With wearables already helping to support healthier lifestyles, could they also be used to specifically foster healthy ageing and independent living, as well as monitoring the health of the elderly?

Ageing Population.

ONS figures show that by 2039, the number of UK people aged 75 and over could be 9.9 million and the number of people aged 85 and over is projected to more than double, reaching 3.6 million.

The rise in the average age of the population (and in the proportion of older people in the population) means that in the UK we certainly have an ageing population.

Similarly, in the United States, 13% of the population is over 65 today, and this figure is set to rise to nearly 20% by 2030. As well as being a new challenge for the countries across the developed world, this ageing population trend also represents a potentially lucrative untapped market for tech companies.

Smart Clothes.

One example that wearables could help seniors’ health is in the form of ‘smart clothes’.

Advances in nano-technology and the development of futuristic and lightweight threads that could have tiny circuits sewn into them have helped fuel predictions that medical applications will account for the largest share in this new textile market by 2021.
Examples of how smart clothes could help include:

• Clothes / watches / bracelets that remind people when to take their medication.
• Clothes that include technology to help seniors monitor and avoid complications from chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
• Wrist-worn devices to track blood pressure.
• Intelligent socks / footwear that can warn diabetics when they are at risk of foot ulcers. This is already being developed by a New Zealand startup, aided by the University of Nottingham.
• T-shirts that monitor the wearer’s stress levels and send vital signs to family members and doctors. These t-shirts which could help to prevent heart failure and seizures are already being developed by a Canadian company.
• Smart mobility aids such as white canes or clothing for the visually impaired that emit ultrasound waves and use sensors to detect obstacles and then send a warning signal (e.g. a vibration) to the user.
• A smart body-brace which can be used to reduce the number of falls in older people. The brace (which is already a product in development by a Washington based company) uses textile sensors to alert the user when they are about to lose their balance.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The ageing population could therefore, with the help of technology, represent a very real business opportunity.

The advances in nanotechnology and smart clothes and wearables could provide many different businesses with opportunities in different market segments within the senior age groups.

451 Research analysts have stated that UK-based public cloud users look likely to be paying thousands of pounds more in 2016 compared to 2015 due to the Brexit vote’s negative effect on the pound.

Nearly £2,000 More.

The quarterly Cloud Price Index Report from 451 Research shows that the total price of running a web server application, taking into account the cost of the public cloud-based computing, storage, database and management required could rise by £1,750 a year in UK.

This is due to the fall in value of the pound against the U.S. dollar which has been driven by the Brexit vote and the ensuing uncertainty.

Billed In Dollars.

The increased cost comes from that fact that most large public cloud operators bill their UK customers in dollars. Therefore, the drop in the pound’s value against the dollar has meant that UK companies will end up paying a lot more for the same bundle of cloud services this year.

UK Cloud Providers Could Also Be Expensive.

Some businesses have reacted by looking to offset the cost increase by searching for a UK CSP (cloud service provider) instead. Unfortunately, as well as lacking the capabilities of many large U.S. providers, UK CSPs need to import their data-centre hardware and many of their important skills from overseas. This, of course, means a higher price for their services, thus meaning that UK businesses may not be able to make significant cost savings by using them.

Bad News For UK Cloud Firms Doing Business Overseas.

With the cost of the dollar being so weak any UK firms hoping to pick up U.S. customers may find themselves at a costly competitive disadvantage.

Public or Private?

The 451 research study also found that when comparing the running costs of public and self-managed private clouds, building private clouds on proprietary software stacks e.g. from Microsoft and VMware brings lower total ownership costs when the number of virtual machines managed per engineer is below 400. Over that number, the open source cloud platform OpenStack appears to be a more financially viable option and all private cloud options appear cheaper than public and managed private cloud options.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Unfortunately, the currency fluctuations caused by the Brexit vote, the billing practices of the big cloud providers and the state of UK cloud providers are beyond the control of UK businesses and it appears that UK businesses will generally need to expect higher cloud costs for at least this year.

Cloud commentators are reminding businesses that it may be better not to be too prescriptive with what type of cloud they are using and to be more flexible if possible with their cloud strategies so that course corrections can be made and excess costs can be minimised.

A warning has come from The PCI Security Standards Council that failure by UK firms to prepare for the introduction of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 could mean big fines.

The PCI has pointed out that under GDPR, groups of companies could be facing fines of up to €20m or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greatest for data breaches. These kinds of fines far exceed the current £500,000 fine.

Why UK Firms?

The UK’s poor record on preventing data breaches is one of the main reasons why UK firms will need to be particularly careful. For example, if data breaches here remain at 2015 levels (based upon a fine of 4% maximum global turnover under GDPR) UK companies could end up paying a 90-fold increase in fines to the European regulator – perhaps as much as £122bn.

For large UK businesses, this could equate to a 130-fold increase in regulatory fines for data breaches, and SMEs could see a 57-fold increase in regulatory fines for data breaches. This equates to as much as an average of £13,000 per SME!

Not Just Fines.

As companies who have experienced very large and very widely reported data breaches would know, the fines are just one part of the potential damage. There would also be the effects (perhaps long-lasting) of the damage to reputation, the serious disruption to the business (especially if there is no DRP  and BC planning in place), and the loss of revenue. It is not unusual for serious data breaches to lead to the demise of the business.

Two Tiered Danger.

GDPR will, in fact, bring in a 2 tiered approach to sanctions, so it’s not just the most serious kinds of data breaches that UK businesses will have to guard against. For example, the regulation allows for fines of up to €10m or 2% of global annual turnover, whichever is greater, for breaches considered less serious.

Warning From New UK Information Commissioner.

New Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, recently warned UK businesses that although the ICO can fine companies up to £500,000 at the moment, this could rise in line with GDPR to 4% of a business’s global turnover.

She also warned that organisations need to take responsibility for their actions, despite the pace of technological change. It’s also bad news for those hoping that GDPR would not apply with Brexit as Denham has stated that GDPR would be live here before the UK left the EU.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

It is clear that there is no escaping GDPR before Brexit so UK businesses need to become very familiar with the requirements of GDPR to ensure compliance. UK businesses also need to address the root problem by acting now to prevent detect and respond well to cyber attacks that could lead to data breaches.