The brainchild of Azran Osman Rani, ex-CEO of Iflix and AirAsia X, Naluri was borne out of a self-confessed obsession to improve the fitness of Malaysians. Backed by a team of doctors, psychologists, dieticians and fitness coaches, the app seeks to provide holistic solutions for users who are overweight or facing stress, anxiety or depression.
Earlier this year, National Diabetes Institute (Nadi) Executive Chairman, Datuk Dr Mustaffa Embong warned that Malaysia has the greatest prevalence of obesity in Southeast Asia as well as one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Approximately one in three Malaysian adults also suffers from a mental health condition or is at risk of developing a diagnosable mental illness, according to the country’s last National Health and MorbiditySurvey in 2015.This makes holistic and preventative care an important healthcare priority for the country.
Yet making a lasting impact can prove challenging as health risk assessments, reward programs and personal fitness apps “only work for about 20% of the population”, says Osman Rani. “This 20% of the population tend to be the ones who are achievement-oriented and goal focused,’’ he says. ‘’You give them the tools and off they go. But 80% of the population really struggle to make these things stick.’’
In order to make sure its users stay motivated, Naluri uses artificial intelligence to “multiply the productivity of each professional psychologist or dietician by 10 if not 20, 30 times’’.
By analysing patterns of behaviour and performance, the app can almost predict a user’s readiness to change and level of resilience, says Osman Rani. And if a user is likely to disengage, a coach can intervene at the right time and in the right context or tone that works best for that person.
Using technology to heighten the efficacy of Naluri’s healthcare professionals also gets around the severe lack of clinical psychologists in Malaysia. In 2017, there were 2.87 clinical psychologist per million people, a slight increase from 2.82 in 2011. But Naluri’s technological innovations hopes to expand the reach for this small group of psychologists.
Other visual AI functions on the Naluri app is a food journal where users can snap photos of meals and receive nutritional information or healthier substitutions. The local element of Naluri becomes imperative as while there are dozens of existing dieting apps, most would not be able to recognise local dishes be it a mee goreng or a nasi lemak.
You cannot just take the western model of kale, quinoa, chia seeds, Fitbit, yoga, and meditation, says Osman Rani about changing users’ lifestyle and behaviours. It just doesn’t work beyond our little urban enclaves.
While the end goal is the consumer, interestingly Naluri, which means instinct in Bahasa, is mainly a B2B player whereby insurance companies and corporate employers bring in the users. If Naluri is able to produce clinically significant outcomes, such as a 5% weight reduction, the companies will then pay Naluri a success fee of a few hundred dollars.
This pre-emptive approach appeals to employers and insurance companies as the average yearly cost to treat someone with diabetes, or heart disease is far in excess of the success fee. The information that the app is collecting could also prove to be a data treasure trove in terms of addressing chronic health problems.
Osman Rani admits that some psychologists and behavioural scientists have expressed doubts about his app, believing that nothing can replace traditional face-to-face conversations. Yet he counters that Naluri is complementary to traditional therapy methods and is not meant to be a replacement.
“I’m not trying to get everyone healthier,’’ says Osman Rani. ‘’I’m specifically focusing on the mass market who are struggling with making changes even when they know this is good or that is not good for them. Overwhelmed with work, middle-class, white-collar workers who are just really struggling to get by in life.’’
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“Time to shake off the rain,” was the key message in Malaysia Energy Services Council President Sharifah Zaida Nurlisha’s opening speech at the 2018 Malaysia Energy Services Exhibition and Conference (MOGSEC) held in Kuala Lumpur from 25-27 September. These were certainly welcome words to delegates from an industry that has been taking shelter for the past four years. In 2018, oil prices have averaged $72 per barrel, up from $54 per barrel in 2017. On the first day of MOGSEC came the news that that Brent oil had reached $81.16 per barrel, its highest level since November 2014.
Sustainable approaches
“As encouraging as it is, we can still expect volatility to continue, given the prevailing external factors such as trade wars and other geopolitical risks,” warned Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee, president and group chief executive of Petronas. “The business models adopted have to be robust to go through the price cycles which are inherent in our industry,” he said. In addition to price cycles, Wan Zulkiflee pointed to consumer pressure leading to policy shifts such as some Malaysian states banning plastic straws from early 2019.
Petronas announced at the show that it will partner with Time Marine Services to jointly develop a new approach for sludge treatment to recover hydrocarbon onshore. Time Marine Services was pronounced the winner of the third Petronas Technology Challenge, which crowdsources innovative and economic solutions to Energy industry challenges, with a proposal that featured non-toxic and environment-friendly nanotechnology chemicals, capable of liquefying sludge and heavy wax.
Artificial intelligence and IoT
According to GlobalData, Malaysia is leading South-east Asia for the total number of planned and announced Energy projects, yet the continuing industry emphasis on cost management, operational efficiency, and safety was still evident in the MOGSEC exhibition hall. Artificial intelligence, sensors, drones, IoT, and virtual reality headsets were all on display as solutions to maintenance and inventory challenges as well as managing the cost, health and safety, and quality of life for workers based out on remote sites.
On its stand, Siemens was showcasing an AI platform for autonomous equipment health monitoring that provides predictive tools for early warnings along with inventory management in real time. The cloud-based platform links with IoT devices to spot anomalies and recommend corrective action. It enables customers to avoid unplanned downtime and becomes a practical day-to-day tool for assisting asset operations, says Vicknendran Krishna Younee, vice president of digitalisation power services.
Among three solutions being demonstrated on the TM One stand was a digitally-connected smart helmet with audio and video capabilities that can be accessed remotely, detects accidents, and can track, locate, and communicate with individuals. Allowing for collaborative work between on- and off-site teams, the helmets transmit data in real time so that site managers can monitor whether they are actually being worn or carried around in hand. The solution was developed after a series of design thinking sessions with industry partners who cited safety, communication and remote troubleshooting as key concerns said Dr Sharlene Thiagarajah, chief executive officer for TM R&D.
Priorities for MOGSEC in 2018 were ‘catalysing regional growth’ and ‘promoting home-grown solutions’. “It is only when we build and own the technology can we customize it to the local environment,” said Thiagarajah, noting that the team had produced a minimum viable product for the helmet in less than three weeks. The goal now is to expand: “data and digital certainly lowers the barrier of entry, which gives opportunity for us to sell beyond Malaysia,” she said.
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Malaysia’s digital economy has been on a rapid trajectory, both as a growing e-commerce market—Malaysian consumers will spend $1.38bn online in 2018, according to Statistica, a 24% increase over 2017—and as a global hub for digital services thanks to its concentration of data centres. As connectivity becomes ever more integral to Malaysia’s overall economic development, it also increases the nation’s attractiveness for cyber-criminals.
Proliferating digital consumers, devices, and data centres creates “an expanding digital attack surface,” says Alex Loh, Malaysia country manager for networking and security firm Fortinet. “IT resources have been pushed to their limits due to the growing adoption of IoT devices and networks, the geometric growth of traffic driven by applications and big data, the creation of complex and highly elastic multi-cloud environments, and the number of highly mobile users demanding network access from anywhere on any device.”
As a result, the nature of cybersecurity incidents is evolving in the country. Data from Malaysia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT) shows that while overall incidents are down, fraud-related threats (which have averaged more than two-thirds of all recorded cybersecurity events in 2018) and malware infections are on the rise.
Fraud, malware, and crypto-mining
Dato’ Dr. Haji Amirudin Abdul Wahab, CEO of CyberSecurity Malaysia, a government agency created in 2005 as an emergency response centre for tackling the growing challenges of cyber-malfeasance, sees the continued rise in fraud threats as somewhat of a function of Malaysia’s success as a digital economy. “Fraud has always been one of the most reported incidents in Malaysia,” he says, “including phishing, fraud purchase, illegal investment, business email compromise, and impersonation. This is due to more and more users are engaged online, doing various online activities and transactions.”
He notes that fraud is becoming more sophisticated: while targets are still mainly individual consumers, “the trend now is moving to targeting online business,” where gains are higher. Business Email Compromise (BEC), in particular, is increasingly prevalent.
According to Loh, attackers are actively looking for known vulnerabilities, taking advantage of newly announced zero-day threats, and maximising the accessibility of malware for bad intent. Cybercriminals are also adding IoT devices to their arsenal of tools used for mining for cryptocurrency. These devices are an especially attractive target because of their rich source of computational horsepower, which can be used for malicious purposes. Another critical factor is the fact that these devices tend to always be on and connected, enabling attackers to load them with malware that is continually engaged in crypto mining.
While ransomware continues to impact organisations in destructive ways, there are indications that some cybercriminals now prefer hijacking systems and using them for crypto-mining rather than holding them for ransom.
Beefing up defences
Orchestrating a strong and coordinated response has long been part of the government’s strategy for developing a digital economy. According to the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) 2017, Malaysia was ranked third among 193 countries in terms of its commitment to cyber security. Malaysia achieved a score of 0.89, behind Singapore and the United States. State-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions are key for delivering a truly digital nation, notes Dr Amir.
Cybersecurity Malaysia has launched a number of capacity-building efforts both nationally and internationally. These include collaborating with the National Security Council on an annual simulation that tests emergency preparedness of the country’s Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) agencies, launching the Global Accredited Cybersecurity Education (ACE) Scheme as an accreditation programme for IT security professionals, and developing MyCERT as a resource centre with technical and non-technical advice for containing incidents.
As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, the private sector is also active in educating the next generation of cyber-defenders. Loh describes how Fortinet has partnered with the Universiti Teknologi Petronas to develop a network security academy aimed at producing “elite cybersecurity professionals”.
All of these efforts will be vital for keeping pace with the emerging nature of cyber-threats. “Cyber-criminals are also becoming smarter and faster in how they leverage exploits [network vulnerabilities] to their advantage,” he says. “With over 100,000 known exploits, most organisations cannot patch vulnerabilities fast enough to keep up.”
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Over the past year, Malaysia’s logistics sector has been increasingly in the spotlight, driven largely by the fast growth of e-commerce. Through its National E-Commerce Strategic Plan, the Malaysian government has set a goal for e-commerce to be growing at 21% by 2020, up from 10.8% in 2016. Already, e-commerce contributes 6.1% of national GDP. “The evolvement of (the) e-commerce sector will put Malaysia on track as a leading ASEAN logistics hub, which will place it on the global logistics map”, said then-Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai last year.
A key government initiative has been the launch of the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ), backed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, to support the growth of Lazada, its Southeast Asia subsidiary and Malaysia’s largest e-commerce platform. The DFTZ is designed to make cross-region shipments more affordable for Malaysian small to medium enterprises, which make up nine out of ten businesses in the country.
According to Mike Davies, managing director of DHL Supply Chain in Malaysia, e-commerce is “causing a lot of fragmented pieces in the transport industry to consolidate and to come up with more ideas, concepts and solutions for the customer”. This is partly because of the role that logistics plays the customer’s overall e-commerce experience. Usually the delivery driver provides the only human interaction in the customer journey. ‘’I call this the moment of truth,’’ he says of the moment when driver and customer meet face-to-face. ‘’We are not just representing DHL anymore. The importance that we need to place on that delivery is a lot higher than it’s ever been before.’’
Several innovations are being deployed to improve quality and accuracy, one of which is ring scanner technology. Replacing paper picking lists, the ring scanner fits on a finger and is linked to a smartphone, leaving the hands entirely free for moving packages. In addition to lowering the risk of dropped items, it has also led to improved warehouse productivity.
Another new technology is ‘pick to light’, where after scanning the pick list, the item locations light up and display the correct quantity. Warehouse staff can follow the lights and press a button on the shelf to automatically update the warehouse management system that the pick is correct and adjust inventory levels.
Cash-on-delivery (COD) models are another area where DHL is working closely with contract customers. Despite COD accounting for an estimated 80% of ecommerce transactions in Southeast Asia, only 20% of Malaysian e-retailers offer this service, according to the iPrice research report, State of Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2017. “It’s the last mile that’s the challenge,” says Davies, “in particular to get a cash on delivery process up and running that is robust, auditable and compliant in this environment, especially when you go further into tier two or tier three cities. We are currently working with our sister company that has achieved this technology integration to facilitate the COD process.”
Looking beyond e-commerce, Davies sees pharmaceuticals and tech manufacturing as other sectors that are driving growth for the logistics industry. The need for manufacturers to make space in factory environments has created demand for warehousing from companies like DHL. The additional pressure to move towards real-time manufacturing requires the two companies to work ever more closely together. Warehouse systems and data quality take centre stage in this arrangement: “it’s all about being able to do things real time, rather than have to batch process from paperwork into a system,” he says.
One of the challenges is integrating customer data into the controlled environment of DHL. Davies notes that “some of the information flow needs to be faster and more accurate than it has been in the past, and we assist clients in getting to that.”
The company is currently exploring technology areas such as augmented reality, robotics and big data, and takes a long term view on recouping investments. With supply chains becoming ever more vertically integrated, the ability to rapidly adopt new innovation will certainly be key to future competitiveness.
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While MIMOS, Malaysia’s national applied R&D Centre, is building and sustaining the country’s technology industry with the aim of becoming a key player in the emerging global Internet of Things (IoT) economy. “We are in effect a cost centre for Malaysia’s innovation economy,” says Thillai Raj T. Ramananthan, chief technology officer of MIMOS, who is “tasked with creating, developing and commercialising intellectual property.”
Currently, Raj and his 800 colleagues (including some 600 scientists, engineers, and other technical personnel) are focusing on an industry segment that is at a unique cross-section of Malaysia’s economic assets: deploying Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled analytics to develop efficiency and productivity in the country’s agricultural economy.
MIMOS was established in 1985 and currently carries out its remit through two applied research laboratories, one focused on advanced electrical and electronics hardware development, the other on communication technologies. The latter concentrates on areas such as artificial intelligence, software engineering and data analytics. More than 500 intellectual property, which was developed by MIMOS has been commercialised by Malaysian technology companies.
MIMOS supports initiatives across an entire spectrum of technology areas from augmented reality to blockchain, and has had extensive consultations with industry leaders.
One of the national facilities housed within MIMOS is the Big Data Internet of Things (IoT) Technology Accelerator (BITX) Lab. The BITX Lab is an open innovation laboratory that provides end-to-end services and necessary technologies for the development of innovative Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The lab assists technopreneurs in accelerating market entry and maximising business performance through organised programmes in product upscaling, quality enhancement and branding. It offers an open but safe and controlled sandbox environment where innovation and experimentation on cutting-edge Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT)-related technologies can take place without the need for a big investment.
Internet of Things (IoT) is an area where Malaysia has “great ‘leapfrogging’ opportunities,” notes Raj, pointing to the national infrastructure and sectoral expertise that provides a platform for innovation. “We are building an entire ecosystem upon our platform,” he says, “promoting open source development framework, and working with the country’s regulator to allocate wireless spectrum.”
MIMOS is assisting the Malaysian government in implementing a National Internet of Things (IoT) Strategic Roadmap, which seeks to industrialise applications across several vertical industries including manufacturing and healthcare. Some initiatives are linked to sustainability: for example, an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor network developed in collaboration with the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) that monitors acidity levels in the waters in Tasik Chini, a UNESCO-designated biosphere site located in the state of Pahang, which is endangered by nearby mining activities. But it is in agriculture where Raj sees particularly fertile ground for growth.
The strategy for agribusiness-centric Internet of Things (IoT) has a number of drivers. Firstly, farming and aquaculture are well-developed sectors, with the palm oil industry being a particular asset. Malaysia produces more than a third of the world’s palm oil and MIMOS is working with the industry players to use the Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled analytics for sustainable planting. Secondly, there are strong export-oriented adjacent industries such as electronics, manufacturing and logistics that can also be leveraged in the agribusiness value chain. And last but not least are Malaysia’s efforts to maintain food security and boost rural economic activity, where Raj notes that MIMOS is helping small-scale farmers to keep production costs low while increasing yields.
MIMOS is supporting eight or nine Internet of Things (IoT) agribusiness trials around the country. These include Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to monitor temperature, humidity and other growing conditions for Shitake mushroom farmers, and an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled aquaculture management system to optimise fish farming outputs. MIMOS is now expanding these trials into a more holistic digital e-commerce value chain: over 80,000 farmers in Malaysia and across Southeast Asia currently sell their produce through a MIMOS-supported online ‘Agro-Bazaar.’ Raj considers the regional reach to be a cornerstone of success: “we need an Internet of Things (IoT) industry with scale—an ASEAN-wide opportunity is critical for the next phase of Malaysia’s Internet of Things (IoT) industry aspirations.”
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At last week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai – the Asian edition of the world’s largest wireless industry symposium held in Barcelona each February – many of the next-generation concepts that seem to be just around the corner for years were on display. A casual tour of the exhibition halls still reveals scores of VR-helmeted visitors swatting and swiping at the air in front of them.
This image of a community groping towards intangible goals, provides a subtext for much of the communications industry, increasingly anxious that the corner will not be turned anytime soon. Uncertainty around the future of 5G is a root cause of this anxiety, which forks into many branches, ranging from the potential drag that the US-China technology industry trade war will have on the development of the technology’s standards, to the perceived lack of revenue-generating use cases that would justify the substantial investments that 5G will require.
One area however where the future does actually seem to be coming more rapidly into focus is applications and use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT) in Asia’s cities, underscored by continued innovations to produce lower cost, and lower-powered sensors, as well as the increased use of machine learning to optimise sensor networks. All of this has convened to start to create real scale in urban sensing networks, which is an end in itself.
Managing city street lighting more cost-efficiently is one quick win that the industry is turning to, enabled by technology developments such as the ‘ultra-low power’ NB-Internet of Things (IoT) lighting management solutions. Produced by Shanghai-based EigenCOMM Technology, it can increase coverage capabilities and reduce costs by using System on Chip (SoC) configurations and reducing the amount of silicon used. Connecting street lamps also turns lighting grids into platforms for other public security applications; vendors were demonstrating solutions that integrate facial recognition systems and security monitoring within the lighting management configuration.
Even more impactful for Asian urban sustainability efforts is a seeming raft of projects to monitor city air quality with greater granularity. A group from Finland’s University of Helsinki demonstrated its early stages of an intelligent air quality monitoring system, which employs machine learning to calibrate small sensors and create ‘virtual’ sensors to extend their coverage and accuracy. Currently, in active trials in Helsinki, the University team will soon be deploying 30 to 50 sensors in Beijing, in an effort that will ultimately need up to 100,000 such sensors for comprehensive coverage. Other Asian carriers looking to use air quality monitoring efforts as a tool for expanding IoT’s footprint in their smart city ecosystems include Korea Telecom for a project in Seoul.
Elsewhere, there are several efforts to bring location and navigation technology to bear on traffic management, autonomous driving and logistics. Astri, a Hong Kong government-run technology incubator, was showcasing the results of its V2X (vehicle-to-everything) networking architecture trials. Astri has long been active in ‘pre-autonomous’ smart parking navigation application development, and is now experimenting with self-driving cars navigating in Hong Kong, and communicating with various traffic and non-traffic Internet of Things (IoT) systems they encounter.
While promising, Astri’s trials have revealed the limitations of current GPS technology in a dense urban environment – high-powered GPS systems produce jitter and lack of definition in such close quarters. This challenge is one which 5G could be well-suited to solve.
Swedish mobile software firm Combain produces granular indoor maps generated by crowdsourced data from mobile devices and WiFi hotspots; the enthusiasm with which opt-in smartphone-wielding mall shoppers provide helps them comprehensively map out a mall or a hospital, accurate to within a meter, in a matter of hours. Combining user-generated views of urban spaces with GPS data will be a critical step in making Internet of Things (IoT)-based location services more capable and powerful.
Not all Internet of Things (IoT) efforts on display are geared at making Asia’s megacities more liveable. China Telecom has launched Small Vaquero, an Internet of Things (IoT) animal husbandry management solution that allows farms and agribusinesses to monitor individual cattle for location and health data, and analyse aggregate trend data. China Telecom currently claims some 200,000 head of cattle have been fitted with low-costs mobile sensors in Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other western provinces.
While perhaps not the most obvious revenue-generating Internet of Things (IoT) application, Small Vaquero demonstrates the growing will of Asian players to exploit the growing efficiencies of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and network infrastructure to build rich data sets, and set in motion a virtuous cycle for smarter cities.
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