I recently read Robin Cook’s novel, Cell, in which the smart phone becomes the primary care physician – via an app endowed with artificial intelligence and supported by cloud computing and big data. I found this book a fascinating read. And at the end of this book, in an author’s note, Dr. Cook references as influential to his thinking another book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine, by Eric Topol, MD, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, CA. Together, these books illustrate the coming wave of changes in healthcare that are enabled by a new convergence of medicine, communications and information technology
– and the need to integrate human supervision at critical points so that machine-to-machine communication does not become a closed loop.
The connected home may be the most familiar market based on M2M (although some may argue with the M2M label here, since human control and monitoring is the main point of the application). Most telecom and cable TV service providers are offering some combination of home monitoring, energy management and security services at price points from $10 a month for a self-monitored system to $40 or more for a professionally monitored home security system. But price is an issue – the low-cost ($10 per month) offerings typically are self-installed, and the ability to enable the full universe of connected home features in a homeowner-installed system with reliable results has been difficult (Verizon announced in February 2014 that they are no longer taking orders for their Home Monitoring and Control service, and are “re-evaluating” their approach to this market). In the meantime retail outlets currently offer basic self-installed systems.
In addition to healthcare and connected home, M2M is a core technology in other industries such as vehicle telematics (fleet management and personal vehicles), manufacturing, logistics, and energy production. Telecom service providers, who earn revenue when their networks are used to transmit machine data, are theoretically agnostic to vertical markets, but from a marketing point of view, they must focus on those verticals that offer the most promise. For example, both AT&T and Verizon have business units that serve as systems integrators for e-health and telemedicine, and both have connected car offerings.
Ultimately, it is most informative to discuss M2M in terms of the vertical market in which the technology is deployed, because the integration of multiple devices, systems and processes into an ecosystem that meets the needs of a specific vertical industry segment typically involves unique requirements and standards.
Will there be an overall, universal standard for M2M communications? In a press release dated July 2012, seven ICT standards development organizations announced the formation of the oneM2M organization, dedicated to specifications development that will create a worldwide standard for an M2M service layer. In this view, applications would ride on a higher application layer, governed by the standards of the vertical market. This is probably about as universal as “standards” will get in the M2M space.
There are many industry-specific organizations that develop standards. Examples include the Continua Health Alliance, dedicated to joining healthcare and technology, and HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which controls privacy in healthcare information exchange. In the connected car space, the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) has taken a leadership role in Europe. And in the U.S., the DOT is looking at standards for vehicle-to-vehicle communications for accident avoidance, using a wireless technology called DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communications), operating at a frequency separate from current 3G and 4G frequencies.
Also called the Internet of Things (IoT), M2M is growing rapidly. Estimates vary widely, but GSMA predicts 250 million M2M connections in 2014; the annual growth rate was almost 40% between 2010 and 2013. And as illustrated in the healthcare case, M2M technology can foster the convergence of ideas among previously separate disciplines – both in and outside of telecom – that will lead to revolutionary new applications. Disruptive? Yes, and it’s great to be in the middle of it.