TechNW Event: Connected Cars and Bridging the Gap Between Healthcare and Technology

Cloud technology and big data are buzz words hitting every industry. At Washington Technology Industry Association’s TechNW conference, we got to see how the automobile and healthcare industries are adopting these.

Connected Cars

Despite the fact that there isn’t a car manufacturer anywhere near, the Pacific Northwest is becoming a major player in the automotive industry. Our very active tech sector is the reason.

A panel including Bryan Trussel, CEO of Glympse, Pranish Kumar, Group Program Manager at Microsoft, Marc Weiser, Founder and Managing Director, RPM Ventures, and Kevin Foreman, GM, GeoAnalytics, INRIX, Inc., tackled the topic of connected cars.

While everything around us is getting connected at an astonishing rate, cars have mostly been left behind. Panel members agreed, that this is about to change and change in a very big way. This year’s projected market for connected cars is $2 to 3 billion. According to Marc Weiser, by 2025 the connected car market is expected to reach $25 billion! Part of the reason for automotive being slow to the “connected” party is that car makers create products to respond to their customers who are the dealers. Unfortunately, dealers do not always take the end user into serious enough consideration, especially when it comes to add-ons that could raise the sticker price.

Over the next four to five years, it’s expected that half of the new cars manufactured will be cloud connected. This connection may be achieved via a cellular chip built into the car, or it may be through your smart phone. Current thinking is that the cellular chip variety of connectivity will be free to the end user, much like you can get free-wifi at Starbucks. When compared to the price of the car, the cost of providing this connectivity is quite low, yet the value provided to consumers will be very high.

A big player in this sector is Microsoft, who is partnering at the OEM level to make your next car smarter. On the other end of the spectrum is Automatic, a product funded by RPM. Automatic is a startup aiming to make even your old car smarter. The product includes a device that plugs into your car’s data port and connects via Bluetooth Low Energy to your smart phone. Once connected, Automatic can help you drive more efficiently, give you the 411 on check engine warnings, and even alert the authorities when you’re in an accident.

An interesting argument was made about how people are beginning to move away from having a relationship with their smart phone to having a relationship with their data stored in the cloud. In this scenario, smart phones, tablets, and soon cars, are merely tools for accessing content in the cloud. While the ability to link you to what’s important in your life—whether that is people or content—is a powerful one, each product experience still needs to be well-thought out in order to provide this access in the most effective and satisfying way possible. As more and more devices provide this connection, I’d argue that, rather than the product losing significance, we’ll have significant relationships with a wider range of products that provide the connected experiences we desire.

Healthcare and Technology

The next panel with Dr. Julie Kientz, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington and Len Jordan, Managing Director of Madrona Venture Group. While there are many wearables in the fitness and healthcare market, few have really connected long term with users. The general feeling is that there still needs to be a lot of thought put into why people use fitness devices and apps, and how the feedback they provide makes them feel. Does a device like Fitbit telling you that you didn’t reach your activity level motivate you to go the extra mile (literally and figuratively), or does it merely make you feel like a lazy failure. And for those devices that push data to internet-based sites, some potential users are uncomfortable with the idea that corporations are collecting all this data about their daily activities.

Still, it’s expected that big data will play a large role in healthcare. Before it does, a lot of work needs to be done to make sure that the data collected by the various technologies is both reliable and secure.

As this goal is achieved, the resulting data could prove to be instrumental in providing healthcare that is both more personalized, efficient, and effective.

It is clear that in the next few years we will continue to see development of a plethora of devices that connect us to the cloud and integrate seamlessly into our lives. Cloud connectivity will be so essential that it will almost feel like these devices empower us with another sense. And in some ways, smart products are, indeed, connecting us to an extension of ourselves, because the content we create, collect, and curate is such a key part of our identity.

Many thanks to WTIA for holding such a thought-provoking and informative event, and for kindly sharing their photos.