3 Ways Healthcare Apps Are Transforming the Patient Experience

 

The healthcare system can be extremely challenging for patients to navigate, and providers haven’t always done enough to streamline the patient experience. While the internet facilitates the spread of health-related misinformation, it also makes it easier for patients to take a more active role in their treatment.

Healthcare organizations are only beginning to explore the possibilities of mobile health solutions, but healthcare apps are already changing the ways patients seek care and communicate with their providers. In this article, we’ll cover three key effects of mobile healthcare apps on the modern patient experience.

Meeting Patients Where They Are

While in-person appointments obviously still have a role to play in healthcare, mobile healthcare apps can help patients by providing information, answering questions, offering medication reminders, and performing various other tasks that keep the patient engaged in their own care. Mobile apps make these functions far more convenient for the average patient.

Rather than picking up a brochure or pamphlet during an appointment, for example, patients can now pull up the same information on their phone in just a few seconds. Making information more accessible is one of the most important benefits of mobile healthcare apps in terms of the patient experience.

Estimating Wait Times

Long waits are one of the most common causes of patient dissatisfaction, and patients may not always know which urgent care centers have availability. Mobile health apps can provide that information on a smartphone or tablet, giving patients the chance to check wait times before deciding where to go.

Improving Patient Engagement

A patient who only interacts with their doctor at the occasional appointment is far less likely to maintain their health than one who is actively involved in their care. In fact, higher levels of patient engagement are strongly associated with better health outcomes.

While mobile apps can’t replace doctors and nurses, they can help patients maintain their engagement even when they’re away from the clinic. Healthcare professionals can only accomplish so much at a given appointment—getting patients to build good habits and stick to them can have an incredible effect on long-term outcomes. Providers can also monitor patient progress and stay in contact with them to continue personalizing their health plans over time.

Mobile health apps are still struggling to increase adoption, but it’s clear that they have the potential to completely change the way patients approach their health. These are just a few of the most important effects of contemporary healthcare apps on the patient experience—with the consistent progress of healthcare software development, it’s impossible to predict what the field will look like in just five or ten years.

The Benefits and Risks of Smart Contracts

 

Smart contracts are automated contracts with self-executing business rules and financial agreements written into the code and stored on a decentralized blockchain network.

Note here that they are not legally binding like traditional legal instruments, but are simply business decisions expressed in a form understandable by software and executed by the “Rules of Law”. That means that it is agreed upon by both parties that once the conditions are met, the contract is executed no matter what.

The mere fact that they are controlled by the code adds to their groundbreaking essence as that also makes them trackable, irreversible, and non-tamperable.

Nevertheless, as with any innovation, there is the other side of the coin. With smart contracts, that is the issue of trust.

Even though blockchain technology provides by nature a trustworthy and trustless alternative to the already existing models of business and interpersonal conduct, a code-controlled contract still remains as secure as the code written into and as bulletproof as the skillset of the person who wrote it.

Even though blockchain technology provides by nature a trustworthy and trustless alternative to the already existing models of business and interpersonal conduct, a code-controlled contract still remains as secure as the code written into and as bulletproof as the skillset of the person who wrote it.

How Are Smart Contracts Used?

The financial and banking sector was the first to recognize the massive potential of smart contracts using blockchain, but other industries are jumping on the bandwagon as well.

Banks from all over the world have long since started to utilize smart contractual relationships, focusing mostly on large-volume cross-border transactions and trading credit default swaps.

Additionally, companies in healthcare, real estate, tax, and insurance, supply chain industries are rapidly switching to these contracts for executing everyday business tasks.

This, of course, in part relies on securing participant identity in the blockchain via tools like AIKON’s ORE Protocol in order to ensure contract signees’ access control, identity, and payment.

Smart Contracts’ Benefits

Many argue that the pros by far outweigh the cons, but for smart contract mass adoption to become a thing of reality, those who are meant to use them first must understand both the benefits and associated risks.

Accuracy

Since this type of contract is based on “if/then” relationships written into the code, when all conditions are met, contracts are executed. Therefore, they allow for infinitely more precision in their execution than what is allowed by traditional judicial frameworks, while at the same time they leave no room for subjective interpretation by human participants.

Speed

As a paperless business tool, smart contracts are very quickly processed. Moreover, their automated and digital nature allows for incredibly fast data input and modification. When time is equalized with money, this is a significant advantage to have over the competition, for instance.

Cost-effectiveness

Having in mind that utilizing these contracts eliminates all need to employ intermediaries that would vouch for the unviolated nature of information, using agreements of this type is less costly for companies than traditional ones. In this sense, trust is built into the mechanism of recording and executing the terms of the agreement – blockchain.

Trust

Encoded into the blockchain platform, and based on the same principles, smart contract technology inherently invokes the rule of trust. Encrypted fragmented records of legal relationships and financial transactions are shared between all blockchain participants, thus ensuring their intended undamaged condition free of malicious modification.

Security

Again, the fact that all information related to this type of contract – or anything stored in blockchain really – is broken down into encrypted sections distributed across the network is precisely what makes it safe from tampering. To change a piece of information within a smart contract, the entire chain would need to be altered and that is only done through a validation consensus.

Smart Contracts’ Risks

As said before, with such a young technology – after all, smart contracts were first introduced in the mid-nineties – there are still pending issues that hinder its mass adoption.

Reliance on the Code

Many people still vary from utilizing contracts built on blockchain to conduct their business precisely because they believe no code is perfect simply because it has to be created by a human. In that sense, it’s reasonable to think that there will always be flaws others can use to gain unauthorized access to the system and perform malicious actions.

Regulation

Since smart contracts and blockchain technology are still maturing, we are yet to see how the legal systems across the world will handle these business agreements in terms of taxation and other forms of regulation.

Nevertheless, these issues are expected to be addressed and resolved as the technology matures and is perfected over time.

In any case, these contracts are formulated in such a way that they truly represent the future of humankind, especially when having in mind the technology-based society we live in.

This article originally appeared on aikon.com

5 Pro Tips for Creating Facebook Ads

 

Facebook ads can be effective tools for marketers, provided those marketers understand how to leverage key features. Simply creating an ad and hoping it will reach interested customers isn’t going to help them grow their business or increase brand awareness.

To get the most out of working with a Facebook advertising agency or for a brand launching their own campaign, they should keep the following essential points in mind:

Using Audience Insights

The Audience Insights tool on Facebook helps to target ads appropriately.

For marketers to get a sense of what it can do, they can open up the tool in Ads Manager, click on the Create New button, and choose Everyone on Facebook in the Choose an Audience to Start prompt. For example, a B2B brand marketing to a company that sells music memorabilia would write in the Interests field, “music memorabilia”.

They’ll then be provided with a wealth of information about people who list this as one of their key interests on Facebook. Businesses can find out their gender makeup, where people with this interest live, as well as information about their lifestyle. This makes it much easier to create the ideal custom audiences for Facebook ads.

Create Custom Audiences

Now that the Facebook marketer has the kind of information that will help them tailor their ads to the right audience, they need to actually create a custom audience for their campaign.

They can start by heading to the Custom Audience Manager feature. There, they’ll click the Create Audience button, and select Custom Audience. There are several options within this category for targeting Facebook ads.

The Customer File option lets a brand target their ad to Facebook users whose email addresses or phone numbers are already in their possession. Thus, it’s useful for marketers with a mailing list.

The Website Visitors option, allows businesses to target people who have visited their website. In order to use this feature,  marketers must install a Facebook Pixel. They can also create an audience based on users who have engaged with their brand directly on Facebook.

Brands with an app can select the App Users option to target customers who have used it, but will have to adjust the code of the app to facilitate this.

Create Lookalike Audiences

The Lookalike Audience feature is very powerful, giving marketers the opportunity to create new custom audiences that mirror the demographics and interests of their existing custom audience.

A company needs to already have created a custom audience in order to use this feature. They can click on the Create Audience button from before, but this time they’ll choose Lookalike Audience.

They’ll then be prompted to select one of their existing audiences so Facebook can analyze it.  Marketers can also select different regions or countries, allowing them to reach customers from another part of the country or world who share many similarities with their existing customer base.

This feature makes it easy to expand a brand’s reach without going through the tedious work of creating an entirely new custom audience.

Use Facebook Lead Ads

If a business is trying to generate new leads with their Facebook ad campaign, the platform simplifies the process. Most lead generation campaigns require potential customers to click on an ad, which will redirect them to a landing page, which will then prompt them to fill in their information.

With the Facebook Lead Ads feature, brands can skip a step. Users won’t be redirected to a landing page; instead, they’ll be prompted to fill in their information right there on Facebook.

There are two main benefits to this approach. First, it makes the process more convenient for customers, boosting the overall likelihood that they will provide their information. Second, it promotes a sense of trust in users. They might be suspicious of a lead generation form on an unfamiliar landing page, but they won’t be suspicious of Facebook.

All a Facebook marketer has to do to use this feature is start creating an ad. When they’re prompted to select what their goals are with this ad, they can simply choose Lead Generation. The feature will guide them through the process of creating the ad.

Use Facebook Messenger Placement Ads

Facebook also gives advertisers the option to target customers via their Messenger feature. This is very useful for marketers, because it helps them answer custom questions directly and efficiently.

Customers who aren’t sure if they want to buy a product or sign up for a mailing list may want to know more about the brand before making a decision. If they can only communicate with the business via email, they’re more likely to lose interest quickly. Messenger gives brands the chance to interact with potential customers in a much more direct manner.

They can start by creating an ad. They’ll select Traffic and Conversions when prompted to choose a goal for the campaign. When asked where they want to direct Traffic to, the user will choose the Website or Messenger option.

Brands can then continue setting up their ad as they normally would. This time, however, they’ll choose Messenger as the destination. They’ll be given the option to generate the content of the message. When potential customers click on the ad, they’ll be directed to Messenger, instead of a landing page. Businesses should monitor their questions, and try to reply when they can.

Again, the difference between an effective Facebook ad campaign and an ineffective one is often simply the result of knowledge. If a brand knows how to use these features like a pro, they’re much more likely to reach the right customers.

Why Are Big Tech Companies Betting Big on Blockchain?

 

Big tech companies have increasingly started investing in cryptocurrency and building up their treasury assets by primarily focusing on Bitcoin.

“2020 is fast becoming the year of crypto acceptance and we see 2021 as the year of mainstream adoption,” – Constantin Kogan, managing director at digital asset manager Wave Financial.

When it comes to big companies buying crypto over the course of the summer and fall of 2020, several big companies have made headlines by purchasing large quantities of cryptocurrency.

MicroStrategy had announced that it had accumulated $425 million in Bitcoin, thus making it its main reserve asset. Galaxy Digital Holdings also invested $134M in June 2020.

Moreover, a mobile payments service Square declared a $50 million investment in Bitcoin, while asset management company Stone Ridge Holdings has disclosed its purchase of over 10,000 BTC as part of its long-term treasury reserve strategy.

Even Microsoft and PayPal joined this crowd of big companies using cryptocurrency by expanding their offerings to customers who want to buy crypto by using their services.

This turn of events cannot be a coincidence and aligns with previous predictions of experts like Raoul Pal, the founder, and chief executive of Global Macro Investor, who recently stated that big companies were starting to recognize the potential cryptocurrencies offer and accumulating this digital asset would be perfectly natural.

“I’d be surprised if within five years’ time Apple, Microsoft, and others don’t have cash in bitcoin,” Raoul Pal said in a YouTube video.

The reason for big companies buying Bitcoin, he stated, is to protect their capital from USD devaluation.

As the price of Bitcoin steadily rises throughout the better part of 2020 (so far we have seen an increase of 40%) corporations are identifying cryptocurrencies as a solid defense mechanism against the wave of inflation some see on the horizon.

It can be argued that they are guided by the logic that when fiat currencies go down in value, crypto goes upwards. Therefore, in order to keep the balance between the two, companies investing in Bitcoin are doing so to diversify their financial portfolios and thus prepare for future developments in the global economy.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” Mr. Pal told his YouTube viewers. “Nothing is a reserve asset like bitcoin.”

And it makes sense if you take into account that apart from USD decreasing in value, bond-yields are practically non-existent, and gold is underperforming.

With a diminished number of places for liquid companies to place their money, cryptocurrency has emerged as the obvious solution. With the growing credibility Bitcoin has been enjoying lately, large companies investing in Bitcoin have taken that as a hint that its extra-accommodative monetary stance will stay in place for years to come.

Mr. Pal went on to compare Bitcoin to the cockroach that is indestructible by traditional financial systems as they are about to collapse under the pressure of the global pandemic. He also called Bitcoin the “life raft” that will take the population and corporate giants through the end of global fiscal policy as we know it.

And it is already happening.

In Stone Ridge’s announcement about the Bitcoin purchase, many financially strong entities – banks, philanthropists, companies using Bitcoin – were also called upon to turn to crypto as part of their treasury reserves.

“Digital assets, tokenization – it’s all coming, and it’s all going to slot into these new digital currencies brought by the central banks.” Mr. Pal concluded.

“So payment systems and rails and everything are going to change massively. Everything we understand – it’s going to be as big a revolution of money that the internet was from everything to email to video to shopping to commerce. It just changed the world we live in. That’s the size of what this is.”

In that sense, companies investing in Bitcoin are those that will make the transition easy for everyone interested in entering the cryptocurrency market. Fighting alongside them are companies that provide services crucial for safe and easy use of the platform, like secure authentication and identity and safe payment services.

This article originally appeared on aikon.com

Protecting Companies from Fraud in the DeFi Space

 

The rise of alternative financial markets that aren’t tied to any particular government or banking system has led to them being organized differently from what we’d seen beforehand. In essence, we’re entering a new era where financial structures are being operated entirely digitally by a distributed network of players – the DeFi space. 

One of the panelists from The New Normal of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency talks held in late October is Luke Lombe, a person with extensive experience in the blockchain industry and a deep understanding of capital formation and market strategies. 

Mr. Lombe is the founder of Echelon One, a consultancy and advisory firm to a wide range of clients including blockchain startups as well as the co-founder of MYNTD, a capital access firm specializing in digital securities. 

Given his background, Mr. Lombe’s provides insights into the functionalities of the Uniswap DeFi platform and the way companies that would want to participate in this space that can safeguard against bots and fraudulent behavior.

To explain the current state of threats in DeFi, Mr. Lombe made a distinction between the traditional and newly formulated, fully decentralized market exchanges. 

All the well-known traditional exchange markets today – the Nikkei, the NASDAQ, etc. – are centralized markets based on the order book model. In these traditional markets, buyers offer a price for a share and sellers offer to sell an asset at a certain price. The exchange is where these players compromise and meet in the middle. When there is a gap in the market, the market makers close it by minimizing the difference between the buying and asking price. 

In doing so, they are also providing liquidity and generating operational profit for the exchange markets. 

This is the opposite of decentralized exchanges where there is no such central authority pulling the strings, Mr. Lombe explained. In the DeFi space, every crypto transaction is a smart contract entry that requires a gas fee, usually paid in Ethereum. 

What makes decentralized exchanges unattractive to market makers is the fee each transaction requires, which would essentially make them go broke due to the high number of transactions executed every minute. The perfect example of that is Uniswap since it’s based on smart contracts and liquidity pools without the presence of any middlemen. 

It is an exchange where two assets are provided in equal value. Moreover, anyone can provide liquidity – individuals, investors, funds, etc – and by doing that, they get rewarded and incentivized to continue with the process. 

According to Mr. Lombe, this new trading model (via Uniswap DeFi token) has seen an explosion in interest in the last six to nine months with the volume going from $1 million to $1 billion a day. This indicates that the decentralized exchange space is attracting a lot of interest. As a result, Uniswap, for example, recently received investments from some of the world’s biggest VC’s, including Andreessen Horowitz.

However, there are also risks involved with this model as well which may lead to fraud on DeFi. On these decentralized exchanges, there are also bots – computer programs or algorithms – whose purpose is to identify opportunities to be exploited within the smart contracts and trading platforms themselves. 

Quite similar to the traditional equity exchanges, arbitrage bots will find a price on one platform, recognize the difference in the price on another, and then make a trade to exploit the difference and generate profit. Consequently, they would create liquidity in the process and stabilize prices, which is a good side-effect, Mr. Lombe noted. 

He also pointed out another unique aspect of decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. Upon placing a trade order on the platform, and announcing it via the blockchain smart contract, the action is also visible to the bots who are ready to exploit the deal for themselves. 

To protect from fraud, speed is crucial – the quicker you can make the trade, the less time there is for the bots to jump in front of the queue and either buy or sell the tokens or affect the price before you get the chance to buy it. The transaction can be sped up by paying a bit more in gas fee, so it’s a good idea to do that to avoid being exploited by the bots and affecting the trade. 

If you pay a small fee, your speed of transaction could be several minutes. If you pay a high fee, it could be just a few seconds, 10 seconds or so. That’s where the varying fee is very important.” – Luke LombeClearly, the DeFi space offers plenty of opportunities, but it also comes with its own set of risks. In that sense, it’s crucial to be informed as much as possible about the potential downsides such as these fraudulent behavior instigating and arbitrage bots.

This article originally appeared on aikon.com

Can Bitcoin Become the Next Global Reserve Currency?

 

One of the most interesting trends surfacing in the crypto industry today is the increasing likelihood of Bitcoin emerging as the next global reserve currency – something that Bitcoin fundamentalists have been preaching for the last decade. 

With the combination of transparency and decentralized trust brought on by the blockchain, individuals and companies across the world have had the opportunity to participate in a free financial system since the emergence of Bitcoin some twelve years ago. 

Since the dawn of Blockchain, trust in this trustless system has been slowly rising with a diverse range of individuals, institutional investors, and even world governments investing in the technology and the various tokens in circulation today. One result of this has been the free flow of liquidity across borders in a remarkably revolutionary way – satisfying the ever-growing need for a more efficient global financial system. 

Mr. Yoon Kim is an accomplished and dynamic crypto analyst and strategist. He successfully built the TMT sector of Tremblant Capital and helped the company increase its AUM from $200 million to $5 billion in five-years’ time. He then launched Vestry Capital, a global TMT equity fund as the head of which he served as an advisor and consultant to various hedge funds and blockchain projects.

With his 20 years of experience in investing and in the blockchain industry, Mr. Kim acutely understands these shifts in the global financial system. 

For that reason, one of the key topics of conversation during The New Normal of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency panel which AIKON organized in late October was “where the future lies for the USD and its long-term position as the world’s reserve currency”. 

Mr. Kim indicated that the USD losing some of its standing in the global financial system and possibly its status as the reserve currency as an inevitable product of blockchain’s accessibility and decentralization. 

As Mr. Kim has pointed out, the current financial system has been in place since World War II – 75 years now! On average, global financial systems have typically lasted for ~70-80 years each. We are, then, coming to the end of an era and can stand with bated breath awaiting the next financial revolution. 

Moreover, history has shown that significant global events often precede the breakdown of institutionalized financial systems. For the Pax Britannica, it was World War I. For the global financial system, we have today, it may very well be the impact of COVID-19 on the world economy. 

Having been a staple of the global economy, and considering the turmoil, the US has endured throughout 2020, USD is in serious danger of being dislodged from the position of power it has enjoyed over the last three-quarters of the 21st century. 

Given the amount of influence that US politics now has on the rest of the world, and being mindful that the level of engagement that USD (as a global reserve currency) will have on the rest of the world after the presidential election will probably never reach the levels from 40 – 50 years ago when it was at its peak. With the decrease in the level of engagement of the US with the world economy after the Soviet Union dissolution, what we see now are the effects of the politics that took 20 years to materialize. 

In that sense, Mr. Kim pointed out that it is very probable that USD is about to be dethroned as the most important currency in the world. 

And while there are those who would like to see the Chinese RMB take its place, Mr. Kim considers this very unlikely to happen. For one, dethroning USD from the position of the global reserve currency would put a significant amount of pressure and responsibility on the Chinese financial system, responsibilities the country seems to be shunning presently. For instance, China has been accused of intentionally increasing demand which then leads to an increase in the prices of international commodities. 

Therefore, the question is what will supplant USD as the global reserve currency or at least become an alternate reserve currency running in parallel with USD?

Mr. Kim stated that Bitcoin seems to fit perfectly, especially taking into account the timing of its rise, as well as its ability to cross borders with very little effort. 

As political and economic relations between the US and China continue to collapse, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that either the USD or RMB will be viewed as a viable global reserve currency going forward. 

Bitcoin may prove to be the thing that both nations, as well as the rest of the world, decide they can live within the upcoming decades. 

While the Chinese government is actively restricting crypto trades, there is massive support within the government for cryptocurrencies and blockchain. This implies that they have a long-term strategy in place, where Bitcoin would be used to dislodge the USD as the global reserve currency. 

In the same way, we’re seeing the causality of the US global economics politics conducted in the past 20 years and its effect on the situation now, there is a good chance that 20 years from now we will have Bitcoin as the reserve currency of the world simply because it will not be controlled by any one nation and its financial system. 

Should Mr. Kim’s predictions come to be realized, individual and corporate players in this new market that is quickly gaining momentum should be preparing for the shift.

This article originally appeared on aikon.com

Privacy Concerns of Smart Cities Projects

 

There is no exact definition of a smart city. Some individuals have their ideas concerning what they envision to be smart cities. However, despite the differences in opinions of how a smart city should be, some things remain clear: a smart city utilizes information technology to enhance the standard of living.

The level of tech used in smart cities ultimately allows a super-efficient city. This efficiency will be needed in the coming years when the population of cities inevitably explode. Recent research has analyzed investments in smart cities to increase by 48% in a space of five years.

The establishment of a smart city is projected to introduce several economic advantages. For one, smart cities are bound to create a multiplier effect in the economy of that city. Since companies and firms will be encouraged to build offices in the smart city, the overall GDP and per capita income will experience growth.

Resources like energy and water will also be managed. Sensors in the city will tackle the issue of pipe leaks and alert city officials to rectify the problem. A great example of this is observed in Cape Town, where water consumption was reduced by an average of 50%.

Major Problems Behind Smart City Establishments

The problem behind smart cities is embedded in the most important element of its creation: data collection. To function effectively, a smart city needs significant amounts of data. Accompanying a large storage of data is the privacy issue. Smart city data can be used for adverse means which include its utilization against the people.

Scandals about the government spying on its people have been exposed. What can stop the government from using the data of the people against the people? Privacy is a human right. It is what gives us the freedom to make our choices. What happens when this privilege gets revoked?

Also, there’s the issue of the centralized data storage getting hacked. Cyber threats will surely probe the storage systems that are always online for weaknesses. Once a weakness is found and user data is exposed, what could stop criminals from carrying out their activities? We’ve seen several instances of this over the years when data from big firms get leaked.

Possible Ways to stop Smart City Privacy Misuse

Before the establishment of a smart city, there should be rules protecting the populace against privacy infringement. Data should only be recorded when necessary and identification associated with the data should also be discouraged. For instance, sensors only need to determine the number of people at a bus-stop and not recognize their identities.

Super-strong cybersecurity measures against theft of data also need to be implemented before creating a smart city. The use of security tools like VPNs should also be encouraged. You can ensure privacy with a VPN, an app that encrypts your online traffic, shielding you from spying by the government and hackers, especially on networks managed by the government.