What does a Solid use case look like? What topical domains are generating the first Solid services? And what does the market development around solid look like? We give an overview of the five market domains where Solid is gaining traction, in chronological order.
Education and career
Domain sketch
The first domain in which we see Solid-based use cases coming to the market is around training and career management. The diploma use case that Randstad launched together with Athumi and Digita in the spring of 2023 is a good example of this, as is the career management application of the Flemish start-up Karamel. The SHARCS imec.icon anchors the domain of education and career in ongoing SolidLab research. There is also a lot moving internationally, such as Arbetsförmedlingen in Sweden making diploma data available, and an alliance of lifelong learning start-ups with roots in France (Prometheus-X) that want to connect to the Solid network in Europe.
Opportunities and challenges
Information about education, work experience and skills is a logical starting point for the market development around Solid given that (1) the data has only a limited degree of sensitivity compared to, for example, health data, (2) the data is clearly related to one person instead of, for example, a family, and (3) the associated use cases provide a clear simplification for the citizen (e.g., you share your diploma in two clicks instead of having to search through your storage boxes yourself). From the perspective of the organizations involved, digitization brings administrative savings, increased quality and reliability of the data, and a better trust relationship with end users.
The current maturity of Solid technology already allows live services to be brought to the market. However, the first use cases also immediately exposed a number of challenges surrounding the scalability of these applications. The two main challenges lie in being able to connect multiple identity providers in an interoperable manner (e.g. in addition to the registration function of the Flemish Government, also allowing integration with Itsme and the use.id service of Digita) and multiple partners for access management (e.g. can you only manage access to your diploma from the application of the Flemish Government, or this can also be done from the application of Randstad, Karamel or other organizations).
Media and leisure
Domain sketch
A second domain that is already active is that of media and leisure. For example, the BBC went live in the autumn of 2022 with a Watch Party concept where you watch a film or program together with your friends, each from their own location. The data you generate does not end up on the BBC servers, but always ends up in the Solid pod of the participant who creates the data: your likes, comments and click behavior. In Flanders, the media sandbox Solid4Media started in September 2023 with the VRT as the central organizer. Finally, a whole range of media parties from the Netherlands have joined together in a pre-competitive alliance to jointly explore the use of Solid through the newly established organization Stichting Nederlandse Datakluis. They are developing a first MVP to go live by the summer of 2024.
Opportunities and challenges
As with the domain surrounding education and careers, the media domain is also a logical starting point because again the data only has a limited degree of sensitivity compared to, for example, health data. From the perspective of the media parties, Solid offers a solution for the loss of market share, the loss of advertising revenue and the loss of consumer confidence that the big US tech giants have caused in the past decade. In the use cases surrounding media and leisure, the focus is mainly on extracting an interest profile based on your clicking, viewing and listening behavior. This interest profile can then allow you to receive personal recommendations, ranging from a media, culture and activity offering that is tailored to your needs, to a range of products and services that fall outside the media and leisure sector, such as the retail sector.
Also for the media domain, the current maturity of the Solid standard and its implementations is sufficient to bring the first use cases to the market. Datavillage, for example, is a tech start-up that offers Solid-based services tailored to the domain of media and leisure.
Body and health
Domain sketch
The domain of body and health has been a domain with great interest in Solid for several years now, and certainly since the COVID19 pandemic. Patient organizations are an important first stakeholder in the link between Solid and health data, as they see Solid as a very powerful tool to give patients more control over their own health trajectory. For example, our research partner Vito works very closely with patient organizations in the development of their WeAre Solid vaults for healthcare data. A second important stakeholder is of course the healthcare sector, which wants to carefully weigh the pros and cons of making medical data accessible to patients. In Flanders, a phase of consultation and alignment was first necessary before the first use cases could be started. Over the past two years, a lot of preparatory work has been carried out via SolidLab and the Solid community, hand in hand with our partners at Athumi, Vito, imec and Voka. Finally, the installation of Health Data Authorities under the impetus of the European Commission is a third element in the interest in Solid pods for health data.
Opportunities and challenges
Naturally, of all domains, this is the domain with the most sensitive data. Building trust — both between partners and around the security and reliability of the technology — is the biggest challenge. At SolidLab we mainly support our partners at Athumi, Vito, imec, and Voka, among others, in their intensive dialogue with the healthcare sector. We also look at how we can stimulate use cases around a healthy lifestyle in the shorter term.
The type and volume of data in these use cases can vary greatly, from sharing simple data such as your blood type (e.g. in the form of a verifiable credential as in the diploma use case) to sharing high-frequency and rich data streams via your smartwatch. Health data can typically be attributed very clearly to one person, but there are some very important edge cases that make access management a lot more complex. Consider, for example, a patient who is a minor, is no longer able to communicate his/her wishes, such as in the case of dementia or coma, or a patient who is incompetent. In these cases, delegating access management is an issue that presents both technical and social challenges.
Home and energy
Domain sketch
With home and energy we arrive at the first of two domains that do not yet have active use cases, but where we expect to see the first use cases in SolidLab 2024-2025. We see interest in three subdomains around housing and energy. The first is that of the administration involved in acquiring and owning a house. Consider, for example, your official address details, the energy performance certificate (EPC) of your home, environmental certificates, utility inspections, EAN numbers, etc. Many organizations are interested in asking citizens for permission to use this data in a standardized way for their processes and services. For citizens, the advantage lies mainly in a simplification of time-consuming administrative processes, while organizations gain cost-efficient access to high-quality data. The second subdomain is that of utilities and especially the rich sensor data that is available through your smart water meter, electricity meter, solar panels, batteries and the smart appliances in your home. By clustering these data flows around the citizen instead of around the devices or service providers, it becomes much easier to support citizens in managing an energy and cost-efficient home. A third and final subdomain is that of architecture and design. Here we see use cases that fall more into the retail segment, where DIY and interior design companies are happy to let you use the data from your home to ensure that you go home with the right products, which is beneficial to customer satisfaction and can reduce return costs.
Opportunities and challenges
The challenges for this domain are a combination of a number of challenges that we have already mentioned for the already active domains. For example, you typically share your house with one or more family members or friends, making it more challenging to attribute the data to one person. This obviously has implications for certain aspects of Solid such as access management. We also see a very wide variation in types and volumes of data, ranging from a relatively simple EPC score to the complex and high-frequency data flow from your smart meters.
The unique opportunity that we have as SolidLab is the HomeLab, which is located on the Technology Park campus in Zwijnaarde. This is an experimental house equipped with a wide range of sensors for the detection of movement, sound and air quality, a whole range of utilities, and smart home technology such as smart switches. The HomeLab therefore not only offers us an experimental environment, but also an existing basis for collaboration with market players to explore the technical challenges of Solid applications related to home and energy.
Mobility
Domain sketch
The last domain is that of mobility, also a domain with a lot of potential that is still in a very early phase of development. Many of us combine different transport modes on a daily basis, such as public transport, an (electric) (shared) car, an (electric) (shared) bicycle, a (shared) scooter, with a bit of walking at the end. Planning your journey is often done via different applications, which creates a suboptimal user experience. In essence, in this domain we look at what mobility in a user-centric way would look like.
Opportunities and challenges
Just as in the domain of media and leisure, we have an additional asset in Flanders as a lot of mobility data has already been made available via the Flemish Smart Data Space and the MobiliData project that offers a great overview of the mobility space and the partners in Flanders. Here too, we can use this springboard by combining the available linked data around the mobility data space with the personal data from your Solid pod, such as your driver’s license, your mobility profile (do you have a physical disability, do you prefer bicycle and public transport, …) and your travel schedule.
A unique challenge in the mobility domain lies in the geospatial and temporal nature of the data. In order for different services to exchange mobility data interoperable and interpret them correctly, the data must be published in the appropriate format. Fortunately, these are aspects that were already discussed in the previous collaboration between the research groups within SolidLab (in particular the KNoWS group), the team at Digital Flanders that designed and further developed the Flemish Smart Data Space, and the joint efforts for the Open Standards for Linked Organizations (OSLO) initiative that has already developed many standards for geospatial data.