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When you hear quantum computing, what do you think of? Mathematical equations swirling around you? Einstein standing at a blackboard? A computer running extensive code? Quantum computing may initially sound confusing, but it is currently a big factor in where banks are moving. According to IBM , quantum computers provide the potential for quite a few developments in the fields of science and finance. From medications to machine learning diagnosis to financial strategies for retirement, these are just some of the ways quantum computing has real-life impacts. It can also drastically impact banking as we know it. Here is what you should know.

Quantum computing 101

Quantum computing as its name would suggest is computing based on the principles of quantum theory. A classic computer encodes information in the binary value of 1 or 0, which ultimately restricts their ability. Conversely, quantum computing differs by manipulating its information utilizing quantum mechanical phenomena also known as 'qubits. The difference is that subatomic participles allow them to exist in more than one state simultaneously, which means that you can have both a 1 and a 0. The topic largely relies on the ideas of superposition and entanglement which are not used in typical computing. By bring quantum physics into computing, you create new avenues and developments.

How does quantum computing serve banks?

Security is one of the most significant problems that banks are faced with. As such, they are constantly reviewing their current systems and seeking new technology that could add to their defenses. Quantum computing is one of those technologies that could change the ways that banks protect themselves.

According to Deltec Bank, Bahamas - 'Quantum computing could help build systems that protect vital customer information and transaction details and safeguard against market vulnerability and financial crashes. That said, the technology is not being used to its fullest potential yet. It might take some time before quantum computers have the ability to overtake traditional computers, but when they do, it will be a swift switch because it is a better option overall.

It is becoming known as the 'quantum advantage to use quantum computing to run everyday banking tasks rather than a traditional computer. It is more efficient and more secure, which has both customers and banks on board.

Are there any other impacts?

The impact of quantum computing on banking is enormous. Big names in banking like JP Morgan and Barclays are preparing to make the switch. IBM has released a full report detailing the potential uses and applications of quantum computing in the financial sector. Yet, even beyond that, there is a prediction that quantum computing may be competition for another well-known method of data protection that is on the rise. Some believe that quantum encryption could actually eclipse blockchain, which is key to the use of cryptocurrencies as it stores information about monetary transactions. Quantum encryption enables banks to send highly secure data over its quantum network.

Final thoughts

'The greatest benefit of quantum computing is that it provides banks a highly secure way to solve problems that were at one point very resource-intensive or entirely impossible to complete, says Deltec Bank, Bahamas That said, will quantum computing change the face of banking as we know it tomorrow? Probably not.

The technology exists and is being tested to see how it can be practically implemented. Banks must calculate financial models due to complex hardware requirements and that takes time. The most important takeaway is that the technology exists and it is something that banks are both aware of and working towards. When a new system is capable of running the same calculations in a matter of seconds and provides the high level of security necessary for financial transactions, it is only a matter of time before it begins to see massive implementation.

Disclaimer: The author of this text, Robin Trehan, has an Undergraduate degree in economics, Masters in international business and finance and MBA in electronic business. Trehan is Senior VP at Deltec International http://www.deltecbank.com . The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this text are solely the views of the author, and not necessarily reflecting the views of Deltec International Group, its subsidiaries and/or employees.

About Deltec Bank

Headquartered in The Bahamas, Deltec is an independent financial services group that delivers bespoke solutions to meet clients' unique needs. The Deltec group of companies includes Deltec Bank & Trust Limited, Deltec Fund Services Limited, and Deltec Investment Advisers Limited, Deltec Securities Ltd. and Long Cay Captive Management.

Media Contact Company Name: Deltec International Group Contact Person: Media Manager Email: Send Email Phone: 242 302 4100 Country: Bahamas Website: https://www.deltecbank.com/

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Quantum Computing Will Have a Huge Impact on Banking, says Deltec Bank Bahamas - MENAFN.COM

The past decade was about the rise of digital health technology and patient empowerment. The next decade will be about artificial intelligence, the use of health sensors and the so-called Internet of Healthy Things and how it could improve millions of lives.

The cultural transformation of health care we call digital health has been changing the hierarchy in care into an equal-level partnership between patients and physicians as 21st century technologies have started breaking down the ivory tower of medicine. But these milestones are nothing compared with what is about to become reality.

With advancements in exoskeleton technology, AIs ever-increasing importance in health care, and technologies like 5G and quantum computing soon going mainstream, theres much to be excited about.

Here are the five biggest themes for health and medicine for the next 10 years.

Artificial intelligence in medicine

Developments in artificial intelligence will dominate the next decade. Machine learning is a method for creating artificial narrow intelligence narrow refers to doing one task extremely well and a field of computer science that enables computers to learn without being explicitly programmed, building on top of computational statistics and data mining. The field has different types: it could be supervised, unsupervised, semi-supervised or reinforcement learning, among others. It has an unprecedented potential to transform health-care processes and medical tasks in the future and it has already started its invisible revolution.

If we consider how AlphaGo, the AI developed by Googles DeepMind lab, beat world champion Lee Sedol at the classic Chinese game Go by coming up with inventive moves that took experts by surprise, we can get a glimpse at what AI can hold for health care. Such moves were made possible by the combination of neural networks and reinforcement learning that this AI uses. This enabled the software to operate without the restrictions of human cognitive limitations, devise its own strategy and output decisions that baffled experts.

We can expect to see the same surprises in medical settings. Imagine new drugs designed by such algorithms; high-level analysis of tens of millions of studies for a diagnosis; or drug combinations nobody has thought of before. When applied to medicine, an algorithm trained via reinforcement learning could discover treatments and cures for conditions when human medical professionals could not. Cracking the reasoning behind such unconventional and novel approaches will herald the true era of art in medicine.

In global health, for example, an algorithm can provide a reliable map of future measles outbreak hot spots. It uses statistics on measles vaccination rates and disease outbreaks from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as non-traditional health data, including social media and a huge range of medical records. Thats just one example, but the field is already buzzing with smart algorithms that can facilitate the search for new drug targets; improve the speed of clinical trials or spot tumors on computed tomography (CT) scans.

However, while experts believe that AI will not replace medical professionals, it also seems true that medical professionals who use AI will replace those who dont.

A myriad of health sensors

Medical technology went through an amazing development in the 2010s, and theres now no single square centimeter of the human body without quantifiable data. For example, AliveCors Kardia and Apple Watch measure electrocardiogram and detect atrial fibrillation with high sensitivity. The EKO Core digital stethoscope records heart and lung sounds as a digital stethoscope, while blood pressure is monitored with the Omron Blood Pressure Smartwatch, the MOCAcare pocket sensor, and blood pressure cuff, the iHealth Clear, the Skeeper, a pocket cardiologist, or the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor, and of course, dozens of traditional blood pressure cuffs.

There are dozens of health trackers for respiration, sleep, and, of course, movement. And while researchers cant decipher your dreams yet they are working on it, alongside figuring out all kinds of brain activity. For example, through EEG. Thats a method that records electrical activity in the brain using electrodes attached externally to the scalp. The NeuroSky biosensor and the Muse headband use it to understand the mind better and in the latter case allow for more effective meditation. As you see, theres not much left unmeasured in your body and it will even intensify in the future. For example, we expect digital tattoos to become commercially available within five years, which will not only measure the majority of the above-mentioned vital signs, but they will do so continuously. These tiny sensors will notify us when something is about to go wrong and we will need medical advice or intervention.

Moreover, with developments in 3-D printing as well as circuit-printing technologies, flexible electronics and materials, applying so-called digital tattoos or electronic tattoos on the skin for some days or even weeks became possible.

Made of flexible, waterproof materials impervious to stretching and twisting coupled with tiny electrodes, digital tattoos are able to record and transmit information about the wearer to smartphones or other connected devices. While these are only in use in research projects, they could allow health-care experts to monitor and diagnose critical health conditions such as heart arrhythmia, heart activities of premature babies, sleep disorders and brain activities noninvasively. Moreover, by tracking vital signs 24 hours a day, without the need for a charger, it is especially suited for following patients with high risk of stroke, for example. Although we are not there yet, there are certain promising solutions on the market such as MC10s BioStampRC Sensor.

Quantum computing puts medical decision-making on a new level

In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy and made the cover of Nature magazine. One example of how this technology will have a major impact on the health-care sector is quantum computing taking medical decision-making to a whole new level and even augmenting it with special skills. What if such computers could offer perfect decision support for doctors? They could skim through all the studies at once, they could find correlations and causations that the human eye would never find, and they might stumble upon diagnoses or treatment options that doctors could have never figured out by themselves.

At the very endpoint of this development, quantum computers could create an elevated version of PubMed, where information would reside in the system but not in the traditional written form it would reside in qubits of data as no one except the computer would read the studies anymore.

In addition, the applications of quantum computing to health care are manifold, ranging from much faster drug design to quicker and cheaper DNA sequencing and analysis to reinforced security over personal medical data. While the technology does hold such promises, we still have to be patient before practical solutions can be implemented in medicine. However, with continued progress in this area, even though quantum computing has been something from a science fiction novel, this decade will see the first such computer used in the clinical practice too.

Chatbots as the first line of care

Symptom checkers that function on the same principle as chatbots are already available, free of charge. However, these rely on the user inputting symptoms and complaints manually. We yearn for one that can make predictions and suggestions based on a users data, like sleep tracking, heart rate and activity collected via wearables. With such features, those bots can help users make healthier choices without having to drag themselves to their doctor.

There was a Black Mirror episode titled Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too that featured an incredibly smart and emotional chatbot that had human-like conversations with the character. Think about having a similar personalized chatbot thats accessible via your smart device and with additional health and lifestyle features. This chatty virtual being can wake you up at the appropriate time based on your sleep pattern and advise you to take your antihistamines as the pollen concentration is particularly high during your commute that day, before you even get out of bed. It can even recommend what you should consume for each meal based on your nutrigenomic profile. It could find the best words for you to motivate you to go to the gym. It could find the best jokes that help you get into a good mood. But would you rather bend to the rules of an AI, essentially forgoing your freedom of choice, than experience life based more on your own will?

5G serving the whole ecosystem of digital health

5G networks will enable data to be downloaded at more than 1 gigabit per second, allowing for downloads 10 to 100 times faster than the currently available 4G services. 4G networks can only serve around a thousand devices within a square kilometer, while 5G can serve a million. It will make the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) possible by connecting a huge amount of health trackers with laptops, smartphones and many more digital devices. There will be no connection issues or latency, as the trackers will be able to work in harmony while getting the most out of our data.

Such a boost will allow for more reliable communication, which is a must in areas like telesurgery, remote consultation and remote monitoring. With bigger bandwidth and faster connection, there might be a boost in wearables as health IoT networks become more stable and reliable, and further help with patient engagement in relation to their health.

Major applications of 5G are expected to be apparent starting in 2021.

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Ph.D., is The Medical Futurist and director of The Medical Futurist Institute, analyzing how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a Ph.D. in genomics, he is a keynote speaker and an Amazon Top-100 author.

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The top 5 technologies that will change health care over the next decade - MarketWatch

To reliably use quantum computing devices, researchers need to have precise knowledge about an electrons quantum mechanical properties. However, there is a considerable amount of uncertainty inherent in measuring quantum states. This is especially impactful on researchers who are attempting to measure the starting conditions of a quantum computing experiment, where an accurate assessment of the quantum state is essential for downstream success of an experiment.

New research from Penns Quantum Engineering Laboratory describes a system that can reset and validate a quantum experiments starting conditions. Led by engineer Lee Bassett, this new initialization procedure will save researchers the time and effort of rerunning experiments while also enabling new kinds of measurements that require a knowledge of a quantum states exact starting condition. Lab members David Hopper, Joseph Lauigan, and Tzu-Yung Huang conducted the study, which was recently published in Physical Review Applied.

Initialization is one of the key, fundamental requirements for doing almost any kind of quantum-information processing, Bassett says. You need to be able to deterministically set your quantum state before you can do anything useful with it, but the dirty little secret is that, in almost all quantum architectures, that initialization is not perfect.

Read more at Penn Engineering.

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Engineers ensure quantum experiments get off to the right start - Penn: Office of University Communications

WASHINGTON, February 21, 2020 - U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios expressed confidence in the supremacy of the U.S.s artificial intelligence and quantum computing programs over Chinas, in a talk at the Hudson Institute on Thursday.

United States research on AI and quantum computing features the most highly cited papers, most investment by the private sector, and greatest government funding, he said.

This assertion challenges the Made in China 2025 Initiative, a 10-year plan that China issued in 2015, and which outlined 10 key tech industries in which China hopes to become a world leader.

Recent progress by the Chinese government in the field of high-speed fiber-optic broadband, AI and surveillance have fueled some analysts fears that the Chinese will hit their targets.

Kratsios laid out four key components of a winning tech strategy in which the U.S. excels: Leadership development, a low-regulatory environment, a belief in the power of the citizen workforce, and international engagement with allies.

Kratsios referenced two specific examples to bolster his argument. He mentioned how Trump committed to at least $200 million for STEM education last year, and how American corporations more than matched that figure by donating $300 million.He also recounted the story that he said put America at the head of the pack in the quantum supremacy race. The story bears upon the uniting of resources invested by the U.S. government in the Quantum Lab at UC Santa Barbara with Googles subsequent acquisition of the lab and connection of that research team to its treasure trove of resources.

Its not a James Bond/Jason Bourne crossover, but the concept of quantum supremacy is vital for national security, Kratsios said. America has only achieved it through a free market of ideas involving prudent government investing and private sector intervention.

Governmental funding and R&D are unique in that they fill the gaps that the private sector doesnt focus on.

Kratsios elaborated that the government tends to invest in early-stage, pre-competitive R&D which it expects the private sector to nurture and raise into a mature industry, such as in the case of the UCSB Quantum Lab.

Kratsios alsomade some comments on the proposals that the EU released Wednesday regarding AI and data. He characterized their approach to AI as values-based, and worried that they do not prioritize implementation.

Kratsios also found fault with the documents binary approach to classifying AI as high risk or not high risk, saying the report clumsily attempts to bucket AI-powered technology into two camps when there should be more spectrum and flexibility in the model.

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U.S. Progress on AI and Quantum Computing Will Best China, Says CTO Michael Kratsios - BroadbandBreakfast.com

No U.S. strategy to respond to competition fromChina will succeed unless it includes increased investment in research, a concerted effort to attract more students to key research fields, and a more creative approach to turning ideas into commercial products, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in congressional testimony on Wednesday, Feb. 26.

Reif spoke at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee on U.S.-China Trade and Competition.

Whatever else the U.S. does to counter the challenges posed by China, we must increase our investment in research in key technology areas, and we must enhance our capacity to get the most out of that investment, he told the panel. U.S. strategy is unlikely to succeed if it is merely defensive; to stay ahead, the U.S. needs to do more to capitalize on our own strengths.

Reifs Capitol Hill appearance came immediately after he delivered an opening talk at a National Academy of Sciences (NAS)_event commemorating the 75th anniversary of Science, The Endless Frontier, a 1945 report to U.S. President Harry S. Truman that is seen as the founding document of the post-World War II research system in the U.S. The report was written by the late Vannevar Bush, who had a long career at MIT, including service as the Institutes vice president and dean of engineering.

At both the NAS and on Capitol Hill, Reif called for a visible, focused, and sustained federal program that would increase funding for research and target the increase at key technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced communications.

The U.S. lacks an effective, coordinated way to target research toward specific areas and funding has fallen far behind whats needed to stay ahead of our competitors, Reif told Congress. One promising proposal is to create a new directorate at the National Science Foundation with that mission, and giving that new unit the authority to be run more like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Reif also said that attracting top talent is another essential element of a successful strategy. At the university level, that requires two parallel tasks attracting top U.S. students to key fields, and attracting and retaining the best researchers from around the world, he said.

Specifically, he called for new programs to offer federal support to undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs who are willing to study in fields related to key technologies. He also said foreign students who receive a U.S. doctorate should immediately be given a green card to settle in the U.S., and he warned against anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Finally, Reif said the U.S. needs to experiment with ways to speed the transition of ideas from lab to market. He called for new ways to de-risk technologies and to create more patient capital, and suggested that the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, should look at tax policies to create incentives for longer-term investment and to foster more university-industry cooperation.

The U.S. edge in science and technology has been a foundation for U.S. security, prosperity, and quality of life, Reif said, in conclusion. But that edge has to be regularly honed; it is not ours by right or by nature. We can best sharpen it with a strategy founded on confidence in ourselves, not fear of others.

Two weeks ago, Vice President for Research Maria Zuber delivered a similar message to Congress, in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on how to improve the intelligence services access to science and technology.

Zuber said that to help the intelligence services, the U.S. needs to capitalize on its strengths, which she said include world-class universities, an open research system, and the ability to attract and retain top talent from around the world.

Like Reif, Zuber highlighted a proposal to create a new technology directorate at the National Science Foundation, as well as the need to attract talent domestically and from abroad. She also cited MITs AI Accelerator a cooperative project between MIT and the U.S. Air Force as the kind of cooperative work that the intelligence services could foster.

In her testimony, Zuber emphasized the need to maintain an open U.S. research system: The U.S. faces new challenges and competitors, she said, but we are well-placed to succeed if we get the most from our unrivaled strengths.

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President Reif testifies before Congress on U.S. competitiveness - MIT News