As COVID-19 sweeps through nations, quickly making established ways of working, studying, socializing, and conducting business impractical or even impossible, people turned to technological innovation for alternatives.

Here we look at three key areas that have been brought to the forefront during the pandemic but are likely to stay with us for the long-term.

Immersive Technology/ XR post-pandemic

Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse, says that XR is specifically pivotal because of its potential to replicate the physical dynamics of collaboration in a virtual environment, enabling you to be fully present and engaged with others as you would in real life.

As most of us struggle with the challenge of adapting to this ‘new normal’ where much of the world’s population finds itself unable to safely hold face-to-face meetings, Smithson explains that XR Collaboration tools are emerging as viable alternatives — not to replace current video conferencing, but to augment them through spatial understanding. “By sharing fully immersive spaces with others, we begin to bridge the physical gap between us – opening up a whole new world of communication possibilities. With XR conferencing, people may not be able to see your face, but they can certainly see your body language, and that is really powerful.”

This power, however, is only properly leveraged where creators are mindful of the unique properties of immersive technology, rather than trying to retrofit it to existing tools and procedures.

“The biggest question we should ask is can we or even should we try and replicate the presence of live events via digital means (be it digital video conferencing, AR and VR)? If we merely try to ‘copy and paste’ one experience into the other, we are doomed to fail,” says Galit Ariel, founder and Creative Director of WondARlands Spatial Innovation Lab.

Ariel says that in her view, simply having embodied avatars standing in a virtual conference room and watching a virtual slide show does not make the infinite possibilities virtual platforms have to offer.

With XR conferencing, people may not be able to see your face, but they can certainly see your body language, and that is really powerful
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Furthermore, the move to digital platforms brings opportunities to “control the stage” in ways that are unavailable to speakers and presenters in real life. While pre-tested or pre-recorded talks and events can be potentially more polished, they also lack the magic and serendipity of a physical setting, interaction and immersion. That is a much harder challenge in some ways, Ariel says, as that content then needs to compete for the individual’s attention span with all the great digital content that is already available online, and the things that are happenings in their separate realities.

“When I see online and virtual panels and presentations using the same method of content delivery, I feel it is a miss. [Although] I understand that most event organizers had to find quick solutions. Going forward, they will need to make smarter and more creative choices about what content is valuable and meaningful in a digital context, and what digital tools make sense. We also need to remember that people are quickly becoming ‘Zoomed out’ and dealing with digital fatigue.  I hope, and I am certain, we will see more creative and experimental ways to deliver content via digital means.”

Delivering new digital content through AR and VR will also depend on network innovation and optimization. Globally, plans to deploy 5G are mixed. While the U.S. is still moving forward with its plans to deploy 5G on the same timeline pre-COVID-19, other countries are facing delays in spectrum auctions, investment, and supply chains. In order to create seamless XR experiences in and outside of our homes, there needs to be significant strides in 5G infrastructure and investment into education about different applications and uses for this technology.

Smart city technology for tracking and security

In order to tackle the unprecedented challenges of this global pandemic, it is vital that local, state and federal governments are able to leverage the vast amounts of data already in their systems to make better-informed decisions that help them flatten the curve and take action in real-time to mitigate outcomes and maximize limited resources.

“Data is key toward effectively tracking and managing a government’s pandemic response,” explains Amr Salem, CEO of smart city technology company Quantela, whose AI-powered recommendation engine deploys predictive analysis to forecast future capacity requirements for traffic, crime, weather, disaster and emergency response. The company currently has over 95 live deployments, including installations in Albuquerque, NM., Erie, PA., and Las Vegas, NV.

Quantela recently launched a platform called CoVER (Coronavirus Emergency Response Platform) which enables authorities to input all their data from across their field of operations, including medical resource tracking, testing kits and results, outbreak locations, quarantine locations and duration, and critical asset locations, into one accessible database.

The move to digital platforms brings opportunities to control the stage in ways that are unavailable to speakers and presenters in real life
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The platform – which can be tailored to the needs of each locality and deployed within as few as three days – incorporates any data source that influences their time-critical operational decision-making can be fed into a cloud-based system that gives them increased insight and control over these fast-moving situations.

The dashboard visualizes complex data sets and is able to reliably predict where the virus will be, allowing leaders to reallocate resources accordingly to prevent shortages. Users can drill down from macro-level data (across states, counties, etc.) all the way down to an analysis of city sectors and even individual patients to ascertain how to best deploy resources to manage and contain outbursts and manage infection clusters, taking actions such as sending real-time notifications to health workers in a particular area.

Data is key toward effectively tracking and managing a government’s pandemic response
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Quantela’s digital urban services technology also includes a Citizen App which can be installed on their phones and allows individuals to perform self-assessments and self-report. Citizens can also use the app to receive information about the current situation in their area, including official government updates and notifications, “red zone” alerts, health advice, and the location of their nearest testing and treatment facilities. Field responders, meanwhile, can use CoVER to record their temperature and other vital statistics. Going forward, it may be possible to leverage such capabilities to detect and stop further outbreaks at a much earlier stage by monitoring how positive patients are recovering, and who is traveling.

“Cities will be able to predict future scenarios based on current spreading patterns, understand the impact on critical medical assets, speed up the allocation of patients to hospitals with available capacity, track quarantined patients, and distribute assets where it’s needed the most,” Salem concludes.

Hygiene innovation

Perhaps the most noticeable shift in our routine brought on by the spread of COVID-19 has been in personal hygiene. We’ve been made forcibly aware that the very act of touching a surface can contaminate it for extended periods of time. And while frequent hand washing mitigates contagion to some degree, our devices and wearables are much more difficult to effectively disinfect on a regular basis.

This is a problem that Amy Hedrick, CEO and Co-Founder of California-based smart tech hygiene company Cleanbox Technology had been working on for years, however.

With a background in media production and storytelling, Amy was an early adopter of immersive technology. In 2016, she foresaw the need in the nascent industry for a solution that would allow users to safely and hygienically share headsets without risking contagion transfer.

Cleanbox went on to patent a technology that uses UVC light in an LED to decontaminate hard-to-clean products worn on the face or head. With a focus on high-risk contagion transfer points; its core products were designed for Augmented & Virtual Reality Head Mounted Devices (HMDs). Cleanbox also includes a hydrophobic coating for the soft materials of the headset, to keep contagions at the surface rather than seeping into the electronics. Cleanbox products have been proven to safely eliminate 99.99+ percent of viruses, bacteria, and fungi within seconds.

“We actually started with the most difficult form factor first,” says Hedrick, “Virtual and augmented reality headsets are made up of many different materials and delicate electronics that have multiple surfaces that are hard to reach. They are much more difficult to clean than say cell phones”.

UVC is a wavelength of light that does not occur naturally in the atmosphere, so viruses do not have a resistance to it. Unlike UVA and UVB rays (sunlight & tanning bed lights), which are not generally used as disinfectants, UVC is safe for decontaminating materials including fabrics, plastics, and acrylic. The use of UVC in an LED instead of traditional mercury tubes or bulbs has the advantages of generating no heat or harmful toxins, as well as keeping the product environmentally-friendly, Hedrick explains.

Cleanbox products have been proven to safely eliminate 99.99+ percent of viruses, bacteria, and fungi within seconds
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With the global shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) – in particular, N95 respirators (N95s) – and the re-use of masks without proper decontamination placing users at increased risk due to viral load build-up, Cleanbox quickly pivoted and designed a retrofit for cleaning masks, allowing healthcare workers and first responders to safely disinfect their N95s. Cleanbox’s CX1 with retrofits have been donated to institutions such as Children’s National and Northwestern University Medical Center. In parallel, Cleanbox developed CleanDefense, a machine due to launch this summer which can decontaminate up to 100 masks per hour.

Going forward, Hedrick believes this is a solution that will be important not just for first responders, but also in care homes, dispatch centers, restaurants, airlines and other facilities that continue to have a heightened need to protect their employees and patrons against contagions such as COVID-19. CleanDefense’s portable design makes it ideal for airports, retail centers, entertainment venues, hotels, restaurants, and any other business requiring workers to wear masks.

“This technology is really going to become essential for all our devices, from mobile phones and tablets to earbuds and glasses, as we move into a new reality where we will have to learn how to better protect ourselves and each other,” Hedrick concludes.

Turbulent times are often a catalyst for innovation, and this pandemic has proven to be no exception. Unfortunately – in spite of the fact that we’re now seeing many countries moving towards easing restrictions and attempting to restart some semblance of “business as usual” – the long-term effects of COVID-19 are going to be felt for many months and even years. What this crisis has also uncovered is that many of those technological “emergency workarounds” actually present us with better and more efficient ways of doing things, and it is unlikely that they will be set aside, even when the virus is finally brought under control.

This article was originally published on Futurithmic

From #XR applications to new safety protocols and high-tech cleaning methods, the innovations that will come out of COVID-19 will change our lives as we know it. https://t.co/GjyYARWxWu pic.twitter.com/vLhY1QPFze

— Futurithmic (@futurithmic) June 11, 2020

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals, and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a XR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Emerging Post-Pandemic Innovations appeared first on Tech Trends.

By Amr Salem, CEO & Sridhar Gadhi, Founder & Chairman of Quantela

Technology companies have traditionally sold their products in much the same way as physical commodities. There was little or no difference between buying a toothbrush from your local supermarket or MS office for your computer. We can call this model of transaction – where the customer pays a certain price for a certain product and considers it the end of the story – Consumption 1.0.

After the financial crisis in 2008, however, technology providers had to find innovative ways to deal with drastically reduced IT budgets, and increase their addressable market by lowering the barrier to entry for smaller customers. The introduction of cloud computing made it possible to deliver “anything as a service” (XaaS), and new flexible consumption models have emerged that are far more economical. This model, where a subscription gives you the right to use MS Office rather than paying the full cost upfront, can be described as Consumption 2.0. Like Microsoft, most tech companies such as AWS, SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Cisco offer their products on a subscription basis, and for many there is no longer even an option to purchase the product in any other way.

The relationship between the Offered Value and the Aspired Value should define the price the buyer should pay to the supplier
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Many companies, however, continued to innovate this consumption model by offering customers the opportunity to only pay for what they actually use. This, in turn, lowered the barrier of entry for smaller customers and increased the addressable market for firms such as SAP, which entered the SME space after it was known for years as the Rolls Royce of ERP, only accessible to large enterprises. These “pay-as-you-grow” consumption models offer customers a minimum entry point based on their needs today, and as they grow and their requirements change, they can then buy more licenses, storage, processing power, features or bandwidth as required. These models were not necessarily restricted to XaaS or subscription pricing structures, but have also been applied to some perpetual or CAPEX based pricing offers. Let’s call this Consumption 3.0.

Throughout this evolution, customers became better educated and empowered, and we have seen a power shift towards the user, who increasingly questions why they have to pay for the technology they consume, and not just pay for the value they are getting out of it.

Technology companies have traditionally sold their products in much the same way as physical commodities
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Aspired, Offered, and Economic Value

This is the right question to ask. Customers are seeking quantifiable value from their technology investments. Before technology buyers commit to a new technology investment, they must identify the outcomes they are looking for, and convert these outcomes into economic value. This Aspired Value is the value gained by the buyer from the economic outcomes generated by the technology implementation.

Once the buyer’s aspired value is understood, the technology provider needs to deliver on those desired outcomes. This is the Offered Value by the supplier.

After the financial crisis in 2008 technology providers had to find innovative ways to deal with drastically reduced IT budgets
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Logically, the relationship between the Offered Value and the Aspired Value should define the price the buyer should pay to the supplier. A solution from “Supplier A” that has a higher Offered Value than a solution from “Supplier B” should be more expensive to acquire by the buyer, as long as it is aligned with the Aspired Value and the outcomes the buyer is seeking. This brings us to how technology companies should be re-thinking their pricing models and offerings so that they reflect a clear co-relation between Aspired, Offered, and Economic Value.

When a technology provider understands the outcomes desired and can convert these into economic value for the buyer, they are able to effectively use that projected economic value as collateral, enabling customers to obtain internal buy-in, approvals and financing by justifying the budget ask with data.

Most technology providers will gradually pivot towards some form of Outcome-Based model which aligns the goals of all stakeholders
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Smart City technology is a case in point. The benefits of deploying these to optimize assets usage, reduce cost of maintenance and generate additional revenues, are widely recognized, yet most cities seeking to implement these struggle with finding the needed budget.

Therefore, Smart City solution providers are looking at collaborative ways to unlock economic value, which could, in turn, be used to finance the capital required to deploy the solution. Smart Lighting is a good use case here, where savings generated by lower energy consumption due to LED lights efficiency and smarter controls reduce operating costs associated with street lighting. These savings can be used to guarantee and repay the debt of financing the city borrowed to deploy the smart lighting infrastructure.

Smart City solution providers are looking at collaborative ways to unlock economic value
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This most evolved outcome-based consumption model, where the initial financing is guaranteed and repaid by the sought economic value outcomes from the technology solution, can be called Consumption 4.0, where customers are not paying for consumption, but rather become collaborative partners with the technology provider, as both strive to achieve mutually beneficial goals and KPIs.

Outcome-Based Financing is the vehicle used by technology providers to address this emerging trend. This is a sign of maturity in the technology industry, which will push providers to focus everything they do from R&D to advertising on the value and outcomes they are delivering to the market. This model is still in its early stages, yet we are already seeing many examples of long-term concessions for Smart technologies, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) being formed to share value between private and public sector, and advertising revenues financing digital signage projects in large malls or stadia.

In the not-so-distant future, this evolution will come to a head, and we believe most technology providers will gradually pivot towards some form of Outcome-Based model which aligns the goals of all stakeholders. This will not only generate the best economic outcomes, but also democratize access to technology and generate extra value that filters down to individual citizens and benefits society at large.

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