POSTED BY Susannah Hampton
Blockchain came to prominence through its role in cryptocurrencies, but its use has now broadened beyond cryptocurrency transaction data. Blockchain is now being utilised as a way of storing and verifying other types of data in other spheres of finance, as well as areas such as human resources, supply chain, land registry and food safety. In Forbes’ 2020 list of the top 50 blockchain companies, financial services were found to be the leading solution area by a large margin (39%), focused mainly on cross-border payments, digital asset trading, and digital/cryptocurrency.
Open Banking is driving the largest disruptors in the digital banking market, BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) and embedded finance, first and foremost, by acting as an enabler for delivery of these concepts. While the idea of Open Banking may not be entirely new, its rise to prominence has been mostly fuelled by adoption of PSD2 and big tech initiatives in recent years. This has helped shape interaction patterns between traditional and emerging actors in the marketplace. As such, Open Banking is a game changer for business model innovation in the face of customer demands for seamless and ubiquitous financial products and services.
The healthcare sector prides itself to be at the forefront of technological innovation. However, the fragmentary way in which many hospitals acquire technical solutions introduces cost, time, and resource inefficiencies that, overall, hinder care delivery and hospitals’ ability to meet their strategic objectives.
Despite ubiquitous cellular connectivity in many contexts through public cellular networks, this is unsuitable for the needs of many enterprises’ use cases, most typically those with specific requirements for cellular service reach, security, availability, latency or any combination of these.