How Apple is Saving Lives

15

October

2017

5/5 (3)

When Apple released the Apple Watch in 2015 it was equipped with a build-in hearth rate sensor. This enabled the users to closely monitor their hearth rhythm during everyday activities. Originally, the Apple watch used the collected data to estimate activity and to calculate calories burned. Recently, Apple announced the they will be extending health-monitoring features of their Watch line with a focus on the heart.

First, Apple will make enhancements to their Hearth Rate App to give the user a closer look at how their hearth is behaving. Measurements like resting hearth rate and recovery hearth rate should give the user a better understanding of their fitness.

Second, Apple is introducing a notification feature. When the hearth rate sensor detects an unusually high hearth rate while the watch’s accelerometer does not detect any activity it will automatically send the user a notification. Regular occurrences can be a sign of bad fitness.

The third thing Apple is doing is focused on hearth rhythm. A regular hearth rhythm has a familiar pattern. However, it can occur that the heart is beating out of its usual rhythm. This is called an arrhythmia and this can cause major problems. The most common form of serious arrhythmia is Atrial Fibrillation, which effect 10s of millions of people and is the leading cause of a stroke. The problem with Atrial Fibrillation is that it is difficult to feel any symptoms and therefore often goes undiagnosed.

Apple is working on a feature to detect these kinds of arrhythmias and to notify the users. During Apple’s initial studies the Apple watch had been effective at surfacing these irregular rhythms. To further expand this study, it will be partnering with Stanford’s Medical School.

With adding these new features Apple wants to give their watch users a better understanding of their fitness and hearth rhythms, helping them live a healthier life and ultimately contribute to save lives.

The Apple Heart Study and new features will go live in the App Store later this year.

 

Sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/11/apple-watch-caridac-arrhythmia-tests-stanford-american-well.html

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/12/apple-watch-heart-rate-tracking-update/

http://med.stanford.edu/appleheartstudy.html

https://support.apple.com/en-la/HT204666

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Future of Grocery Shopping

28

September

2017

4.56/5 (9)

What Will the Future of Grocery Shopping Look Like?

About 70 years ago Dutch supermarkets were going through fundamental changes (CBL, 2017). Back in the 1940’s, the entire grocery shopping process was different. You would walk into a small store only to find a large counter. Here, a member of staff would ask you what you were looking for. To hereafter, get these items from shelves behind the counter, while you would wait in front of the counter. This process was inefficient, slow and labor intensive.

This changed in 1948, when the first self-service grocery store of the Netherlands was opened in Nijmegen (Kruideniers Museum, 2017). Long stretched out shelves with all the products neatly in place for the consumer to grab. Staff was only needed to replenish the products and to help the consumer checkout. This revolutionized the grocery industry. This self-service system disrupted the entire industry, and in the years to follow most supermarkets adopted this concept. The grocery store as we know it today was born.

Well… at least how we have known it until now. We might be at the verge of a similar shift in how we do our groceries. Slowly e-grocery shopping is gaining traction and the competition is fierce. The total online food revenue in the Netherlands already exceeded half a billion euros in 2017, which is equivalent to 3% of the entire grocery industry (Schutijser, 2017). Industry giants Albert Hein and Jumbo are well invested in the market and are market leaders with 400 million and 100 million in turnover respectively. However, a smaller player in this industry is catching the eye of investors, media and their competitors: Pic Nic.

The 2015 start up, does not have a single brick store, it does not even have an internet web store. The only place where consumers can buy groceries is using their mobile app. All items are bought online and will be home delivered the next day by a sustainable electric vehicle. Due to the absence of physical stores Pic Nic does not have high costs of rent and other related expenses. Because of this, they can offer free delivery and claim to guaranty the lowest prices on the market (Pic Nic, 2017).

Laurens Sloot (2017), professor in retail marketing at Groningen University, claims that the consumer is the ultimate winner in this new e-grocery market. The traditional supermarkets do not want their consumers to shop online. Home delivery brings along a lot of additional costs and logistic and operational challenges. However, Sloot claims, supermarket firms are forced to join this battle in the online industry because of changes in the consumer preferences and startups like Pic Nic.

Sloot (2016) also predicts that two hundred to four hundred supermarkets will disappear in the next ten years, as more and more people will start to do their shopping’s online. Sloot (2016) is confident this sector will experience growth of about 30% per year, and will become a multi-billion-euro industry by 2025. Nevertheless, this is only based on speculation. No one exactly knows how supermarkets will adapt in the future. Perhaps the e-grocery market might be nothing more than a niche market, but it might as well cause an industry disruption like the self-service grocery concept changed the way we did our shopping in 1948.

 

 

 

Hey fellow BIMers! I am very interested who you envision the future of supermarkets. If you have a particular view on it, I would love to read it in the commitments!

 

References

CBL. (2017). Historie zelfbediening. Retreived from: http://www.cbl.nl/de-supermarktbranche/historie-       zelfbediening/

Kruideniers Museum. (2017). In het verleden ligt het heden. Retrieved from:                http://www.kruideniersmuseum.nl/historie

Pic Nic. (2017). De online supermarket. Retrieved from: https://www.picnic.nl/

Sloot, L. (2017). Boodschappen online bestellen wordt serieuze business. Retrieved from:                https://nos.nl/artikel/2194239-boodschappen-online-bestellen-wordt-serieuze-business.html

Sloot, L. (2016). Laurens Sloot in Nieuwsuur: ‘Online market share of supermarkets may grow 20 to 30               percent per year’. Retreived from: http://www.rug.nl/news/2016/04/laurens-sloot-in-               nieuwsuur_-_online-market-share-of-supermarkets-may-grow-to-20-to-30-percent-per-year

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