Rethink Tech Roundup - Birmingham

Rethink Tech Birmingham took place at the Jaguar Experience Centre yesterday. Following on from the success of Rethink Tech London, the Birmingham event had a lot to live up to! However true to form the line-up of industry experts delivered another informative agenda, raising thought provoking questions and generating those all-important light bulb moments for the audience!

Andrew Jackson, CEO, Intercity Technology, set the scene for day, discussing how changing the way we work and utilising technology effectively can truly impact business performance. The day gave the audience the perfect opportunity to rethink their current processes, systems and technology and whether they are really enabling business transformation and innovation.

Eugene Berger, Chief Technologist, HPE Aruba

First up was Eugene Berger who focused on the importance of mobility in business. Eugene looked at how people are driving wireless and mobility strategies. There is an expectation that the tools and technologies that employees utilise in their personal lives are transferable to their working lives. People need to be able to collaborate and work remotely readily and securely in today’s working world, raising the question, do you have the tools and technology to enable your workforce to do this?

View Eugene's presentation: The importance of mobility to your business

Aatish Pattni, Head of Threat Prevention, Northern Europe, Check Point

Aatish Pattni focused on security, discussing what future cyber threats and attacks look like for businesses. He discussed the increased sophistication of these threats including hidden, polymorphic and multiple entry point attackers and how they access company assets. Aatish looked at the financial and reputational impact attacks like this can have on businesses and how security must be a top priority for organisations.

View Aatish's presentation: Staying One Step Ahead In The Real World

Iain Hennessey, Director of Clinical Innovation, Alder Hey Children's Hospital

A key theme that came out of Rethink Tech London was the need to look outside our industry’s and sectors in order to drive innovation and change our businesses. Iain Hennessey delivered an inspirational key note discussing how Alder Hey are using technology to improve the experience children have when they visit the hospital, as well as improving ways of working for hospital staff. Here are just some of the innovative ways technology is being used at Alder Hey:

• Entertainment as medicine - Sony screens used to create a 3D aquarium for children - children can design and release their digital fish into the aquarium.
• A hospital built for the 21st century - WIFI is available throughout the hospital. Ease of connectivity has improved collaboration and communication throughout the hospital. The hospital was designed by children, and the award winning building is now an iconic landmark in the city of Liverpool.
• Employing artificial intelligence - IBM Watson can read 40 million documents in 15 seconds providing insights into possible treatments and is already being used in hospitals in the US. For the moment this super computer is being used in a patient App - capturing data from children and personalising their experience before and during their treatment. This fun and engaging way of communicating information with children helps ease anxiety about their visit to hospital.
• Virtual engineering - Employed by car manufacturers such as Bentley, Alder Hey are utilising virtual engineering to make brains and hearts for surgeons to practice on!
• Creating time and space to innovate - The hospital has opened the Innovation Hub - a place for employees to come up with ideas and experiment with new ways of working.

View Iain's presentation here: Alder Hey Innovation

Panel Discussion

The day ended with an exciting panel discussion between our speakers plus Suzan Sakarya, Channel Director, Wandera and chaired by Shaun Collins, CCS Insight.

The panel closed with their top predictions of what the next big focus in communications technology will be:

• Eugene predicts that location awareness in wireless networks will be a key area of focus especially within hospitals and government buildings.
• Aatish discussed how privacy will become a key concern in terms of employee/consumer rights and how it will impact the way vendor’s design applications and websites. Privacy vs benefits will be a key theme.
• Iain talked about how technology is enabling organisations to capture a wealth of data about patients / customers but finding ways to make that data more meaningful is key.
• Suzan discussed user visibility and that businesses need to be able to see what is happening across all devices.

Finally the panel closed on a discussion around Biometrics. Their increasing affordability means companies will utilise them more and more and will soon make passwords a thing of the past.