The healthcare industry is rapidly switching to telemedicine, pharma related collaboration, and virtual examination, especially during the pandemic. Video conferencing and collaboration platforms like Zoom are becoming a critical part of core healthcare operations. Telemedicine appointments increased 154% from January to March 2020 because of the pandemic and will continue to be a staple of healthcare into the future.  

Voice recording and review is an essential practice for highly regulated industries. This is because  regulations concerning recording, handling, and retention have been in place for some time. To addressreview requirements, many organizations have turned to voice-to-text transcription, which companies have deployed in waves in an effort to gain better insights into their audio and video information. While many use cases have been popular in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, the relatively small gain in insights using transcription compared to the high resource and time cost to implement them hasn’t yielded the right result.

On December 1, 2020, Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner (“OPC”) issued a report on a data security incident at the Quebec-based financial services firm Desjardins.  The Desjardins incident involved an insider at the firm who accessed, collected, and leaked the personal information of over 9.7 million customers and users from Canada and elsewhere during a two year period—a staggering amount of data over an extended period of time.   

With the centralized “in-person office” as we know it evolving to collaboration tools centered work-from-anywhere, it is no secret that this year has been challenging for most professionals regardless of their industry. This “new hybrid office” now lives inside the four corners of your computer screen regardless of your physical presence at home, in an office, or somewhere in between. From video conference calls to chat bubbles, our technology has undeniably been tested in a variety of new ways.

While most startup founders would prefer not to pore over laws, regulations and interpretive materials to design a perfect product, it’s an essential exercise for those developing financial services solutions. For fintechs and the other finserv-related startups (e.g., regtech, suptech, etc.) understanding the regulatory obligations of customers and prospects will be core to your mission. In some cases, the process of interpretation and analysis might be a heavy lift involving expert outside counsel, lobbying efforts, and specialized consulting services.

As the CEO and a co-founder, I am excited to announce on behalf of our entire team that Theta Lake has secured $12.7 million in a series A funding round, bringing our total company funding up to $20 million.