Technology trends in 2021: Which industries will benefit?

The COVID-19 pandemic which brought our world to a standstill not only hit the macroeconomic landscape and businesses hard, but also changed life for the common man. It was indeed heartening to see the world embrace restrictions at many levels - social distancing, wearing masks, working remotely from home to keep businesses, schools and colleges functioning and evolve into the ‘New Normal’!

I believe that technology truly emerged as the hero in this pandemic - across sectors. Some key trends we have been seeing, which are here to stay – across sectors are summarized.

Healthcare

The year 2020 became a game-changer for the healthcare sector as COVID-19 gave rise to digital disruption of unseen proportions.  It also catalysed the Government of India’s actions on the digital front. The Government released updated telemedicine guidelines on March 25, 2020, which legalised teleconsultation and telemedicine practice in India. It also brought widespread use of tracking applications such as the Aarogya Setu and aided use of multiple wellness applications to monitor health parameters - remotely. The Government also actively collaborated with healthcare experts and technology veterans to lay the foundation of Digital healthcare guidelines and policies tailored to the Indian healthcare system. The government and industry partnership further extended in the provision of ventilators, academic researchers contributing to developing low cost equipment, auto manufacturers realigning their assembly lines to manufacture low cost ventilators, tracing shortages in healthcare and using technology to track real time movement of essential medical equipment, testing kits and medicines using technology.  It is also worthwhile to note that the vaccine was made available in a record time of 10 months. Technology is now being used to manage the supply chain to ensure that vaccines are made available to billions of people, globally. These are all examples of how Future technologies as such IoT, ML and AI-supported our response to the global pandemic.

India registered a 502% rise in online medical consultations from people above the age of 50 according to a recent report titled the Rise of Telemedicine. This gives access to a large volume of data for future technologies as such IoT, ML and AI in healthcare which can lead to fine-tuning solutions that can improve various aspects of healthcare - chronic care management, predictive care, self-assessment for prevention/wellness, remote healthcare delivery, clinical decision support, and diagnostics. The entire healthcare ecosystem, from patients to providers, payers, pharma, equipment manufacturers all have shown immense commitment in implementing technology to overcome challenges.

It is also worthwhile to note that healthcare-tech start-ups are seeing huge funding, indicative of a growth in tech in the healthcare sector.

Manufacturing

The legacy Indian manufacturing sector has always approached future technologies with caution, leading to slow deployment in the sector.   Manufacturing, especially the MSME segment was one of the worst-hit during the pandemic. The mass exodus of migrant workers only amplified the crisis.

The pandemic was also a wake-up call to multiple economies about their over-reliance on one country for all their manufacturing needs. When global supply chains were disrupted, economies and organisations had to look for longer-term solutions to fulfill their supply chain demands.  The pandemic became a catalyst in spurring a wave of innovation in the manufacturing sector and accelerated the adoption of future technologies including IoT, AI, automation, ML, AR, VR, Digital twins, and robotics in a bid to design and build more resilient systems. We are already experiencing an increase in the demand for small to large-scale adoption of connected technologies from Indian enterprises.  There is also demand for digitalisation from brown-field transformation programs from both medium and large manufacturing units.   The table below gives a sense of the opportunity that COVID- 19 brought in the manufacturing sector. We also feel this will provide the right impetus to the Make in India initiative to scale, as well as push the ‘make in India for the world’ focus – to build high quality Indian products for international consumption.

Energy

The Indian energy sector braved the pandemic with surprising resilience as the energy supply chain from oil wells and mines to nozzles and burner tips remained steady despite the global economic turmoil. However, energy demand dipped sharply during the pandemic as a significant proportion of the global population stayed indoors Distribution companies could not bill consumers or collect payments, outage calls were not attended to, fuel demand was low and refineries reduced output to 30%. Keeping pace with technological innovation became vital for the recovery of the sector and cutting back on human involvement across the energy chain, particularly in sector operations, was no longer a 'nice to have'. The sector identified and resolved this and associated vulnerabilities in its operations with future technology applications like remote metering reading using advanced metering technologies, answering outages with better GIS mapping,  and adopting state-of-the-art digital asset management systems.

Agriculture

The food supply chain is complex as it involves producers, consumers, agricultural and fishery inputs, processing and storage, transportation and marketing. The pandemic brought the food supply chains under duress as the majority of countries banned the movement of goods and people both across and within their own state borders.  Restriction on food exports made the situation even more challenging.

However, agricultural activities in India were exempt from restrictions and declared as “essential services”. The pandemic made it apparent that the application of technology in agricultural systems is no more a luxury but it is the need of the hour. Indian government’s free android app - Kisan Suvidha grew to 100 million registered users. This app provides farmers with critical information on the weather predictions of market prices, dealers, agro advisories, and plant protection. Bhuvan, a platform prepared by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) employs geospatial spatial technologies for gathering data useful for plantation, pest surveillance, and weather predictions. With the coronavirus situation and the social-distancing protocol affecting the labour and agricultural inputs availability, smart agricultural technologies like precision agriculture and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can be used effectively to manage agricultural land, its operations, and thereby the complete food supply chain.

Telecommunication

The telecom sector was always ahead in utilising cutting-edge technology and therefore was geared to providing services during the pandemic without many challenges. The data usage in rural India surpassed that of urban India during the national lockdown. This is a testimony to the success of Bharat Net and digital literacy. With improving connectivity to rural villages and opening up of space sector opportunities for telecom service providers are set to improve.

Making the internet accessible to 850 million rural Indian citizens will further accelerate remote patient monitoring, remote skilling and education initiatives. The pandemic has also sharpened the focus of telecom service providers on their ability to provide IoT solutions as additional services leverage the market potential. 5G testbeds and implementation will allow newer business models to develop and these use cases can provide better value to customers.

In conclusion, I would like to highlight that the post COVID era will be the era of accelerated technological advancements, rapid adoption, and mushrooming of tech startups in every sector. With timely policy support, investment, and focus on solutions for Indian problems which can then be applied globally, the potential for future technologies looks more promising than ever before.

The article has been written by Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chair, IET Future Tech Panel