When the Virtual and Digital worlds merge, a Digital Twin is created

An increasing number of companies are adopting a new emerging technology that allows the fusion of physical and virtual systems. The product of the fusion between these two components is called Digital Twin, a virtual representation of physical products and systems, generated through data collected from the environment. Creating a Digital Twin helps businesses to analyze more efficiently integrated sources of data and to predict how a product or system would behave in real life, enabling rapid and advanced decision making, or anticipating future risks.

An example of a successful Digital Twin application comes from the 36th America’s Cup race. Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, in partnership with Altair, used Digital Twin technology to design, develop and optimize most of the boat’s components. Through the Digital Twin software powered by AI, Luna Rossa created a virtual representation of the boat to analyze how the AC75’s foils would impact the water, obtaining vital information on the boat’s structure and simulating how it would perform under different conditions.

Defender Emirates Team New Zealand also developed a Digital Twin in partnership with McKinsey and its subsidiary Quantum Black. Using AI and Machine Learning the team performed a vastly larger number of sailing maneuvers than a real crew could have done, in less time and processing a huge amount of data ten times faster than the normal testing process in a simulator room.

Digital Twin technology is also becoming a key component in the development of smart cities. Governments are partnering with tech companies to build a Digital Twin of physical cities to help them make better decisions in the design and development of urban areas or anticipate potential dramatic consequences from climate changes and make cities increasingly sustainable. Microsoft’s subsidiary Azure Digital Twins launched a comprehensive software solution to build digital smart cities, providing engineering companies and constructors with virtual representations of the physical spaces to help them analyzing the environment and optimizing space usage.

Accelerating technological advancements are paving the way for the adoption of Digital Twins, which are part of the most disruptive innovation cycle in the technology sector. The rise in popularity of Digital Twin technology is also supported by advancements in AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) which make it easier to collect and integrate a vast amount of data and information. According to Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2020 report, the global Digital Twin market was worth $3.8B in 2019, and it is projected to reach $35.8B by 2025, at a CAGR of more than 45%, creating an increasing number of long term investment opportunities.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

From the Console to the Cloud: The Disruption of the Gaming Industry

With restrictions on travel and social interactions, people have started spending even more time in front of screens, seeking alternative forms of entertainment: A clear beneficiary is the Video Gaming Industry which reached $159.3 Billion during 2020, increasing by 9.3% from 2019 - Video Game Statistics.

This unprecedented boom in the Gaming industry was supported mainly by Cloud Gaming technology, a kind of "Netflix for gaming" which allows users to play a wide range of games which would usually require specific high-powered hardware. Thanks to the Cloud, users can play games remotely just by subscribing to the service, avoiding the need to download files into their devices or purchasing expensive consoles. This new business model is called Game-as-a-Service (GaaS) and it is completely changing how video games are consumed.

Video game company Activision Blizzard is one of the first major pioneers of this model. Its great success came from the blockbuster “Call of Duty” franchise: Whether the user is playing on a PS5, Xbox, PC, or smartphone, he can access the entire video game saga and engage with other players from any device just by subscribing to it. 2020 was a record year for Call of Duty, with more than 100 million monthly active players engaging with its free-to-play experience.

Another successful example is Epic Games and its popular video game Fortnite. Fortnite is a multi-platform and no-cost game whose first source of monetization comes from micro-transactions. Everyone can access the basic game experience, and monetization happens when gamers decided to buy additional features such as new costumes, weapons, and even special missions.

GaaS has been around for several years, but the growth and the engagement of users has been accelerated in recent years by the live streaming. Amazon-owned platform Twitch is a game streaming platform where people can truly live the social side of gaming. Through Twitch, top video game players can make money broadcasting games and monetizing fans’ views: In March 2018, Fortnite reached about 630,000 viewers, while in 2019 another event hosted by Fortnite attracted more than 7 million viewers. In 2020, Twitch had about 26.5 million daily users and 6.9 million streamers creators each month, and these numbers are continuously rising – Twitch Traker.

In 2020 Google has entered a media partnership with Activision to show the online format of The Call of Duty League through its own video-platform YouTube. The online event was the most watched CoD e-sports match in the game’s history: The Call of Duty League reached 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube, with a peak of 331,000 viewers - Forbes.

The GaaS business model is disrupting the game industry as never before: The main difference from traditional forms of gaming is that through the Cloud, games are streamed and not sold at once. Instead to purchasing a product, users must pay for a subscription service, and that is why game developers cannot stop updating their services: By introducing exclusive new content, users become more willing to spend money to enhance their gaming experience, generating a potentially unlimited stream of revenues. To maintain a competitive edge, Game developers must communicate and cooperate with users to generate a virtuous cycle of revenues and achieve a win-win situation.

As reported by Statista, the Video Games industry will reach more than $150 billion in 2021, attracting companies outside the gaming sector: The evolution of Cloud services, combined with advancements in 5G network globally, allow big technology companies such as Amazon, Google, and Tencent, to heavily invest in network infrastructures and technology innovation to be part of the future expansion of the industry.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

Tech innovation is shaping the future of the healthcare sector

Historically driven by analog processes, healthcare activities have been significantly altered by the technology revolution. The increasing application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems is becoming more common in the healthcare industry and is helping healthcare businesses to be faster and more efficient.

Already pre-pandemic, about 80% of hospital leaders said cloud investments were a moderate, high, or critical priority for 2020. Going forward, the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) will further accelerate innovation adoption and related applications in the healthcare realm.

Technologies like Cloud computing, AI, IoT and machine learning are disrupting the health market and providing patients with new innovative services: for example, by engaging with digital providers, today patients can receive personalized medicines tailored to their specific needs, lifestyles, and genetic code, or can be visited by doctors directly through their smartphone.

Population aging around the world is another major tailwind for digital, patient-centric healthcare services. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 703 million persons aged 65 years or over in the world in 2019. The number of older persons is projected to double to 1.5 billion by 2050. Technological advancements in screening processes, smartphones and wearables can bring point-of-care testing to the patients and represent a strong opportunity for providing sensitive, low-cost, rapid, and connected diagnostics.

There is increasing awareness that AI applications enable to analyze patient's health conditions and identify anomalies at a speed that humans cannot achieve, helping physicians to optimize and avoid time-consuming tasks, and reduce margins of error of diagnosis.

For example, today AI is already just as capable as (if not more capable than) doctors in diagnosing patients heart diseases, blood infections, and detect signs of potentially cancerous cellular growths. IBM’s AI program called Watson was recently challenged to analyze the genetic data of tumor cells. The human experts took about 160 hours to review and provide treatment recommendations based on their findings. Watson took just ten minutes to deliver the same kind of actionable advice.

Despite the rapid advancements in AI and machine learning in HC, we are still a long way from a total replacement of human intervention in medical processes. A research from Harvard showed that patients are reluctant to use health care provided by medical artificial intelligence even when it outperforms human doctors. The main reason is that patients believe that their medical needs are unique and cannot be adequately addressed by algorithms. For this reason, patients were less likely to utilize AI based services and wanted to pay less for it

The most likely evolution is that doctors will be supported by AI to perform repetitive tasks and increase quality of diagnosis at a fraction of time and costs. A recently developed machine-learning algorithm based on deep learning nearly matched the success rate of a human pathologist in interpreting pathology images, at about 96% accuracy. But the truly exciting thing was that combining the pathologist’s analysis the AI diagnostic method, the result improved to 99.5% accuracy,”

In summary: when it comes to healthcare, implementing AI solutions and machine learning will not necessarily mean replacing doctors, but optimizing and improving their abilities. The convergence between the healthcare industry with AI, Cloud computing, IT, and machine learning systems will further catalyze new innovative applications, providing patients with an early and accurate response to treatment and enabling healthcare organizations to reach new quality standards at a lower cost.

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The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product.  It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.