Healthcare is changing from treating people to trying to prevent people from getting ill in the first place. Technology is contributing to this new way of healthcare as it is getting easier to monitor and track daily health. Bio sensors and wearables are becoming more and more affordable and accurate. Thanks to these technologies and so many people having smartphones it is easier to track every move and heartbeat. The data that is been collected by using these biosensors and wearables is very valuable. Analysing and realtime tracking of this data makes it possible to give insights in the status of the current wellbeing of people. This way early alerts of inconsistencies can help to treat or even prevent illness.

Health coach is an upcoming job, created by enabling data collection on a realtime basis. A health coach will track your data and advise you on food intake, daily exercise and even supplement intake. Their job will consist of enhancing your health and making sure you are doing your all time best in preventing any illness. The possibilities are endless, at the moment the Apple Watch is able to detect abnormal heart rhythm with a 97% accuracy rate, sleep apnea with 90% accuracy rate and hypertension with 82% accuracy rate (IoTforAll, 2018). Apple also just started Health-Kit which invites developers to build health tracking applications and makes it possible to very easily conduct research. Offcourse they understand that the value of health data is growing every day.

So not sure yet what you want to do after BIM? Maybe think of analysing and tracking big data in every day healthcare. Bridge the gap between non-proven diet practices, fitness coaches and general practitioners. Or maybe just use the knowledge from DBA to manage a development team in building the next health tracking application!

Sources:

IoTforAll, march 2018 – https://www.iotforall.com/connected-devices-health-wellness/

When having dinner tonight think about how the food got on your plate. Original outdoor farming makes use of a lot of acres of land and is at the point of becoming old school. The first large warehouses with indoor vertical farms using water as basis for growing have been built.

Let’s take a look at what is currently happening in the agricultural industry. First of all due to an elevated increase in population, expected growth of 33 percent, we will need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 according to the World Government Summit^[1].  At the moment innovation in the agricultural industry is very scarce. At the same time urbanisation is also increasing meaning less availability of land to use for food production.

Secondly, current farmland is degrading which makes the land unsuitable for farming. Already 25 percent of the farmland has been rated as ‘highly degraded’ ^[2]. While natural resources are being stressed due to multiple reasons. For example; deforestation of unsuitable land, overcutting vegetation, improper crop rotation, unbalanced fertiliser use, etc.

Luckily disruption^[3] of this industry is on its way:

1. Hydroponics; growing crops without soil. Using nutrient solutions solved in water to feed plants. Not only does this way of farming not require land it is possible to integrate solar power, generation of electricity, production of freshwater and farming. With hydroponics it’s easier to use sensors for the water and track the exact consequences of changes in the composition of this new ‘soil’.
2. Urban farming; farming on top or inside city buildings. This is often combined with vertical farming and hydro- or aeroponics. This way of farming is highly efficient due to stacking crops and thus using less space with a higher output.
3. Data drive farming; analysing and combining data about weather, seeds, quality of water or soil. This helps farmers to make more informed decisions.
4. Use of drones; soil and field analysis, crop monitoring and spraying, health assessments. Using drones helps to analyse the farmlands and make farming more efficient.

Change is inevitable to increase farming outputs with 70 percent by 2050. This old-fashioned industry has been staying behind until now. Hydroponics is even possible at your home and is a lot of fun. So don’t have a garden or a rooftop take a look at hydroponics.

[1]        United Nations World Population Prospect 2017, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/

[2]       Agriculture 4.0: The Future of Farming, World Government Summit, https://www.worldgovernmentsummit.org/api/publications/document?id=95df8ac4-e97c-6578-b2f8-ff0000a7ddb6

[3]       Five ways agriculture benefit artificial intelligence, https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2016/12/five-ways-agriculture-benefit-artificial-intelligence/