Regulation has a Direct Impact on the Pace of Innovation Date:   Sunday , October 05, 2014 Benefitcloud, based in Plano, TX, enables customers to leverage the benefits of their health plans by bringing in enhanced accessibility and transparency into the entire process The latest developments in the consumer technology space surface as a combined form of recent trends in social, mobile and big data. These trends continue to drive intelligent and personal services in the industry. Among these tendencies, Mobility is worthy of special mention as the hottest trend, bestowed with the potential to outperform other contemporary technologies. There is immense excitement around the approaching wearable technologies. Thoughts on Future My thoughts on the immediate future of the industry are centered on regulation, the only feature with a direct impact on the pace of technology-driven innovation, taking place in sectors like Healthcare, Technology and several others. These sectors are in for massive technological disruption. For instance, substantial disruptions can be expected in the healthcare sector, with respect to consumerism, which is in its early stages. Furthermore, the sector would evolve further with colossal changes in the entire healthcare cycle, starting from buying insurance to delivery of care, to the fundamentals of how medicine is taught, learned, practiced and delivered. Going deep into the concepts in regulation, I am of the opinion that the advancements in regulation would not affect the innovative approaches in the sector. The pace of innovation towards software technologies remains unaffected. Understanding the Challenges To answer this question as an individual, I would highlight the widening gap in understanding and utilizing technologies. As an entrepreneur, it has been an unvarying challenge to locate the right talent. Interestingly, it is much easier to raise the required capital than finding talented resources. Talking about my sector, the lack of skilled engineers is the toughest concern. Coming back to regulation, it would be another noteworthy trend in healthcare and related sectors. Additionally, several architectural and fundamental challenges associated with Internet are around Net Neutrality. (As told to Anitha T S)