Wireless health services shouldn’t be regarded as solely an emerging markets play Shrikant Latkar, vice president of products and solutions marketing at Aricent Group says.
Latkar believes remote monitoring can help cut the cost of healthcare in developed markets, and even boost patient recovery by getting people out of hospital and back in their own homes faster. He told TelecomAsia that remote monitors can halve the time people stay in hospital following operations, which takes up to 30 days in the most serious cases.
In addition to cutting hospital running costs, Latkar says people will pay for the extra value offered by returning home faster and being monitored by machines. “It’s good for the hospital and the patient,” he said. However, he does predict some disruption to healthcare business models in developed markets, which he notes are currently “built around hospitals and insurance companies.”
The firm, which this week announced its 35th win for its LTE core software, is also exploring opportunities in the financial and automotive sectors, Latkar revealed. He notes that the future of ATMs is being debated in the finance industry, while car makers face myriad decisions regarding the best experience to offer drivers, and who owns it – “the car maker, the operator or the content provider?”
Aricent this week also detailed a revenue assurance deployment conducted for MVNO Lebara that was rolled out in the space of eight weeks. Latkar explains the operator, which targets migrant workers in seven European countries, “couldn’t track calls across its network,” and was experiencing “leakage of up to 15%” as a result.
Partnerships with chip firms were also detailed by the firm during this week’s Mobile World Congress. It is collaborating on developing a small cell protocol stack optimized for Texas Instrument’s KeyStone multicore system-on-chips, and is set to deliver field and lab testing equipment to 4G chip maker Sequans Communications covering machine-to-machine (M2M) devices, customer premise equipment, smartphones and USB dongles.
M2M is also likely to be the source of Aricent’s next major announcement. Latkar told TA.net the firm is currently working on “a significant M2M deployment for a tier-1 European operator,” which involves integrating its software with back end infrastructure from Oracle.
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