General News
1 October, 2024
The technology relieving pressure on under-resourced industries
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Skills shortages seem to be a growing concern for some industries and business owners over others. In Australia, for instance, the continuing strain on our healthcare workers, teachers, and specialised agricultural and mining sector enterprises is particularly potent.
The cause of these skill shortages can largely be attributed to both a lack of educational pathways for professionals, and reduced resources for business owners to invest in the manpower they need. Thankfully, the advancement of digital technologies may potentially be able to fill these resource gaps.
From generative AI and machine learning algorithms to smart connected tech, today we'll be outlining the top technological innovations of the 21st century that are already supporting Australia's most under-resourced and in-demand industries.
iPaaS solutions: Providing centralised software offerings
iPaaS basically stands for Integration Platform as a Service, and is a new generation of SaaS ('Software as a Service') solutions for business owners in virtually all industries. Using data analytics algorithms and connected technologies, iPaaS solutions effectively provide business owners with the ability to not only integrate various machines, equipment, and other digital tools like monitors around their workplace, but to also record and interpret the performance data collected by those connected technologies.
This allows for improved business data analytics capabilities, allowing Aussie business owners to find new, dynamic correlations in all their different performance metrics. With real-time data tracking, performance metrics can be gathered and interpreted in real time, ensuring that decision makers always have the most current data at their fingertips. And if we've learnt anything from big tech, it's that data-driven decision-making is set to be the way of the future for global industries.
iPaaS solutions also offer exciting new capabilities within the realm of business automation. With modern IIoT ('Industrial Internet of Things') technological capabilities, enterprises using iPaaS can then control these applications from a centralised dashboard. For Australian industries that have historically required on-site workers (i.e. agriculture, mining, fabrication, etc.), iPaaS solutions may finally allow for professionals to work remotely.
The age of mining professionals having to work for a fortnight to a month at a time and having to travel regionally and leave their families for work may be coming to a close. The improved flexibility of these professions may also aid in attracting future generations of workers to these under-resourced industries as well.
Healthcare monitoring technologies: For flexible patient care
Traditionally, the healthcare sector has required massive amounts of manpower to run effectively. Doctors and nurses are responsible for diagnosing, treating and monitoring patients, which can get difficult in situations where there's a large patient-to-healthcare professional ratio.
In recent years, many health-related digital technologies have been developed to lighten the load on professionals in the field. This revolution in health tech has been driven by an increased willingness among investors to fund health-tech startups.
Some devices that have been helping doctors and nurses care for patients include wearable tech for monitoring patient vitals (i.e. heart rate monitors or even pulse oximeters), and AI-driven solutions that use patient data to predict diagnoses within a minimal margin of error. It's this AI technology that's paved the way for patient tech that's tailored to particular health concerns/contexts, like wearable pregnancy tech that monitors vital physiological signs to identify mothers who are at higher risk of experiencing birth complications.
Among the most exciting benefits of healthcare monitoring technology is that it allows patients to collect data on their health from outside hospitals and clinic settings. In the past, only doctors had access to the equipment necessary to monitor their patients' health and diagnose potential issues. Today, a bevy of recently-developed medical devices can track metrics like heart rate, blood pressure and blood sugar levels throughout the day, granting healthcare professionals access to a wider range of data points and allowing them to make more accurate diagnoses.
The healthcare sector is notoriously understaffed in many places. Thankfully, many high-tech health monitoring devices are allowing medical professionals to provide higher-quality care to a larger number of patients - both within and outside of healthcare facilities. This added flexibility and efficiency in patient care effectively improves the quality of health services as well as alleviating the higher demand Australian hospitals and clinicians have been experiencing since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Generative AI education tools: Supporting Aussie teachers
A strong educational system is the bedrock of a thriving society. Besides making sure that young people are proficient in subjects like history, English and science, schools also provide a place where children can learn to interact with their peers and start to build a life outside of the home.
Teachers are the lifeblood of education. Educators have a wide suite of responsibilities, including managing classrooms, grading test papers and crafting lesson plans. Given the importance of teachers, it's no surprise that staff shortages have a massive impact on schools. In Australia, some educational institutions are struggling with just this problem.
To help make up for a shortage of teachers, many schools are turning to AI tools to help ease the pressure on their staff. Generative AI-powered solutions are being utilised to help educators create lesson plans and learning resources for their students. Educators are also taking advantage of cutting-edge software like Turnitin and Grammarly to check for plagiarism in test papers.
While human interaction is key to a good education, there are plenty of tasks that can be outsourced to digital software to increase educators' output and allow them to focus on the most important part of the job: teaching.
Machine learning: Next generation antivirus
Cybersecurity isn't necessarily an under-resourced industry in the traditional sense because there are plenty of IT specialists constantly upskilling across the globe. But the industry is still constantly facing skills shortages as a global collective because malware is evolving at too rapid a rate for cyber specialists to keep up with, thanks in part to the development of ML-powered (Machine Learning-powered) malware that evolves intelligently in response to antivirus, firewalls, and other cybersecurity measures.
This is how you end up with situations like the CrowdStrike update bug that sent computers in banks, hospitals and other businesses worldwide into a 'blue screen of death' and impacted millions of tech users across the globe - because only one security firm is single-handedly managing operations for hundreds if not thousands of enterprises. The solution? Fight fire with fire by using cybersecurity solutions powered by machine learning to combat ML-powered malware.
Antivirus solutions powered by intelligent and evolving machine learning algorithms have been praised as 'next generation antivirus'. The evolution of antivirus solutions in direct response to machine learning malware effectively automates the process of malware detection and protection for the digital age. By utilising machine learning to combat machine learning malware, cybersecurity specialists across the globe can spend less time setting up honeypots and manually identifying the sources of cyber attacks, and spend more time investing in proactive cybersecurity processes that help strengthen their organisations from within.
Conclusio
Thanks to the continuous evolution of digital technologies, the number of tailored industry tools available to businesses keeps growing. Businesses using iPaaS solutions can conveniently manage and collect data from assets including but not limited to CRM tools, eCommerce platforms and data analytics software without dedicating countless man-hours to each one.
Similarly, other innovative solutions like healthcare monitoring devices, generative AI education tools and ML-powered antivirus software are all helping enterprises get more done whilst also alleviating resource stress on not only business owners but also the professionals comprising their workforces.
In short, all of the new technological innovations that we've outlined above are being developed expressly to support Australian business owners in all industries - but especially those in famously under-resourced sectors. No matter which sector you're working in, there's a chance that any of these four technological innovations will come to play a major role in streamlining and enhancing the efficiency of your own workplace.