As the Northern Ireland Ambassador for Digital Leaders 2021, Anaeko will be hosting this year’s annual flagship event! The Event showcases Northern Ireland’s collaborative efforts to address the ‘Grand Challenges’. As leaders in software, Anaeko convenes notable speakers from academia and the business community to discuss their strategies for contributing to UK economic growth through the four “Grand Challenges,” areas of technology that are likely to transform industries and societies.

“We are proud to showcase our universities, businesses and the extraordinary new technologies that are set to deliver environmental and societal economic benefit in Northern Ireland — from exploiting the benefits of artificial intelligence, to accelerating the drive to net zero, to increasing mobility, to improving quality of life for the elderly.” – Denis Murphy, CEO of Anaeko

The Grand Challenges

1. CLEAN GROWTH

How we will maximise the advantages for UK industry from the global shift to clean growth. The move to cleaner economic growth – through low carbon technologies and the efficient use of resources – is one of the greatest industrial opportunities of our time. By one estimate, the UK’s clean economy could grow at four times the rate of GDP. 

Clean growth? Green growth? Or beyond growth?

Professor John Barry of Queens University Belfast (QUB) urges us to start with the objective itself: “There is much talk of the need for clean and green growth in the face of the planetary crisis, and as part of a new economic strategy as we seek to ‘build back better’ after the pandemic. While there is much merit in such efforts perhaps it is also time to question growth itself as an appropriate objective for the economy in our climate changed and carbon constrained world.”

2. AGING SOCIETY

Can we harness the power of innovation to help meet the needs of an ageing society? Life expectancy is rising in Northern Ireland. In fact, it is predicted that 1 in 4 children born today will celebrate their 100^th birthday. The prospect of longer lives will create new demands for technologies, products and services to help older citizens lead independent and fulfilled lives.

Understanding today for a healthier tomorrow 
Dr. Charlotte Neville, Senior Research Fellow at QUB will talk about the Northern Ireland Cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Ageing, or NICOLA, the first large scale study of ageing in Northern Ireland. She will be joined by a representative of Kraydel, a Belfast-based age-tech company, who will demonstrate how new technologies are helping people remain independent for longer by enabling better communication with family and healthcare providers. 

3. THE FUTURE OF MOBILITY

How can we become a world leader in shaping the future of mobility? The world faces a dual challenge of keeping people, goods and services moving while at the same time cutting carbon emissions. From planes to trains, to cars to trucks, around a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions are created by the way we all choose to get around. 

Driving to net zero: Challenges for public transport

Due to scale, the challenge to decarbonise public transport is huge. Smart infrastructures—and choices—are critical. Juliana Early, Associate Professor, QUB discusses the emerging electric battery versus hydrogen dilemma and the role of digital technologies in shaping our mobility solutions.

4. AI & DATA

How do we put the UK at the forefront of artificial intelligence and data revolution? Artificial intelligence and machine learning can be seen as new industries in their own right, but they are also transforming business models across many sectors, deploying vast datasets to identify better ways of doing complex tasks. 

Artificial intelligence: Water’s next frontier
Anaeko CTO Colm Hayden presents the opportunities for transforming water management by applying the benefits of artificial intelligence. As an example, he demonstrates how Northern Ireland Water is delivering more value to their customers and to the environment through smarter data management.

The program begins at 2:00 pm on 16 June 2021 sign up HERE.

The Health and Social Care – R&D Division and the Connected Health Innovation Centre (CHIC) based at Ulster University are looking to further establish their existing partnerships by arranging a series of workshops to facilitate access to NI clinical based Life and Health Science to identify emerging unmet needs in areas of clinical and commercial interest. In the post COVID world where there has been a marked change in attitudes to the role of technology in healthcare, and a positive acceptance in the need for increased uptake of digital innovations in a healthcare setting, the second webinar in this series will be looking to showcase The Role of Digital Technologies in Respiratory Health, and Anaeko couldn’t be happier to be part of such an innovative project. 

55% of the population live in urban environments and these environments play an essential role in human health and wellbeing. Air pollution contains air particulate matter, PM2.5, that can stay in the air for long periods of time and be inhaled deep into the lungs. Pollution within urban areas can have an affect on asthma sufferers and “Around two thirds of people with asthma tell us poor air quality makes their asthma worse, putting them at risk of an asthma attack.” (www.asthma.org.uk).

Asthma is a long-term condition that needs careful management and monitoring to keep it under control in order to reduce the risk of attacks. People are feeling the effects of air pollution on their asthma so how can they manage attacks when they have less control over air pollution? 

Outdoor Air Quality

The main sources of outdoor air pollutants are vehicles, industry, buildings, agriculture and peoples activity. During high pollution episodes children, elderly and people with chronic health problems are the most vulnerable and with these air pollution peaks there may be an association with an increase in hospital admissions for individuals with pre-existing respiratory conditions.

The main air pollutants of health concern are Particulate Matter (PM2.5, PM10).  Sources of PM can be natural or man-made and could include bacteria, indoor heating, car exhausts, construction. Particulate matter can penetrate into the lungs and bloodstream causing irritation of the airways, coughing and aggravation of heart and lung diseases.  

With air pollution being a health risk and because people are exposed to it in their everyday lives, where they work, exercise and live there is a need to provide informative and real-time localised air quality data. So individuals can make informed decisions on when and how they carry out their daily activities. 

Day-to-day changes in weather can have a great influence on air quality. Pollutants that are high on a still day can be much lower the next day, or next hour, if the wind direction or speed changes. If people are given this information on when air quality is at a good or bad level they can adjust accordingly within their area and timeframes.

Indoor Air Quality

People spend a lot of time indoors so indoor air quality needs considered. Air pollutants generated outdoors can also have a direct impact on the indoor space. The main sources of indoor pollutants can be home heating, fires, candles, cooking, cleaning products or drying clothes creating damp. 

Monitoring indoor air quality and assessing changes needed to improve air quality could lead to a better environment for vulnerable groups like the elderly in their homes or children in schools. By giving more insight and analysis to individual people but also policy makers or building planners changes can be made to improve indoor air quality:

• More ventilation through windows or built in systems
• Including building regulations to improve air quality indoors
• At home activities to reduce pollutants
• Greener choice in home heating

By giving individuals and regulatory bodies more information, real-time data and advice more people can become aware of the strategies to take to improve health. 

Clean Air for Healthcare is a health data research platform and suite of applications for those living with respiratory conditions and those who care for them. By giving a unique, personalised perspective on health and air quality it allows users to see localised air quality data and empower their decisions on when to take part in certain activities or areas to avoid.

It will help to enable personal action plans and with historical data and trend analysis help predict air quality changes giving the patient real-time and predictive information. 

Healthcare systems are anticipating a surge of societal health issues to emerge post-pandemic and with long-term effects of COVID on the population being particularly manifested in respiratory conditions, digital innovations to address these patient conditions are essential to prevent the healthcare systems being overrun with increasing workloads. 

The goal of the event is to build relationships between the HSC Clinical Research Staff, Companies and Academia with a view to increasing collaborative research and technology commercialisation through the matching of clinical need with technology solutions.

The agenda will allow an opportunity for Companies to engage with key HSC and Academic stakeholders and gain insight into NI’s unique capabilities, meet with key investigators and showcase their innovations and key capabilities, enabling the development of better targeted solutions to real unmet health needs.

Anaeko will be represented at the event by Senior Software Architect Roger Wallace in a short but succinct keynote presentation.

Sign up for the event HERE.

This year’s Digital Leaders annual lecture keynote will focus on Northern Ireland’s strategies to mitigate the climate emergency through smarter water management. As the Northern Ireland Ambassador for the event, Anaeko will partner with Northern Ireland Water to deliver this year’s annual lecture and panel discussion on the challenges around becoming carbon neutral by 2050. 

There is no greater threat to the environment and current ways of life than climate change. In fact, the latest science indicates that global warming must be limited to less than 1.5ºC to avoid catastrophic impact. Northern Ireland Water are committed to accelerating the transition to a regenerative, sustainable future in order to reduce and prevent further atmospheric damage and achieve #netzero.

This year’s annual lecture will be led by, Alistair Jinks, Director of Business Services at NI Water. As a lead thinker in the future of water, Jinks will share how complex climate challenges are being tackled by NI Water through an array of initiatives, from green energy generation to decarbonising and improving air quality – all while reducing operating costs and creating exciting new jobs across the province. In addition to sharing a high-level strategic overview, Jinks will also discuss the infrastructure changes that are required for success and the role of data in helping to inform and manage sustainability. 

The keynote will be followed by an expert-led panel discussion, further exploring the challenges and opportunities of the transitional landscape and the role of innovative technology in reaching the ambitious net zero target. This portion of the event will be moderated by Simon Hamilton, Belfast Climate Commissioner and CEO of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, the panel will assess the main challenges around the transition to net zero and the role of transformative technologies for creating a more resilient future. 

Neil Kitching – Specialist, low carbon (water) , Scottish Enterprise

As an energy specialist at Scottish Enterprise, Neil’s experience and expertise centers on the relationships between low carbon heat, water technology innovation and business.

Neil is active in the Hydro Nation Water Innovation Service, which helps companies develop new products and services and accelerate their route to market. He recently commissioned research into ‘digital water’ and is excited at the potential for obtaining new and valuable insights from this work.

Neil is passionate about the environment and is the author of Carbon Choices, which focuses on offering common-sense solutions to our climate and nature crises. The book identifies 10 foundational building blocks for solving these problems and includes a green action plan for government, business and individuals as well.

Ciaran Nicell – Head of Business Analytics, NI Water

As head of business analytics at Northern Ireland Water, Ciaran Nicell is responsible for developing systems and tools that improve decision-making capability across the entire enterprise.

Working within the company’s business improvement team, Ciaran works closely with a variety of experts to build new intelligence capabilities in the NI Water Intelligent Operations centre.

Ciaran’s background is extremely diverse. He draws on over 30 years of experience in engineering management, data systems and analysis, including 11 years at NI Water.

Professor John Barry – Green Political Economy, Queens University, Belfast

John Barry is a professor of Green Political Economy and Co-Director of the 
Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queen’s University Belfast. He is also co-chair of the Belfast Climate Commission making him a valuable contributor in this years annual lecture during Digital Leaders Week 2021.

His areas of academic research include post-growth and heterodox political 
economy; the politics, policy and political economy of climate breakdown 
and climate resilience; socio-technical analyses of low carbon energy and 
sustainability transitions; and the overlap between conflict transformation 
and these sustainability transitions. 

Colm Hayden – Chief Technology Officer at Anaeko 

Colm Hayden is a well-respected cloud and data specialist. His experience over the past two decades includes roles as chief technology officer at cloud software and services companies, technical director to industry networks, technical lead on open standards, university course director and business network founder. 

As CTO of data optimisation specialist Anaeko, Colm has scoped and delivered 400 projects, designed 40 cloud platforms and brought to market over 100 applications for clients including NI Water, Land and Property Services, Health and Social Care Northern Ireland, UK Government, IBM Cloud, Microsoft, Vodafone, Fujitsu, Verint, Epic Games and many more.

This program offers a rare opportunity to learn from experts at the intersection of climate and environment, net zero initiatives and digital technologies. Beverley Ferrara, European representative of The Water Council, a US-based global center for advancing water technologies and stewardship, will also compere the event. 

The program begins at 3:00 pm on 15 June 2021. Register HERE.

We are delighted to be Digital Leaders Partner for Northern Ireland this year. We very much support the Digital Leaders mission of building leaders to drive digital transformation across the public sector. This is particularly important in a post pandemic world.

For Digital Leaders Week we plan a great programme which includes:

1. A Launch Video
2. An Annual Lecture
3. A Flagship Event
4. A number of other event from other NI partners

The theme for the week in Northern Ireland will be achieving Net Zero Carbon. This is becoming a major focus, not alone across Northern Ireland, but across all the regions and will require collaboration between private sector, public sector and academia. Some example Northern Ireland initiatives are as follows:

• The Belfast Net Zero Roadmap was launched before Christmas and
• Towards Net Zero is a major strategy focus for NI Water as the biggest user of electricity in the region.

We hope that you will all join us for some great content and speaker for the Digital Leaders week between 14^th and 18^th of June 2021.

Summary of our project findings and future development

Summaries of our sensors find there’s a strong repeating pattern as I just mentioned every evening in winter as we turn our heating on. There are always localised events although there can be strong agreement which is reflected in the general weather or the pollution forecast. There’s approximately one serious pollution event every 10 days or so.There’s a 20 percent correlation between indoor and outdoor but one of the things that was striking for us was that indoor pollution increases going out of town and the highest readings of indoor pollution come from suburban areas of Belfast where there are more houses with more stoves and more open fires. 

A summary of our prescription findings. We find a relationship between diabetes and respiratory prescriptions which disappears when you filter out deprivation because people in deprived areas are more likely to suffer from multiple conditions.  In deprived areas there’s 165 percent increase, in general, of spending when compared to the wealthier areas.  There is a seasonal increase in respiratory prescriptions in wealthy areas that isn’t reflected in the deprived areas. 

So what can we do about it? What action can you take? 

What we realised working through this project that the hard problems are usually human problems they’re not technical problems. Changing people’s behaviour is just hard. It’s difficult, look at the legislation that was introduced about smoking in the workplace, consider how long it took us to get there how many decades passed before public opinion had shifted. Just enough for the government to risk banning smoking. What is the likelihood of the government banning stoves or steadily taxing cars so that they cannot be a source of pollution. It just seems unrealistic so we really need to look at how we can change behaviour and recognise that itis difficult. Now there are roughly two articles a week in the national newspapers about pollution and its impact. The screenshots you see in front of you I took just last week. I didn’t have to hunt very far and it’s a selection of newspapers from across the uk and there are initiatives around the uk to promote this awareness but general anecdotal evidence is that they’re underperforming. 

So let’s look at what we are trying to achieve and again these numbers are from Northern Ireland and for those of you living in England you just need to do the mental maths multiplied by 30.  What we want to do is provide personalised localised and real-time actionable advice. We want to create personal positive asthma action plans for up to 150,000 patients across Northern Ireland. We want to reduce the 10 thousand critical care admissions that happen every year and reduce those 70,000 bed days that are an impact caused by that lose 10,000 critical care admission. We want to reduce the 45 million spent on respiratory medicine each year. These are the targets, these are the goals and this is how we measure our success.

Whether or not we can impact these numbers we reason that the most likely people to engage with pollution and health services applications designed to change your behaviour and inform you but probably not the people that you that need the most help. For example an application that serves as the park run community or the Strava users who you would find a group of people that are very engaged with their health and they’re very welcoming for more data for training and health guidance. Yes they’re not necessarily the people that you need to but they can be a route to refining a service, building evidence so we can target more vulnerable groups. Ideally what we would like to do is reach people through their GP led care there’s no reason why a service or an application like the one you can see in front of you, which is clean air for healthcare’s mobile application, couldn’t be prescribed by a GP.  But to reach the GPs you have to refine the service and you have to test it in the real world and you have to have a slick experience and clear evidence of its effectiveness.  So why not target the people that you can reach and use them to improve your application, improve your messaging, and improve personalised care. An example of this would be Couch to 5k. Which isn’t for everyone but it is an example of a really successful self-help application that is promoted actively by the NHS and is recommended by the NHS. We are aware of various initiatives using existing pollution data infrastructure to deliver air quality alerts and as i mentioned before anecdotally it just doesn’t appear to be a huge taker so we need to to work on that problem. 

As I said behavioural change is hard and we are working with the University of Ulster on an ethical study to understand how people react to personalised pollution information. What are the ethical issues and how might they affect people’s behaviour. It’s an ongoing study so I really don’t have results to discuss at this time. We’re also having conversations with behaviour experts discussing how we might involve communities to target vulnerable groups could we, for example, provide real-time feedback in parks? can you put a sensor in your local park and information on the gate that might change behaviour.  How would it change behaviour? Could you encourage people to walk rather than run on a day with bad pollution? Could you remind people who do have long-term respiratory problems to take their inhaler before they walk the dog because they might, or maybe delay it until later, or another day? 

Finally we’ve been continuing to expand our geospatial hub into other services and look at how it can help work withother health and social problems 

Find out more about the Clean Air for Healthcare Data hub below and contact us for questions or enquiries:

Air Quality Data exploration

It’s tempting to attribute the issues to purely location there is a relationship between where people live and pollution or is there a relationship that we can demonstrate and this is where our investigation takes a turn and we start looking at air quality.  

On this slide you can see for example the kind of air quality services that are publicly available today, and the approach is very similar to the pollen forecasts that you see in the news, air quality forecasts try to mimic weather forecasts. Their approach is generally seeing wealth forecasts as a gold standard but air quality is different to weather forecasting people genuinely want to know what’s the weather might be like later today or tomorrow but they can see what the weather is like now because they just look out the window but you can’t see what pollution is like even if the pollution is bad enough to actually affect you you still cannot see it.  So there is a critical difference between air quality and weather another critical difference is that short localised weather events aren’t really that important because sure someone might see the weather forecast for mostly fine and not take an umbrella and they might be unfortunate enough to get caught in the down poor that’s local and they’re a little annoyed maybe they spend a wet afternoon and that’s no harm done. The weather forecast for fine weather is perfectly reasonable generalisation.

That brings me to our third hiccup of this project what we were seeing was the data available for pollution didn’t offer the kind of localiSed real-time view that we were starting to believe was necessary to inform people about what’s happening in their area. We decided to bring our own data to the table. We decided to measure our own pollution and that’s thanks to a collaboration we had with another Belfast company and we were able to quickly deploy multiple pollution sensors across Belfast. You can see on the map these sensors were able to provide us with real-time means particular pollution both indoors and outdoors and you can see from the map that we place them around Belfast to build up a picture of the different conditions in different parts of the city. It is the placement of these IoT pollution measurement devices that kind of brings up that final hiccup of our SBRI story. 

It was our experience that any discussion with the government agency to place IoT devices on government property will quickly break down if you’re working on an IoT project with government.  You really need a backup plan and you really need a very long term discussion about how you might get these things installed and managed and the responsibility.  The impact that they might have so this is something that you need to consider now in the end what we managed to do was place these at private residences that we had access to and so we side-stepped local government. So all of these sensors are basically people’s houses in suburban areas across Belfast and some office buildings in the city centre.

Very briefly we can take a look at the sort of data that we collected.  Here you can see the kind of insight that we got from our real-time sensors.  Our study tracked both indoor and electrical pollution which is unusual and we find that indoor levels of pollution you can see on the left-hand graph are roughly around 20 of what is happening outside so any measurement that you are getting from an external data sensor can can be inferred the level of complete pollution internally. Very large spikes in the pollution do happen and do cross over to indoors so what’s happening outside can impact you inside. It’s not uncommon for indoor pollution to reach levels that could impact the health of people living with hot conditions. 

We also tracked regular high pollution events that would otherwise be smoothed out by normal air quality, reporting and forecasting these events occur regularly they coincide with people arriving home from work, turning on their home heating our wood burning stoves and fires.  You can see on the right an example of an event that happened on election night in 2019. The blue line shows the city centre, the red line shows suburban southern part of Belfast and you can see that the events occurred on the same day but at different times. So different people in different areas of the city will be affected at different times of the day. When I was walking on that night I can tell you it was difficult to breathe, so this is a real event-driven, real-time need for information in your local area. 

Watch Next Video