By Vikram Bhat, Chief Product Office, Capillary Technologies

Humans by nature are selectively attentive, which means, they react to things only if they are truly interested in it. For years, brands have ignored the very basic fact of making their consumers feel ‘invested’, interested and unique. Consumers, they are the reason brands exist. The proliferation of the internet and the introduction of mobile applications has made brands accessible to consumers more than ever. While competition is fierce in retail the industry with the arrival of new brands in an already saturated market, each of these brands are vying for the same customer. In such a competitive market, how then can brands differentiate their voice and build a loyal clientele?

Personalization is the answer

Gone are the days of mass marketing and ‘one size fits all’ campaigns as consumer expectations and buying journeys have evolved over time. With an omnichannel shopping experience, consumers expect a customized and seamless journey across platforms. They also expect brands to ‘address’ them individually and earn their loyalty. To make this happen, brands are turning towards personalizing their marketing campaigns with the help of technology. While the tried and tested micro segmentation method is effective, it is also a tedious process. Here’s where Artificial Intelligence is a real game changer.

But why should brands personalize their approach when they already have customers? Today, consumers have the power to choose, and personalization allows brands to communicate with and reach their target audience at the right time, with the right product, the right offer and message, through the right channel. Brands are able to achieve a better response rate, increased customer loyalty, and lower marketing costs. According to a report from Marketo, 79% of consumers are more likely to respond to brand promotions if it is tailored to their preferences and previous purchase interactions. Which is why personalization is also the first step toward building brand loyalty.

Role of data in personalisation

Knowing your customer is the key to a personalized campaign, and data is more important than you think. The journey always begins with capturing the right data. Brands must leverage their goldmine of data which they collect across platforms to keep campaigns on target and devoid of old-fashioned judgement and error-prone segmentation. An AI-driven strategy helps make sense of this data. It creates an algorithm to understand individual consumer preferences. It will deep dive into their buying patterns and history, product preferences and characteristics. It analyzes customer behavior and other parameters to create and send personalized campaigns to each customer – akin to giving someone a tailored suit. This helps brands achieve a true 1:1 personalization and continues to optimize campaigns through machine learning.

Personalization is also the first step towards building a brands customer experience. Consumers are inundated with messages from brands who are forced to compete on discounts to increase sales. According to Red Crow Marketing, on average consumers may be seeing more than 4000 adverts, most of which are of little or no interest. As consumers we tend to engage with advertising only if its meaningful. Such communications help create lasting relationships.

Brands need to be omnipresent, and AI is helping brands personalize their presence in more ways that one can imagine. Building brand loyalty is one. Consumers tend to be loyal to brands that care for them. A study conducted by Accenture shows that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who remember them and provide relevant recommendations. Today, brands have a goldmine of data but often lack the creativity to design compelling campaigns or the ability to identify their targets consumers. AI analyzes this data by looking at previous marketing campaign successes, buyer history, preferences and timelines, and other key markers to create new targeted campaigns.

Overcoming challenges with AI

A common obstacle that brands often face in taking personalization to the next level is the ability to design multiple versions of a campaign across platforms. Here AI helps save time and money while giving brands visibility into the buyers’ journey across multiple platforms.

The RoI on AI-driven campaigns are immense. Personalizing campaigns benefits brands immensely; it reduces acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, enhances revenue by 5 – 15 percent and increases efficiency of marketing spend by 10 percent to 30 percent.

The future of personalization is a true 1:1 engagement, which AI is enabling. We are looking forward to a time when personalization will be the only way brands choose to interact with their customers– that’s the future which will eventually be a reality.

Author: Naji Kazak, General Manager – Middle East, Africa, Turkey & Russia at Alaris, a Kodak Alaris Business 

Historically, the healthcare industry has been paper intensive, but in this digital age, document scanning and archiving will help speed up patient care, improve records management, ensure regulatory compliance and provide significant cost savings. Medical scanning and data capture technologies are now becoming an integral part of the industry.

So, what are the right features to consider when choosing the best scanners for healthcare and medical records scanning?

Process Optimization

The admission process in any healthcare setting is time-consuming and creates a significant amount of paperwork. 70 percent of new patient information is received as paper documents which takes time and money to process manually. Manual data entry runs the risk of error, and this can impact patient care.

Scanning is often cumbersome because, in addition to patient intake forms, there are irregularly sized documents such as insurance cards and photo identification that also need to be in a patient’s medical record.

Today there are scanners that have superior document handling capabilities that ensure that patient records are quickly and reliably scanned. With features such as Active Feed, Controlled Stacking, and Intelligent Document Protection, all documents are accurately scanned without the need for presorting.

Compliance

It is important that the scanners being used contribute to the security of electronic personal health information. The scanners need to comply with existing and new legislation and ensure that confidential patient data is safely routed to a secure file repository. By eliminating paper records and digitizing paper based documents that arrive from external sources or documentation that gets produces during the hospital stay, you’ll mitigate risks and ensure secure data handling and storage. The insertion of patient data into the EMR system ensures patient privacy and compliance.

Optical Character Recognition

OCR is one of the most important features a scanner can provide to a healthcare setting for medical records scanning and indexing. Optical character recognition is the electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. OCR allows you to search and sort PDF documents in the same way you would a Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Google Docs file. You can search by keyword, edit with a word processor, send the text by email, and even decode it using screen readers.

These benefits open up a larger bundle of benefits that otherwise would not be possible. Those benefits include:

• Speed:Modern OCR technology dramatically improves efficiency by decreasing the time spent searching for information on medical records. Instead of searching through documents manually, you can search by keyword. You can even use names as keywords to quickly find documents for specific patients.
• Cost efficiency:You can finish more work in the same amount of time when you eliminate the need to manually search for documents and specific notes on those documents. Additionally, you’ll save money by avoiding the costs associated with copying and printing.
• Reduced environmental impact:It’s simple: The fewer resources you use, the less of a negative impact you make on your environment. Digitally indexing your documents as opposed to using a traditional filing system reduces your paper usage.
• Reduced physical space:Without a physical filing system, you have more space available where filing cabinets used to be. For some offices, this means a more efficient use of space. For others, it may even mean relocating to a smaller space to take advantage of cheaper rent and lower overhead for heating, cooling, and lighting.
• Document accessibility:Having documents scanned and indexed with an OCR makes their information immediately accessible in multiple places and on multiple systems at once. This is a huge improvement compared to only having a select number of physical copies available in select locations, which you must spend time searching for and filing.
• Reduced errors:Data entry errors happen. So do typos, lost documents, and misfiles. Automatically indexing your documents eliminates all of these issues.

 

Intelligent Barcode Reading

Intelligent barcode reading automatically processes barcodes for job instructions when scanning. You can group different types of scanning jobs together, each type of job being bookended with barcodes prompting the scanner to read everything within them in a designated way. Once the scanner reaches the second barcode in the stack, it removes those instructions and moves on to the instructions provided by the barcode in the next stack. This way, you can process multiple types of jobs at once without needing to tend to the scanner.

This technology further improves the efficiency of your medical office, whether it is a small private practice or part of a larger hospital. Providing health centers with sufficient time to care for each individual patient is one of the game-changing differences between the bedside manners that make people feel welcome and the hurried attendance that leaves patients feeling like just another number. Less time spent in the back office means more time spent helping the patients themselves.

The Best Features Are the Ones You Need

Look for scanners that  usenative, non-proprietary TWAIN integrations, which means they are time-tested, provide for easy integration, and will not present surprises later on when PC’s are upgraded. Document scanner vendors should also have a full team of field engineers to provide installation, technical support, and proactive troubleshooting tasks to staff, avoiding costly downtime.

Scanners that are the best to use in your EMR system  integrate with the majority of electronic medical records systems like McKesson and Epic. Make sure they also have the required certifications like Cerner for example, so you can be sure that you comply with healthcare standards.

By Shereen Shabnam

With the recent introduction of the innovative IQOS at the Dubai Duty Free, interest in smoke-free products has increased in particular with the new IQOS 3 and IQOS 3 MULTI that comes with improved design and functionality and offers adult smokers a better alternative for nicotine consumption than traditional combustible cigarettes.

We recently ventured to Geneva to explore the benefits of moving away from smoking with combustion where toxicants associated with burning are the primary cause of smoking-related disease to an alternative that helps the transition to eliminate health issues related to smoking.

We learnt with Philip Morris International (PMI) that the high temperatures in the lit end of a burning cigarette, above 600C, cause a large number of chemical reactions to take place, breaking down the tobacco into the thousands of chemicals that appear in cigarette smoke. Many are considered harmful, and together they are recognized as the main cause of smoking-related diseases.

Seeing first hand the future plans of Philip Morris International as they work towards building their future on smoke-free products is commendable, especially as smoke free products are a much better choice for those who refuse to quit.

Through multidisciplinary capabilities in product development, state-of-the-art facilities and scientific substantiation, PMI aims to ensure that smoke-free products meet adult consumer preferences and rigorous regulatory requirements. The vision for PMI is that these products ultimately replace cigarettes to the benefit of adult smokers, society, the company and the shareholders.

Having seen the quality control measures on their production site and the commitment to invest further into smoke free alternatives, the future looks better for smokers worldwide as they learn that inhaling the complex chemical mixture of combustion compounds in tobacco smoke causes adverse health outcomes and move towards smoke free products.

Using smoke free products like IQOS eliminates burning and hence the formation of toxicants is significantly reduced. If the tobacco is heated to temperatures below 400C, a tobacco vapor is produced instead of smoke.

At these lower temperatures, the toxicants in cigarette smoke are significantly reduced or eliminated. The resulting vapor still provides the flavor and nicotine that adult smokers are used to and crave.

The positive response and the growing support for the role of non-burning alternatives in public health is a sign that smokers and stakeholders appreciate the research and studies done to make smokers understand the benefits of moving to smoke free products.

According to PMI, an increasing number of public health experts from around the world now believe that products that don’t burn tobacco and tobacco-free nicotine products that smokers can switch to can have a positive public health impact.

The new IQOS 3 and IQOS 3 MULTI deliver a premium tobacco experience with simplified usability, personalization and taste from real tobacco rather than liquid. Both devises have no ash and releases a nicotine-containing aerosol, not smoke, which leaves a less lingering smell on hands, clothes and hair, meaning, favorite clothes are safe from burns and undesired smoke smell.

The new IQOS devices have new protective reliability, a more sophisticated design and will appeal to adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke and are looking for an alternative.

IQOS has already helped nearly 6-million adult smokers stop using cigarettes and switch to smoke-free alternatives

The IQOS 3 MULTI provides the user with 10 consecutive uses without needing to be recharged. The work of over 400 PMI scientific personnel has yielded an elegant design, which does not sacrifice functionality.

As well as state-of-the-art design and premium feel, PMI products come with a choice of over 500 color combinations using a wide range of available accessories.

What we leant in Geneva is that IQOS is a technologically-advanced heat-not-burn alternative to cigarettes which emits over 90% less harmful chemicals compared to cigarettes and hence PMI has made a commitment to a smoke free world and having loved ones who are heavy smokers, I sincerely wish the message on the alternative smoke free products reaches far and wide.

Thankfully, with products like IQOS, there are now rapid developments in nicotine-based products that can effectively substitute for cigarettes and become viable alternatives to smoking in the future.

Machine Learning (ML) Powered DDoS Protection Quickly Identifies and Mitigates Threats Without Manual Intervention

A10 Networks(NYSE: ATEN) adds Zero-day Automated Protection (ZAP) capabilities to its leading Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) family of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) defense solutions. The ZAP capabilities automatically recognize the characteristics of DDoS attacks and apply mitigation filters without advanced configuration or manual intervention. This speeds the response to the increasingly sophisticated multi-vector attacks to minimize downtime and errors and lower operating costs.

Today’s DDoS attacks are more prevalent, multi-vector in nature and morph over time. With millions of IoT devices predicted to be in use over the coming years, driven by the transition to 5G networks, traditional DDoS solutions will quickly become inadequate. Current solutions are static, reactive and require significant operator intervention, resulting in a slow response time to the rapidly evolving attack landscape. It is clear that DDoS detection and mitigation is a growing concern for enterprises, cloud providers and service providers, alike. In fact, in a recent A10 Networks surveyof mobile operators, 63 percent saw advanced DDoS protection as the most important security capability needed for 5G networks. And, in an IDG research report, respondents confirmed that the number-one most important capability in a DDoS solution was automated detection and mitigation.

“The economics of DDoS mitigation and attacks are very much slanted towards the attackers now, so we will need more efficient tools and advanced technologies to balance the equation to make DDoS defense more effective and economical,” said Chris Rodriguez, research manager, cybersecurity products. “A10 Networks is advancing the economics of DDoS security by leveraging machine learning and advanced heuristics to create that balance.”

DDoS Protection Powered by Machine Learning

A10 Networks’ ZAP is comprised of two components: dynamic attack pattern recognition by a machine learning algorithm and heuristic behavior analysis recognition to dynamically identify anomalous behavior and block attacking agents. ZAP works in conjunction with A10 Networks’ adaptive DDoS security model and its five-level adaptive policy mitigation engines to provide a complete in-depth defense system. This comprehensive approach blocks DDoS attacks while protecting legitimate users from indiscriminate collateral damage typically associated with traditional DDoS protection methods.

The ZAP policies can be enforced by a combination of hardware and software. Thunder SPE (Security and Policy Engine) appliances can serve up to 100,000 ZAP policies at line rate and the remaining ZAP policies can be served by software. This provides superior mitigation performance over the traditional software only solution, enabling superior response time and scalability.

“In today’s climate with the dramatic increase in polymorphic multi-vector attacks and the chronic shortage of qualified security professionals, enterprises and service providers need intelligently automated defenses that can accomplish tasks autonomously,” said Lee Chen, CEO of A10 Networks. “Manual interventions are not only resource-intensive but too slow and ineffective, resulting in a greater potential of network downtime and high cost to the organization.”

A10 Networks provides the highest performance with 500 Gbps of protection in a single one-rack unit (RU) appliance, leading automation capabilities with ZAP and five-level adaptive policy, and actionable DDoS weapons threat intelligence for a complete multi-modal defense in depth solution.

A10 Networks Thunder TPS with ZAP is available now.

Following rigorous testing, including an extensive durability assessment and evaluation of key attributes such as usability, image quality and value, Keypoint Intelligence – Buyers Lab (BLI)has selected the Alaris E1000 Series Scanner as winner of the Summer 2019 Pick award for Outstanding Scanner for SMBs.

According to Lee Davis, Editor of Scanner/Software Evaluation at Keypoint Intelligence – Buyers Lab, the Alaris E1025 and E1035 Scanners are loaded with features and functionalities that complement today’s document management and business process optimization solutions, enabling SMBs to maximize their ROI.

Easy to set-up and integrate with existing business processes and applications – from network to Cloud – the Alaris E1000 Series from Kodak Alaris enables users to scan right out of the box. Productivity-boosting features include the ability to power up and start scanning in less than ten seconds and fast throughput. The devices can scan at speeds up to 25 pages per minute (ppm)/50 images per minute (ipm) and up to 35ppm/70ipm, respectively. The bundled Smart Touch scan utility lets users create scanning shortcuts – complete with image enhancement and document processing settings, plus routing instructions – to streamline and standardize frequently recurring scanning chores.

“The Alaris E1000 Series was very impressive during testing, with exceptional results in OCR accuracy and file size testing,” said Joe Ellerman, Manager of U.S. Lab Operations at Keypoint Intelligence – Buyers Lab. Ellerman also commented on the E1000 series’ media-handling capabilitiesdescribing them as “second to none in this class”.

“The device offers an 80-sheet capacity ADF – the largest in its class – so workers cancapture more documents at a time. Other nifty features, like Intelligent Document Protection and multifeed detection prevent jams and misfeeds to keep information flowing seamlessly,” Ellerman noted.

“Our award-winning scanners deliver best-in-class image quality, paper handling, and a user experience that is unmatched in the industry,” said Sue Rodeman, Worldwide Marketing Director, Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business. “We will continue to develop smart, connected solutions that set the stage for automation, drive productivity, and give our customers insight to make more intelligent business decisions.”

Alaris has won more BLI Awards than any other scanner manufacturer including four Scanner Line of the Year awards. The Alaris S2040 Scanner received the Winter 2019 Pick award for Outstanding Departmental Scanner and the Alaris Passport Flatbed Accessory was recognized with an Outstanding Achievement in Innovation award last year.