Ericom CEO Kyle Page sees IoT opportunity

Proactive use of data bordering on artificial intelligence may impact how business processes and workflows change in the near future.

At the 2024 CRN Pipeline event on the Gold Coast, Ericom CEO Kyle Page foreshadowed a near future when lights and sirens were needed less often as smart use of data in aged care escalated.

And from honeybee cells to jail cells, tuning into the beating, breathing hearts of businesses will be the norm.

“When you look at the customer, they're looking at how can I consume [technology],” said Page.

“So the better that we've come — thanks to Netflix and Microsoft — that’s per month. So the more that we can turn all the technologies into per month [subscriptions] — then add a layer of managed service and love around that device — customers will go, yes please; we want that.”

Page saw the ubiquity of internet of things (IoT) devices and data analytics spawning a renaissance in how businesses served their customers.

“So we've been doing good, old-fashioned nurse call systems, which is push the button beside the bed, one in the toilet, one in the shower; obviously if [aged care patients] fall over, they can push a button.

“And then the time to respond, the workflow, what goes behind if somebody pushes the button — how long does it take for somebody to get there and, if they don't get there, what happens next? Do you ring somebody? Do you make an alarm bell ring? We're replacing that with IoT devices.

“The person … who's got dementia, they will take the device off. So their Apple Watch they're made to wear to get their heartbeat, their breathing, are you safe, where are you?

“We're now putting in a radar product that we found out of South Korea that picks up heartbeat and breathing in real time; no cables, right?

“And then we're now getting this data full time; what else can we do with that data?”

From aged care to waste management, bees and prisons — every sector set to transform with smart data

Page used the example of monitoring the daily routine of a senior citizen to detect if there were any red flags that could indicate emergency intervention.

“If my mum goes to the toilet at 6 o'clock every morning, she has breakfast at 8:15 and she spends 15 minutes doing this and 10 minutes doing that — if we pick up those routines, we can go: ‘They didn't get out of bed on time’.

“So we can do workflows based on people's routines in the home and look at fall detection and all that.”

Page said IoT is becoming omnipresent in sectors as diverse as primary agriculture, waste management, and prisons.

“We're now talking to councils [and] waste companies who go, let's put an IoT device on every bin because we can do route optimisation and look to save a million dollars in diesel per month by … only picking up full bins.

“Every industry [is] now looking for a device to measure something.

“We've put IoT devices in flowering trees and other places to find out what colour bees are going to at what time. And this is driven by a bee research company, Beehive.

“We've turned it into a managed service.”

Inspired by its experience with aged care and nurse-call systems, prisons were investigating IoT-based prisoner monitoring, Page said.

“The heartbeat and breathing; prisons found out about us being able to do that and we ran a trial with them,” he said.

“We're now able to pick up the way the prisoners are at risk, the cells at risk. We can now pick up their heartbeat and breathing, so if they start to want to do something bad to themselves, their heart rate will either go up or down.

“We can now report that in real time to people to go to the cell and help.”

Data explosion to feed the artificial intelligences of the near future

The spread of recording and monitoring systems has led to an explosion of data, he said.

“So how do we mine that data in real time to create workflows that are better?

“Whether it's keeping an employee safe, better productivity, predicting things … before, when you were only checking one in 10, but now we can check 10 out of 10.

“You can use passive technology to look and go, ‘OK, it's sitting up there and going blink, blink, blink’ but the information you get, I look at that.”

And the smart use of data could even cut ambulance response times and ramping, Page suggested.

“They get the call that they've had a heart attack or a stroke but what happened half an hour before that? Can we pick up the science and say, ‘Hey, ambulance, I think you need to drive past this place in roughly half an hour. There's a stroke about to happen.

“That whole blue light, red light thing changing; just the impact on that industry. And all the industries you go into, there's a use case of what is the process automation workflow that can be improved or changed, because now you've got more data.”