As the 2021 year comes to a close and we anticipate what’s to come in 2022, it’s with great appreciation and honor to announce that Dogtown Media has received a global accolade from the major digital rating agency, Clutch.co, as a Top Global B2B Company for 2021.

After 10 years in the mobile app space, reaching a highly regarded and recognized global accolade is a major accomplishment and points to the continued dedication of Dogtown Media to their global client base and their hyper-focus on producing high-quality applications. 

Dogtown Media is Los Angeles’ leading mobile application company, working with organizations in nearly every vertical to bring their unique ideas and solutions to the app market. Dogtown Media prides itself on the satisfaction, approval, and happiness of our clients. And aims to create cutting-edge solutions that are pushing the boundaries of what’s thought o be possible in the mobile application space.

the mobile application space.

And for those who may be unaware, this Clutch.co accolade is only one in a series of major accolades awarded to Dogtown Media such as Top 2021 B2B Leader in Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, a top 2020 Service Provider, and the 27th Best B2B Service Provider in the World in 2019. All of these great accolades point to the dedication to craft and customer, and only scratch the surface of their long laundry list of accolades from Clutch and other prominent rating agencies in the mobile app space. 

“This recognition feels surreal and we are lost for words”, notes founder Marc Fischer. “We feel truly honored to be recognized by such a prestigious rating firm, and hope to continue to provide high-quality, meaningful applications for our clients today and far into the future. “

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

“They were an effective team, met deadlines, and created a great end product.“. — Director, Risk Comm Lab, Temple University

“They built an intuitive and simple design, and the team works quickly to address bugs and solve problems.”— Senior Ops Manager, Hospital Innovation Lab

Let’s build something amazing together! Connect with us and get a free tech consultation.

You’ve probably heard about cloud computing being offered by companies like Amazon and its

Consequently, many application developers are now starting to use cloud-centric platforms for mobile app design due to its numerous advantages and features over traditional application development. As a Los Angeles App Development agency, we’ve worked with many companies that have questions about cloud computing as they explore their next app idea. Hopefully, this article can shed some light on the importance of cloud computing, where it fits in the app development life cycle and considerations regarding your approach to cloud computing.

How can cloud computing benefit your mobile app development? We’re so glad you asked!

Throughout this article, we will be discussing some of the many ways cloud computing can positively impact your mobile application development. With these proven benefits, we believe that you will not only be able to optimize the application design process, but you will also have the tools necessary to produce high-quality mobile apps geared to provide users with a seamless in-app experience. 

Time Reduction: Say Goodbye to Unnecessary Time Consumption

In today’s competitive digital business landscape, efficiency is everything. The amount of time spent on a given task is arguably the most important factor in any form of business operation, as it can make or break the financial performance of an organization. 

One of the biggest complaints we hear from mobile app developers is that the application design process consumes too much time. From designing the framework of the app to testing its functionality, traditional mobile app development has the potential to eat up hours upon hours of a developer’s time. 

Enter Cloud Computing.

Currently, developers who utilize a cloud-based development platform are experiencing a significant reduction in the time taken for mobile app development. This reduction in time is a vital asset for developers as it lessens the time to market period, allowing their applications to gain ground over the competition. 

Because these cloud-centric development platforms come standard with key components such as advanced integration, stronger security and pre-installed application programming interfaces (APIs), mobile app developers are now able to spend less time on the development of the app and instead apply this time in other areas of the application design, such as new features and   app upgrades suggested by users. 

Compatibility: Cloud-Based Mobile Apps Function Across Multiple Platforms

Which platform do you prefer; iPhone or Android? No matter what your preference is, you’ve most likely come across apps that are only available on one platform or the other. 

This is because traditional mobile application development doesn’t permit developers to construct a “one-size-fits-all” app. Rather, most developers have to choose a platform to utilize. And, if they wish to make the app available on another platform as well, then they are required to completely recode the application in accordance with the other platform’s framework. 

Sounds like a handful, right? In fact, these compatibility issues can cause strenuous headaches for developers, typically resulting in lengthened time to market and a lesser quality end-product. 

Fortunately, cloud computing technology provides developers with the ability to launch their applications on various platforms, such as iOS and Android, without the need for re-coding. This is because cloud-centric platforms do the hard work and optimize applications for use on numerous platforms, allowing developers to focus solely on the features and design of the mobile application. 

And like we discussed prior, this minimized workload allows mobile app developers to cut down on unnecessary time consuming tasks and direct their efforts towards the implementation and functionality of the app. 

Scalability, Reliability and Recovery

As mobile apps continue to progress with our digital age, users are becoming increasingly demanding of applications that demonstrate strong reliability and recovery services. 

Unfortunately, traditional mobile application development can create nightmare scenarios for developers when faced with scalability, reliability and recovery issues. For instance, application updates and security patches with traditional app development often render mobile apps unusable until these issues are resolved by developers, due to the complexity of altering the application’s framework.

With cloud computing technology, however, developers are able to continuously fix and update their applications without pulling the app out of commission. This ability is not only instrumental in providing users with a seamless experience while using the application, but it also drastically reduces the time needed by developers to address these issues. 

In addition, cloud-centric platforms promote advanced data recovery through the use of cloud servers which store the application’s data and back it up regularly, in turn preventing critical data from being lost in complications such as data breaches.

Here at Dogtown Media, we’re dedicated to providing our clients with cutting-edge applications, built on a matured foundation of experience. With over ten years of experience in the app development industry and countless accolades, we’re confident we can bring your next mobile application from idea to reality.

Reach out to learn more!

COVID-19 has forever changed how we approach work. When the pandemic began, Dogtown Media said goodbye to its Los Angeles-based development headquarters for the past decade. We left this office, moved the entire team to remote work, and don’t have any intention of going back. The future of work has changed, and we’ve changed with it. Here are the trends that I believe we can expect to see soon.

Remote Work Will Provide More Opportunities for Job Candidates

Moving to San Francisco used to be a prerequisite for working in the high-tech industry. Today, this is no longer the case. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to figure out how to build cohesive remote work teams fast. And with this new change comes new opportunities.

Organizations will hire more remote workers than ever before now that they know how to get things done outside of an office environment. This is great news for many employees — it means they have better access to more job opportunities. But it also yields some other pertinent benefits worth mentioning.

Knowledge workers can now move to places they want to live, not somewhere they have to work. We can already see this occurring: A recent survey of tech professionals discovered that an average of 30% of respondents had left major metropolises such as Seattle and Los Angeles for greener pastures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Don’t think this trend will continue? Another survey found that 81% of tech workers are either considering or making plans to move to more affordable cities.

The financial incentives certainly play a role in this exodus. Remote workers earn $4,000 more per year than their in-office counterparts, and 30% save $5,000 more per year due to less commuting and eating at home. Moving to smaller, cheaper towns allows these employees to stretch their dollar even further. But if we put money aside, the advantages are still substantial. By choosing where they live, remote workers attain better control over their personal lives. Whether you want to get outdoors more or start raising a family, this is certainly an appealing factor.

Office Models Will Adapt to the Future of Work

On the other side of the equation, remote work also offers a significant financial benefit for organizations that embrace it: Companies can save $11,000 annually for each employee who works remotely half of the time. With that said, it’s no wonder that a Gartner survey of 127 business leaders found that 82% of respondents plan to maintain a hybrid or remote work dynamic after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

While the same survey elucidated that 47% of business leaders plan to let employees work from home permanently, it also found that another 43% of respondents plan to implement a flexible hybrid work dynamic going forward. For example, some organizations will ask their team members to come into the office two or three days a week instead of five. This will transform how companies structure their headquarters and satellite offices.

Many enterprises are already restructuring how they’re organized. For instance, outdoor retailer REI recently sold its newly-constructed headquarters building to Facebook to pursue a more distributed work model. Known as a hub-and-spoke office model, this paradigm allows companies to shed office space and slim down headquarters while maintaining optimal productivity.

In a hub-and-spoke office model, a smaller headquarters (the hub) and satellite offices (the spokes) serve as locations for employees to congregate, communicate, and collaborate. Instead of long commutes, team members can meet at the hub or spoke that’s most convenient for them. This lean approach eschews large underutilized offices in favor of lean spaces that can accommodate employees who come in two or three times a week and work the rest remotely.

Every Work-Related Industry Hit by COVID-19 Will Reinvent Itself

COVID-19 has proven that change is the only constant in our lives. Although, for many industries related to work, adapting is easier said than done. Co-working and commercial real estate were hit particularly hard during this pandemic. Fortunately, both will bounce back — but it won’t happen without preparing for the future of work.

As companies move towards more flexible hybrid work dynamics and hub-and-spoke paradigms, office-on-demand models will make more sense for many organizations instead of overpaying for underutilized real estate. WeWork and other co-working spaces will be the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. They can provide these businesses with turnkey solutions and an intimate office footprint where team members can work together. In such scenarios, “hot desks” that employees coming in and out can use for the week will replace dedicated workspaces.

Commercial real estate will likely hurt for some time due to all of these pandemic-induced work changes. But it will eventually reinvent itself. This industry will pivot more to mixed-use buildings; a proportion of space will be reserved for industrial or work-related endeavors while the rest is used for residential property. With that said, I’m sure the day will come when a remote work employee has to attend a meeting at one of their company’s “spoke” offices, and it happens to be located a few floors down from their loft!

The Future of Work Is Closer Than It Feels

Several promising COVID-19 vaccines are being expedited to roll out to healthcare workers and the general population. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has even alluded to the possibility that we may all return to a normal semblance of life by this summer. But although COVID-19 may soon be in humanity’s rearview, its effect on how companies get things done will be everlasting.

COVID-19 has accelerated the future of work to an unprecedented pace. This means that we fortunately won’t have to wait long to see the fruition of these predictions. Are you ready?

Want to leverage emerging technologies like 5G, AI, and IoT in your organization? Get in touch with my team for a Free Consultation.

Digital vaccine passports have become a contentious topic over the past few months. Whether you agree with their necessity or not, one thing’s become readily apparent: They are coming. But these passports may not take on the shape or format you imagined.

The U.S. government will not be implementing a vaccine passport. Instead, it is handing off the responsibilities of building and enforcing one to private enterprise. The reasoning behind this decision? Private organizations can solve this problem, faster, better, and more efficiently. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be releasing guidelines for how to develop a vaccine passport in the coming weeks. But if you’re eager to get started on developing yours, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog post, we’ll give you a glimpse into our future with digital vaccine passports. We’ll also examine some of the common pitfalls that this paradigm is susceptible to. Lastly, we’ll round up this piece with a checklist that health tech developers should try their best to meet when creating a digital vaccine passport. Let’s get started!

Our (Near) Future With Digital Vaccine Passports

Whether you want to visit a certain country, partake in events like attending a concert, or work in a particular sector, it’s likely that you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve received your COVID-19 vaccine in the near future. For example, unless they have very good reason to abstain from it, healthcare employees will need to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. This also goes for frontline workers across industries. Companies have the right to fire an employee or forgo renewing their contract if they have not been vaccinated.

Across the world, many organizations and countries are already taking action to implement vaccine passports and regulations of some kind. For instance, E.U. legislators recently proposed rules for a certificate system to verify the vaccine status of people moving between this union of 27 member countries. While those who pass these checkpoints can travel without the need for quarantine restrictions or additional tests, anyone who fails to comply with these regulations could be denied admittance or forced into quarantine.

While the concept of vaccine passports may seem stringent to some, its success is readily apparent in Israel. The country has issued “green passes” to citizens who are fully vaccinated. With this pass, people are free to eat at restaurants, socialize at bars, and attend concerts or sporting events. Public health experts believe that the country’s vaccine passport implementation has helped tremendously in keeping its COVID-19 numbers down and allowing its economy to reopen safely.

The arrival of vaccine passports will cause a big shift in society. After all, how do you really prove you’ve been vaccinated? In the U.S., people receive flimsy cards as proof. But these can potentially be forged and possibly lost. Well, that’s why vaccine passports are going digital. But there are still myriad pitfalls to address for this concept to be a success.

Potential Pitfalls of Digital Vaccine Passports

As we’ve alluded to with forgery, security is a prime concern when it comes to vaccine passports. But there’s also the potential issue of non-compliance. People as well as private and even public organizations may not follow the regulations that come with these passports. There’s also the question of fragmentation — as we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, each state took different measures to stave off this illness from spreading. If you were in Los Angeles, California, you probably had a drastically different experience than a citizen of Miami, Florida.

The problem of non-uniformity in vaccine passports only becomes magnified when you examine the entire world. Different vaccines are being distributed and used around the globe, and what’s permitted in one country may not be allowed in another. For example, China does not accept travelers who received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Such fragmentation between countries, along with the fact that digital vaccine passports will be developed by different organizations, could make things quite confusing.

Then there’s the question of time. Currently, there isn’t much data to go off of to see how long the COVID-19 vaccines are effective for. A quick Google search shows that there’s conflicting information regarding each specific vaccine’s efficacy against the COVID-19 variants circulating throughout the world. It’s likely that we’ll need to receive annual booster shots to ensure proper protection against this virus, so we’ll also need to factor in proof of these into passport iterations.

Clearly, several questions must be answered. While digital vaccine passports may differ from one another, there are a few key factors that all of them should possess.

Best Practices for Building a Digital Vaccine Passport

Here are some elements that every digital vaccine passport should have:

An Intuitive User Experience

A digital vaccine passport should be seamless to access and use. It should also enable the passport holder to easily disclose the minimum amount of information needed for verification. This can be difficult since the information required to be disclosed is dependent on the use case.

Privacy Protection Must Be Prioritized

Obviously, digital vaccine passports should be forgery-proof. But that’s only one segment of security in a long list of many. Be prudent and examine each component of your digital vaccine passport and every step required in a verification process. Identify any weak areas and ask yourself how you can strengthen them to ensure complete end-to-end privacy.

Build Trust Through Credibility and Transparency

Digital vaccine passports must strike a fine balance between information security and transparency. They must also work and be recognized across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Your solution should not only be multi-lingual but also credible enough that it’s recognized by various organizations such as airline companies and foreign governments. It should also be transparent enough to pass stringent requirements set forth by these organizations in a timely manner.

Data Portability

At the end of the day, digital vaccine passports are all about data. And developers of these passports must prioritize data portability. Passport holders should have complete control over the data they choose to share. Create your solution with granular data-sharing in mind so that users can easily compartmentalize and choose what information is displayed for various use cases.

Factoring In the Future

We believe that digital vaccine passports will become an essential part of humanity’s future. With that said, it’s vital for developers of these solutions to plan with the future in mind. This can be difficult to do since nobody knows what the future holds as far as health crises like the pandemic go. But it can help to examine the potential benefits that emerging technologies offer.

For instance, blockchain is a strong candidate for a tech stack that supports vaccine passports. it’s transparent, encrypted, and private. Not only does it store information securely, but you can choose who you share it with. And if you end up needing booster shots in the future to protect against COVID-19 variants, it can easily log that.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of digital vaccine passports. What components would you like to see in these health tech solutions. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Chatbots are a natural fit for enhancing customer service, especially in an online or mobile setting, and we run into them on websites, in hospitals, on social media, and in mobile apps. There is room for this AI-enabled application in almost every business vertical, but there are pros and cons to be aware of when developing your first chatbot.

Chatbots in Customer Support

Customer support can be grueling. It requires businesses to provide friendly, responsive, and quick help at almost any time of the day. Because of the large investment involved in hiring people and building resources, it is difficult to build an excellent customer support team overnight.

It takes a lot of constant training and ongoing optimization to finetune your support representatives to meet all key performance indicators, like time-to-first-response, time-to-close-ticket, and customer satisfaction or feedback. Instead of skimping on one of your most important customer-facing departments, consider what a chatbot can unlock for you and your customers. Whether your company is a Fortune 500 company, doctor’s office, or a corner grocery store, your business can create and deploy a chatbot quickly and easily without a massive investment.

Benefits of Chatbots in Business

Increase Customer Happiness

Every company is in the business of making their customers happy. It’s what keeps profits steady and brand recognition strong. Thankfully, chatbots fit right into that notion as they are 100% customer-centric.

Chatbots work to answer user questions as fast as possible to reach a resolution on the question at hand. They help customers with the same efficiency and response rate, unlike humans which respond to various queries with different response times. This reliability can give customers more consistent expectations of interacting with your company.

If done right, chatbots can improve customer satisfaction. For example, an customer service representative based in Los Angeles may not be able to speak Japanese to help a customer, but a chatbot can easily switch to a different language on the fly. This unlocks the added benefit of reaching many more customers without having to hire interpreters or native speakers.

Leave an Impression on Customers

Besides serving up a consistent experience that customers can count on, chatbots offer customers the opportunity to “ooh” and “aah” over your company’s use of the most cutting-edge AI and machine learning technology. Many customers enjoy interacting with a chatbot, and engagement rates have been increasing steadily.

In 2019, nearly 40% of retail customers engaged with a chatbot in their search for an answer. When chatbots work well, they can bolster your brand image. They can also help customers see your company as an industry leader.

Available Around-the-Clock

Unlike people, chatbots can be “on” 24/7 without feeling exhausted or needing a break. They can help a customer whenever they need it and from wherever they’re located. Chatbots can stay on indefinitely and use customer feedback to continuously improve their success rates.

Generate Better Leads

Besides helping people with their questions and issues, chatbots can also generate leads. Add in a spam filter, and you can even generate better leads than your contact forms. In on-demand delivery apps, chatbots are often used to take orders and process payments from new customers. This can reduce the amount of time it takes to get a new lead to purchase a product from your company.

More Cost-Effective

Because chatbots don’t require healthcare or sick days, chatbots are much cheaper in the long run compared to a traditional customer support team. They use fewer resources like office space, money, and equipment. Chatbots cost a one-time investment fee, and they need minimal maintenance to continue performing.

Downsides of Chatbots

Talking to a Computer

At the end of the day, most chatbots can’t help customers shake the feeling that they’re talking to an automated AI application. For many customers, their problems can only be solved by a human, and this often includes problems with a purchase, shipping, or credit card charge. For these customers, interacting with a chatbot can feel futile and frustrating.

Although natural language processing technology has come a long way in the past few years, we still haven’t reached a point where chatbots feel human. Fluid language isn’t possible yet. Even the best chatbots can’t make customers feel like they’re talking to a human.

Difficult to Develop

Chatbots can be difficult to design and develop, especially if your company’s use case is complex. When adding machine learning technology into the mix, chatbot development can get downright arduous. As it stands, companies need to spend a lot of time, effort, and server space in creating their chatbot.

Most businesses need chatbots for simpler needs, however, like customer support which can run on pattern-based algorithms. There are already no-code or low-code platforms that offer brands the ability to create a custom chatbot. As technology keeps advancing, it’ll get easier and easier to create and deploy chatbots.

Ongoing Maintenance Schedules

Chatbots require updating and maintenance. Someone should look into the chatbot’s failed customer support tickets to make adjustments where necessary to avoid failing to resolve a ticket about the same topic again. As user questions and issues grow, take some time to add these new topics and their associated solutions into the chatbot’s knowledge bank. The time and effort will be worth it: this work can keep your brand image strong.

Developing Your Chatbot

Creating and deploying a chatbot is getting easier, and more companies are taking advantage of this technology by combining it with AI and machine learning. Don’t get left behind — a well-maintained chatbot with a high success rate in answering questions can strengthen your brand image and leave a great impression on your customers.

Have you interacted with an excellent chatbot? What company’s chatbot was it, and what did you take away from the experience? Let us know in the comments below!

For senior citizens who were able to quarantine alone or live alone throughout the pandemic, technology has taken over many aspects of senior care so that nurses and family can safely ensure their patient and loved one is staying healthy and well. Internet of Things (IoT) applications like fall detection and alert devices, behavioral monitoring sensors, and malnutrition and dehydration trackers have worked tirelessly to support caregivers and elders alike during the pandemic. The hope is that these devices will identify signs of a larger issue so that it can be stopped before becoming serious enough to require hospitalization.

Fall Detection Devices

In elderly populations, falls are a major concern. Falls become more common with age and are the second leading cause of unintentional or accidental deaths worldwide. Thus, it is important to control as much as we can for falls both at home and in senior care facilities.

IoT technology can help caregivers prevent, predict, and detect falls by helping them record falls, pinpoint risk factors in the environment and the individual, and learn preventative and corrective measures. Conventionally, fall-detection technologies have used devices that the elderly person carries or wears. When the patient falls, they have to press the button on the device. This solution is great if your loved one is living across the country in Los Angeles while you’re in Atlanta.

But this method doesn’t account for patients that didn’t fall but don’t feel well enough to get up or for patients who haven’t been feeling normal recently. IoT can detect changes in the patient’s wellbeing by monitoring for discomfort and wellness. IoT sensors can help caregivers track their patients’ progress for days or weeks at a time and compare metrics to see if their patient’s health is declining, which is a risk factor for falling. This can support caregivers to act earlier and provide more care to make up for the senior’s deteriorating wellbeing.

Staying Home Longer

Research shows there may be a link between moving out of the home and into a senior care facility and dying earlier. For many elderly patients, it’s important for them to stay somewhere familiar and accessible to their families. IoT can help families remotely keep an eye on their senior family member by sending daily information about the patient’s health and wellbeing without any action necessary from the senior. When used with tele-assistance services, IoT technology really shines for seniors.

Companies like Vitalbase and SeniorAdom are working on remote assistance technology using IoT systems. Their tools include geolocation pendants, motion detection sensors, and wrist band devices. This hardware is supposed to automatically detect changes in behavior, motion, physical strength, and cognition.

By anticipating risks, sending early notifications to family and caregivers, and acting quickly in an emergency, these companies are making it possible to protect our seniors without expending more money, time, and effort. For example, SeniorAdom uses a self-learning algorithm and a smart box connected wirelessly to sensors in the senior’s home. With these devices and software, the company can detect abnormal situations or critical problems and send a warning to relatives and caregivers. SeniorAdom also uses motion sensors and door sensors to create a general daily schedule of the senior so that abnormalities are more obvious when they occur.

A Look at the Sensor Technology

These IoT-enabled sensors work on an 0G network which is used to send small amounts of data over a larger distance. They don’t pick up any personal or private information while they detect differences from the baseline conditions and movements. 0G devices also utilize low amounts of energy, making the overall cost a lot lower for the family.

For devices that run on other networks like cellular devices, it’s possible to utilize 0G as a backup network to ensure a stable connection for around-the-clock supervision and emergency communication. Vitalbases’s Vibby OAK is an automatic fall detection device worn on the senior’s neck or wrist. It connects to a cellular device (like a smartphone) but uses a 0G network when the cellular connection is unstable or unreachable. At healthcare and senior living facilities, devices operating on the 0G network can communicate with existing nursing call systems to keep medical staff updated in the event of an emergency.

More Autonomous Living

Many seniors want to continue an independent, autonomous, and healthy lifestyle. By outfitting their home and body with several devices and sensors in an IoT system, it’s possible for relatives and caregivers to remain vigilant, proactive, and connected without having to ask their seniors to leave home for good.

The goal of robotics is to develop and construct meaningful machines that will support and help human processes. The multidisciplinary field fuses technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning together to develop innovative solutions.

Dogtown Media is Los Angeles’ leading robotics company, working with enterprises and organizations to help their businesses. Our team prides itself on the satisfaction, approval, and happiness of our clients. We want to create cutting-edge solutions to solve simple frustrations and tackle business hurdles.

Just recently, Dogtown Media was hailed as a top agency on Clutch for its excellence in AI for robotics. If you’re not familiar, Clutch is a B2B review platform based in Washington, DC. The site is well respected in the space for its commitment to providing data-driven content and verifying client reviews.

This recognition feels surreal and we are lost for words. Our team wants to send its sincerest thanks to Clutch for this award. We believe that this award is a great sign for our 2021 run, and we are looking forward to a prosperous year. 

 We know that this recognition was made possible thanks to our clients’ amazing feedback. We owe this success to our clients especially those who left us their review on Clutch. 

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

“They’re a small shop that’s motivated and offers a comprehensive list of services and capabilities. They’re accountable and willing to work by our side to make the best product possible. The entire team is professional and eager to solve our problems.” — Founder, Mobile Sales Training Company

“Dogtown Media developed a solution for a project considered impossible to do in the tech world. They’ve taken every goal we’ve had and delivered above and beyond our expectations, beating our requirement of achieving a 50% accuracy rating on visual search capabilities with a software that is over 90% accurate.” — CTO, Innovengine

Let’s build something amazing together! Connect with us and get a free tech consultation.

The roll-out of 5G across the entire world is going to largely affect how we connect and network with each other. In business, 5G will boost the stability and connectivity of existing Internet of Things (IoT) applications while bolstering new IoT systems. It won’t take long for our cities, homes, and ways of living to adapt to all of the benefits 5G will bring, not to mention the added communication abilities, like staying in touch while traveling or connecting to the car next to you in traffic.

Ultimately, 5G will effect change in society, digitalization, and economies in almost all aspects of life and business, but for now, 5G operators are working to ensure mobile connectivity is strong and stable before expanding their focus to other industries and fields. Once that’s done, work will pivot to optimizing connectivity across consumers, businesses, and supply chains.

The Growing Need for Connectivity

Every year, the world’s data volume increases, and with more Internet-enabled devices than ever, 5G has become crucial. Soon, existing technologies won’t be able to meet IoT’s requirements unless 5G is available everywhere. As an example, in 2017, Germany doubled its data volume from 2015, reaching 1 billion gigabytes in a single year.

Experts calculated the number of connected devices and sensors reached between 50 and 500 billion in 2020. With these numbers growing every year, 5G offers unlimited possibilities for our global economy and productivity. Once we reach a certain global data volume, we will need 5G to maintain and scale up business and consumer needs.

LTE Today, 5G Tomorrow

3G made it possible for us to use our phones on a mobile connection with relative ease and speed, and it catalyzed the popularity and manufacturing of smartphones. With the roll-out of 4G LTE, data transfer rates skyrocketed, and it remains the most popular and most-used network even today. 4G LTE offers speeds up to 100 megabits per second, although many of us will experience those speeds first-hand on and off.

It’s possible to boost LTE bandwidths for download speeds up to 4,000 megabits (4 gigabits) per second, and while this is super fast, LTE was designed for smartphone use. On the other hand, 5G will be optimized from the ground-up for IoT connectivity. 5G speeds are faster than much of the Wi-Fi connections available around the world: stable speeds up to 20 gigabits per second aren’t out of the question with 5G.

In comparison, the first smartphones with 1G were eight million times slower than phones will be with 5G. When you put it that way, it seems 5G opens up all kinds of new doors. Now we can dream of transmitting data in real-time with no quality loss. We can theoretically connect 100 billion mobile devices around the world and access them all at the same time. 5G offers stable connection quality and an obvious increase in speeds (moving up to 500 kilometers per hour). That’s like driving from New York City to Los Angeles in nine hours, rather than the 41 hours it would normally take by car.

And besides smartphones, in our increasingly digital world, 5G will be a major asset in applications to many areas and industries. As a result, 5G will become the key technology for connectivity in the near future.

Unlimited Potential

In addition to IoT, the Industrial IoT, a major consumer of mobile connectivity technology, will benefit immensely from 5G. 5G will offer continuous connectivity and data transmission between robots, systems, machines, and people. And analysis will be done on-demand using edge computing, which is an emerging technology that we won’t be able to utilize fully without 5G.

The number of connected sensors and devices is expected to grow at a massive rate, and problems will be pinpointed in real-time rather than after the fact. Optimization can be done in real-time (or close to it), minimizing downtime, revenue loss, and loss of productivity. 5G will enable humanless tasks, not just in driving, but for industrial tasks like picking up and delivering goods, machine-to-machine communication, and loading and unloading materials.

Connectivity in a Digital World

Digital transformation (thanks in part to the pandemic) is driving the growth and expansion of many emerging technologies. But in the field of network connectivity, digital transformation is leading the charge for what to focus on and for use cases. High-quality connectivity is the most important end goal of 5G, especially for both large and small IoT systems. A dropped connection could lead to the factory floor production getting halted.

IoT and 5G experts know that all of the possibilities are still unmapped and unknown. As we arm ourselves with more stable and scalable emerging technologies, we will uncover more ideas, innovations, and opportunities that were previously thought of as unfeasible. Smart farming, which involves keeping an eye on all animals at any given time, crop health, soil moisture, changing weather, and much more, will finally be possible and closer to real-time observation than ever before. Accordingly, we’ll see a large increase in sustainability and efficiency in food production.

5G’s Prospects

Although we don’t know when 5G will reach market maturity, it’s obvious that it will bring about more possibilities, efficiencies, and connectivity than we’ve ever experienced before. It’s unclear what new ideas will be unlocked by the power of 5G. But one thing is certain: The world will never be the same when this next level of network connectivity is fully realized.

Telehealth has changed how we treat and care for those who have medical maladies and are vulnerable. The latest innovations in this field are enabling people to live safer, fuller lives without the need for constant human supervision. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear; more healthcare facilities than ever before are embracing telemedicine in an effort to keep patients from in-person appointments that risk exposure to the deadly virus.

Recent telehealth innovations such as wearables heavily rely on the Internet of Things. With this technological paradigm, we can securely transmit and analyze data in order to unearth life-improving care plans. These capabilities allow aging populations to continue to live in their own homes while reducing the burden that many care facilities are experiencing at the moment. In this post, we’ll examine the benefits of furthering telehealth connectivity innovation and the factors needed to make it happen.

Enabling Patient Independence

Good connectivity is essential for three types of telehealth monitoring: passive, active, and condition.

Passive monitoring deals with medical applications and technologies in the patient’s home that quietly monitor his or her behavior. These devices usually only initiate action if they notice something concerning. For instance, the Alcuris Memo Hub connects a variety of smart devices around a patient’s home, like a tea kettle, TV, and lighting. If this platform notices a change in the patient’s typical pattern of behavior, it will issue an alert. It can also observe and trigger an alert for gradual changes that may indicate a revision to a health regimen is required.

Active monitoring entails devices such as panic buttons and two-way intercoms. In summation, these devices require proactive action, either from the patient or a caretaker.

Lastly, as its name implies, condition monitoring involves the monitoring of specific health conditions. It combines aspects of the first two approaches we’ve discussed with detailed health data, like blood pressure, heart rate, and movement.

Simplicity Is Essential

Digital health innovations help improve the quality of life for aging populations as well as patients living with chronic conditions and disabilities. They also help lower the costs and resources needed for adequate healthcare delivery for these cases.

Ensuring that telehealth devices have enough connectivity to reliably capture, share, and analyze data is absolutely necessary. Without proper connectivity, wrong conclusions (and consequently, outcomes) could be reached. But these connected devices need one more feature to take telehealth to the next level: the ability to work right out of the box.

Telehealth device manufacturers should configure their devices to seamlessly connect to a healthcare provider’s system seamlessly without any complexities. They should also be able to work anywhere, whether that’s Beijing or Los Angeles. Making telehealth devices and platforms plug-and-play is imperative since a large portion of their audience may not be tech-savvy or have the time to set up complicated systems.

Overcoming Connectivity Obstacles

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, chances are good that you have some experience with mobile phones. This means you’re also painfully familiar with the occurrence of black spots where your mobile device can’t receive a strong, reliable signal. Can you imagine this conundrum for a device that your life depends on?

When a patient’s life is on the line, we cannot compromise on connectivity. To mitigate this issue, telehealth devices should be capable of selecting the best network based on its location and even change between networks to minimize drop-out time. During a critical moment, a dropped connection can mean the difference between life and death. So any device in the telehealth market should offer strong, reliable, and continuous connectivity.

To ensure optimal connectivity, medical device makers must consider its importance from the start of the design process. This often translates to a few common factors for the device. For example, it must be lightweight, easy to operate, robust, and unobtrusive. Often, these elements restrict the design of these devices, which is something that manufacturers may have not dealt with before if they previously focused on larger or fixed devices.

On top of this, manufacturers must also think through what occurs at the back end of their telehealth devices. Do they connect to a cloud service through which analyses are run? Or is the data being transmitted to another human who needs convenient access to it? In this case, how should the information be presented? Alongside connectivity, this focus on communication must also be considered at the beginning of the design stage.

Don’t Forget Security

End-to-end security is always crucial for anything that handles sensitive data such as telehealth devices. Whether it’s your hardware or software, all of your connectivity platforms must be secured properly in order for your device to work effectively.

Unfortunately, several consumer SIMs lack advanced security protocols. They actually send data over standard internet channels, which increases the risk of this information being stolen or lost. To mitigate this, prioritize security early on in the device design phase.

Numerous IoT manufacturers treat device security as an afterthought. As we know from the IoT industry’s track record with data breaches, this has not worked out well. The same mistakes cannot be made when it comes to the personal data of patients.

Dedicated end-to-end security solutions are usually the best for telehealth devices. This involves measures such as data encryption at the device level, communication through trusted private networks and secure gateways, authentication, and authorization.

If you want to take things a step further (which is never a bad idea), add in data flow monitoring tools to detect any unusual activity. These could be your first indicators of a malicious attack taking place. Lastly, consider consulting a third-party pen tester before deployment.

Are You Ready for the Future of Telehealth?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of how connectivity can help accelerate telehealth innovation. It may not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think of new capabilities in digital medicine, but it’s certainly among the most important. By emphasizing connectivity during the design of a telehealth device, you’re able to give patients and providers more peace of mind and unlock better outcomes for both parties.

Have you had any unusual experiences with telehealth connectivity? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

We’ve barely just begun 2021, but it’s already shaping up to be an amazing year for Dogtown Media. We were recently featured as a top machine learning developer by Techreviewer.co! Thanks so much to our clients, team, and community for your continued support — you’re the ones who make this possible.

Techreviewer is a trusted B2B information platform that regularly conducts market research across numerous sectors, such as development, design, and marketing. Its meticulous methodology quickly helps companies identify high-quality services for a variety of complex technical tasks. Whether you’re searching for experts in AI app development, the Internet of Things, or business analysis, Techreviewer’s analysts can expedite the process of finding the best technology partner for your business needs.

For Techreviewer’s list of 2021’s top machine learning companies, the review hub evaluated each contender by examining its demonstrated expertise, experience, quality of services, and reliability to deliver products that went above and beyond clients’ requirements. That last component was especially crucial in elucidating the top players in this sector; the product must leverage key aspects of machine learning to help transform a client’s digital presence.

Over 500 companies were considered for this prestigious award. We’re extremely proud to be able to say that we made the cut after quite a few time-intensive assessments!

Besides being recognized as one of the best machine learning app developers of 2021, we’re also grateful to have been featured as one of 2021’s best iPhone app developers as well as a top mobile app developer in Los Angeles by Digital.com!

With this award, we couldn’t be more excited to see what else is in store for our company in the new year! Thanks to Techreviewer for recognizing our hard work. And thanks again to our clients, team, and community — we couldn’t have done this without you!

About TechReviewer.co

Techreviewer a trusted analytical hub that carries out studies and compiles the lists of top development, design and marketing companies. The platform helps to find the best companies that provide high-quality IT services for technical support, development, system integration, AI, Big Data, and business analysis. As a result of objective market analysis, the Techreviewer platform determines the most successful and reliable IT companies and makes top ratings for each of the service categories. Techreviewer’s ranking lists help organizations select the right technology partner for their business needs.