Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Lars Olrik, Group CEO of Verdande, and Jo Kinsella, CEO of Financial Services of Verdande (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: As you are saying, this is an industry that is rather old school, but it is now learning to leverage technology in meaningful ways.

Lars Olrick: They have to. They are driven by government and the depopulation and re-skilling of the older generation. They have to take bold steps and use technology in a very different way. If you look at healthcare, it is really interesting there. The U.S. healthcare [system] is the torch bearer on a global level in terms of data. The volume of electronic data that is being made available, not only from the hardware but all the patient records we talked about, is forcing a more constructive learning and knowledge transfer from doctor to doctor. In the old days, a doctor came in and he was god and god decided what way he wanted to do it. Nowadays, god actually has to justify why he operated in this way.

SM: Generally, I think the healthcare industry in the last three or four years has really taken off. Healthcare IT has really taken off.

LO: Unbelievably. The investments are huge. Part of it is regulatory. The “Obamacare” [plan] where we are not [saying], “We are not paying you for 30 days.” If you have to come back in because you had a bad operation, it is blamed on the hospital. The dynamics in the healthcare industry are forcing you to document, transfer learning, and use information better to optimize the treatment of the patient. You have to use all this available data in a much cleverer way today.

SM: I think that is correct.

LO: Young doctors we talk to like using clever technology that enables them to do a better job.

SM: Where do you see the gaps in the industry? Let’s look at oil & gas and the way you apply data to solve certain problems. You must be surrounded by other kinds of problems that are not being solved by anybody and that you are not interested in solving.

LO: I think the big area in oil & gas is the partnership between people and technology. How do you use technology to enable human beings working in oil & gas to do work in a safe environment? How do you use technology to do what they do in the Bering Sea? How do you use technology to prevent a catastrophe that will have a huge impact on the environment? One thing is to build safer platforms, but technology is going to play a massive role. The deeper we are going to drill, the more complicated it will be. It is not just about the construction of the platform, it is about technology – leveraging technology. How do we prevent things from happening? You can replicate that to operations in a hospital or a wrong decision based on wrong information that makes an oil spill to turn out into a catastrophe. Those are the places where technology is going to play an ever-increasing role.

SM: Jo, what do you think about the financial services sector in regard to my question?

JK: For financial services there are a few things I see. Obviously, the increase in real-time data is huge and has been for a while now.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Lars Olrik, Group CEO of Verdande, and Jo Kinsella, CEO of Financial Services of Verdande
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