The fourth industrial revolution glossarium: over 1500 of the hottest terms you will use to create the future

Bioconservatism (a portmanteau of biology and conservatism) is a stance of hesitancy and skepticism regarding radical technological advances, especially those that seek to modify or enhance the human condition. Bioconservatism is characterized by a belief that technological trends in today’s society risk compromising human dignity, and by opposition to movements and technologies including transhumanism, human genetic modification, «strong» artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity. Many bioconservatives also oppose the use of technologies such as life extension and preimplantation genetic screening134,135.

Biomedical informatics is the branch of health informatics that uses data to help clinicians, researchers and scientists improve human health and provide healthcare136.

Biometrics is a system of recognizing people, by one or more physical or behavioral traits. In information technology, biometric data is used as a form of access ID management and access control137.

Bio-Techno-System is a hybrid systems between biological systems and technical systems, by means of computer (science)138.

Bit is the smallest unit of information that a computer can work with. Each bit is either a «1» or a «0». Often computers work with groups of bits rather than one bit at a time; the smallest group of bits a computer usually works with is a byte, which is 8 bits139.

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a virtual currency designed to act as money and a form of payment outside the control of any one person, group, or entity, and thus removing the need for third-party involvement in financial transactions. It is rewarded to blockchain miners for the work done to verify transactions and can be purchased on several exchanges140.

Bitcoin mining is the process of creating new bitcoin by solving puzzles. It consists of computing systems equipped with specialized chips competing to solve mathematical puzzles. The first bitcoin miner (as these systems are called) to solve the puzzle is rewarded with bitcoin. The mining process also confirms transactions on the cryptocurrency’s network and makes them trustworthy141.

Blockchain is algorithms and protocols for decentralized storage and processing of transactions structured as a sequence of linked blocks without the possibility of their subsequent change. Also, Blockchain is used for cryptocurrency by using individual nodes that run a system for cryptocurrency exchanges. Exchanges of cryptocurrency are validated by miners. Miners validity is checked by other nodes for correctness. The use of blockchain technology reduces transaction times and fraud. Companies, such as Tesla, take cryptocurrency as a form of payment but do not accept all. In 2021, Tesla began accepting Bitcoin (BCH) then several months later stopped accepting due to environmental issues with mining of bitcoin. Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin due to the environmental implications created by mining cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency mining takes a substantial amount of electricity, generating a significant carbon footprint. Wit Bitcoin, there are several different types of crypto currencies including Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Stellar (XLM), Dogecoin (DOGE), Biance Coin (BNB), Tether (USDT), Monero (XMR), with many more and a continuing amount of new currencies142.

Blockchain Technology refers to the way in which operators that don’t know each other can produce and maintain decentralized databases. The technology allows for the members of the chain trust each other even though they don’t know one another. The best-known blockchain technology application is the virtual currency Bitcoin143,144.

Blocking of personal data – temporary cessation of processing of personal data (except for cases where processing is necessary to clarify personal data).

Blog (a truncation of «weblog») is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page145.

Blogger is someone who writes regularly for an online journal or website. A political blogger might provide weekly commentary on current events146.

Blogosphere is the social universe created by online individuals using web log publishing platforms. Simply put, the blogosphere is a slang term for all the blogs on the internet. The blogosphere is often compared to grassroots journalism in that each member is able to post on any topic that catches their personal interest. The blogosphere is a powerful social network in that many popular bloggers have an audience measured in thousands and, in some cases, millions. However, the blogosphere is also very diverse, so the it does not represent a unified social unit – even though some of the social sub-groups within the blogosphere are. Post-based messaging services like Twitter are often considered part of the blogosphere despite the shorter length of the posts147.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) also known as Bluetooth 4.0, this is a wireless, personal-area network with short-range and low-power consumption that allows for objects to transmit data148.

Boolean neural network is an artificial neural network approach which only consists of Boolean neurons (and, or, not). Such an approach reduces the use of memory space and computation time. It can be implemented to the programmable circuits such as FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array or Integrated circuit).

Born-digital is a descriptor for information that is created in digital form, as opposed to digitized from analog sources149.

Brain Migration is a movement of highly-skilled professionals involved in intellectual or creative work as well as of potential specialists such as students and trainees going abroad for more than a year150.

Brain technology (Also self-learning know-how system) is a technology that employs the latest findings in neuroscience. The term was first introduced by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, in the context of the ROBOY project. Brain Technology can be employed in robots, know-how management systems and any other application with self-learning capabilities. In particular, Brain Technology applications allow the visualization of the underlying learning architecture often coined as «know-how maps».

Brain—computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain—machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication pathway between the brain’s electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. Research on brain—computer interface began in the 1970s by Jacques Vidal at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The Vidal’s 1973 paper marks the first appearance of the expression brain—computer interface in scientific literature151.

Brain-inspired computing is calculations on brain-like structures, brain-like calculations using the principles of the brain (see also neurocomputing, neuromorphic engineering).

Broadband refers to various high-capacity transmission technologies that transmit data, voice, and video across long distances and at high speeds. Common mediums of transmission include coaxial cables, fiber optic cables, and radio waves152.

Brownfield refers to an existing industrial system targeted for new functionalities with zero operational disruptions153.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of places. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a place forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition154.

Business administration (also known as business management) is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising business operations. From the point of view of management and leadership, it also covers fields that include office building administration, accounting, finance, designing, development, quality assurance, data analysis, sales, project management, information-technology management, research and development, and marketing155.

Business Blog (b-blog) is a blog of published, informal online articles that are either included in a company’s internal communications system (intranet) or posted on the Internet for the public to read. Business blogs use a more personal tone than corporate websites and are primarily used for public relations purposes. A business blog may also be referred to as a corporate blog or corporate Web log156.

Business Continuity – «Describes the processes and procedures an organization puts in place to ensure that essential functions can continue during and after a disaster.» A note regarding preservation: Backups vs Preservation: Disaster recovery strategies and backup systems are not sufficient to ensure survival and access to authentic digital resources over time. A backup is a short-term data recovery solution following loss or corruption and is fundamentally different to an electronic preservation archive157.

Business Design is a modern business model conceptualization. Business design is closely related to service design and shares some of its principles but applies them to the business concept of the entire company. The central idea of business design is to alter business activities in a customer-oriented manner in order to create strong customer loyalty158.

Business Innovation is an organization’s process for introducing new ideas, workflows, methodologies, services or products. Like IT innovation, which calls for using technology in new ways to create a more efficient and agile organization, business innovation should enable the achievement of goals across the entire organization, with sights set on accomplishing core business aims and initiatives. Innovation often begins with idea generation, wherein ideas are narrowed down during brainstorming sessions, after which leaders consider the business viability, feasibility and desirability of each idea159.

Business Intelligence refers to the applications, technologies, and practices for collecting, analyzing, and integrating business data to support improved business decision-making160.

Business management tools are all the systems, applications, controls, calculating solutions, methodologies, etc. used by organizations to be able to cope with changing markets, ensure a competitive position in them and improve business performance161.

Business mobility also known as enterprise mobility, is the growing trend of businesses to offer remote working options, allow the use of personal laptops and mobile devices for business purposes, and make use of cloud technology for data access. Business mobility recognizes a shift from the traditional central office business model162.

Business model canvas is a representation of how an organisation makes (or intends to make) money. Based on an extensive literature research and real-world experience we define a business model as consisting of nine building blocks that constitute the business model canvas: 1. The value proposition of what is offered to the market; 2. The segment (s) of clients that are addressed by the value proposition; 3. The communication and distribution channels to reach clients and offer them the value? proposition; 4. The relationships established with clients; 5. The key resources needed to make the business model possible; 6. The key activities necessary to implement the business model; 7. The key partners and their motivations to participate in the business model; 8. The revenue streams generated by the business model (constituting the revenue model); 9. The cost structure resulting from the business model163.

Business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts. The process of business model construction and modification is also called business model innovation and forms a part of business strategy. Also, Business model is a plan that identifies sources of revenue, the customer base, products, and details of financing. It simply tells how the business makes money164,165.

Business Payments Directory (BPD) is a system that enables online businesses to choose from a variety of trusted business payment vendors for whom they opt to contract out for managing their online sales payments and consumer purchases. Also known as an online payment’s directory166.

Business to Business Gateway (B2B Gateway) is an access channel by which external systems, such as clinical information systems and registered repositories, interact with the My Health Record system167.

Business Transaction in the context of electronic commerce, is any monetary transaction that is made between consumers or businesses via the Internet. Business transactions free up time when conducted online since each party does not need to be physically present in order to make the transaction168.

Business use case is to describe, in technology free terminology, how a business process is used by people or systems external to the business to achieve their goals (composed from several definitions in the literature)169.

Business Viewpoint is an architecture viewpoint used to describe the purpose of establishing an IoT system by encompassing a business’s vision, mission, values, and objectives170.

Byte is eight bits. A byte is simply a chunk of 8 ones and zeros. For example: 01000001 is a byte. A computer often works with groups of bits rather than individual bits and the smallest group of bits that a computer usually works with is a byte. A byte is equal to one column in a file written in character format171.

«C»

C2C E-commerce refers to the selling of goods directly from one consumer to another online. Typically, an online service serves as a platform and enabler for this type of digital commerce172.

Call center is a centralized department that handles inbound and outbound calls from current and potential customers. Call centers are located either within an organization or outsourced to another company that specializes in handling calls173.

Call for Twinning Tenders is a DHE informational document on the purpose of twinning’s, twinning conditions, information on tendering and the evaluation and award criteria174.

Call to Action (CTA) refers to a prompt that attracts the attention of a web page visitor and guides them to perform a desired action. A CTA is usually a link or an image which the visitor is supposed to click, or which requests the user’s email address or asks them to make a phone call. A CTA is one of the basic tools of conversion rate optimization175.

Calm Technology is technology that does not affect life or the environment in which (or for which) it is produced176.

Canonical Formats in information technology, canonicalization is the process of making something conform with some specification… and is in an approved format. Canonicalization may sometimes mean generating canonical data from noncanonical data. Canonical formats are widely supported and considered to be optimal for long-term preservation177.

Capability – the organizational ability to intentionally and systematically use improvement approaches, methods and practices, to change processes and products/services to generate improved performance. The key word here is use. While capacity provides the potential for improvement, it is the active application and use of improvement approaches and practices that determine whether improved results will be realized178.

Capacity (building) can be defined as the ability of individuals and organizations or organizational units to perform functions effectively, efficiently and sustainably. Capacity building is an evidence-driven process of strengthening the abilities of individuals, organizations, and systems to perform core functions sustainably, and to enable continuous improvement and development over time179.

Capacity building framework. DHE WP3 developed a capacity building framework drawing on other existing frameworks which target all kinds of stakeholders who are interested in scaling-up person-centred digital solutions for integrated care. As part of this framework, 8 key components and 20 building blocks have been defined180.

Capsule neural network (CapsNet) – a machine learning system that is a type of artificial neural network (ANN) that can be used to better model hierarchical relationships. The approach is an attempt to more closely mimic biological neural organization181,182.

Card image is eighty characters of data stored as a single physical record. A file storage format of 80 characters or bytes per record. The card-image format is a remnant of the time when data were literally input on punch cards that had physical limits of 80 characters per card. Usually a case or all the data for a single respondent is stored on several 80-character «cards.» Each «card» is numbered and stored in numerical sequence. Cards with the same sequence number (i.e., having a common format for the layout and contents of variables) are called a «deck»; thus, cards are often referred to in documentation by their «deck number». Example: «The variable for age is stored in Deck 01 in columns 10—11 and the variable for race is stored in Deck 02 in column 10»183.

Cardano (ADA) is a third-generation, decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain platform designed to be a more efficient alternative to proof-of-work (PoW) networks. Scalability, interoperability, and sustainability on PoW networks like Ethereum are limited by the infrastructure burden of growing costs, energy use, and slow transaction times184.

Care co-ordinator is an individual who is responsible for coordinating the care and support of a Care Recipient. It could be a role undertaken by a health care professional or the care recipient or family carer185.

Care recipient is an individual who receives or seeks any care services or support considered to be integrated care, from another person or organisation. In certain circumstances, a care recipient may be the term used for a person receiving a new project-based service186.

Case in survey research, an individual respondent187.

Cashless Economy is a system where any type of money transactions is done through digital means like debit cards, electronic fund transfer, mobile payments, internet banking, mobile wallets188.

Cashless society is one in which cash, in the form of physical banknotes and coins, is not accepted in any financial transaction. Instead, people and businesses transfer money to one another digitally – via credit or debit cards, electronic money transfers, cryptocurrency, or online and mobile payment services, such as PayPal and Apple Pay. Although no existing society is cashless, many economists believe that consumer preferences, competitive pressures on businesses, profit seeking by banks, and government policies designed to facilitate cashless transactions will soon lead to at least a few cashless societies189.

Center for Technological Competence is an organization that owns the results, tools for conducting fundamental research and platform solutions available to market participants to create applied solutions (products) on their basis. The Technology Competence Center can be a separate organization or be part of an application technology holding company.

Centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) – promoting a healthy general public and sharing data about chronic diseases are main goals of the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC)190.

Centers for medicare & medicaid services (CMS) is the wing of the U.S. department of health and human services that runs healthcare reimbursement and health it programs191.

Central processing unit (CPU) also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions in the program. This contrasts with external components such as main memory and I/O circuitry, and specialized processors such as graphics processing units (GPUs). Also, Central Processing Unit (CPU) is a von Neumann cyclic processor designed to execute complex computer programs192.

Centralized control is a process in which control signals are generated in a single control center and transmitted from it to numerous control objects.

Cerner corp. is a public company in North Kansas City, mo., that provides various health information technologies, ranging from medical devices to electronic health records (EHR) to hardware193.

Change Control is a formal process used to ensure that a process, product, service, or technology component is modified only in accordance with agreed-upon rules. Many organizations have formal Change Control Boards that review and approve proposed modifications to technology infrastructures, systems, and applications. Data Governance programs often strive to extend the scope of change control to include additions, modifications, or deletions to data models and values for reference/master data194.

Change healthcare is a healthcare technology provider of revenue cycle management, payment management and health information exchange (HIE) solutions195.

Channel is a means of entry into the My Health Record system to enable reading and updating My Health Records. For example, individuals can use the National Consumer Portal or providers may use the system via B2B196.

Character format is any file format in which information is encoded as characters using only a standard character-encoding scheme. A file written in «character format» contains only those bytes that are prescribed in the encoding scheme as corresponding to the characters in the scheme (e.g., alphabetic and numeric characters, punctuation marks, and spaces)197.

Character-encoding scheme is a method of encoding characters including alphabetic characters (A-Z, uppercase and lowercase), numbers 0—9, punctuation and other marks (e.g., comma, period, space, &, *), and various «control characters» (e.g., tab, carriage return, linefeed) using binary numbers. For a computer to print a capital «A» or a number «7» on the computer screen, for instance, we must have a way of telling the computer that a particular group of bits represents an «A» or a «7». There are standards, commonly called «character sets,» that establish that a particular byte stands for an «A» and a different byte stands for a «7». The two most common standards for representing characters in bytes are ASCII and EBCDIC198.

Chatbot is a software application designed to simulate human conversation with users via text or speech. Also referred to as virtual agents, interactive agents, digital assistants, or conversational AI, chatbots are often integrated into applications, websites, or messaging platforms to provide support to users without the use of live human agents. Chatbots originally started out by offering users simple menus of choices, and then evolved to react to particular keywords. «But humans are very inventive in their use of language,» says Forrester’s McKeon-White. Someone looking for a password reset might say they’ve forgotten their access code, or are having problems getting into their account. «There are a lot of different ways to say the same thing,» he says. This is where AI comes in. Natural language processing is a subset of machine learning that enables a system to understand the meaning of written or even spoken language, even where there is a lot of variation in the phrasing. To succeed, a chatbot that relies on AI or machine learning needs first to be trained using a data set. In general, the bigger the training data set, and the narrower the domain, the more accurate and helpful a chatbot will be199.