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The global pandemic has inspired people and businesses alike to rapidly adapt to a new reality. Although we’ve understood the importance of digital connectivity for decades, connectivity through the COVID-19 pandemic has become an even bigger part of critical infrastructure, helping society, business and academia work, study and socialize online.
Many of the global behavioral changes stemming from Covid-19 are clear, including the move from offline to online domains. Last year, we could see that consumers’ use of fixed broadband increased by an average of two and half hours per day.
In its first 5G Outlook Series report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlighted several activities behind that increased usage: in healthcare, a 490 percent increase in telemedicine urgent care visits; in socialization a 75 percent increase in online gaming; and in retail, online transactions were up 74 percent globally. In the world of work, Ericsson<\/a>’s Mobility Report showed 60 percent of white-collar workers increased their usage of video calls.
Advances in fields such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce and the Internet of Things were already well established on the tech trends radar. What we didn’t expect was that fields such as education and healthcare, among the most conservative in the adoption of new technology, would suddenly take center stage – and progress in a matter of months in ways that would usually take years.
Looking forward, governments are aiming to do more to harness the potential of 5G with a view to emerge stronger from the pandemic, as well as addressing greater challenges, such as climate change.
Here are some of the top technology trends<\/a> from 2021 that experts believe are likely to stick around for years to come.
Trend 1: Digital workplaces
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In general, employees have responded positively to the convenience of ‘WFH life’, but employers are also noticing the benefits – lower office rental and upkeep costs, for example. According to our Future of Enterprises report, 60 percent of decision makers are very satisfied with the ability to cut down on office space, with 43 percent strongly believing they will have no office at all by 2030. Early indications also show remote workers are up to 40 percent more productive than their in-office counterparts.
According to the global survey featured in our IndustryLab report exploring the dematerialized office and insights into the 2030 future workplace, half of respondents indicated they would want a full-sense virtual presence at work from anywhere. With many of the tech giants announcing their plans for more permanent working from home arrangements post-COVID, it’s generally agreed that the future of work is remote, and that ‘business as usual’ will never be as it once was.
Trend 2: Online learning
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Digital workspaces and dematerialization won’t just benefit those in the workforce. At the peak of the COVID pandemic, over 1.6 billion children in 195 countries around the globe were sent home as classrooms closed. Video conferencing tools, other digital services such as language learning apps, virtual tutoring and e-learning software have all seen huge surges in demand. With quality education key to both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Human Development Index (HDI), there’s no question that education must be well-resourced and accessible to all.
As we continue the important work to improve educational opportunities through technology, we need to ensure we’re reducing, and not contributing to, inequality in education. While the extent to which e-learning continues once students return to their classrooms is yet to be seen, the necessity of connectivity for education has been made abundantly clear.
It is abundantly clear that improvements in access to the internet and digital tools in schools—coupled with other factors, such as access to devices, the availability of relevant content, and the support to teachers and students to effectively integrate technology into educational practice—holds the potential to equalise opportunities at an early age which proliferates throughout childhood and adulthood—bringing not only benefits at an individual level but to society.
And as 5G networks enable faster internet and more reliable connectivity than ever before – even in remote locations – these possibilities will only continue to grow.
Trend 3: Telehealth
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COVID-19 pandemic has shown the huge potential, and real-world functionality, of telehealth technologies as vital tools to help avoid the spread of viruses through tracking, testing and treating.
In a research innovation project launched in September 2020, Ericsson, Telia and Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden used AI to help monitor and manage the demand on healthcare resources, creating and refining advanced AI analysis and insight models for the planning and prediction of healthcare resources.
Ericsson, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) and King’s College London also collaborated on the 5G Connected Ambulance – a groundbreaking new way to connect patients, ambulance workers and remote medical experts in real time. This innovation enabled healthcare workers to perform the UK’s first remote diagnostic procedure over 5G, demonstrating its transformative potential to enable clinicians and paramedics to collaborate haptically, even when they are miles apart – and help patients even if they can’t get access to a hospital.
Telehealth also provided other game-changing ways to address the challenges of providing health services at home, through video conferencing, e-mail, telephone, or smartphone apps.
These advances have been particularly helpful for seniors. Recent insights from an Ericsson ConsumerLab<\/a> study revealed that devices and the internet had helped 90 percent of seniors surveyed during the pandemic. The benefits offered by technology aren’t limited to medical services either, but can be factors that can improve overall quality of life through mobility, safety and socialization.
A 2020 study also concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic had forced important changes in the healthcare industry<\/a> which may help to establish telehealth more firmly in the years to come.
Trend 4: Contactless convenience
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Contactless technology is defining the customer experience post-COVID, from touch-free payments and ‘just walk out’ shopping to biometric check-in for travel and accommodation.
Even when shopping in-store, almost 90 percent of shoppers in the US now claim to prefer touchless or self-checkout features. And with security always a high priority in an increasingly globalized world, facial recognition security systems are becoming more and more common.
These safe and undeniably convenient innovations have been made possible with more advanced processors and memory chips, better image sensors, smarter AI and faster communications networks, all of which will continue to improve in the coming years.
Combine this with the expectation that virtual and augmented reality will fundamentally change our everyday lives in areas including education, work, social interaction, travel and retail, and we’ll start to see a true blend of the physical and digital – no touching required.
We are seeing all these trends play out in India as we see them playing out in rest of the world. Are these innovations just a product of the pandemic or here to stay? I do believe and concur with experts that these trends won’t disappear with lockdowns.
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