Archive for category: Technology

Investment decision makers are voracious consumers of data – and today they consume it at greater speed and volume, and with greater efficiency, than ever before. But the momentum of technological advancements behind the improved use of data is unceasing. New tools and capabilities seem to constantly become available, helping to level the playing field between the largest and smallest firms and institutions.

In many cases, asset owners and allocators look to what might be called strategic data partners such as Northern Trust, that have the necessary combination of resources and expertise to help clients better capture their data and make use of it to drive performance. In a recent interview with II, Barb O’Malley, Senior Vice President, Head of Client Solutions Consulting, Northern Trust, shared her insights on what asset owners and managers should keep in mind as they try to keep up in the Age of Data.

Don’t ignore quick wins. There are still benefits to be gained from tools that have been around for a while, such as robotic process automation (RPA). Recently, through RPA, Northern Trust has been able to reduce by 2 million the false positives for one of its reconciliation processes. In other words, when it comes to leveraging technology, it isn’t always about the latest and greatest. “Don’t stop doing what you’re already doing,” says O’Malley.

Don’t act small. O’Malley says she often encounters the belief on the part of smaller shops that they can’t afford to keep up with big, enterprise-level technology. “But today there are more tools available that are targeted to smaller and mid-tier clients, particularly in the data management space,” she says. “It’s worth keeping up with what’s available, even if you begin your search on the internet – there are definitely strong capabilities out there for smaller shops.”

You don’t need massive infrastructure. If you’re an asset manager who has been unwilling to embrace the cloud, you may be leaving a lot of computing power on the table. “A huge amount of infrastructure isn’t necessary,” says O’Malley. “We’re seeing more desktop-type tools that are quite powerful. There are some capabilities that asset managers and owners may be able to access in the cloud that weren’t available to them even a few years ago.”

You’re not alone if you’re struggling to keep up. Asset owners are increasingly moving asset allocation responsibilities in-house, and in the process are discovering they either don’t have the necessary skill sets on their teams, or the appropriate technology – or lack both. For asset managers, the challenge centers around identifying a more robust data management solution. “Data analytics has become more important to an asset manager than perhaps they at first realized – or maybe even realize now,” says O’Malley. “And some of them are struggling because they built somewhat inflexible solutions based on the choices of vendors that they had at the time.”

According to O’Malley, this can lead to a “blindered” view of what insights emerge from data for asset owners and managers. “There are two coexisting views on technology – what’s needed to run the day-to-day business; and what’s needed to gain more insights into data around client behavior, various securities, and portfolio management,” says O’Malley. “Many of our clients feel as if these two needs fundamentally conflict – but they don’t. What does happen, however, is that they often limit their data consumption to only answer one set of questions – which makes it hard to gain a more holistic view. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Team data scientists with the investment pros. With very few exceptions, investment professionals are not data scientists. But pairing up investment and data experts can be a game changer. And even if hiring a data scientist isn’t in the budget for some investment shops, their knowledge can be accessed through service and technology partners such as Northern Trust.

“Data scientists are really good at looking at the data and not being impaired by preconceived notions of what that data is going to say,” says O’Malley. “They can sometimes help surface insights that the investment professional hasn’t seen. And then the investment expert helps the data scientist either interpret the results or tweak them. When you take a pure data scientist and pair them with someone with strong investment acumen, you tend to get the best possible outcome.”

Powerful tools can help create trust. Perhaps the main driver of the need for transparency in investing has been asset owners becoming more involved in allocation. Certainly, in cases where those capabilities are brought in-house by an institution, there is a desire to see what’s happening anywhere in the process at any given moment. That demand is driving innovation around dashboarding at Northern Trust.

“Our clients want to understand our success in meeting data deliverables,” says O’Malley. “We will start to roll out a number of dashboards that track our success in meeting their expectations. We’ll also provide KPIs that will show trends over time and how we’re performing day-to-day – how we’re settling trades, how the cash is being processed, and so on. For example, they might see there is a trend with the timing of third-party data. With all the relevant information easily at hand, we can discuss with our client the component of the trading process that may not be working – and that kind of collaboration, plus the metrics to back up that we are delivering as promised, helps create trust.”

There’s a difference between real time and right time. Real time access to endless data flows isn’t necessarily a benefit to investment decision makers if the data and analytics provider doesn’t know the purpose for which the data is being used, and thus cannot optimize its delivery.

 

Read more…

Apple’s reliance on China is once again in the spotlight, this time because of the Wuhan coronavirus — an outbreak that has temporarily frozen the company’s retail operations in the country and rattled its supply chain in a matter of days.

The virus, and the uncertainty about how it may affect Apple’s supply chain, have reiterated the iPhone maker’s reliance on China. It also comes just after the tech giant dodged 15% tariffs on Chinese imports that would have impacted the iPhone and other important products.

The virus prompted Apple to temporarily close all of its stores and corporate offices in China until February 9 “out of an abundance of caution.” But the bigger concern appears to be around how this might impact Apple’s supply chain, which is largely based in mainland China and Taiwan.

During Apple’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call last Tuesday, Apple said it was factoring any impact from closures and production slowdowns caused by the virus into its fiscal second-quarter revenue guidance, which it’s pegged at landing between $63 billion and $67 billion. But Ming-Chi Kuo, the TF International Securities analyst that frequently reports on Apple’s supply chain, recently cut his projections for iPhone shipments in the first calendar quarter of 2020 by 10% because of the coronavirus.

“I’m going to be really surprised if Apple doesn’t end up reporting reduced sales and production,” said Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at market research firm Forrester. “The supply chain of these high value consumer electronics products is so tight and efficient that disruptions are felt quickly, and there’s limited ability to catch up once you get in the hole.”

However, some analysts have said that if Apple’s supply chain is able to return to regular operations by mid-February, the potential ramifications may be minimal. A new report from Bloomberg suggests that may very well be the case, as it says Apple’s key suppliers, including its major iPhone assembler Foxconn, will return to full-scale production as soon as February 10.

Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, said that as of February 3, the impact seemed “containable,” saying that 1% to 2% of iPhone’s that would have been sold in the March quarter may shift to the June quarter. But if Apple’s suppliers were to remain closed until late February or early March, roughly one million iPhone’s could be pushed to the June quarter.

“I think it’s a very quantifiable to a small impact that’s already factored into Apple’s guidance, unless this outbreak continues into later February or early March,” Ives told Business Insider.

Tom Forte, a senior research analyst for D.A. Davidson, also said that if the situation were resolved by mid-February, Apple should be able to fully recover. But any further obstacles beyond that point could be troublesome for Apple.

“If this remains an issue through the month’s end or even worse into March itself, it has the potential to be even more disruptive than the original outlook suggested,” Forte said to Business Insider.

While production slowdowns driven by the virus outbreak may be manageable, Gillett says there’s a chance it could impact near-term product launches, like the low-cost iPhone that’s rumored to be in production. That product, which is said to be a successor to 2016’s iPhone SE, was expected to go into production in February for a March launch date, according to Bloomberg.

It’s not the first time in recent months that concerns have been raised about how Apple’s reliance on China could impact its hardware business. Apple narrowly avoided a 15% tariff on Chinese imports that would have impacted flagship products like the iPhone after the United States settled a partial trade deal with China in early December. The tariffs could have increased iPhone prices by between $120 and $150, Ives previously told Business Insider.

Read more…

Health care in India faces several challenges including inadequate access, low insurance penetration and a growing chronic disease burden. At the same time, traditional business models have found it hard to show attractive returns on investment, except for a few large providers. Technology infusion — along with expanded infrastructure and efficiencies from process improvements — could help improve health care accessibility and affordability, according to experts who spoke about emerging trends in that industry at the 2020 Wharton India Economic Forum, held this month in Mumbai.

Despite its shortcomings, India’s health care sector has a lot going for it on several fronts. A government-led push to get health care providers to embrace electronic medical records is enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to extract insights from patient data to deliver better treatment. The availability of telecom bandwidth is making medical expertise reach underserved rural markets through telemedicine and tele-consulting programs, delivered over mobile phones.

The Indian government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative is encouraging domestic manufacture of medical devices and helping lower the prices patients pay for products such as stents and implants, which in the past were imported. At the same time, in India the policy environment and regulators need to accommodate technological interventions such as the growth of online pharmacies with the requisite controls in place, according to the panelists. Health care innovation in India could serve as a global model for a shift from treating the sick to preventive care and wellness, given the size of its underserved populations, they said.

Health care has the potential to lead to economic growth and to provide employment, but it also is a crucial sector in terms of “protecting the health and the wealth of the nation,” said Sangita Reddy, joint managing director of Apollo Hospitals, a chain of health care facilities, and president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industries.

Health care offers the opportunity to find ways to make medical services “more understandable, affordable and accessible,” said Gaurav Agarwal, co-founder and chief technology officer at 1 mg, an online pharmacy and digital health care platform. The three-year-old firm, based in Gurugram in India’s northwestern state of Haryana, has already seen 85 million customer visits annually to its platform, which allows patients to not just buy medicines but also make bookings for lab tests or doctor consultations.

India’s health care industry is becoming more and more attractive for investors, with technology-led innovations helping penetrate second- and third-tier markets, said Puncham Mukim, managing director at Everstone Capital Advisors in Mumbai. The firm has investments across health care investment categories including hospitals and medical device makers, and aims to invest between $400 million and $500 million over the next two years, he said.

In laying out India’s health care challenges, Reddy noted that across the entire supply chain from the general medical practitioners to tertiary care hospitals and government-run facilities, “everybody is working on incremental access.” At the same time, she said the country has “high quality health care,” and that the private sector provides more than 76% of such care. She described that scenario as “islands of excellence in an ocean of inadequacy.”

“Care is shifting from the hospital to the clinic, from the clinic to the home and from the home to a 24/7, ubiquitous access to care, driven by the mobile phone.” –Sangita Reddy

A significant portion of the country’s population is underserved in health care, Reddy said. India has a doctor-to-patient ratio of 1:10,189, some 10 times lower than the 1:1,000 recommended by the World Health Organization, according to a report by The Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. The country’s doctor-to-patient ratio must see an increase with a doubling of the number of doctors; India needs three times as many nurses and five times the paramedics it now has, she said.

While these challenges are daunting, they provide “a tremendous opportunity to disrupt traditional health care models,” Reddy continued. She called for a shift from what has traditionally been “sick care” to wellness, and said that provides opportunities “to flip the health care paradigm and focus on prevention.” A two-pronged approach, “which is to grow the [health care] infrastructure, improve the methodology, the efficiency and the way we do things; and reduce the burden of disease” will address the supply-side constraints, she said. “If we do these things together, we might not just help solve India’s health care problems, but we will show a model for the world.”

Agarwal noted that India has a chronic disease burden or non-communicable diseases burden of almost 20% of its population, where nearly 200 million people have some chronic disease. Of that, just diabetes and hypertension afflict some 100 million people, and that patient population is growing by 13% a year, he said. To make matters worse, the rate of patient adherence to prescribed treatments is abysmally low, he added.

According to a paper by the All India Institute for Medical Sciences, patient non-adherence to medication ranges from 24% for cardiac patients to between 50%-80% for hypertension patients. The reasons include complex medication regimes, exhausted medication supplies and adverse drug reactions, it noted.

Agarwal saw technology as the imperative to address some of the inadequacies, and listed a few of those. “Unlike the west, which has evolved into this massive care-driven health care ecosystem, India has a consumer-led health care ecosystem,” he said. “If you go to any hospital, you see patients walking around with their files. Insurance penetration in India is at 15%. There’s zero outpatient insurance, which means that when you go see a doctor for your day-to-day needs, there is no insurance available whatsoever. So from a cost improvement perspective, the payer as the patient is incredibly motivated to figure out how to reduce his or her disease cost burden on a monthly basis.”

At the same time, in India, the patient owns the health data, which Agarwal saw as “extremely fascinating” – it happened to be the germ of the idea behind founding his online pharmacy 1 mg. “In the U.S., my health care data was digital, but nobody had any access to that data,” he said, recalling his decade-long stint as an engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. “But in India, we own our data and we are actually fairly okay with people having access to that data.” Such a data-rich country could provide the opportunity to do pioneering work on disease progression models and the like, and share them with the rest of the world, he added. “Health care will become consumer centric. India will drive that revolution.”

In September 2018, India launched its National Health Protection Mission called “Ayushman Bharat Yojana” with the aim of providing 100 million poor and vulnerable families (approximately 500 million beneficiaries) health care insurance coverage up to Rs. 500,000 each ($7,150 approximately) for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization. “From a large swathe of population that was hitherto untreated and undiagnosed, Ayushman Bharat [provides] large swathes of the population the opportunity to get diagnosed,” said Mukim.

Mukim noted, however, that sufficient capacity does not exist in terms of primary and secondary health care even in Tier 1 markets, or those with a population of 1,000,000 or more, which typically are large metropolises like Mumbai or Chennai (Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets are defined by progressively smaller populations). Most of the existing health care facilities are in those markets, and they attract most of the new investments in capacity as well, he added. Some pockets are coming up to speed with the need, though. Hyderabad and Chennai, for instance, are no longer “under-bedded,” he noted.

A major hurdle to expanding access to health care is a mismatch between the capital costs of building hospitals and the ability for those to generate sufficient returns for investors, said Mukim. Further, approvals and permits to build hospitals consume “a lot of time,” he added. The cost of setting up a hospital is not vastly different across markets, whether it is Tier 1, 2 or 3, he noted. But patients’ ability to pay gets progressively lower from urban to semi-urban and rural markets “because it’s all out-of-pocket” in the absence of insurance, he pointed out. “There has to be some help on that [front] to reduce cost of putting up capacity.”

“Around 20% of consultations on 1 Mg are actually done by an AI doctor. They’re just as accurate as a panel of six doctors.” –Gaurav Agarwal

The app helps bring an “efficiency layer across the spectrum” where, for instance, housekeeping staff could turn around rooms faster and the admissions desk knows which rooms are available at the press of a button, said Reddy. Electronic health records help its doctors “manage and move data” related to patients. The next layer is in establishing care protocols for hospital processes, she said. For example, such protocols allow “the newest doctor in Apollo to operate at the efficiency of someone with 20 years experience,” she explained.

 

Read more…