EM-TECH Symposium: Day 3

Seminar Date: March 8, 2014

Venue:  Bro. Andrew Gonzales Hall, A903

          The third day of the symposium was divided into two parts, the first part was S15’s Health Innovation and the second part is Business Innovation for S16. For the first half of the day, all of the presenters are in-line with health, and I’ve learned a lot from the speakers as they were directly involved with their topics. Personally, I am not that conscious about what I eat, and with the speakers’ talks, it made me somehow realize that we should all be aware of what we eat or what we put in our bodies. For example, in Dr. Eric Punzalan’s talk, I was able to understand why having X-Ray examinations should only be done if needed. Through his talk I also learned how this technology evolved into a new, less invasive way of examining our internal body using the MRI. I believe that although these technologies are already present, I think it will still undergo some more changes before the community will benefit from them. From the next speaker, which was Dr. Jerome Palaganas, he was able to give a list of new technologies and some of which are relatively new to me. Being IT students, in my opinion, we, together with the health professionals would be able to design and come up with better and safer technologies that would greatly contribute to human health. For example, with Dr. Punzalan’s body scanning technologies and Dr. Palaganas’ smart wearable devices, a new trend that combines all these into a compact, light and mobile device which will help us monitor ourselves and transmit these information to our physicians anytime, anywhere and at any place. 

  For the second part of the seminar, it was the time for the Business Innovations speakers to talk. The first speaker was Mr. Mike Garcia and he talked about Data Warehousing. From his talk I learned that storing data is very important especially for big organizations. And through data warehousing, they are able to store, organize and access data easily thanks to a large database with uniform data. I think IT students should be able to know how Data Warehousing works because this is an increasingly popular trend nowadays most especially for companies who value their services to customers. The next speaker was Ms. Cecile Ang and she presented their product called Sweep, a universal card payment solution. From her talk, I realized that today, technology does not only evolve for convenience, but for security as well. Security has always been one of the main concerns why most people wouldn’t want to try these payment options, and with the technology that Ms. Ang presented, I think they were able to respond to these concerns by including multiple layers of validation. After the Sweeper card, RFID technology was then presented by Mr. Celmer Santos. From his talk, I learned RFID is not only used for identification, but in payment as well. Being a "probinsyano", we usually drive in NLEX in going to and from the province, and I've always been fascinated by how that wireless and cashless payment method works. To summarize, I believe the highlights of the second part of the seminar were "Wireless", "Security", and "Convenience".

          Personally, all of the technologies presented are not new to me, but I got really interested when these technologies have been further developed for better use and application to new things. And as IT students, I believe that we also have the advantage of getting to know these technologies faster than other less-techie individuals, and it is also our job to educate people about these technologies for a smarter, safer, and more convenient way of living.