Digital Transformation of the Working World

What does digital transformation mean? The terms digitization, digitalization and digital transformation can often be confused due to their similar appearance. Digitization means the transformation of analogue information into digital form. For example, you scan a sheet of paper with information on it, and save this scan on your computer as a PDF. Digitalization now combines this converting of information with the aim of improving operating procedures. In our example, you would upload the scan to a cloud to which your whole team or institution can access. This simplifies work and communication and, thus, improves the business- or the work-flow of the company, institution or lab you work in. Digitalization is happening in most industries. As an example, the advertising industry digitalizes most advertisements by posting them on social media or sending e-mails in order to reach etw. erreichen their audience more quickly and to be able to check on whether the ad has been seen and how long it has been looked at. These changes in business and the health care system can be described as a digital transformation. The whole process of our society adapting a more digital way of working and communicating can also be referred to as a digital transformation.

In this article I will concentrate on the digital transformation taking place in the working world, especially in the health care sector and on the effects upon it.

Technology as an opportunity: What digital potential do we have? Europe is using just 12 percent of its digital potential, says the “McKinsey Digitization Index”, the US is operating at 18 percent and Germany at 10 percent. The term “digital potential” with its positive connotation , suggests there is a great opportunity offered when using technology and digitalizing industries. However , a lot of people consider technology a threat to their traditional ways of life and feel discouraged by the possible loss of jobs. However, a broad understanding of technology and its functions can provide an opportunity to gain confidence when dealing with machines or computers. The fear of being overwhelmed and overtaken by technology is only overcome by learning about digitalization and then using machines without being led by them. The reason why digitalization is often seen as something genuinely bad originates from a lack of knowledge and an over generalization of digital transformation as being completely new and unfamiliar. This is why many people suggest the positive aspects of training young people in how to digitize, which offered them a broad future perspective. This would apply as well for current workers who should have the opportunity of visiting seminars and re-training in order to gain awareness of what digital transformation taking place actually means.

Fully utilizing our digital potential would forward economic growth. So, why is there such little usage of the digital potential? We can see differences in the utilization of the digital potential across industries. Some are leading, like the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, followed by media and finance and some are lagging, including most traditional sectors. The low figure of 12 percent that Europe is operating at is also due to variation among its countries. How much a country supports digitalization hugely effects how far its industries are along the process of digital transformation.

What about the health care sector and digitalization? Six years ago, a study from the University of Oxford predicted that about 47 percent of all jobs were endangered by digitalization. Since it would extend the length of this article to take every industrial sector into account , we are going to focus on the healthcare sector when talking about impacts on working life.

One can say that the key in the healthcare sector nowadays lies in knowing how to quickly access the relevant information. In medical technology data and connectivity play a big role and add techniques like bioprinting into the work of medical employees. The knowledge of how to work with new technologies has become crucial . This means that digital transformation is responsible for creating various necessary skills and also offers new job perspectives. On the one hand, there are jobs that require a vast knowledge of technology and highly skilled workers, creating new technology, teaching how to deal with it and analyzing the newly accessible data. On the other hand, skills that involve manual experimentation to gather the information may largely not be needed anymore. Thus , there is space for low skilled workers who do simpler work than before, because the new technology took their “old” skills and they are not trained to do the high skilled work that requires at lot of knowledge.

Therefore, we surely will observe a decrease in the demand for several traditional jobs and an increase in the demand for workers in newly established jobs which leads to a polarization of the working world. The gap between highly skilled and low skilled workers will make it harder for medium-qualified workers to find jobs since their knowledge is easily replaced by technology but at the same time they are overqualified for those jobs that only require a low skill level.

EXERCISE: 1. What is digitization? a. scanning to a cloud b. the transformation of analogue information into digital form c. combining computers with each other 2. How much does Europe use of its digital potential? a. 12 % b. 50 % c. 30 % You’ll find the answer on: http://tinyurl.com/weiterbildung-englisch

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. http://dict.leo.org. 2. www.dict.cc. 3. https://hpi.de. 4. www.mckinsey.com. 5. www.isst.fraunhofer.de. 6. www.webster-dictionary.org.

CARMEN LOBITZ Carmen Lobitz ist freie Trainerin, Lehrerin und MTA. Sie gründete 1998 in Berlin lobitz seminare, die unter anderem Englischseminare für Health Professionals anbieten. Kontakt: mail@lobitz-seminare.de www.lobitz-seminare.de

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Lösung für Exercise: Answer: 1. b Answer: 2. a

Digital Transformation of the Working World

What does digital transformation mean?

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Digital Transformation of the Working World

What does digital transformation mean?

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