The Future Of Healtcare, enabled by data streaming

Dreams of the future: Healthcare

As a leading expert in the field of (big) data solutions, we help develop the technologies that are going to shape our future. In this blog we discuss the future of healthcare, which will become more customer friendly and efficient as we learn to leverage the power of data streaming.

A peek into the future

A patient walks into the clinic or a hospital. He suddenly started feeling ill during his holiday and an online consult with his own physician has resulted in the advice to see a GP locally. He goes to the GP, who has already received his patient file and the information from the consult with his own physician. Upon inspection, the GP refers our patient to the hospital to get further examination. When he does, the hospital is already aware of who he is, what his symptoms are and any other conditions they should be aware of. This means the hospital is already aware of the patient’s allergy to penicillin, even if he forgets to mention it himself. After being examined (using an MRI scan, amongst other equipment) the patient is swiftly diagnosed. Luckily, his condition does not require a stay in the hospital. He receives his treatment and is sent on his way with a prescription and a healthcare wearable to monitor his condition remotely. When he arrives back home, his practitioner is aware of everything and takes over care from the hospital. Additionally, a refill of his medication is already ready at his local pharmacy for pickup. Even though different institutions and people were involved in the care of this patient, he experienced a seamless medical journey.

Enabled by data streaming

The seamless healthcare journey our patient experiences, is made possible by data streaming solutions enabling seamless data-driven collaboration. Take a look behind the scenes:

  • Solutions for patient records in a secure manner ensure that healthcare practitioners already know vital information about patients and their symptoms when they arrive. This makes care more personal, efficient and safe. It also makes it easy for our patients to switch between healthcare practitioners.
  • Our patient doesn’t know it, but the MRI machine used to examine him is part of a healthcare equipment sharing programme. This means that the MRI machine is also used by other healthcare providers and the MRI images are securely streamed to the appropriate institution. This makes healthcare equipment more affordable for smaller institutions. Solutions for handling this type of MRI imaging data responsibly are required to bring such equipment sharing programmes to life.
  • The healthcare wearable our patient wears continuously monitors his biometric data and streams this data to his healthcare practitioner. A solution dedicated to processing and responding to this real-time data allows healthcare practitioners to respond to any warning signals before our patient even notices them.
  • During this visit, our patient has caused plenty of treatment and administrative data to be generated. After leaving the hospital, this data is stored anonymously and used to improve care in the future. Solutions for processing and analysing large amounts of data are incremental for doing this in an efficient manner. Using a solution like the Datastreams platform, this data can also be shared with other healthcare institutions to improve R&D and enable faster healthcare innovation.

The future is not here yet, but we’re moving towards it every day. Ready to move towards the future with us? Read more about how our Datastreams Platform can help healthcare institutions here.

Leading expert in the field of (big) data solutions, Finance future

Dreams of the future: Finance

As a leading expert in the field of (big) data solutions, we help develop the technologies that are going to shape our future. In this blog we discuss the future of financial service institutions, which will only become more data-driven as pressure on these institutions increase. Today we present a snapshot of the financial institution of the future and the data streaming technologies that power it.

A view of the future

The financial institution of the future is faster and more customer-friendly than the financial institutions of our current time. When interacting with their bank online, the customer has a seamless customer experience that is tailored to their preferences. Additionally, they are proactively approached about possible issues or opportunities. For instance, a customer might be approached about the possibility of scheduling a weekly payment when the system notices weekly manual transfers or be asked if they have made an error when exhibiting abnormal behaviour (i.e. transferring €1050 instead of €10,50). These suggestions are frequently made at relevant times while the customer is actively interacting with the system, making banking more personal, engaging and meaningful. 

Customers in the future also enjoy a more open and seamless financial experience across platforms. Open banking regulations mean they can choose from a plethora of third-party applications for managing their finances in a seamless and easy manner. The financial customer of the future has no problem consenting to their data being shared for this purpose, trusting the high security and privacy standards upheld by financial organisations. 

Finally, aside from offering a better banking experience for customers, the financial institution of the future is also much safer and less likely to facilitate fraud or money laundering. Banks know their customers and can instantly detect behaviours that are indicative of (future) fraudulent behaviour or that suggest an account has been compromised. When warning signs are detected, immediate action can be taken and financial crimes such as fraud and money laundering can be prevented in real-time.   

Enabled by data streaming technology

The future of the financial industry described above will be enabled for a large part by (real-time) data integration, streaming data analytics and event stream processing.

  • More personal customer experiences are achieved by utilising some of the over 2.5 exabytes of data that customers are generating daily. Bringing together customer data from different sources and performing analytics on this integrated source of customer data helps institutions know their customers and engage them in a more personal manner with marketing or customer relation messages.
  • Real-time analytics and event-stream processing, combined with historical customer data, are at the core of enabling real-time personalised engagement with customers. They allow financial institutions to respond to customer behaviour as it is happening, enabling timely, relevant cross-selling and immediate responses to uncharacteristic behaviour. It also enables issues to be detected and resolved pro-actively before they hinder a customer’s online experience.
  • Sharing customer data with certified third-parties upon request while also adhering the strict GDPR-regulations regarding data sharing and customer consent, requires a solution capable of performing a delicate balancing act. A platform like the Datastreams Platform that is dedicated both to data governance and data collaboration, allows financial institutions to build a system where financial data can be shared safely, securely and seamlessly.
  • Real-time analytics and event-stream processing enable organisations to monitor ongoing transactions and immediately recognise suspicious, fraudulent patterns. This allows banks to detect fraud within seconds and shut down transactions before any damage is done. Comparing ongoing transaction data with historic transaction data also allows identification of uncharacteristic customer behaviour, potentially safeguarding customers from losing money in cases of hacked or stolen accounts.

The future is not here yet, but we’re moving towards it every day. Ready to move towards the future with us? Read more about how our Datastreams Platform can help financial institutions here.