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United Kingdom Future Care (UKFC)

Minor Thesis    Sujith  Kumar  Anand    Candidate  Number:  HHZP5    Student  Number:  14100409  

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United Kingdom Future Care (UKFC)  ..........................................................................................  1  Minor Thesis  ..........................................................................................................................................  1  Introduction  .............................................................................................................................................  3  

Context  ................................................................................................................................................  3  Company  ........................................................................................................................................  3  side  of  the  UKFC  service.  ........................................................................................................  3  Personal  Offering  ........................................................................................................................  3  FDP  Focus  Area  ...........................................................................................................................  4  

Business challenge  ...........................................................................................................................  5  Literature Analysis  ...............................................................................................................................  5  

Micro-level and Macro market assessment  .............................................................................  5  Macro-level Industry assessment  ................................................................................................  8  Threat  of  entry  ............................................................................................................................  8  Buyer  power  .................................................................................................................................  9  Supplier  power  ............................................................................................................................  9  Threat  of  substitutes  .................................................................................................................  9  Competitive  rivalry  ....................................................................................................................  9  

Micro-level industry assessment  .................................................................................................  9  Financial  analysis  ....................................................................................................................  10  

Essay  ......................................................................................................................................................  11  Reference  ..............................................................................................................................................  14  Appendix  ..............................................................................................................................................  15  

Appendix A: Business Model Canvas  ...................................................................................  16  Customer segment  ........................................................................................................................  16  Value proposition  ..........................................................................................................................  16  Customer relationships  ................................................................................................................  16  Channels  ...........................................................................................................................................  16  Key activities  ..................................................................................................................................  17  Key partners  ....................................................................................................................................  17  Key resources:  ................................................................................................................................  17  Cost structure  ..................................................................................................................................  18  

   Table  of  Figures:    Goal  Model……………………………………………………………………………………………………..5  Financial  Statement………………………………………………………………………………………..5  

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Introduction

Context

Company

United Kingdom Future Care (UKFC) is a vision from Microsoft Services [1]. Their

initial approach to the market is from the United Kingdom (UK), by partnering with

Kent County Council (KCC) [2], Centra group [3], and University College London

(UCL) [4]. KCC provides the ecosystem where the users test and evaluate the UKFC

product within a real environment. Central group, one of the UK’s largest providers

for affordable houses, helps in setting the necessary technology, during alpha/beta

testing phase. The students and researchers from UCL are involved in developing the

technical side of the UKFC service.

Personal Offering

Previous Offering

The development of the project started on November 2014, but my involvement with

the project started in January 2015, on a part-time basis, by providing support for the

development team during the early high-fidelity prototype stage as User Experience

(UX) designer. The service as UX designer was to help the development team is

building the right product with the right functionalities and screen layouts. This

development team involves more than 60 students from three different master

programs [5] working together for a course System Integration as part of their course

curriculum, from UCL Computer Science department. However, due to their course

deadline and the multiple hierarchies to solve or change the problems. The

suggestions were restricted towards labels, error messages, and alignments.

Future Offering

This development team involves more than 60 students from three different master

programs [5] working together for a coursework, as part of their course curriculum in

UCL CS department. However, due to their course deadline and the multiple

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hierarchies to solve or change the problems. The suggestions were restricted towards

labels, error messages, and alignments.

FDP Focus Area

Figure 1: Goal Model

The main goal of UKFC product is to facilitate elderly people independent living. The

independent living is achieved by using existing (IoT- Internet of Things) sensing

devices and wearable devices. This puts elderly people in the center of the health

system by serving as a solution and a unified base of private elderly people’s health

data and empowerment (See Figure 1).

The increasing aging population and people with long-term conditions is a major

problem in the current health care strategy. So the project addresses this problem by

collecting the health data from users regularly through integrating sensing devices.

The gathered information from monitoring elderly people is shared between elderly

people and their carers. The service also provides a facility for end users to take

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advantage of a notification mechanism, which will be initiated in an emergency

situation or when a situation is predicted, based on the data collected and its analysis.

Due to the non-disclosure agreement and the strict confidently from the Microsoft

services, the previous stage of this project is unknown. However, the current work

involves user testing the developed prototype with the end users. This process would

be performed in a user-centered iterative process, which is explained in the essay

section of this report. Later on, the future work will involve in alpha/beta testing at

Kent County Council.

Business challenge Due to the late involvement into the project, it was difficult to identify whether the

idea is feasible or not. Additionally, the project owners forced to think, the suitable

users for UKFC are elderly people and people with long-term conditions. This

eventually stopped from identifying other customer segments, explained in Business

Model Canvas (See Appendix A). So this report would criticize and look at the

business idea impartially and identify if it’s worth the investment of money and time.

So a feasibility analysis (Innovation Frame Process) best suits this circumstance to

determine, when the idea would break-even and generate profit. During the feasibility

study, analysis of the business idea, market, and technical, competitive and financial

would be performed to determine the strength of the business idea. This would be

achieved by performing Mullin’s customer-driven feasibility study to understand the

external and internal environment[1].

Literature Analysis

This section will address the Mullins' customer-driven feasibility study to test the

UKFC product [5]. Since the idea is still at the first version of prototyping stage and

the involvement of many member teams some section in the model will be neglected.

Micro-level and Macro market assessment  

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People aged 60 and above, who is depending the state pension or retired will be

considered as elderly people [6]. In 2015, 14.7 million people are aged sixty years and

above in the UK [7]. This trend is expected to increase over 20 million by 2030 [8]

[9].

Many elder people aspiration is to maintain their quality of life and to live

independently in their own homes. Successful aging and particularly whilst struggling

with one or multiple long term problems, requires them to perform independent

activities of daily living (IADL), IADL are critical for maintaining independence such

as walking, meal preparation, managing medication, and using the telephone.

However, older adults may not pay close attention to how well they perform these

tasks and the subtle errors that may signal a pattern of decline of health.

People with long-term conditions account for more than 70% of inpatient beds and

half of all General Practitioners (GP) appointments in England[2]. The National

Health Service (NHS) is the healthcare provider for all the citizens of UK. The NHS

budget allocation for the financial year is more than £100 billion[3]. NHS is forced to

spend £4 million a week on elderly patients at hospitals, who are capable of going

home. This problem is caused because the elderly people the local authority doesn’t

provide the necessary help for them, when they return to their houses[4]. A report

from BBC, suggests if the care services is organized better. There is a chance to “free

up 7,000 beds – 6% of the total – saving the NHS nearly £500m a year”[5].

With the aforesaid problems raised by elderly people, NHS is tremendously planning

to reduce 3.5% of the unnecessary hospital visits, which has been increased by 47%

during the last 15 years. But the current coalition government in thinks, with this

approach £1 billion could be saved for NHS[6].

Also, the current health care system needs to follow the tailored approach for treating

elderly people. In the current system, elderly people are having no knowledge of their

health condition unless the information is provided a doctor, nurse or a health

institute. To obtain this report, it takes ample amount of time and to follow a set of

procedures. With this approach, there are chances of under, over and miss:

treatment[7]. These increasing problems suggest there is a need for a paradigm shift

in health sector towards individual and self-care, prevention and user empowerment.

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Ubiquitous sensors or Internet of Things (IOT) in the home setting can provide a

solution to the above said problems. The current generation is moving towards smart

concepts. It is already provided sufficient advances in the field of smart cities, smart

companies, and smart transportation. During the recent years, integration of sensors in

the field of ambient assistive living[8] with the use of Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) has also seen developments. In 2015, 50 billion

devices (IoT) is expected to be interconnected in this ecosystem[9].

Sensor networks started their journey from hospitals, assisted living homes, and now

it’s moving to elderly people homes in the recent years. These sensors have the

capacity to monitor ton of things from motion, when and what a person does, collect

daily habits and their current conditions. Some international bodies like Oregon

Center for Aging & Technology, AARP have already accepted the fact, elderly people

monitored all the time with the help of sensors[10].

The UKFC product is not created for elderly people alone. It’s a product that can be

used by the people who are in need of continuously monitoring their health data.

Some of the UKFC product uniqueness is:

- Integration of low cost sensors.

- Collecting and predicting health data for users.

- Providing measures for past and future health data and to suggest measures in

preventing future health conditions.

- Aggregation all the data by combining with the existing third party sensing

devices.

- Providing support for third party subscribers like research institutions and

governments to access the data for research purpose.

In 2013, the international market for IoT was estimated around $1.9 trillion and

expecting a 17.5% growth rate between, 2013 to 2020, and a estimated growth of

more than $5 trillion during these period[11].

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The AAP joint programme (AALJP) is a EU funding body aimed at improving the

elderly people quality of life and to support independent living. This body funds start

ups, medium companies, and research and user organization. At present, they have

financed more than 150 projects across Europe[12].

Due to the increasing elderly people population, the assisted living market acts a

niche market with a significant potential for growth. The combined estimated market

size for assisted living and the smart homes in Europe is valued at €152.2 million[13].

The UKFC utilizes the advantage of combining the sensors to gather health

information from elderly people. The sensor devices are connected in the home and

the data from the devices are collected and followed through a software, which

processes the information collected and provides the services of detection, prevention

and aggregation of data collected. More information about the System Architecture is

explained in the Appendix.

Macro-level Industry assessment

Threat of entry

The barrier to entry includes

Government regulations: Health Care is very critical as it involves the life of a person.

Therefore it takes high level of testing and research to introduce any health care

product and service[14][15].

Trust and Safety: The question of safety and trustworthiness of the service rises, since

elderly people haven’t had much interaction with technology.

Negative social attitude: People are not usually comfortable in showing their health

issues. This would be same with elderly people. So monitoring their data by a third

person might make them uncomfortable and irritated.

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Buyer power

With $343.82 billion market cap, Microsoft will not have a problem[16]. But, still it

needs to buy the third party sensors well ahead and conduct the process of integration

and testing. So they can are capable of setting their own terms and conditions.

Supplier power

With more than 1000 thousand companies in the world and the emerging sensing

market in china[17], the sensor industry is capable of matching the buying power of

Microsoft. Due to this competitive supplier market, they can’t put any pressure on

Microsoft over prices.

Threat of substitutes

The concept of collecting data from sensors is not new but the prediction of data from

the aggregated data, using large third party sensing devices is somewhat innovative in

this field. So this might result in potential to apply for IP protection, which reduces

the treat of substitutes. However, this doesn’t mean other big giants like Apple,

Google will not approach this idea.

Competitive rivalry

As mentioned above, other big giants can approach this idea, if Microsoft seems to

make profit or show the growth or break-even with investment very early than

prediction.

Micro-level industry assessment

The first version of UKFC product can be currently accessed from website and tablet

version but subject to copyright protection, which is owned by the Microsoft. The

technology is currently in its prototyping stage and needs extensive user testing before

the next phase towards market launch.

Currently, there is huge competition in the field wearable fitness tracker. The

companies competing are Fitbit, Nike, WithHings, Jawbone, Misfit, Sony[18]. These

companies can be considered as early competitors. Since they are already very well

established in the sensing environment. The economic viability of the UKFC is

explained below:

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Financial analysis

This report was created for a coursework in the course MSIN7008 Entrepreneurship

Theory and Practice.

Figure 2: Financial statement

In 2014/15, NHS planned a net expenditure of £112bn, out of which 3.1% would be

financed for elderly care. So a small fraction of their annual expenditure could be paid

for UKFC[19].

Route for market launch and financial forecast:

The primary market place for UKFC will be Untied Kingdom and the product will be

tested Kent County Council. Wherein, the next five financial year forecasts is pointed

out below:

Year 1 (Development and testing iterations)

Financial year 1 would be mostly towards developing the product and iterating until

the beta version is launched. The development of the product is done at UCL with an

estimated expense of £50,000. Due to its partnership with Kent County Council, the

user testing will be performed by 20-30 customers, which comprises both elderly

people and their carers, and initial implementation phase will kick start at Kent by the

end of 2015, with an estimated expense of £35,000 which includes deployment,

testing and other miscellaneous cost. Additionally, the manufacturing and

infrastructure cost would be approximately £30,000.

Year 2 (Beta production and test)

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Financial year 2 would be critical in testing the beta version, before it goes for a

regulatory pass from the government authority. This evaluation would also be carried

out in Kent due to its easy access and partnership. We expect the test would be at least

with 200-300 customers that would comprise of carers, general practitioners and

elderly people. This would give us a much better estimation of the service. This

would further bring the expenses of £30,000 in development, £17,000 in deployment,

and £130,000 in testing, manufacturing and other miscellaneous cost.

Year 3 (Government regulations and launch)

The financial year 3 will be concentrated on passing the government regulations. This

year will also lead into further evaluation with 1000-1500 customers. Based on the

regulations board the cost of regulation is a fixed cost of £100,000[20].

Year 4 (Covering Kent)

In financial year 4, we expect to the plan for expansion to other cities from Kent. This

would result in additional cost towards marketing and advertising. Besides, a more

dedicated team of people to cover the deployment, maintenance, customer service and

infrastructure cost.

Year 5 and Year 6 (Expansion Nationwide)

Until 2020, UKFC will be expanded to all over the UK even though the technology

adoption rate, would take some time. But in the next 5-10 years the business would

break-even for a positive cash flow. And the customer would be both the private and

the government, while government giving the authority of the councils to accept the

service and product to distribute it to their elderly people community members.

Essay

The UK government is investing lot of money in health care for the ageing

population, which is being increased every year. It is projected, by 2050, UK alone

will have 19 million elderly people with public health expenditure expected to be

9.6% GDP. The UKFC has a tremendous potential for growth in UK. As pointed in

literature analysis, NHS is looking for various ways of reducing the unnecessary GP

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and hospital appointments made by elderly people. This solution provided by

Microsoft not only solves the problem of NHS but also provide elderly people the

control of looking their future health condition based on their current and previously

collected health data. This will be a long-awaited solution for carers and family

members who are worried about their elderly. However, this solution may not be

scalable to other countries because, not all countries have a centralized health

provider like NHS, who pays for individual health care.

The project owners are strong-minded in believing, elderly people as the immediate

customer segment for the UKFC product. But micro-level market assessment has

showed there is a potential to grow the customer base apart from elderly people to

people who are looking for long-term health monitoring.

The customer need is widely being served by traditional care homes, wearable like

Fitbit, Jawbone and technology giants like Apple, Samsung, and Philips. Currently,

the biggest share of the elderly care market is owned by professional care homes.

Attempts are also made by a Government health care organization such as the NHS in

the form of telecare and telehealth services. However, the market is still fragmented

and mostly focused on healthy adults.

Although, technology giants like Apple, Samsung and Philips are attempting to serve

this sensing market. Microsoft will have a competitive advantage by targeting the

elderly people and allowing the integration and aggregation of third-party sensors.

The most valuable credentials created by Microsoft is its trustworthiness, connections

and their ability of buying power and the strength of creating own terms with

suppliers, for large scale, along with their capability to reach the majority of the

customers all over the world.

From the micro and macro analysis, both market and the industry are favoring the

UKFC product prediction with a positive growth for next 10 years and potential to

break-even within three years of the product launch. Microsoft can take the advantage

of first-to-entry create a presence difficult for competitors to adopt. Also, Intellectual

Property for the UKFC can also add more value and restrict too many competitors.

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The second team of developers will be introduced to UKFC project in this year

autumn, to build further more from the current prototyping stage towards the

alpha/beta testing phase.

Some of the traps which Microsoft needs to avoid

Trap 1: Large market fallacy: Since elderly people population are growing in every

country and with this created a huge market. There are chances of competitors within

a short period.

Trap 2: the better mousetrap fallacy: other competitors can copy the innovation of

UKFC if an IP (Patent) is not obtained at the right time. Also, there are high chances

the solution might not be user-centric because the target customers were not consulted

during the first version of the prototyping stage.

Trap 3: no sustainable business model trap.

From the created business model for UKFC, the proposed solution of the revenue

stream is business-to-business (B2B) but this will not the situation outside UK. So an

alternative approach for business-to-customer (B2C) need to consider if it’s scaled

outside UK.

The internship and the future work from the master thesis point of view is to be

discussed and finalized on 22nd April 15. However, the user evaluation of the UKFC

will be performed in a three-stage iterative process. During the iteration one, a semi-

structure interview will be performed to understand the elderly people perception of

technology and its uses. Due to ethical issues, an evaluation will be only performed

with active elderly people only. Later, personas and storyboard will be created in the

iteration two to better understand the interviewed elderly people. In iteration three,

UKFC product will be set-up in the elderly people for the certain period of time and a

contextual Inquiry will be performed. During the contextual inquiry, users will be

observed while they interact with the UKFC product and a structured interview will

be performed to finish the session.

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Reference

[1] J. Mullins, The new business road test: What entrepreneurs and executives should do before writing a business plan, 2 edition. Harlow, England  ; New York: FT Press, 2008.

[2] J. Appleby, “Spending on health and social care over the next 50 years Why think long term?” The King’s Fund, 2013.

[3] “NHS England  » Planning 2014/15.” [Online]. Available: http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/forward-view/sop/. [Accessed: 12-Apr-2015].

[4] “NHS spends £4m a week on elderly who block beds with managers blaming cuts for problems getting worse,” Mail Online. [Online]. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2207546/NHS-spends-4m-week-elderly-block-beds-managers-blaming-cuts-problems-getting-worse.html. [Accessed: 12-Apr-2015].

[5] N. H. S. Choices, “Improved care for elderly could ‘free up 7,000 hospital beds’ - Health News - NHS Choices,” 08-Oct-2012. [Online]. Available: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/08august/Pages/Improved-care-for-elderly-could-free-up-7,000-hospital-beds.aspx. [Accessed: 12-Apr-2015].

[6] R. Syal, “Plan to reduce unnecessary hospital visits overoptimistic, say auditors,” the Guardian. [Online]. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/11/better-care-fund-overoptimistic-auditors. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[7] M. E. Tinetti and T. Fried, “The end of the disease era,” Am. J. Med., vol. 116, no. 3, pp. 179–185, Feb. 2004.

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[9] L. Atzori, A. Iera, and G. Morabito, “The Internet of Things: A Survey,” Comput Netw, vol. 54, no. 15, pp. 2787–2805, Oct. 2010.

[10] “Sensors monitor older people at home.” [Online]. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/19/sensors.aging/. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[11] {#pmad-Byline-Frame{width:620px  !important; Height:120px !important;}}, “The ‘Internet of Things’ Will Be The World’s Most Massive Device Market And Save Companies Billions Of Dollars,” Business Insider. [Online]. Available: http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-the-internet-of-things-market-will-grow-2014-10. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[12] “AMBIENT ASSISTED LIVING JOINT PROGRAMME | ICT for ageing well.” .

[13] “MarketsandMarkets: European Smart Homes and Assisted Living - Advanced Technologies and Global Market Worth €152.2 million ($195.9 million).” [Online]. Available:

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http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/european-smart-homes-assisted-living.asp. [Accessed: 12-Apr-2015].

[14] “Complying with Monitor’s integrated care requirements - GOV.UK.” [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/integrated-care-how-to-comply-with-monitors-requirements/complying-with-monitors-integrated-care-requirements. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[15] E. Admin, “Guidance for Service Providers,” 01-Mar-2011. [Online]. Available: http://www.rqia.org.uk/what_we_do/registration__inspection_and_reviews/service_provider_guidance.cfm. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[16] “Microsoft on the Forbes America’s Best Employers List,” Forbes. [Online]. Available: http://www.forbes.com/companies/microsoft/. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[17] “The Chinese sensor industry: poised to become world leader?: Sensor Review: Vol 30, No 1.” [Online]. Available: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/02602281011010556. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[18] “Battle of the bands: Fitbit Flex, Nike+ FuelBand SE, Jawbone Up and more,” Pocket-lint. [Online]. Available: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/130033-battle-of-the-bands-fitbit-flex-nike-plus-fuelband-se-jawbone-up-and-more. [Accessed: 13-Apr-2015].

[19] “Key statistics on the NHS - NHS Confederation.” [Online]. Available: http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[20] “Annual Report 2013 | The Intellectual Property Regulation Board.” [Online]. Available: http://ipreg.org.uk/public/about-us/annual-report/annual-report-2013/. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[21] “37 MSc and MEng students deploy Big Data Infrastructure project for the UK Housing Associations with Microsoft UK.” [Online]. Available: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/computer_science_news/article/37-msc-and-meng-students-deploy-big-data-infrastructure-project-for-the-uk-housing-associations-with/. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[22] “Home - kent.gov.uk.” [Online]. Available: http://www.kent.gov.uk/. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[23] “Centra is the non-profit company and part of the Circle Housing Group | Circle Centra.” [Online]. Available: http://www.centragroup.org.uk/. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[24] “Carer’s Allowance - GOV.UK.” [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.uk/carers-allowance/overview. [Accessed: 02-Apr-2015].

[25] R. M. Grant, Contemporary Strategy Analysis and Cases: Text and Cases. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

[26] Business Model Generation. .

Appendix  

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Appendix A: Business Model Canvas

Customer segment The three main customer segments are the elderly people, carers and government.

Although the end-user of the product is elderly people, both elderly people and carer

can use the service with government being the primary customer of the service. The

government can support for purchasing the service and product for elderly people and

the carers. The service of UKFC provides elderly people, the power of knowing

what's going on with their health and carers with an overview of the data and any

abnormalities that can be addressed during an emergency.

Value proposition UKFC’s main value proposition is to improve the wellbeing of elderly people whilst

lowering the cost and allowing them to stay independent. However, with the primary

benefits, there are a lot of other benefits for family carers who manage various other

household things and sometimes, a full-time job. UKFC can provide an easy

monitoring tool by giving them valuable insights in the case of an emergency, saving

both time and money. Similarly, elderly people can monitor their health by

themselves without being burdened with others to get regular updates on their health

conditions, which in-turn provides strength for staying independent.

Customer relationships UKFC is a product for medical significance to elderly people. Therefore, round the

clock personal assistance is required, where customer can directly interact with an

UKFC representative to have a seamless experience and avoid any uncertain

circumstances that might hamper their health. Elderly people have strong bonding

with other elderly people in their communities, as they have a lot of free time. Thus,

such communities will be used to receive feedback, exchange knowledge and solve

issues. This will be both online and offline. UKFC also has potential to collect a large

amount of health data, on how people interact with the product to improve its

customer experience.

Channels UKFC is using sensors to monitor the elderly people interactions and movement and

delivering the aggregated data through the Website (for desktop) and Windows app

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(for Windows tablet), this is done keeping in mind the screen size, easy accessibility

and the penetration rate. On the other hand, UKFC also plans to have an active social

network presence not only for marketing and advertising, but also for sharing

information with friends and family within their social circles.

Key activities UKFC’s main goal is to provide well being, independent living and reduce the

healthcare cost to its end users which can be achieved by implementation of these key

activities. Firstly, utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and wearable to help

with monitoring, detection and prediction of health conditions by elderly people and

their caretakers. Secondly, an extensive user evaluation needs to be done by users to

make the system more robust. Finally, before launching it to the market government’s

standard regulations needs to be passed.

Key partners At present, UKFC have strategic alliances with University College London

(UCL)[21], Kent County Council[22] and Centra[23]. In future, a partnership with

government is needed, as the government supports elderly people with compensation

and allowances[24]. Computer students and researchers from University College

London (UCL) carried out the initial stage of prototype development. Kent County

Council (KCC) is involved in providing an environment where the testing and

evaluation can be performed with the actual customer segments. Centra is one of the

UK’s largest providers of affordable houses[23] and they would provide support in

setting up sensing technology during the testing phase.

Key resources: In any business or a startup, it is a necessity to have the resources to create and deliver

value[25] Key resources can be tangible or intangible, financial, physical or

intellectual[26].

Human resources: As the business, depends upon sensors, software and elderly

people. The need of software engineers, user researchers and user experience

specialist are some of the essential requirements to support the business grow

efficiently.

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Physical resources: These resources are very important and cost-intensive. They are

the backbone of UKFC. They include sensing technologies such as sensors and

wearable, IT infrastructure, logistics etc.

Financial resources: As a resource intensive and critical healthcare service, the

product needs huge funding for developing and testing with multiple iterations during

its early phases.

Intellectual resources: Intellectual such as the UKFC brand, copyrights and trade

secrets are important to provide intangible value such as trust and security.

Cost structure UKFC’s initial cost would be towards developing a very scalable and robust

infrastructure. This would also include developing cost in terms of salary for their

employees. Also during the initial phase, there is a need of heavy testing, evaluation

and setup cost, as they need to deploy the technology in various scenarios and

contexts.

 

Figure 6: Business Model Canvas