, as they process claims, gather a large amount of data from multiple sources. Incorporation of machine learning in the process and healthcare mobility solutions can help build customer relationship management systems that offer targeted service and eliminate churn.

The industry is also exploring ways to use the technology for helping doctors deliver proactive, timely, and cost-effective care to patients.

Internet of Things

With over 1 billion wearable devices active in the market, the healthcare industry is no more unsure about the technology’s capabilities. The biosensors present inside the wearables are getting more sophisticated to become links in the digitalized healthcare system which lays emphasis on home-based treatments.

Through the data collected by the sensors, insurance companies can help wary customers of problem signs before they develop into diseases.

Distributed ledgers

When a patient interacts with a healthcare system, they talk to a number of parties: doctors, pharmacists, insurance companies, etc. A distributed ledger can enable all the stakeholders to be on the same platform, making the interactions and following transmissions, transactions transparent and real-time.

An example of this can be seen in how the patients no more have to wait for the insurance companies to release payment since the latter is updated of the stage where they are at in the healthcare system.

One of the key resources in the healthcare economy is data – a resource that places insurers in the central of the provider side of the digitalization landscape. A number of insurance companies are making use of data to become active participants in healthcare transformation, while there are still a number of providers who are waiting for the digitalization lighting to strike.

Whatever the case may be on the insurer end, the other side of the reality is that members are appreciating insurers’ digitalization efforts by increasing the usage of value-added services. For an insurance company, it means that now is the golden time to enter the space. We can help you.

Our team can help you make an infrastructure that can bring you on a shared transparent, value-plus platform as your customers. Contact our team of insurance industry digitalization experts.

Far off the Clinical Silo: Presenting Comprehensive data

Posted on 23/05/202102/06/2021 by Blogs

For the past 15 years, the electronic health record (EHR) has been the cornerstone of digital hospitals and a primary repository for clinical data. The strategy for most healthcare providers has been to integrate as much data as possible into the EHR so that clinicians need to work with only “one single source of truth” when treating their patients.

However, there is a problem with EHRs. They are simply not designed to incorporate data from other sources, such as medical devices, asset management systems, location services, wearables or any other secondary non-clinical data. These sources of data offer tremendous value for improving health outcomes but, because of the difficulty in incorporating these data sources, are not being used.

In the coming years, most healthcare providers will prioritize aggregating new data sources (and thereby exploring new use cases). They will be seeking to not only implement new business models, but also to leverage the investments they’ve already made in new capabilities and technologies centered around internet of things (IoT) platforms, artificial intelligence, big data and robotics.

Storing such data in a single clinical silo, like an EHR, is neither practical nor efficient. Rather, healthcare providers need to focus on data aggregation and orchestration platforms (DAOP) that can collect data across the ecosystem and deliver actionable insights which will impact the day-to-day delivery of care. These platforms help move healthcare providers away from a reactive approach to managing healthcare data to one that’s more proactive, automated and insights-driven.

This is because the latest generation of DAOPs is architected as a collection of different open, modular and granular services, provisioned using the cloud and delivered as a service, which is enabled thanks to emerging server less designs. As these intelligent layers of software and data continue to be integrated in advances in big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and automation, and root themselves in agile/DevOps practices, they create low-cost, increasingly automated and smart agile workflows.

The EHR remains an important system — but it will be only one source of data feeding the DAOP. It will continue as a digital application focused on documentation, internal work flows and decision support within the hospital, while the DAOP will act as an engine, enabling new and innovative business models across the patient ecosystem.

Data, interoperability and APIs

Accessing and harnessing data across a variety of systems is the core of what the DAOP does. Once the aggregated data has been transformed and ingested into a centralized data lake, it can be consumed as microservices through a structured and well-managed API gateway.

The use of RESTful (Representational State Transfer) APIs, or RESTful web services, combined with the rapidly emerging FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard, is accelerating and standardizing healthcare interoperability. FHIR-based RESTful APIs enable healthcare data-sharing across a federated and fragmented environment without necessitating data migration or locking up data in centralized solutions, such as EHRs. This is important because locking up data in EHRs and other such systems can reduce an organization’s control of the data and lead to prolonged time to value from new ideas and innovations.

Setting a complete healthcare API strategy

FHIR-based RESTful APIs are just the tip of the iceberg. On their own, they do not solve problems like data fragmentation, lack of standardization or sub-optimization across a complex ecosystem. To fully leverage the benefits of FHIR and APIs, more must be done than simply adding an API on top of an existing system of record, because the raw data is typically not in a state or format that lends itself to interoperability without manipulation. Most systems of records, such as the EHR, store data in a proprietary format, which needs to be manipulated before it can be shared. Maintaining a loose coupling of applications is best done outside of the EHR and enabled by a FHIR-based data lake.

To be successful, a complete healthcare API strategy should:

Address the differences between the raw data from the systems of records and the data requirements of FHIR and other interoperability standards. Data transformation and translation against industry standards helps to standardize the data into a canonical form.
Hide the complexity of the underlying data environment to the data consumer. APIs and the platform behind them provide the opportunity to encapsulate the systems of record so the end user doesn’t have to search through multiple systems to find the data.
Consider opportunities to improve and enrich the raw data to maximize its use. Once data is aggregated and standardized behind the API, questions can be asked of the data that could not be asked before. Opportunities exist to enrich the data with provenance, security, privacy, conformance and other types of metadata. Enrichment can also come in the form of new insights gleaned from the data through analytics and evaluation of the data against knowledge bases.

APIs should be the gateway into a robust data processing platform capable of maximizing the usefulness of the data behind it. In this way, the challenges EHRs and other systems of record present with aggregating important sources of data can be overcome without undue burden and cost to the healthcare organization.