Superfast 5G wireless technology is expected to be a driving force in the development of telemedicine and in balancing the distribution of medical resources, said Jiao Yahui, deputy chief of medical administration and supervision for the commission.

Medical personnel who have used 5G technology for remote diagnosis or surgery have given positive feedback on the high quality of images, data and audio transmitted through the network.

“However, it’s still a new technology. It’s in its infancy,” she said. “The national backbone network is immature at this stage, and cross-regional transmissions have some instability.”

She added there is some risk associated with performing remote surgery using the 5G network.

The Da Vinci System, an early robotic surgical system developed overseas to facilitate long-distance surgeries, has not lived up to expectations, Jiao said.

She said medical institutions should exercise the principle of prudent tolerance, and not rush 5G applications into the healthcare sector.

An increasing number of medical institutions across China are collaborating with telecom companies to seek breakthroughs in telemedicine. Beijing Tiantan Hospital, a designated emergency care provider for the upcoming Beijing International Horticultural Exhibition, has begun setting up facilities based on 5G to provide possible long-distance emergency aid during the expo, according to Wang Yongjun, the hospital’s deputy head.

“I want to stress that our work is in the trial stage. We will accumulate more experience and test its stability,” he said.

In recent years, China has been pushing for wider applications of intelligent tools to upgrade its healthcare services.

Jiao said the country is committed to building intelligent hospitals this year to enhance data and information sharing between medical workers, provide easier access to services for patients and improve internal management at healthcare institutions.

The commission has also formed a five-tier evaluation system to offer guidance, she said.

“Advancements in information technology demand a huge investment,” she said. “The launch of the 5G framework is aimed at maximizing outcomes with limited resources.”

In response to rising concerns about data security, Jiao called for stronger legislation to clarify the ownership of medical information.

She added that existing laws and regulations, such as the Cybersecurity Law and Regulation for Safety Protection of Computer Information Systems, have provided a safety net for personal information.

Growth in consumer use of Visa products in 2018 indicates a number of positive trends in the growth of digital payments, it said.

The 2018 Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study, which reveals the extent to which digital payments are becoming a part of everyday life for Vietnamese consumers, said: “The total value of purchases made by Vietnamese consumers on their Visa credit and debit cards is up 37 per cent, while the number of transactions is up by 25 per cent. eCommerce in particular saw strong growth with the total value of purchases up by 40 per cent.”

Dang Tuyet Dung, country manager for Visa Vietnam and Laos said: “As the Vietnamese economy grows and becomes increasingly internationalised, commerce here will require ever faster, more efficient ways of paying. These recent figures from our network demonstrate clearly the fact that digital payments are now truly a part of day-to-day life for many Vietnamese consumers regardless of whether they’re buying from an online retailer on the other side of the world or simply paying for their groceries.”

The report, which specifically looked into consumer sentiments towards variousforms of payment, found that Vietnamese consumers are carrying less cash, and half are making card and mobile payments at least two to three times a week.

Seventy-three per cent of respondents are using credit and debit cards, up 59 per cent from the previous year, while 82 per cent have tried making transactions on mobile phones.

The research also found that the use of new payment technologies is picking up traction, with 44 per cent of the respondents indicating that they are now making payments through apps, while 32 per cent are using contactless payment technologies that allow users to simply tap their cards on the terminal to pay.

Some 19 per cent have used QR payments where a phone scans a unique merchant code and transfers money to the merchant’s account.

Dung added: “While digital payments are still in their relative youth in Việt Nam, it’s been incredibly positive to see how consumers are embracing new payment technologies — it augurs well for these technologies in particular, and for digital payments more broadly.”

Globish aims to triple its revenue this year under a plan to lure more than 10,000 students to its English-learning programmes within three years.

It has been operating an online English learning platform in Thailand for four years. It now boasts 8,000 learners, which 3,000 of them learning every day.

Chuencheewan Wongsaeree, 28, co-founder and operation manager of Globish Academia (Thailand), started Globish when she was just 24, with her co-founder Troy Ananthothai. They met at the Asian Leadership Academy more than four years ago when she took a design-thinking class there.

She said that the concept of Globish is designed to be a platform that enables Thais learners to meet English coaches from Thailand and abroad.

“It is to help working people to learn and improve their English-speaking skills. The target group is manager-level workers who have been working for a while and need improve their English skill to further their career path,” Chuencheewan says.

Currently, it has 80 coaches, from Thailand elsewhere in Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and European. Around 25 courses are available on the platform.

“Our online platform is mostly live, not recorded videos, with both one-on-one and discussion classes with a Thai coach, and group conversation with native speaker teachers, both American and British. We also provide e-learning for grammar and vocabulary allowing students to learn by themselves unlimited,” says Chuencheewan.

Apart from the online courses, it also offers offline workshops for students every two weeks at Hanger Co-Working Space by dtac Accelerate.

Globish is designed to facilitate people to design their course schedules flexibly according to their available time-slots and they can choose their own coaches.

“Our coaches have at lease three years of experience in teaching online English speaking course for foreigners and have TEFL certification. We have an education team to source and select coaches to fit to Thais. The peak time of learning is 8 pm to 1 am,” says Chuencheewan.

There are 79 people in the team, aged 30 or below, working as part of a student support team, marketing, engineers, and education. Mostly, they are part of the student support team who provide 24-hour support for learners. Learners first have to have to their English skills tested and they will offered a suitable course.

Additionally, the company aims to expands its online learning platform, booking and live learning system to Hong Kong, by licensing to a local partner to use the platform for teaching financial courses.

“Currently, there are banks and universities that use our online learning platform to get their staff and students to do online learning,” says Chuencheewan.

The company plans to expand its English online learning course to abroad as well, aiming to move into Indonesia and Vietnam this year.

Globish’s revenue comes from learning fees. Courses are from four to six months, and will be later be extended to one year.

“We want to see an efficient result. We focus on quality that needs a suitable time range and six month to on year is proper one. One-on-one conversation is 25 minutes each time while the group discussion is 55 minutes,” said Chuencheewan.

For example, a business course is for six months. The students will get 46 times of one-on-one conversation and 12 times for group discussion as well as learning with other foreign students and a coach every in 25-minute sessions. All of them can access to practise on their own with e-learning for an unlimited time throughout the course.

“It needs to take thousand hours to complete our total e-learning courses and all students can take e-learning classes as much often as they want,” says Chuencheewan.

The company offers business and general courses, with each type divided into six levels. Learners have to be tested for their level to be determined before they take the course. Tests are required to move up to the next level. People who graduate from Globish will get a certificate, which is standard with Kokoa.

The company offers English speaking courses for children ages from 7 to 14. For the student courses, Globish Kids has Thai coaches and a discussion group.

Over the past three years, the company’s business has grown by four times each year.

It has raised a total of Bt10 million. The first round came from the Sue Tid Peak TV show by Tan, Ichitan, and Paiboon, Grammy and angel investors. The second round came from IOIC (Intania Open Innovation Club, Chulalongkorn University), Dtac Accelerate and angel investors. Now it is closing pre-series A round. It has accumulated over 110,000 classes.

“Our business is quite conservative, so we do not need to do the huge fund raising. For the pre-series A fund raising, we would like to expand market for Globish Kids. Most of the investments will be spent in expanding the Thai market. Our strategy for expanding abroad is to use strategic partners as the key is not money,” said Chuencheewan.

Education is a slow- growing industry, but online English education is enjoying healthy growth of 30 per cent each year. For Globish, it has grown 400 per cent over the past two years. People are looking for English skills for real use rather than English certification. They also really expect efficient results for their spending.

She said the success of the online English course address learners’ pain points, they can speak and practice efficiently without wasting time on travel to classes.

“Everything requires English, no matter whether it is for e-commerce, international trade, travel abroad, growing career paths and so on. People need to improve their English skill in a way that is suitable and addresses their real need. Online English speaking courses are the best answer and that is why we keeping having huge growth every year,” said Chuencheewan.

With the power of the platform architect, she said the company wants to utilise this online learning platform for teaching other subjects – especially soft-skills such as leadership and communication as well as other languages such as Chinese.

“Earlier, we set up Globish with the aim to help Thais to speak English well. But only English is not enough for improving people’s working lives. So, in the future, we might work with partners who are specialists in necessary skills and we will expand our service to cover new areas such as coding skills,” said Chuencheewan.

BOX 

n Founder of the Year, Thailand, Rice Bowl Startup Award 2018

n JUMC STAR 2017 Excellence, Award for Leading Social Impact Entrepreneur in Thailand

n JUMC STAR 2018 Excellence, Award for Leading Business Transformation Entrepreneur in Thailand

n Pitch@Palace, Top3 Startup from South East Asia by Prince Andrew, Duke of York. 2018

n 1st Runner Up, Swiss Innovation Challenge 2016

Paul Sin, head of Deloitte Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab, discussed “Unleashing Blockchain in Finance and Beyond” during a recent visit to Bangkok. He told media that blockchain provided solutions to unique problems thanks to key features of its distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Deloitte uses hashing algorithms to encrypt data on the blockchain, allowing different users (or nodes) to replicate each other’s data for high availability without exposing the information to unauthorised access.

This core feature of DLT gives rise to applications that are especially valuable for cross-industry transactions, especially in the financial services sector and for supply-chain traceability.

Blockchain applications have been adopted to do business across industries in banking, insurance, healthcare, digital rights, supply chains and regulatory processes.

In banking, blockchain technology is now being used for settlement and clearing, syndicated loans, offshore financing, and regulatory matters. In insurance blockchain deals with duplicated claims, marine insurance, micro-insurance, and agent certification. Meanwhile, its supply chain traceability applications include product warranty, traceability, patent records, and intellectual property rights.

The benefits are not confined to the business sector, with blockchain applications also being used by the public sector and government. For example, the public sector is using the new technology for intraday reporting and mandatory insurance, while the government is using it in its governance model, for open API (Application Programming Interface), and the regulatory sandbox – where businesses can test their systems safely under the supervision and recommendations of regulators.

Sin said the beauty of blockchain for finance lies in the way it helps small and medium-sized enterprises get access to financial services. Currently, only one in four SMEs are successful when applying for loans. Blockchain technology helps address this problem, offering further options for those rejected.

“Blockchain is a B2B [business to business] platform where all kinds of businesses in different locations can form multiple partnerships to improve their efficiency or reduce costs. That’s because blockchain helps businesses share information while keeping data privacy,” said Sin. However, businesses that want to use blockchain must first digitalise their data. The financial sector, where data is already digital, is thus a pioneer in using blockchain technology.

Blockchain Lab

Deloitte’s Asia Pacific Blockchain Lab was opened in September 2017 with the aim of centralising resources in the region to better serve its clients. Sin said the lab collaborated with two other blockchain research facilities in Dublin and New York in order to bring over 40 DLT solutions to the Asian market.

“We chose to establish our lab in Hong Kong because of its role as both the financial centre and trading hub in Asia Pacific,” said Sin. “There are hundreds of trading companies in Hong Kong that will prosper from [China’s] Maritime Silk Road strategy. The availability of talent [in Hong Kong] was another major factor.”

In March 2017, the lab used blockchain to develop a trade finance proof-of-concept (POC) for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and five of the city’s leading banks to share information about trades including purchase orders, bills of lading, open-account financing, and invoicing. Sin reports that it eliminates forged invoices with proof of authentic supporting documents on the blockchain network.

The project was launched in September 2018, with governance framework defined, business model established, and technical scalability proven.

Sin explains that Deloitte also partnered with China Life Insurance to implement a blockchain application for cross-border bancassurance; with the China Consortium to launch blockchain cross-border real-time exchange of information; and with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore Exchange and Nasdaq to implement a blockchain financial settlement platform.

Meanwhile, for supply chain traceability, Deloitte worked with Kerry Logistics and Cargo Smart to launch a blockchain-driven logistics application.

Deloitte has also worked with MoneySQ, Hong Kong’s first online crowdfunded lender, to create the trustME business platform. Sin says his company is now busy using the blockchain network for supply chain traceability across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, synchronising real-time data among SME manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers.

These are two assumptions I cannot agree with, particularly if we look at the world of retailing.

In Thailand the value of e-commerce rose to Bt3.2 trillion last year, representing the highest growth in Southeast Asia. So it’s not surprising to see traditional retailers looking to expand their presence online.

However, on the flip side, major e-commerce players like Amazon, Alibaba, Lazada and Pomelo Fashion are looking to establish a presence offline. While some may opt for temporary pop-up stores, others look to set up permanent physical shops. And this move to the offline world – and the demand for it by consumers – is why I don’t believe that traditional retailers are dead. Rather, their roles are simply changing.

This is the future – and the opportunity – for retail travel agencies. The challenge is that travellers, in particular the millennial generation, don’t turn to retail stores to plan their next vacation. They’re using a combination of online travel agencies, publishers, social media and referrals to make their purchase decisions.

To compete in this digital space, travel agents will need to embrace this transformation to safeguard their services and value. While the entire retail-travel-agency business model has traditionally been about the human touch, it’s now evolving to combine physical, digital and human components, meaning businesses will need to work across multiple channels – online, mobile and brick-and-mortar.

What this means for businesses is that, instead of simply thinking about how to generate traffic to their stores, websites or call centres, they now need to also think about how they can inspire travellers. To do this successfully, a key step will be upgrading – and in some cases changing – the technology they currently use.

To become true designers of the future travel experience, travel agents need to harness “the power of three”.

Choice

Travellers want transparency and choice, and they want immediately. In an era of endless pricing options, fare types and loyalty programmes, insightful recommendations for trip planning are more valuable than ever.

To deliver this, travel agents will need a comprehensive set of content – airline, hotel, alternative lodging and ground transport options – and ensure that this information is effectively managed for customers. They could, for example, share the options through interactive screens that allow customers the flexibility to choose what they want and leave the task of fulfilling their preferences to the agency.

Personalise

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), travel agents can now analyse their customers’ previous travel history and preferences to build a highly personalised experience. This brings new opportunities for not only travel applications but also monetisation. In fact, more than 80 per cent of Thai consumers are willing to spend more for personalised products and services, according to a survey by the SCB Economic Intelligence Centre.

Machine learning could also be aided with voice and natural language processing. Travellers will want to be able to tell their application what to do. Travel agents that devise the most efficient way of selling high-value and high-engagement products via voice will succeed in the future.

Connect

We’re beginning to see the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in streamlining the operation of hotels and airlines by connecting complex systems to smart devices. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. With 5G services expected in 2020, we will see mass connectivity, everything from fully intelligent homes to smart transportation systems.

For travel agents, IoT has the potential to address customer pain-points by delivering relevant information at just the right time. For instance, location-based information for a traveller looking for the best takeout restaurant nearby with the best customer reviews.

Popular opinion suggests the demise of the retail travel agency business model. However, I prefer to see it as the evolution of the agency experience. It’s about designing an experience that is collaborative and creative.

We travel to be amazed, and retail travel agencies play a significant part in creating that amazement.

Champa Magesh is vice president of retail travel channels at Amadeus.

Mercari started the service in 2013, providing users with a platform to sell and buy secondhand items such as clothing, furniture and books with their smartphones. The service has been popular mainly with younger generations, but the company found that more and more elderly people have been using the app in the past couple of years. The number of items sold for such reasons as planning for senior life and “pre-death clearouts” — activities that have become popular among the elderly — more than doubled in 2018 from 2017, according to the company.

Haruo Gomi, a 70-year-old retired company worker and long-time clarinet player in Tokyo, started using the app two years ago when he sold a handmade cage liner for ¥800, which he had originally made for his pet hedgehog. To his surprise, it sold quickly. “I hadn’t imagined that people actually paid for such things,” said Gomi, who then became fascinated with the app. He has sold more than 150 items, including musical instruments he had stopped using.

Recently, he has been absorbed in modifying a commercialized music stand to make it lighter and easier to carry and selling it through the app. “Nothing satisfies me more than people’s acknowledgment that the things I have made are good and helpful,” Gomi said. “I’ve always been keen on making things with my hands since childhood, and I want to get into it again for the remainder of my life. Mercari motivates me and connects me to information and new people.”

 For Takiko Mouri, a 64-year-old homemaker in Nagoya, Mercari is a tool for interacting with people both online and offline. She mainly sells handmade accessories called tsumami-zaiku, a traditional Japanese craftwork made of small pieces of textile. “I check my smartphone every morning after I wake up and I’m very glad when the accessory has sold,” she said. People can exchange messages through the app before and after the purchase. The exchanges sometimes become lengthy for Mouri because she answers every question from potential buyers even when it is unrelated. “I like to answer all the inquiries, to the extent that my knowledge permits. Sometimes my attitude makes people inclined to buy my accessories after a month-long communication,” she said. Mouri also made friends with a clerk at her nearby post office after frequently speaking to the person when mailing her products to customers.

The recent survey conducted by the company targeted about 1,600 men and women in their 20s and in their 60s and older. The majority of the respondents in their 60s and older — 79.6 percent — use flea-market apps “to clear out articles in disuse,” while 71.6 percent of those in their 20s use them “to get money.” Those who answered that they “have more sense of being connected to society by using flea-market apps” was 26.8 percent among those in their 60s and older, nearly three times that of the respondents in their 20s, at 9.9 percent.

The company plans to hold an exchange event for heavy users in their 60s and above in Osaka on Tuesday, followed by an introductory seminar for elderly people in Fukuoka later this month.