The Human Sensor

From https://www.iotsworldcongress.com/the-human-sensor/

Going back to normal feels so good… It does. In events like the IoT Solutions World Congress, it means seeing people without masks rushing down the aisles with a traveling cappuccino and a smile, interacting with possible prospects, listening to experts telling stories about real experiences and lessons learned, sharing knowledge with peers and ultimately living a congress in all its dimensions and till the last minute. 

 

The third day of the event was mostly focused on healthcare for… “what can be more important than health?”, as Helena Lisachuk, Partner at Deloitte, put in several sessions. The sector still needs to rise up to the new challenges brought by the pandemic, which paradoxically opens new opportunities too. In fact, according to Lucien Engelen, Global Healthcare Innovation Strategist at Laurentius, healthcare will be “the biggest growing sector in the coming years”. Shafi Ahmed, Consultant and Colorectal Surgeon at NHS Barts Health, echoed that sentiment by adding that the “Internet of Medical Things will be one of the verticals of the future”. And this goes hand in hand with more cures being taken out of the hospitals to different places where the patients feel at ease. 

 

Obviously, the IoT will help with that. But that doesn’t mean sensors will govern their life. Nuria Pastor, CEO of HumanITcare, made it clear that “we need technology to speak the same language as doctors and the same language as patients. We need to use technology in a human way”. Somehow, we need the human sensor. 

 

“Digital is certainly the future,” but it takes more than having the solution to a problem to change things, as Lubomir Gradinarsky, Director for Packaging, Devices and Sensors at AstraZeneca, stressed. We need collaboration to offer patients “a seamless user experience,” he said, plus sustainability and privacy, ça va de soi. Yet, to get there, we need to share knowledge in the first place, recalled Dr. Manuel Ramón Castillo, a physician partnering with HumanITcare to better serve palliative care patients. 

 

In the end, sharing knowledge is what the IoT World Congress is about. We’re living in a transformative era where “the flow of information will be as important as the flow of products,” as Jim Kilpatrick, Partner at Deloitte, highlighted first thing in the morning to illustrate the current shift in the supply chain. Daniel Spahr, COO at Stream Analyze, elaborated on that when talking about the fact that the automotive sector has turned into “software on wheels.” 

 

Over 12,000 attendees processed all that information within the three-day event. Now we all just need to make the better of it. 

 

In any case, we can always discuss it at IOTSWC23.

 

 By Anna Solana