Etla’s part in the project firstly focuses on the developments in personal data related hype-cycles and innovation in three selected domains that have been identified to have an exceptionally large near-term potential to generate value from data.
Such data-intensive domains include financial services having the largest digital datasets stored per firm, on average.
Health care forms another domain holding massive personal data stores. In health care, image data (e.g. X-ray and CT scans) dominate stored data volume-wise but there is also an increasing trend to develop tracking applications and other technological solutions for individuals to monitor, collect and analyze their own personal health data.
Our third domain of interest concerns personal location data of which amount is increasing rapidly alongside with the diffusion of smartphones. Individual location data has substantial potential to generate value in various sectors, e.g., via location-based advertising and service provision.
Secondly, we explore the underlying dynamics and firm strategies behind the dramatic upsurge in the patenting of technologies related to personal data. Both descriptive analysis and advanced statistical methods are applied for shedding light on these developments in the markets for personal data.
