Tech For Good - Issue 03 by NODE

Issue 03

THE RISE OF THE CYBORG VAN OORD’S SUSTAINABILITY MISSION IMPROVING EARTHQUAKE ALERTS IS THE NHS EMBRACING NEW TECH?

AM OP ERI C I O CR ID A’S ISI S

The sha Comm r o - an ing pla nwea l d t We now form t th of V irg o it’ find out s doing contro inia tu l th rn how t the he sam e opio ed to a stat i e e go for C d epid datat it r OVID emic ight -19 .

DANIEL BRIGHAM Content Director

echnology can be used for bad. There’s no getting away from it. Just because you happen to edit a magazine called Tech For Good, doesn’t mean you should shy away from the many negative real-world issues that the nefarious use of technologies can create. From discrimination to meddling in elections, tech can rightly get a bad rap. Sometimes, though, it’s good to focus on the very best that technology has to offer; and that very best is saving lives. This month’s issue of TFG is stuffed full of the positive impacts tech can have on the ability to improve lives, and showcases the breadth of its reach. Our cover story is an interview with Carlos Rivero, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first Chief Data Officer, who has masterminded a data-led response to the opioid epidemic in the USA. Not only has it helped to reduce the number of opioid-related overdoses in the state, but now the data-sharing platform is being used to save lives in the COVID-19 pandemic, too. Our Expert Insight comes from William Laurent, who, as a Tokyoite,

has first-hand experience of how Japan is leading the world in early warning systems for earthquakes. Using thousands of underground seismographs, within a fraction of a second the sensors can determine the location and magnitude of the quake before immediately sending out live-saving alerts. From data-sharing, to seismographs, to brain-machine interfaces: We take a look at how human-AI collaboration can improve the lives of people suffering from chronic diseases. We chatted to Lama Nachman, famous for her work with Stephen Hawking that allowed him to communicate effectively, about how AI can create tools to provide a better quality of life for patients. However, Nachman also warns that the public perception of AI-based tech has “gone downhill” and calls for more responsibility in its application. It’s a fascinating insight into both the good and bad sides of new technologies. I hope you enjoy this month’s issue!

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CONTENTS 06

PUBLIC SECTOR How a data-sharing platform is saving lives in Virginia

SOCIAL GOOD Human-AI collaboration and the rise of the cyborg

EXPERT INSIGHT Innovation consultant William Laurent on earthquake detection

ENVIRONMENT Why dredging company Van Oord is on a sustainability mission

LEADERSHIP Marga Hoek on how COVID-19 has made businesses less risk-averse

HEALTHCARE Is the NHS fully embracing new technologies?

EDUCATION Bringing classrooms into the 21st century

PUBLIC SECTOR

TECH FOR GOOD

USING DATA TO SAVE LIVES

USING DATA TO SAVE LIVES The battle to tackle an opioid epidemic across the USA was going nowhere. So the Commonwealth of Virginia turned to data to fight it, appointing Carlos Rivero as the state’s first Chief Data Officer with a mission to bring the numbers down – and save lives. He talks to Tech For Good about the methods behind the data-driven response to the crisis, and how it’s now being applied to COVID-19

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Virginia State Capitol, Richmond

wo years ago, when Carlos Rivero moved from his role as Data Officer for the Federal Transit Administration to become the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first-ever Chief Data Officer, his first task was spelled out for him in no uncertain terms: use data to fight the opioid epidemic. In 2018 the east-coast state of Virginia, with a population of 8.5 million people, was seeing an average of three deaths from opioid overdoses a day. Rivero quickly got to work. He actioned the Framework for Addiction Analysis and Community Transformation (FAACT) platform, alongside AWS Partner Network’s consulting partner, Qlarion. It became the Department of Criminal Justice Services of Virginia’s first cross-agency, cloud-based data8

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sharing platform. To ensure there was buy-in across agencies, Rivero created the Data Trust, which established a legal framework for sharing data. FAACT quickly became integral to the fight against the opioid epidemic, and has now been expanded to give realtime data about the COVID-19 crisis in Virginia. Rivero talked Tech For Good though the process of using data to save lives, and where the technology goes next. You’re Virginia’s first Chief Data Officer. Could you give us an overarching view of what the role entails? At the most basic level, it is increasing the value of our data assets over time. In order for us to do that, we have to think about what constitutes a data value

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chain. Essentially, when you talk about data, it is nothing more than a binary representation of the real world. So how do you generate value out of that data and how do you make it something that you can utilise over and over and over again? Some have talked about data being the new oil, but that’s absolutely false. It’s not a new oil because once you use oil, its value decreases rather quickly; whereas the more you use data, the more valuable it becomes. The way I like to characterise it is that data is the currency of the digital economy. The more access you have to data, the better your decisions will be, and the better your outcomes will be. The more leaders embrace data-driven cultures and help to create and facilitate data-driven cultures, the more we’ll start to see a transition to a data-driven approach to problem-solving.

Some have talked about data being the new oil, but that’s absolutely false. Once you use oil, its value decreases. The more you use data, the more valuable it becomes” Carlos Rivero

Let’s talk about the opioid epidemic, and how you used FAACT to tackle it. Absolutely. FAACT is a project that spawned out of a pilot project that I was mandated to work on by our General Assembly. So in the language that was created for my position, it also specified that I needed to work on a pilot project, addressing the opioid epidemic and providing input with regards to the value of data and data analytics, and data sharing, to help solve this problem. ISSUE 03

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Virginia’s capital city, Richmond

Was it a relatively new concept to use data to try and solve this specific problem? They had been trying to utilise data. But there wasn’t one leader that was accountable for the project. And when it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility, right? Nobody’s going to run with it. You need someone to be able to carry that on and so that’s why they made it very clear that that is what they were expecting me to work on. But fortunately at the same time, the Department of Criminal Justice Services was partnering with the Department of Behavioural Health and Developmental Services and a variety of other agencies to actually kick off a pilot project, which 10

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is where they partnered with our technology partner Qlarion to start working on a very small-scale pilot in the Winchester community. Now, I think the key here is that the project was community driven; community focused. Many other organisations, especially at the state level, look at it as a state problem, right? And then they try to bring in a bunch of state-wide data assets that, more often than not, don’t have the level of resolution or granularity that you will need to address a very local, specific problem. The reality is the action needs to take place in the community, so you need to empower community leaders and community stakeholders with the right intelligence

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at the right time to make the right decisions and take the right action. For us to come in and come up with analytics solutions that build up the intelligence platform that allows them to derive intelligence from the data that they already had – which they just weren’t able to share with each other – created a lot more value for them. In real-world terms, what was the direct result of that data on the epidemic? I’ll give you a good anecdotal story that we recently heard at one of our symposiums. The head of the Northwest Virginia Regional Drug and Gang Task Force monitors the dashboards that we provide daily. One day the number of overdoses

that were being reported at the local hospital was much higher than the normal threshold that they were experiencing. And so he immediately turned to his task force and said, ‘Stop everything you’re doing, go to the hospital and start interviewing these individuals. Let’s find out where they’re getting their drugs from and if this is something that’s local to one place’. And they identified that it was local to a specific location, were able to get a warrant, and they locked that down. For the next three weeks, it didn’t have a single overdose. That’s pretty powerful, right? If that data hadn’t been coming in on a daily time step, if it had been coming in only once a month, they would have completely missed it. There would have been a month’s worth of overdoses happening. Tell us how the success of FAACT has informed your response to COVID-19 in Virginia? So the very interesting thing about that is that the pattern is pretty generic, right? The implementation of the technology may be specific and there are nuances about it, but the pattern is the same: bring data assets together, massage those data assets into a format that will be easily digested and understood by the people who are taking action and ISSUE 03

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If that data hadn’t been coming in daily, there would have been a month’s worth of overdoses happening” then provide them that intelligence. So thankfully with the FAACT project we had already been considering, what is that pattern and how do we leverage this environment to be able to expand it into more communities all the way out to the entire Commonwealth. We brought in partners like the Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association – which is a private association. We also brought in the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Emergency Management, which are new players to the Data Trust. It allowed us to support the Governor, his state cabinet, the COVID-19 Unified Command, and even individual health district directors across the Commonwealth to give them the intelligence they need to help inform their operations. That’s a lot of work to get that sort of buy-in across so many different departments. It is. It absolutely is. It’s a lot of coercion, a lot of persuasion and influence, but it’s for the greater good. We’re really doing 12

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things that are supporting saving lives at the end of the day. They’re saving lives. And I think one of the driving principles behind the success we’ve had is that everyone understands that what we’re doing is tied directly to saving lives. It’s pretty tight because people can clearly see that the data assets we’re bringing in and the decision-making framework that we’ve created directly correlates with our ability to save lives. And that I think has been key. In specific terms, how is the data helping your ability to save lives during COVID-19? First and foremost, at the very beginning we were really concerned about our hospitals and our healthcare system being overwhelmed with COVID cases. So the supply of personal protective equipment [PPE] was extremely important. Being able to bring that data in-house and identify which healthcare systems and which hospitals were having difficulties obtaining PPE, and then being able to improve our supply chain to get

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those supplies right to where they needed to be on time and as fast as possible, was critical. We could also look at the relative distribution of COVID cases across the Commonwealth and assess how healthcare systems could easily be overwhelmed with 10 cases, as opposed to a system that would need a thousand cases to be overwhelmed, for example. Have successes like this, during a crisis, helped to drive acceptance that data can be relied on as a key area of combatting crises? I think there is a cultural shift. People are starting to realise that the governance framework, the legal framework and the technology framework that we’ve

designed and put together is suitable for the kind of work that we’ve been talking about doing for well over the past decade. I think between the FAACT project and the COVID-19 response, we’ve really illustrated the value and the capabilities of the platform and all of the different frameworks that surround it so that people are starting to become more confident in our ability to actually do this for everything, not just for these very specific use cases. After the opioids epidemic and COVID, where do you think the data-led focus will shift to next? To be honest with you, it’s really now more about the economic recovery

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The data assets we’re bringing in and the decision-making framework that we’ve created directly correlates with our ability to save lives”

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USING DATA TO SAVE LIVES

and looking at the economic impact of COVID on our most vulnerable populations. In particular, the communities where the primary occupations are more service-oriented that don’t have the ability to work from home. What role can new technologies play in improving the lives of the most vulnerable? Being able to provide the right level of connectivity to each of these different communities is critical. With broadband it’s almost like back in the day when electricity became a basic utility that everyone should have access to. That’s the same way we should start thinking about broadband connectivity: it’s a basic utility that everyone should have access to. And right now that is not the case. Tied in with this is housing problems and homelessness. Is that an issue you’re keen for data to help tackle? Absolutely. I have projects with the Department of Housing and Community where we are implementing a Data Trust to help them identify the services that they’re providing to the homeless population. That gives us a more holistic view of homelessness across the Commonwealth, rather than just what’s happening in a particular

city. That helps us understand what are some of the things we can do from a resource perspective that are going to help mitigate some of the impacts of homelessness. On a broader final point, with the US elections coming up, what sort of role does tech play in ensuring the process works fairly for all? Can you foresee a future where elections are done online safely and securely? That is a very, very touchy topic, especially as we talk about other organisations attempting to influence the results of the elections. And when you talk about technology, there’s always a flaw somewhere, and it’s just waiting to be discovered by someone. I think really at the core of this is not so much how are we going to have online elections, it’s really more about does everyone in your constituency have an equal opportunity to vote? That’s really the question that we’re trying to get to: have we made it easy and simple enough for everyone in your society to vote? Then the technology question comes into play, because if we talk about a technology solution, that would mean that everyone who is eligible to vote would have access to the same technologies. And we know for a fact that today that doesn’t exist yet. ISSUE 03

SOCIAL GOOD

MARCH OF THE CYBORGS

When Elon Muskâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s company Neuralink revealed in August that a computer chip had been implanted into a pigâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brain, it sparked a heated debate about the possibilities, and dangers, of brain-machine interfaces. Tech For Good talks to Lama Nachman, famous for her work with Stephen Hawking, as well as Dr Rylie Green and Dr David Martin about the medical possibilities of AI-human collaboration AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquia

hat is a cyborg? When hearing this word, most people think of science fiction. They picture the replicants from Blade Runner or Darth Vader from Star Wars. However, in its purest definition, cyborgs already exist. After all, the use of technology in the medical field is something that is already saving millions of lives and allowing 16

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people to live with a quality of life they would otherwise never be able to achieve. And, if cyborgs - cybernetic organisms - are defined as creatures that are part-human and part-machine, what would you call a person with a pacemaker?

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We can’t just put things out in the world, not consider the ramifications of what these things mean, and hope for the best” Lama Nachman

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But, sometimes, technology catches up to fiction. Take, for example, Neuralink’s recent announcement, in which Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company unveiled they’d implanted a coin-sized computer chip into the brain of a pig called Gertrude. Musk sees this as the first step in the development of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) and, eventually, human-AI symbiosis. Although the time when humans can fully merge with AIs to become the cyborgs we see in the movies is still years of testing and research away, academics have been studying for decades the medical applications of AI and currently use it to create tools that improve patients’ quality of life. Granted, we might have never met a cyborg, but we all have heard of Stephen Hawking. Lama Nachman, Intel Fellow and Director of Intel’s Anticipatory Computing Lab, was among the team of scientists that helped Hawking speak. When he was 21 years old, Hawking was diagnosed with a type of motor neurone disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, during a visit to CERN in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia which, combined with ALS, was life-threatening. To save his life, the doctors performed a tracheotomy, a procedure that cost him his ability to speak.

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Dr Stephen Hawking From 2012, Nachman’s team developed the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT), a software that allowed Hawking to communicate using keyboard simulation, word prediction and speech synthesis. Hawking had a sensor placed on his glasses. When the scientist moved his cheek, he triggered the sensor and could interface with his computer. After Hawking’s death in 2018, Intel made ACAT open-source, allowing other people with ALS, or any other disability, to use it or even develop it further. This decision was a fundamental step in democratising the technology, a vision that Hawking shared. “Even in the early conversations with Stephen, he was adamant about ‘if you

guys want me to spend a lot of effort and energy to work with you on this, it needs to be something that is opensource,” Nachman tells Tech For Good. Now, almost 10 years later, Nachman is working with another world-famous researcher, Dr Peter Scott-Morgan, who also suffers from ALS. Scott-Morgan recently underwent the same surgery that made Hawking lose his ability to speak. However, unlike Hawking, Scott-Morgan is determined to fight the progress of his disease by replacing his organs with pieces of machinery. He has said he wants to become “the world’s first full cyborg”. Working alongside Scott-Morgan, Nachman and her team are looking ISSUE 03

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to integrate gaze-tracking and AI into ACAT. Nachman’s aim is to develop a response-generation capability that listens to Scott-Morgan’s conversations and suggests possible responses. This feature would allow users to maintain the speed of a standard conversation, something that is proving, at the moment, quite challenging. “The gap is always the same,” Nachman explains. “Even if you predicted what they’re going to say before they finish the sentence, there’s still quite a bit of delay before you can actually formulate your response and send it which, for someone who’s many, many, many days at the other end of that conversation, it’s a really hard thing to do. It just breaks that connection.” Reminiscing on her experience working with Hawking, Nachman details his desire 20

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to understand and control the technology. In contrast, Scott-Morgan is happy to let go of control. “Peter was literally at the opposite end of the spectrum,” she says. “He was like ‘I am a cyborg. Peter 2.0 is not about me wanting to control the AI, it’s about me and the AI becoming what Peter 2.0 is’. So he had a very open nature to all of that.” Nachman believes that context-aware computing and AI-human collaboration technologies can improve many people’s lives, as long as they can be developed and used responsibly. “One of the things that has happened over the last four or five years is that the public perception of AI has gone downhill dramatically,” she says. “And I think a big part of that has been that we have a gap in responsibility. I think it’s really up to all of us as AI researchers

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to make sure that we’re developing responsible technology. We can’t just put things out in the world, not consider the ramifications of what these things mean, and hope for the best.” And, ‘the best’ is indeed very promising. Besides the addition of AI, Nachman’s team also wants to add a brain computer interface (BCI) into the software, using electroencephalograms (EEGs). EEGs are commonly used tests that use electrodes to track and record brain waves. Nachman envisions skullcaps that would use EEG technology to interface with a computer, similarly to Neuralink’s chips. This would make ACAT accessible to those who can’t move any muscle of their bodies to trigger a sensor. For these people, their brain waves would trigger speech. Nachman’s commitment to this project is rooted in her long experience working with people with ALS. “It’s kind of the first thing that you hear from them,” she says. “‘I just want to be able to communicate. I want to be able to communicate with my love. I want to be able to express a thought’. And that is really what humanity is all about.” Allowing people to communicate is also the aim for Dr Rylie Green. Her research has greatly improved the quality of cochlear implants and bionic eyes, helping people to hear and see.

This is what we’ve needed to push this industry for a long time: for somebody to put their money where their mouth is, and to drive the industry to make new materials, miniaturised devices and new chip technologies” Dr Rylie Green

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Green is a Reader in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London, where she specialises in researching bioactive conducting polymers; that is, materials that can be used as coatings for medical electrodes or to build medical devices. Green explains that the main reason why implantable devices are only rarely commercialised is because of the difficulty of connecting living body tissue with metals. “There are only a very few numbers of electrodes that you can actually fit within these tissues and safely use,” she tells Tech For Good. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, living systems communicate with ions, not electrons. Injecting electrical currents into the body often causes dangerous chemical reactions. To solve this problem, Green’s team is researching materials that convert electrodes’ electrical charge to an ionic charge that the body understands. If she succeeds, electronic devices would become safer to use and able to communicate with any organ. Secondly, the body rejects inorganic materials, like metals, and creates scar tissue around them. These scars are meant to protect the body from harmful elements but also prevent implantable devices from working. Green wants to cover electrodes with materials that are “soft and squishy”, like 22

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the body’s nervous tissue. To achieve this, her team uses hydrogels, materials that are very compatible with the body. These should be very familiar, as they are used to make contact lenses. But, why imbed metals when you can imbed living organisms? The next step of Green’s research is what she calls “living electrodes,” a combination of hydrogels and STEM cells that create connections between electrodes and body tissue. “Most of the tissues that we’re trying to interface with have some sort of disease state,” she says. “It might be blindness caused by loss of cells in the

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eye, deafness or things like Parkinson’s, dementia, where you’re getting abnormalities within brain activity. All of those cells are in a state of stress. Behind this project is the idea that, if we provide healthy cells in this environment, and instead of stimulating electrically, we give them a natural ionic input, we might create a better result in patients because we’re creating an interface that’s very natural, instead of an artificial electrical stimulation that can also continue to cause some damage.” Although the project is promising, it comes with many challenges. The most pressing one is how to support the growth

of the STEM cells and make sure that they develop the correct characteristics and connections to be useful to the device. The types of projects that Green has worked on alongside companies such as Cochlear Ltd., Bionic Vision Technologies and Galvani Bioelectronics are based on a very similar concept to the one used by Neuralink. While Green doesn’t believe that Elon Musk’s company is doing anything particularly revolutionary, she underlines the importance of his investment in this technology. “Academics and industry partners have been working with these technologies for decades,” she says. “But this is ISSUE 03

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what we’ve needed to push this industry for a long time: for somebody to put their money where their mouth is, and to drive the industry to make new materials, miniaturised devices and new chip technologies, bring them all together and show that they can work to actually push them into the market.” As an example, Green talks about Cochlear, a cochlear implant company that she has worked with. Despite the developments that her team has made to increase the number of electrodes in cochlear implants, improving the user’s ability to differentiate sounds, the number of electrodes currently used is still the same as it was in the 1970s. “Companies like Cochlear haven’t been driven yet to increase the number of electrodes,” she says. Musk’s investment into this type of technology could be the 24

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step necessary to drive this field forward; the one that other companies have not been willing - or able - to make. Green believes that investing time and money into AI-human collaboration research will drastically change the lives of people that live with chronic diseases. A great example is epilepsy. This condition is poorly treated and poorly understood because, among other things, the focal point of seizures constantly changes. In Green’s best-case scenario, patients would have smart implants that used AI to predict an oncoming seizure and block it. “Then, over time, you will have patients that can be walking around, operating heavy machinery, doing whatever they like, who may have normally been rather restricted or homebound, because they would have been more worried about having seizures,” she says. “I see that as being the best use of AI in implantable devices for humans.” However, she admits that she’s not “quite seeing the cyborg army yet”. Creating extra functionality for human beings as Musk strives to do is, in her opinion, a long way away, mainly because of safety concerns. After all, any kind of implantable device is bound to a high-risk surgery and potential brain damage. This is the reason why surgeries such as deep brain stimulation

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At what point do we say the use of technology makes you a cyborg? If you need a cane to walk, does that make you a cyborg? Or if you own a pair of shoes? Dr David Martin

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procedures are done only on people who suffer serious conditions. Although this is a risk Scott-Morgan is willing to take, not many other people would. If few people are willing to undergo brain surgery to become cyborgs, even fewer are willing to go through it more than once. But, surprise, here’s the catch: this is exactly what needs to happen in order to change the device’s battery. To make Musk’s and Scott-Morgan’s dreams a reality, brain implants need to be safe, stable, and efficient. Moreover, as mentioned before, they need to be able to convert electricity into signals that the body can interpret. Only then will they become truly revolutionary. PEDOT might be the perfect solution. PEDOT, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate, is the material that both Green and Musk are using to try to overcome the challenges of implanting electrodes into the human brain. PEDOT was first discovered to have medical applications by Dr David Martin, currently a Professor and Associate Dean at the College of Engineering of the University of Delaware. “It’s been an ongoing effort for more than 20 years now, really,” Martin tells Tech For Good when reflecting on the development of these polymers. The idea that he envisioned then, and that he is still pursuing, is to make coatings

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that lower the impedance of the electrodes that are implanted in the body, improving their biocompatibility. Impedance is a huge challenge for makers of biomedical devices. Essentially, it is a circuit’s resistance to an alternating current. In the biomedical field, it determines the size and voltage that electrodes need to have. The only way to obtain small and long-lasting chips is to ensure that they can maintain a low impedance.

PEDOT was the first polymer that showed signs of being able to do just that. “What our materials do is they essentially create a lot of effective surface area,” Martin explains. “So the whole volume of the material is acting like a big open structure, and you can get a very efficient electron-to-ion charge exchange. Because of that, a little thin coating of our material will lower the importance of the electrode by 100 times, sometimes 1,000 times.” ISSUE 03

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However, a lowered impedance is not the only use of PEDOT. A big reason why these materials might be revolutionary is that they are good at conducting both electricity and ions, becoming the perfect bridge between implants and brain tissue. Over the last 20 years, Martin and his team have worked in testing and researching this property, as well as making new versions of EDOT (the monomer that originates PEDOT) that adapt to specific organs and devices. “Hopefully we can come up with a big library of special source,” he says. “And then you can use whatever code you 28

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need based on, for example, whether the electrode you’re coding is made out of gold or stainless steel, or platinum. Or if you’re talking about electrodes that are going to go in the eye, or the brain or in the heart, then there are molecules that are specific to those kinds of tissues. And you would like molecules on your EDOT that are tailored to improve and optimise the interactions, stability, longevity, sensitivity... all the other properties that you might be interested to have in your device.” PEDOT and EDOT still have a long way to go in terms of research stages. However, if they are proven successful,

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these materials could pave the way to make Scott-Morgan’s ‘Peter 2.0’ a reality. Nonetheless, Martin argues that cyborgs are already around us. “At what point do we say the use of technology makes you a cyborg?” he says. “If you need a cane to walk, does that make you a cyborg? Or if you own a pair of shoes? A pair of shoes protects your feet against the ground and it’s not natural, we’re not born with shoes.” Are cyborgs evil? It probably depends on your definition, but the common expert answer is ‘no’. Only humans are. “I think anything can be used for bad,” Nachman says. “But I am a huge optimist

in terms of how technology can really come and amplify human potential.” AI-human symbiosis has great potential for good, as well as great potential for bad; just like nuclear fission and genetic engineering. If the technology is perfected, regulated and democratised, like ACAT was, it could help Scott-Morgan speak and Elon Musk download his memories, but also allow millions of people hear, see, or live their lives without fear of having a seizure. After all, most people don’t want to be super-humans; they just want to live a normal life. ISSUE 03

EXPERT INSIGHT

EXPERT INSIGHT: THE FUTURE OF QUAKETECH William Laurent, founder of FujiGain, a consultancy focussing on digital transformation and business innovation, looks at how Japan is leading the world in early warning systems for earthquakes - but there is still much to do

he earthquake alert I receive through my phone is always jarring and to the point. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is an earthquake! There is an earthquake!â&#x20AC;? a female voice exclaims in Japanese, which is then immediately followed by a terrifying and impossible-to-disregard clamorous alarm sound. After this earthquake early warning (EEW), we Tokyoites have, on average, between 10 and 30 seconds to seek out a more secure position or head for higher ground before the shaking commences. Those fortunate enough to reside in one of the more technically advanced prefectures in Japan will receive localised earthquake intelligence via a regimen of public address systems, which will bark

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out specific evacuation instructions as well as information on the nearest public areas that are currently determined to be safe. As a long-time resident of Tokyo, it is quite comforting to know that within a single nanosecond of an earthquake being detected, not only will I get a warning sent to my mobile phone, as well as any accessible radio and television networks, but that the EEW system will begin to automatically halt trains and shut down nuclear reactors before the worst shock-waves are felt. As perhaps the most earthquake-prone and tsunami-vulnerable nation on the planet, Japan continues to lead the world in rapid seismic detection technology and EEW systems. Since 2007, the Japanese Meteorological Agency has been able to issue increasingly sophisticated public warnings, enabled by its dense network of 1,000-plus underground seismographs positioned throughout the country. These seismic sensors analyse each earthquake’s primary waves (which are largely harmless and imperceptible) and then determine the estimated location and magnitude of the quake, all within a fraction of a second. If the ground movement is deemed to be potentially harmful - based on predetermined minimum intensity thresholds - alerts will be immediately promulgated through the EEW system,

We Tokyoites have between 10 and 30 seconds to seek out a more secure position or head for higher ground before the shaking commences” warning citizens 10 to 30 seconds before harmful secondary waves arrive from the quake’s epicenter and commence their destructive shaking. Of course, the time needed to properly detect and warn the populace about a ruinous earthquake is highly dependent on the proximity of an individual to the quake’s epicenter and the distance between the quake’s epicenter and the closest seismic sensors. Outside of Japan, the most advanced EEW system is centered in the USA. Sponsored primarily by the US Geological Service, ShakeAlert has been sending out earthquake alerts over the last two years to various locations in the State of California. Although many sensor/transmission components of ShakeAlert are considered to be more advanced than what has been implemented in Japan, the sensor network was less than 65% complete as of this Spring, and several data integration, ISSUE 03

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infrastructure, and funding issues persist. Also, regulatory and environmental considerations are making things challenging for California, as public construction permits can be costly and difficult to obtain. While the rest of the world is learning important lessons on EEW systems from Japan and California, there remains much room for improvement in the areas of earthquake detection, characterisation, and warning transmission. A great deal more thought leadership, education, and innovation are required if we are to improve the rate at which lives and property are saved in countries where earthquakes remain a continual threat. For example: •T ransmission infrastructure remains problematic. Not all alert transmission conduits are fast enough or robust enough to disseminate alerts before they are compromised by secondary wave vibrations. A large portion of our telephone lines, cell phone substructure, and public/private internet links remain extremely vulnerable to natural catastrophe. For example, cellphone towers can be easily damaged or upended in a severe earthquake. • EEW systems need to further embrace prescriptive analytics. It is not enough to know that an earthquake is on its way: humans need to know what action to take after disaster 32

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It is not enough to know that an earthquake is on its way: humans need to know what action to take after disaster strikes”

strikes. In a country like Japan, where much of the population lives close together in wooden houses, citizens would most likely reap great benefit from post-quake thermal imaging analytics - where residents would receive reports on where fires have broken out in their region along with subsequent real-time information which recommends the safest evacuation routes and areas for assembly. • Data on seismic activity must become more seamlessly integrated with utility, public transportation, and power-grids - not only domestically, but on an international foundation. We need to do a better job of envisioning Smart Grid technology solutions from a global perspective.

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â&#x20AC;˘ Information campaigns on how to receive and respond to earthquake early warnings must be crafted to reach the maximum number of individuals. This will necessitate that we enhance current earthquake response education with bi-lingual support and make accommodations for those with disabilities or limited access to smartphones. Although the EEW warning system here in Japan gives me a heightened peace of mind about the perils I may face from an earthquake, there is always some level of trepidation as I venture out into each new day. Consequently, it is important that, as professional scientists and technologists, we do not overlook the health impact of earthquakes: they are not only damaging to property - they

can be scary and traumatising; and at their most extreme, they have the potential to cause PTSD-like symptoms, especially when frequent aftershocks wake us from our sleep and disturb our business meetings for many weeks. However, in tandem with the recent improvements in earthquake detection and warning systems, there are encouraging developments (from a mobile applications perspective) on how to better assess the mental veracity of those affected by natural disasters as they unfold. For those of us that live with the daily threat of earthquakes, we can continue to look towards both Japan and the USA to lead all areas of quaketech innovation for the foreseeable future. ISSUE 03

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From poacher to gamekeeper Royal Van Oord, one of the world’s largest dredging companies, has turned its attention to renewable energies in order to help protect the oceans. Mare Straetmans, Van Oord’s Director for Digital Transformation, speaks to Tech For Good about how it’s planning to become a digitalised and sustainable enterprise AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquia

an one of the oldest and largest dredging companies in the world become a paragon of sustainable development? This is the aim of Royal Van Oord, the 150-year-old Dutch maritime contractor. The owner of one of the world’s largest dredging fleets, Van Oord has worked on enormous projects such as the construction of Dubai’s famous Palm Island. As well as being involved in the offshore oil and gas business, traditionally its work involves dredging, land reclamation and maritime engineering. 34

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However, like all companies in Van Oord’s industry, it came in for criticism due to the ill-effects of dredging on maritime ecosystems. Sediments often damage coral reefs and fisheries, and smother seagrasses, which constitute the key food source of dugongs and sea turtles. The release of toxic chemicals can also increase water turbidity, littering the ocean and provoking the spread of harmful metals throughout the maritime food chain. To combat this, over a decade ago Van Oord embarked on a journey towards a business model centred

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around renewable energies and, in particular, offshore wind farms. Once perceived as an enemy to the ocean, Van Oord now wants to play an active role in preserving it. These are not just empty words. Last autumn, Van Oord secured a large contract for Taiwan’s megawatt Greater Changhua wind farm program and signed a MOU with NYK for joint ownership of its new Japanese-flagged offshore wind installation vessels. In total, throughout 2019, the company made €571 million in revenue from the offshore wind business. It is becoming a core focus of Van Oord’s business. However, Van Oord’s transition is still in its early stages and has many challenges to overcome. One of them is the need for more detailed information regarding the impact of the company on the environment, as well as the sustainability of the company long-term. In order to realise these aims, digitalisation is a fundamental piece of the puzzle. Last May, Mare Straetmans became Van Oord’s Director for Digital Transformation and was entrusted with the task of digitising its operations. He describes his role to Tech For Good as “getting the company to see the potential and start embracing the digital transformation”. Straetmans recognises the environmental impact of Van Oord’s traditional 36

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activities. He describes dredging as “a vacuum cleaner that takes away from the beds of seas and rivers to make sure that ships can go through” and admits that dredging “invades the integrity of ocean beds or river beds”. However, dredging doesn’t cease to be a necessary activity. “Otherwise lands would be whipped away by the sea”, Straetmans explains; a risk that climate change has only worsened. “Maritime is a bit conservative, and is only now engaging with digitalisation and I think that, for Van Oord, this is no different,” Straetmans says. “It’s a huge company that needs everything it can do to compete. And they’ve asked me to help there. So I’m working with the wind business unit and I’m working with the dredging business unit to make digital products, to help them become more efficient and to give clients a better experience. That’s what you want. But taking these steps in a multibillion-dollar business is not easy.” Van Oord’s goal is, in Straetmans words, to ensure “a sustainable future for future generations”. He stresses the two drivers that motivate this aim: the financial imperative, which is the offshore wind business; and the commitment to sustainable office operations. “It’s a huge challenge,” he says. “It’s not easy to change assets that have

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Sustainability is becoming more and more crucial, but I think it should even grow furtherâ&#x20AC;?

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a 30-year life span. So basically we’re working with machines that have been built 25 years ago, so that has an impact on the way the machine operates and what it does. And it’s not easy to change that for the newer ships. It’s obviously easier to make them more sustainable, but this is a big challenge.” It is not only Van Oord that has found adapting to a more sustainable model a significant shift. It is a challenge that has been felt across the whole maritime industry. “Maritime is pretty far away from the end-consumer, so the pressure on sustainability is coming in pretty

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late,” says Straetmans. “Sustainability is becoming more and more crucial, but I think it should even grow further.” In addition to its investment in renewable energies, Van Oord has been researching and carrying out different projects that aim to “mitigate the impact” of dredging on sea life. One of them has been a series of experiments regarding the building of new coral reefs. The Coral Engine, created by Van Oord in the Bahamas, is the first large-scale underwater coral nursery, which grows outplaceable that can be used to rehabilitate coral reefs.

FROM POACHER TO GAMEKEEPER

Van Oord have also deployed the new AdBm Noise Mitigation System (NMS), which is, effectively, a curtain of bubbles. It reduces the sound produced by offshore pile driving and wind turbine foundations, preventing acoustic contamination and protecting sea life. Van Oord has also changed the methods used for sand transportation, by taking advantage of water currents. “We don’t bring the sand to the location where it should be, but, instead, we place it somewhere so that the ocean can bring it to the right spots,” Straetmans says. “It’s a more natural process.”

However, there are certain areas where a lot of research is still needed. One of them is reducing ship’s and port’s dependence on petrol. “At this moment, it’s like a roof,” Straetmans says. “I know a lot about ports, but it’s like an oil refinery. It just needs too much energy; you cannot draw that out of a network of the electricity network. So, smaller ships you can do on electricity, a full-blown ship not yet, maybe at some point, but not right now.” Until the technology advances enough that sustainable energies can replace fossil fuels, Van Oord is focusing on the

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If we know our impact better, we can also better mitigate it, or better influence it. That’s where digital comes in” efficiency of its activities to reduce the use of non-renewable energies, as well as assessing the impact of their activities. Straetmas believes digitalisation is vital for the company’s data collection as well as its future-proofing efforts. “I think the most crucial bit is knowing better what is happening,” he says. “If we know our impact better, we can also better mitigate it, or better influence it. The ‘knowing better’, that’s where digital comes in. Knowing better how we are doing our projects and how they can be done more efficiently. That’s where the digital in sustainability plays a crucial role.” Straetmans recalls an instance that showed the need for data in sustainability efforts: “We had a client that said to all the bidders ‘you can do this project, but you have to do half of the CO2’. And all bidders said ‘Of course we’ll do half of the CO2’, but then the client realised, ‘I’ve got no clue how I’ve got to check 40

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this’. So, on our side, but also on the client’s side, there’s a big question of making it transparent; measuring it.” Digitalisation efforts can provide enormous data that Van Oord and other dredging companies can use to make their activities more efficient and reduce their environmental impact. In order to do that, Van Oord is planning on placing sensors in their infrastructure to obtain relevant data. However, there are still several challenges to overcome, including the placement of the sensors, the type of sensors to be used and how to store the data that is collected. “At this moment, the data of the ships is going all directions,” Straetmans says. “Knowing where the data should go and how we store it and start making use of it; that’s a really long journey.” It may be a lengthy journey, but it will be worth it. “There’s so much upside,” says Straetmans. “Especially in offshore wind, there’s a move to drive down

FROM POACHER TO GAMEKEEPER

costs, because right now they’re not subsidised. I think doing things digitally together with clients could mean a huge opportunity for driving down costs. There’s also the drive for sustainability because, when you make sustainability transparent, it creates a drive to become more sustainable.” While Van Oord’s digital transformation will help to, at the very least, reduce the damage to the oceans, it will also streamline the company’s internal affairs. Straetmans describes Van Oord as “an Excel-based company … There are a lot of people that have no clue what

the internet is about. So, it’s a huge step that the company needs to make.” One of its main focuses is on client relationships. “We’re helping our commercial guys to be more on top of their commercial information,” says Straetmans. “So we give them a dashboard where they can find all the relevant information on the clients that they’re visiting.” In addition, a second project is focused on obtaining and analysing client feedback efficiently. Another focus is on monitoring, with Van Oord working on developing a tool that would make dredging more

Palm Island, Dubai, which was constructed by Van Oord ISSUE 03

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Imagine: 150 windmills fully digitalised. You can just bring yourself into the windmill, into the turbine, through the deck, and even watch what’s happening on the sea”

efficient. Since a fundamental part of the dredging activity is sand-transportation, this tool would help Van Oord calculate the amount of load that the ships can take, depending on weather, winds, currents and tides. Many of these technologies have already been put in place in other industries. However, Straetmans states that there are many instances in which the maritime industry has to face problems that are specific to its activities and that create great difficulties for the company’s digitalisation efforts. An example of this is in the monitoring of windmill installation and mainte42

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nance. “For every bolt that is adjusted in a windmill; they have to take a picture with a nanometer or a pressure meter, and push the bolt so that they know that the bolt is fixed,” he says. “And they may take a picture so that they can show the client with what force that bolt has been adjusted up to that level. And you’re talking about a 100-metre wind blade windmill. “So, it’s very much an industry where there’s a huge need for information security-wise, insurance-wise but also operational and also maintenance-wise, and there are many suppliers involved. That’s a big, big quest, I think.”

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In contrast to other sectors, such as those that revolve around digital innovation and are leaning more and more towards collaboration between companies and providers, the maritime industry’s mentality doesn’t quite work like that. Straetmans defines it as “I do best and I hope I win. And, in the end, if I get the best deal from my supplier, then maybe I win better.” In order for these efforts to really make a difference, the suppliers need to be fully on board. “We find some clients that are working in this digital space already, but very in the beginning,” he says. “This is a big, big challenge for the whole

industry. That’s also why I like it because there’s so much opportunity still.” Straetmans hopes that these challenges will be overcome in the near future and that, in less than 10 years, Van Oord’s digitalisation efforts will have come to fruition. Within the next decade, he hopes to be able to be working with full digital twins of Van Oord’s projects. “Imagine: 150 windmills fully digitalised in time,” he says. “You can just bring yourself into the windmill, into the turbine, through the deck, and even watch what’s happening on the sea.” Straetmans also hopes that by 2030 the company will have passed the sensitisation and data analysis stage and is “a 100% focused on mitigating and potentially on net positive contribution to sustainability.” Straetmans sees great potential for Van Oord to use its knowledge and expertise on maritime ecosystems to support further research on this hidden area of the planet. “We measure ocean beds before we do a project,” he says. “We know what its structure is, what it looks like, what kind of sand it has. So that would be one of my aspirations: to know everything that’s happening in oceans and what they need. That’s an opportunity that I hope the company engages on. We’re not there yet, but it’s growing.” ISSUE 03

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STRIPPING AWAY THE FEAR AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

n March, Europe ground to a halt. Lockdowns enforced because of the spread of COVID-19 closed our towns and cities. And the business world changed in the blink of an eye as many workers were confined to their homes or even placed on extended leave, with little indication of when they might return. All in all, the peak of the pandemic was a time of huge uncertainty. But for Marga Hoek, it was also a time that fired a passion, sharpened her focus and reinforced an idea that had taken root

TECH FOR GOOD

Marga Hoek is an award-winning author and keynote speaker on the subject of sustainability in business. Her upcoming book will cover technology’s role in our drive for a more sustainable world, so Tech For Good grabbed at the chance to learn more about her personal mission and why COVID-19 looks to have made organisations less tech-averse some months before. Freed up by the unavoidable postponement of many of her usual engagements, Hoek - a global voice on sustainable business and author of the award-winning 2018 book The Trillion Dollar Shift - did anything but stop. Instead, she got to work on her next title. The subject of her new book is “tech for good”, making Hoek a shoe-in candidate to be interviewed for this magazine. Fundamentally she believes the future economy must be built around two pillars: technology and

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sustainability. Both have been topics of significant interest in her impressive career spanning high-level roles in the private and public sectors, but it has been the COVID-19 experience that has given Hoek greater urgency to put this message across. “I was already doing research and writing a little bit about it,” she reveals. “And then COVID-19 set in. I thought, ‘oh wow, this is a disaster’ - but I’m an entrepreneur, so if something terrible happens, I have the motivation that something good must come out of it. “It struck me that the ‘tech for good’ topic was amazingly obvious throughout COVID-19, because we could see

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before our eyes the benefits of technology in helping fight this pandemic. And that gave me motivation to do more work on it and develop this book in order to offer inspiration to everybody.” As a self-confessed optimist on the heavy issues around sustainable business, Hoek makes it her mission to “inspire”. The book, due to be released in 2021, will shine a light on 10 technologies that she believes organisations must consider to deliver sustainable success into the future, outlining groundbreaking use cases from today. Hoek offers us only a glimpse into what you might call the book’s 10 commandments - “3D printing is one,

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It struck me that the ‘tech for good’ topic was amazingly obvious throughout COVID-19, because we could see before our eyes the benefits of technology in helping fight this pandemic. And that gave me motivation to do more work on it and develop this book in order to offer inspiration to everybody” and of course artificial intelligence” - but each will be supported by a compelling business case. In the crowded professional speaker arena, this is how Hoek has carved out her niche: by fitting big ideas around sustainability with the commercial realities of a company. This notion was foundational to The Trillion Dollar Shift, in which Hoek uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to set out how business and capital have a real opportunity to help resolve problems of sustainability while staying profitable. As she now brings technology into the mix, Hoek will adopt the same approach, with one of the book’s main purposes being to highlight the enormous scope of potential. “Technology gives you so much enhancement to achieve sustainability impact while improving your company, but I found that so many people actually

don’t realise it and most importantly aren’t aware that tech applies to every single company,” says Hoek, who sits on the boards of three large corporations in finance and insurance among her other professional commitments. Hoek puts this knowledge gap down partly to an historic aversion to technology-driven change, but it’s at this point that she brings up COVID-19 once again, and a positive side-effect of the pandemic. “In normal life, if there’s not a crisis, we fear all kinds of things, but in this situation, the fear of the virus was so much bigger that people were much less resistant to technology,” she says. “And we couldn’t test things a million times before applying them, so that gave an enormous boost to the use of technology. “COVID-19 has shown us that we need technology, it’s so much part of ISSUE 03

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My grandfather was a captain on a ship, and he always used to say ‘leadership is a privilege and comes with a huge responsibility’. And I keep repeating that. If you lead a company, you have responsibility for the company, the stakeholders, and the world”

the solution nowadays. It brings the solution so much quicker, and it enables us to do innovative things, like delivering medicines with drones. I think the level of acceptance has been positively impacted by the coronavirus. It’s like the fear has been stripped away.” Other evidence can be found to support the theory that COVID-19 has shone a light on technology’s power for good. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), technology is 48

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helping “mitigate the negative effects of this crisis” in relation to the 17 United United Nations SDGs. The third SDG for example, around “Good Health and Well-Being”, has been supported by everything from IoT-based remote health monitoring and bedside telemetry, to robots and drones used in quarantined hospitals, says the IDC. Then there is SDG number 12 - “Responsible Consumption and Production” - a subject close to Hoek’s executive background

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in sustainable construction, and where COVID-19 has seen retailers and manufacturers reexamine their supply chains and consider circular economy principles that enable the reuse of discarded items and materials. These are the types of examples, along with many more, that Hoek will detail in her book - yet one book and one person can only go so far. Hoek says the responsibility to grow technology and sustainability initiatives ultimately

sits at the door of business owners and consumers. “My grandfather was a captain on a ship, and he always used to say ‘leadership is a privilege and comes with a huge responsibility’. And I keep repeating that. If you lead a company, you have responsibility for the company, the stakeholders, and the world,” says Hoek. “A lot of leaders have a company, and then they ask how they can do a little bit of good with what they do. That ISSUE 03

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I feel there is a fundamental shift now, and that is happening because more and more companies see that more value creation can be achieved by applying both technology and sustainability” perspective is completely the wrong way around; it’s not driven by creating impact, it’s driven by improving their company a little bit. A really sustainability-responsible leader of a company thinks from the world backwards.They think about what the world is faced with, what we need to find solutions for, and bring that back to their own company.” When it comes to this topic, the technology sector itself is under the microscope. As the macroeconomic power of Silicon Valley’s biggest corporations has grown to frightening levels, so has their 50

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responsibility to not only demonstrate sustainable practices, but also commit cash and resources to tech-driven, world-changing initiatives. At the beginning of this year, Microsoft vowed to be carbon negative by 2030. Not only that, but it also launched an initiative to use its technology to help its suppliers and customers around the world reduce their own carbon footprints. Apple and Amazon are among others to have made similar pledges, but in Hoek’s view, more can still be done to apply best sustainable practice to the “core businesses” of big tech. “Some [of these companies] fund renewable energy, for example, and because they have a lot of resources, they develop renewable energy at a large scale, essentially becoming energy providers, and that is amazing and very important - but it’s not enough,” she says. “And that’s because we expect from these same companies that they don’t, for example, develop phones that we have to throw away all the time for the next model. “So actually, the ‘for good’ doesn’t apply to their core business. And what sustainable leadership means is that those leaders would apply it to their core business. That is what we want.” Hoek works tirelessly to get her views across to today’s business leaders but she is positive she won’t have to

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toil quite so hard in the future, as a generation brought up tech-savvy and sustainability-conscious graduates into enterprise’s decision-making roles. But will change happen in time to overcome our planet’s toughest challenges? Hoek admits she is simultaneously optimistic and impatient. “My hopes are high, because while the generation shifts now to the millennials, who will soon be the biggest percentage on the market, as well as Generation Z, they are very sustainably-minded. Eight out of 10 of them won’t work for a company that’s not sustainable, and seven out of 10 of them are willing to pay more for sustainable products. So they’ll put the pressure on it, and by the time they become leaders, hopefully we haven’t ruined their motivation.

“I feel there is a fundamental shift now, and that is happening because more and more companies see that more value creation can be achieved by applying both technology and sustainability. So more companies are successful, and if other companies see that, that makes things happen quicker. And the coronavirus has opened our eyes. It’s made people realise, and I hope it sticks, that when we do change our behaviour, the positive impact of that is there within weeks and months. “Yes I’m impatient, and it takes too long sometimes, but it will happen, it absolutely will happen. And technology is the big driver behind that.” To learn more about Marga Hoek’s work, visit her website: www.margahoek.com ISSUE 03

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PUBLIC VS PRIVATE The NHS is considered a national treasure in the UK, but no institution is perfect. We spoke to Richard Rolt, COO of pathology services provider Viapath, about why IT isn’t being given the attention it deserves in parts of the healthcare system – and how COVID-19 has exposed that INTERVIEW: Daniel Brigham

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ell us about the work Viapath does? We’re one of the UK’s largest pathology service providers. We use novel and innovative IT integration technology to connect different parts of the healthcare system together with pathology. A request for a pathology test is placed in a hospital system, such as a patient record system; in simple terms a doctor might be with a patient and need to order diagnostic tests, such as a full blood count or whatever they might need. They order that by pressing on a button next to that patient on their patient record, and that creates a request. Then that request is handled by our integration platform and sent to the lab that needs to process it.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the five years you’ve been at Viapath and how has that improved the ability to bring labs together? The environment I work in, in pathology, tends to move at a snail’s pace in terms of technology change. Pathology requires you to have a laboratory information management system. The systems here in the UK are focused systems proprietary to the NHS and UK healthcare. You will find that they’re mostly either legacy systems that need replacing in about 50% of the labs in the 54

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country, or they are provided by a company called Clinisys. Clinisys have got some good technologies, but they are constrained by the pace of change and investment in NHS IT. So where is technology advancement coming from? International companies like Roche Diagnostics, Becton Dickinson and Abbott all manufacture large-scale testing platforms and distribute on a global basis. This is a massive business. What they are competing for is highly competitive because they are leasing equipment into hospitals on the basis of drawing revenue from essential

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The state of IT integration at the outset of COVID-19 was not mature enough to cope, which meant the NHS wasn’t in a great starting position” Richard Rolt supplies. It’s a bit like in an office where you can rent a photocopier, and you can get the photocopier for free so long as you buy the cartridges. The testing platforms for core pathology services have a large footprint, consuming the space of something like half a football pitch, the manufacturers support our scientists with implementation and we then buy their reagents. And because that’s how the arrangement works, you end up in a five- or 10-year lease, so contract renewals are massively competitive. They are very interested in innovating because it provides a differentiated proposition to enable them to win in the marketplace. ISSUE 03

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There’s been little excuse, really, because the ability to digitalise has been there – it just hasn’t been realised” What sort of innovation are we talking about? The laboratory equipment manufacturers are innovating in a number of ways. They aim to develop the best diagnostics in terms of sensitivity, to reduce costs through efficiency and to improve equipment reliability. They are also innovating in IT to increase connectivity to laboratory systems, digitising the entire request-to-result pathway, reducing transcription errors and increasing the rate of throughput in the laboratory with fewer human interventions. Today we are seeing investment in more automated platforms driven by robotics and the emergence of machine learning as a means of interpreting results more accurately and efficiently. This is crucial in the future treatment of cancer, for example, where digital images can now match the magnification of a glass slide under a microscope, enabling histopathologists to work remotely from the laboratory like their radiology counterparts. It also enables 56

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the application of machine learning techniques to automate interpretation of digitised specimen slides rather than consuming the time of histopathologists. How widespread is that now? It’s slowly creeping in. But one of the problems is that the histopathologists need to be 100% confident that the technology will work before it receives widespread acceptance in the UK. Has the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the need to utilise new technology? The priority for setting up testing was set around getting the equipment, getting hold of the reagent kits, and getting the laboratories ready. The state of IT integration at the outset was not mature enough to cope, though, which meant that, as a healthcare provider, the NHS wasn’t in a great starting position. And IT not being considered a priority is a pattern you get used to, unfortunately.

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For example, if you pitch up at a hospital, what are the chances of your hospital having your patient record? It’s minimal, isn’t it. They might have some rudimentary information, but little more. Yet you’re able to see your own banking information from any location in the world on your phone transaction by transaction, or check what your online supermarket buying habits have been over the past 12 months instantly and to see orders you’ve just placed. But you can’t necessarily check your own health records, or your own prescription information. There’s absolutely no reason why healthcare couldn’t have sorted that in the same time it’s taken Tesco or Barclays to. It’s fundamentally using the same tech, and improving connectivity

and integration between healthcare providers. It’s not something supermarkets or banks have done overnight, but it’s something they’ve worked on constantly because they saw the value in it. There’s been little excuse, really, because the ability to digitalise has been there – it just hasn’t been realised. Do you think there is now a realisation that there needs to be more of a focus on IT? In talking to clinicians and decision makers, are they paying it the attention it needs? I think all too often the IT component is dismissed as the technical bit, so the attention it needs to guide the teams that are doing it just isn’t there at a leadership level. So, with

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pathology you end up with substandard experience of requesting and receiving diagnostic test results. For example, if you’ve been to a government facility like a car park to get tested for COVID-19, you’ll probably know that the swab goes into a tube with a barcode on it. That barcode has very minimal information, which was kept anonymous. It would include a unique identifier, and your telephone number to send a text to with the result. So whilst the laboratory can test it and then send the results to that telephone 58

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number it doesn’t necessarily mean that the result will be elsewhere in your healthcare records, so your GP probably won’t get that information. And that’s a result of the people at the top simply not investing enough attention into the possibilities of IT over recent decades. It’s an emotive subject, clearly, but would you say that’s due to underfunding in the NHS? I don’t think it is simply underfunding in terms of investment, but perhaps underfunding in terms of the right

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ration between healthcare organisations. I think things can go wrong in that kind of environment that the private sector wouldn’t tolerate, but it’s been accepted in the NHS for years.

leaders from the IT sector in the right roles. For example, clinicians – who do amazing work in their field – have a lot of influence, but their interests and skills are not in the tech area. You might find a great bit of research work that has information sitting on a dodgy old server underneath a desk, because they’ve not got the breadth of knowledge to demand something more robust. In IT terms it can be a bit like the wild west; clinicians can develop things on their own, information is not centralised as a result and so that limits inter-collabo-

With massive commercial enterprises like Amazon making large investments into healthcare, is there a danger the public sector will get left behind? I think, unless things fundamentally change and there is better leadership and better attention paid to IT and tech, the public sector will lose the game in the end to industries. I think the public sector can win if they accelerate innovation and see it from a commercial perspective. Clearly, further privatisation of the NHS would be a very tricky political matter and it would attract enormous media attention. I think we’re told we, as the public, love the NHS but I wonder if that is actually true. I think we have more of a love-hate relationship with it depending on our most recent experiences. And if these private companies are going to come along and offer aspects of healthcare service that are just far more convenient and far more practical and reliable – and far more innovative behind the scenes – then I think it’s highly likely that we will see more privatisation of the NHS in the future. ISSUE 03

EDUCATION

Something old, something new Following the response to COVID-19, is education in the UK finally ready to embrace more technology in the classroom? Mital Thanki, CEO of Spark Academy, tells Tech For Good how the future of education could be a blend of old-school teaching and automation platforms AUTHOR: Daniel Brigham

his year marks the 150th anniversary of the Education Act in the United Kingdom. The act was significant: never before had a specific piece of legislation dealt with the provision of UK education. It unified the teaching of children, establishing school boards across the country. It was democratising, and a revolutionary leap in the way that Great Britain approached education. But, although most industries have changed beyond recognition in the century and a half since, the very act of teaching in a class60

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room has stood still. Sure, there are overhead projectors now. Maybe a bit of PowerPoint, and the boards have changed from black to white, but the fundamentals havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t altered: text books, exercise books, writing down answers and essays on paper with ink. Teaching very much remains a digital-free environment. This could be set to change, however, after COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown forced schools to adapt the way they planned lessons,

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Classrooms have changed little over the decades taught pupils, assessed their work and monitored their well-being. While it created extreme challenges, it also opened some eyes to the possibilities presented by a more digital world; a world in which machine learning and automation can free up time for teachers to plan lessons and inspire their pupils, rather than get bogged down in preparing resources and hours of marking. After 150 years of standing relatively still – just a few here shuffles here and there – is education in Britain finally ready to embrace digital transformation? Mital Thanki believes now is the time to grab that chance. Founder and CEO of Spark Academy – an award-winning after-school tuition provider for English, 62

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maths and science – Thanki admits the rapid change in teaching methods enforced by the national lockdown opened her eyes. “I’m a qualified teacher and used to work in schools and I was a little disheartened by the whole process,” she tells Tech For Good. “I love working with kids but I wanted to do it on my terms and to be able to make faster and better decisions, so Spark Academy was born and the whole idea was to make education affordable for kids and make sure there is social mobility – allowing children to climb ladders and get to where they want to be. “We had defined our methodology and it was working really well. But then COVID-19 hit and suddenly it felt like

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our systems had been compromised - there were certain things that we just weren’t going to be able to do. It was very difficult to communicate with students because a lot of it was based on emailing, and it’s difficult to manage homework over email. Paper became a thing of the past, so we had to put all of our worksheets in one drive for students to access, and I felt this just wasn’t good enough.” Thanki knew the challenges faced by Spark Academy were being experienced in schools across the country, and went searching for an online learning platform

Nikhil Sharma

Education in the UK needs to come into this century, and we need to move to a blended learning model” that could help manage these issues. There was a checklist of problems Thanki wanted solving: children were experiencing trauma due to the isolation they felt at not being able to go to school, so she wanted a platform that would have a community aspect that allowed for instant messaging between peer groups, teachers and pupils. Thanki also aimed to provide structured course materials and real-time reporting, to avoid having teachers sending out worksheets over email. And the final, vital, requirement was a platform that enabled remote teaching. Expecting to have to use several platforms, Thanki was instead introduced to a cloud-based automation and digital tool for students by Nikhil Sharma, who works in Spark Academy’s technical team. It covered all of the bases. ISSUE 03

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It enables teachers to make quicker, faster, smarter decisions in the classroom to best support their students”

“It blew me away, by its capabilities and the way it can be configured,” Thanki says. “With my teaching experience in schools, I knew that this would be great in a classroom. I was excited. The solution was an all-in-one platform. You can have live lessons, and produce realtime reports, and bring children together. There’s more too, with the ability to add gamification to incentivise base learning.” Sharma says the major driving force behind building the platform was “to continue education”. 64

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“The platform was focused on ensuring conversations can happen between teachers and students, empowering the educators to engage with students, and sharing real-time assignments in an interactive way,” he says. “We wanted to mimic everything that happens in the classroom – the motive was to mimic that virtually.” Those ideas became Spark Learning Platform. Key to its creation was ensuring it wasn’t merely a remote learning tool, but also a platform

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that could be used for in-classroom teaching. With kids returning to schools around the world, it was no use developing something that wouldn’t be beneficial outside of a pandemic. “It enables teachers to make quicker, faster, smarter decisions in the classroom to best support their students,” Thanki says. “To give you an example, a teacher can go through a lot of examples on a white board and they can tell the students to crack on with the classwork. The kids can still use paper

to do their working out, but then they can submit their answers on a tablet. Imagine the power for the teacher to be able to see that reporting coming in to them straight away in real time. “They’re able to see exactly how their students are doing at any time, and can assess whether a student might not be understanding something and can immediately talk to them and reinforce their teaching. So rather than waiting a week before that penny drops, they can rectify issues there and then.” This, perhaps, may be the biggest learning that education can take from the response to COVID-19. There perhaps isn’t the need for a tech revolution, in which everything becomes digitalised, but there is a need for evolution; an education system in which traditional teaching methods can be supplemented by automation tools that allow teachers to concentrate on, well, actually teaching. Thanki calls this a blended learning approach; incorporating traditional teaching methods with tech. “It’s important to bring more awareness about blended learning into the education field,” she says. “We’ve essentially been doing the same thing for 200 years. What I’m trying to say is that education in the UK needs to come ISSUE 03

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into this century, and we need to move to a blended learning model. “This methodology is already working in universities, and has been embraced and students are thriving. There will be a lot of change involved, and educating the education system, but it’s here to stay – and now is the time to embrace it.” It’s no secret that schools are underfunded in the UK, which can mean that the teaching profession is often naturally resistant to change, especially if it involves costs. There is also a time issue: learning to use a new platform – and changing the way one traditionally teaches a classroom of children – could be time-consuming in a profession that is already time-poor.

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Research carried out last year by University College London found that one in four teachers were working more than 60 hours a week – 12 hours above legal limits set by the European Union. One third of all new teachers leave within the first five years of qualifying, with a negative work-life balance cited most often as the reason. So anything that adds to that workload, rather than reducing it, is unlikely to be met with open arms. However, Thanki says once the Spark Learning Platform is up and running, it will free up significant time for teachers. The platform is pre-loaded with ready-made resources and assignments in the three core subjects of

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maths, English and science. This allows teachers to plan their lessons, rather than their resources. “One of our focuses was definitely on allowing the teacher more time to focus on actually teaching,” says Sharma. “We came up with pre-loaded materials and created certain assessments where the students get automated feedback, which is based on teachers’ previous feedback. Through the machine learning it creates feedback to save time for teachers.” There has already been a move towards online learning in secondary education, but it’s slow. Harrow School, one of England’s most famous private schools, recently set up a virtual sixth form to teach A-levels

online for global students (if you have a spare £15,000 a year to spend). The change towards more digitalised learning may be sloth-like, but it appears inexorable. “Some institutions will go entirely online, but there is a need for interaction face to face so I think blended learning is the way we’ll see education go,” says Thanki. “It might be a case where it’s 75% online and kids will meet in school for specific workshops. It’s about having an open mind and educators need to have that about the possibilities in education. “First, though, we need to get our basics right and start with the right foundations and realise the power of tech now.” ISSUE 03

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