Working within the technology industry there are some buzzwords which come up over and over again, current one being ‘Artificial Intelligence’. 

Algorithms

Prediction machines use algorithms to predict the likelihood of X. For example, predicting the salary of an individual given information on their demographics, behaviour and cultural trends. By calculating the prediction accuracy of an event happening to a certain person, industry or trend, we gain further insight and can act accordingly. Prediction machines or models have many advantages. Although there is investment required to build these models, there are savings made intervening in a problem before it escalates. Public sector organisations can do this, but only if they can convene and analyse the datasets that might collectively point to cases of highest future risk.

If we take the example of three isolated departments; department for Education, the Police and the Department of Health & Social Care. If each department can collaborate and integrate their data, we would be able to predict various cases like individuals who are at risk of committing crime in the future, individuals who are vulnerable and individuals who are at risk of drug/alcohol abuse etc. By identifying the potential problem before it happens this has a domino effect in future years. The costs of intervening before an event, far outweighs the costs of intervening after the problem. 

Predictive Policing

In January 2018, it was announced that Kanagawa, a Japanese prefecture, hoped to introduce predictive policing, when tackling crime before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This AI-based system would employ a ‘deep learning’ algorithm that allows the computer to teach itself by analysing big data. By gathering various data from different departments, they can use metrics on time, places, weather and geographical conditions to predict the likelihood of criminal offences taking place. 

Technology Trends

The collection of data is crucial to all things predictive. Most departments are sitting on a pool of data that can facilitate prediction machines and automated processes. From Forbes top 5 technology trends in 2019, three of the five trends will require the utilisation of data to deliver the output.

Predictive Analytics in Healthcare

The healthcare industry produces and gathers a huge amount of data and this data has the potential to be used in predictive analytics modelling to help improve and forecast the demand on healthcare services. There are many ways in which predictive analytics could be used. Some companies are looking at forecasting hospital readmissions and others looking at predicting specific patient illnesses before they become serious. 

Predictive analytics in medical imaging is set to have a big impact on cancer care too, says Anant Madabhushi. For pathologists, it will mean using predictive analytics to improve identification of specific things on images.

(Source: HealthTech )

“Usually, we see AI algorithms that can detect a brain haemorrhage or a wrist fracture — a very narrow scope for single-use cases,” said Matthew Lungren, MD, MPH, assistant professor of radiology. “But here we’re talking about 14 different pathologies analyzed simultaneously, and it’s all through one algorithm.” (Source: Stanford Medicine) 

Data Analytics and Insights

A full data quality assessment, building a complete picture of your data landscape. Providing rapid proof of value, highlighting gaps and making recommendations on how to answer your most pressing questions. Our Data Analysts will perform statistical, geospatial and trend analysis to rapidly generate your reports and provide valuable insights.

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Artificial Intelligence

Working within the technology industry there are some buzzwords which come up over and over again, the current one being ‘Artificial Intelligence’.

A recent book on Prediction Machines: The simple economics of Artificial Intelligence gives a better understanding of what artificial intelligence means for the future;

“The current wave of advances in artificial intelligence doesn’t actually bring us intelligence but instead a critical component of intelligence:- prediction.”

Prediction machines use algorithms to predict the likelihood of X. For example, predicting the salary of an individual given information on their demographics, behaviour and cultural trends. By calculating the prediction accuracy of an event happening to a certain person, industry or trend, we gain further insight and can act accordingly. Prediction machines or models have many advantages, although there is an investment required to build these models, there are savings made intervening in a problem before it escalates. Public sector organisations can do this, but only if they can convene and analyse the datasets that might collectively point to cases of highest future risk.

If we take the example of three isolated departments; Department for Education, the Police and the Department of Health & Social Care. If each department can collaborate and integrate their data, we would be able to predict various cases like individuals who are at risk of committing crime in the future, individuals who are vulnerable and individuals who are at risk of drug/alcohol abuse etc. By identifying the potential problem before it happens this has a domino effect in future years. The costs of intervening before an event far outweigh the costs of intervening after the problem. In January 2018, it was announced that Kanagawa, a Japanese prefecture, hoped to introduce predictive policing, when tackling crime before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. This AI-based system would employ a ‘deep learning’ algorithm that allows the computer to teach itself by analysing big data. By gathering various data from different departments, they can use metrics on time, places, weather and geographical conditions to predict the likelihood of criminal offences taking place.

Predictive Analytics for Better Health and Social Care

There are different areas where public services can implement predictive analytics. Within health and social care departments collaboration, data analysis, aligned information architecture and machine learning could lead to improved services and highlight patient’s health signals before they develop into serious conditions.

Machine learning and predictive analytics has been used in collaboration between AliveCor and Mayo Clinic with ECG machine learning to unlock information on key factors beyond heart health.

“Mayo Clinic has pioneered new approaches that may uncover significant measures of physiology that have been hidden in individuals’ ECGs.” said Vic Gundotra, CEO, AliveCor.

“It is exciting to see the application of machine learning algorithms in ECG and its potential to quickly detect rhythm abnormalities in patients,” said Friedman, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist.

More industries are becoming aware of data optimisation, prediction and the benefits of aligning multiple data sources, so costs are dropping for these services with some areas already adopting these techniques including fraud detection, credit worthiness, health insurance and inventory management. Successful implementation of predictive analytics is transforming human activities and starting to move into the healthcare sector in order to remove siloed working and improve health information sharing.

A good example of this is from a NHS Digital case study were Luton Council aimed to improve the communication between Healthcare and Adult Social Care.

A care system “Framework for Frailty” was developed to collaborate and create a common approach to the early recognition and identification of frailty as a long-term condition. The system made data available between health response staff and social care staff so staff could provide better targeted prevention and early intervention for patients that would be likely to need health and social care.

The outcomes of this project are to “provide personalised prevention care, see a potential £2.7 million saving for hospitals and reduce hospital admissions”.

Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and data optimisation are achievable within healthcare and starting to play an integral role. With collaboration, engagement from key stakeholders, a focus on data protection, legislation and information architecture predictive analytics can bring many advantages to health care delivery and patients health.

The collection of data is crucial to all things predictive. Most departments are sitting on a pool of data that can facilitate prediction machines and automated processes.

If you would like to find out more about how your data could be used for predictive analytics download our latest brochure on Data Analytics and Insights.

Data Analytics and Insights

A full data quality assessment, building a complete picture of your data landscape. Providing rapid proof of value, highlighting gaps and making recommendations on how to answer your most pressing questions. Our Data Analysts will perform statistical, geospatial and trend analysis to rapidly generate your reports and provide valuable insights.

Download brochure

Technology within healthcare has the potential to transform patient care and the health sector in many ways. The analysis of medical data can help gain insights and support decision-making by collecting data from a variety of areas such as medical costs, clinical data, patient behaviour and pharmaceuticals. Because healthcare data is so complex and can be difficult to process there are many barriers in place, but we want to explore the benefits of healthcare analytics and have a look at some examples of how data and machine learning are being used cross the healthcare industry. 

Personalised patient care

Integrated care is a patient-centred model that aims to bring communication and co-ordination between patients, healthcare professional, and collaboration of care delivery even between separate organisations. With connected health, correct data processing and analytics guide medical professionals along a clinical pathway which could follow and support patients with personalised care. Further AI analysis of patient data, can further enhance the patients journey and efficiency of treatment.   

“Patients whose doctors provided more patient-centric care by discussing their concerns, analysing their conditions in light of their broader health record and collaborating to find solutions, had 51.3 percent lower annual healthcare costs than those without.” (Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine) 

Data analytics help health providers identify patterns and red flags that are not easily caught by manual processes. Some healthcare organisations are using big data to monitor hospital admissions in real-time, creating informative dashboards for medical professionals and pairing patients with the appropriate specialists (from Modern Healthcare). 

Operational Efficiency 

Across all industries operational efficiency through lean practices and data analytics have been adopted to become more streamline and cost-effective. For healthcare service providers predictive analytics and real-time data can help to understand admission and discharge rates to analyse staff efficiency for different numbers of patients at one time. Data analysis could influence healthcare to decrease waiting times, streamline emergency departments, or improve accuracy in administration departments. 

A good example of data analysis and turning big data into dynamic reports, KPI reporting and dashboards, improving patient outcomes and reducing costs is the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Demah Al Shathri, Manager, Enterprise Reporting, comments:

“As we approach the pre-defined threshold for a particular measure—for example, waiting time in the ER department—the system automatically issues an alert, and the relevant decision-maker can drill down through the numbers to see where the problem lies. If we actually hit or exceed the threshold, there are separate escalated alerts for those events.” 

By using information rich dashboards and reports the hospital decision makers can quickly decide on the best approach in any scenario. 

Discovering the right medicine to cure diseases 

By analysing large sets of data through machine learning and AI, drug discovering can become more accurate to treat individual patients. Data analysis can provide a view of correlations and hidden patterns within huge data sets like clinical trials and medical records. Predictive analytics could be used to test the effectiveness of a specific drug at treating a disease or illness.  

An interesting example from Qrativ looks at combining “AI and Big Data to discover new purposes for drug treatments”.

“The AI platform triangulates easily between the scientific literature concerning existing drugs and other large sources information, like genome sequencing, in order to predict the efficiency of a drug in a data driven manner.” 

Maintenance of Equipment 

Healthcare service providers operate with a huge physical infrastructure and all machines must work effectively all the time. The Internet of Things could influence the healthcare sector offering a range of equipment to transmit data to central dashboards and reports to monitor status, performance, usage and faults with equipment.   

A report from Harbor Research looks at “Machine Data Analytics Drives Innovation in Healthcare Market” and how todays’ tools are only scratching the surface of the value of complex machine data.  

With these benefits, and many more, opportunities to improve patient care and reduce costs within the healthcare industry are growing but with some barriers like siloed working, problematic data conventions, sensitive data and patient preferences data analytics has yet to be fully utilised and relies on collaboration and information architecture for the entire industry to benefit. 

Anaeko CTO, Colm Hayden is in Boston, Massachusetts this week attending this years Medtech conference by AdvaMed. Having worked on a number of projects in the health sector, this event provides a great opportunity to meet a number of innovators and market leaders in medical technology. To find out more about the confirmation, follow the link.

Data Analytics and Insights

A full data quality assessment, building a complete picture of your data landscape. Providing rapid proof of value, highlighting gaps and making recommendations on how to answer your most pressing questions. Our Data Analysts will perform statistical, geospatial and trend analysis to rapidly generate your reports and provide valuable insights.

Download brochure

Last night Anaeko attended this years INVENT Awards at the ICC Belfast, where we acted as corporate sponsors of the ‘Business Software’ category and had the absolute pleasure of presenting the award to this years winners ‘Thunder’.

 The INVENT Awards are Northern Ireland’s premier competition for innovative start-ups to showcase their business acumen and budding entrepreneurial spirit.

Organised by science and technology hub Catalyst with headline partner Bank of Ireland, the annual INVENT Awards celebrate the brightest new business ideas with the greatest commercial potential from across the region.

 Ten finalists were chosen to compete for the main prize at a showcase event in the ICC Belfast, with Vikela Armour taking home a prize package of £26,000 from the total prize fund of £50,000. Belfast-based engineering graduate Peter Gilleece set up Vikela Armour to develop a new type of body armour that provides better protection and comfort than conventional flak jackets.

As sponsors of the Business Software category at this years awards, Anaeko CTO Colm Hayden had the honour of presenting this category award to ‘Thunder’, an innovative new start-up founded by James McGrath and Matthew Finch. Thunder seeks to leverage innovation, by giving employees a platform to express their innovations and communicate these within large corporations. 

As a company, we love to promote and engage with innovative enterprises at any level of development, to learn more about our services and how Anaeko could help your business grow! Complete the short form to the right of this article to get in contact!

Komala Rama is a seasoned member of the Northern Ireland tech industry, and over the past year has become a valued member of the Anaeko team. Komala’s position as a Senior Software Engineer allows her to work on the development of high quality applications using the latest technologies based on customer requirements. Her attention to detail and ongoing dedication to customer needs has made Komala a great asset and valuable team member at Anaeko.

What is a Senior Software Engineer

As a Senior Software Engineer at Anaeko, you will work on projects where you can make a real difference to people’s lives and help develop solutions on a global scale. A Senior position will make you an integral part of any customer project, with leadership and time management at the forefront of your project responsibilities. Mentorship may also become an important part of your daily role as the team grows and junior software engineers join our team.

You will be responsible for:

• Developing high quality solutions which impact the lives of users worldwide.
  
• Working as part of a team to solve problems and produce innovative software solutions.
  
•  Learning about new technologies and approaches, with talented colleagues who will help you learn, develop and grow.
  
•  Developing excellent technical, team-working and Agile project experience.
  
• Contributing to peer reviews of designs, code and test specifications
  
• Continuous innovation and improvement

Senior Software Engineer Skills

Communication Skills

It’s extremely rare that Software Engineers work in isolation. In fact, what separates Software Engineers from similar roles like Software Developers tends to be the amount of high-level collaboration, leadership, and team building required of a Software Engineer – and communication skills are key to all of that. Software Engineers should be able to clearly communicate – in writing and orally – with virtually any type of team or company stakeholder, regardless of that person’s technical background.

Team Player

Software Engineers typically work as part of a team – or leading one – and creating or maintaining great software programs requires the input and expertise of a great number of people. Success or failure will be shared by that team. Successful Software Engineers must understand how to compromise, how to motivate others to deliver the best work they’re capable of, and how to take and learn from criticism.

Problem Solving

Successfully steering software development projects to completion requires quickly identifying and solving a lot of issues along the way. Software Engineers must be curious and creative problem-solvers, able to sift through code to pinpoint a programming error while also anticipating other issues before they arise and adapting quickly to solve them.

Attention to Detail

Software Engineers are expected to be precise and meticulous, with a high level of attention to detail applied to everything from coding to testing to documenting projects. Some software engineering industry best practices – like using version control systems to keep track of old work – fall into this category of soft skills.

KOMALA ON WORKING AT ANAEKO

TIM : Hi Komala, do you want to introduce yourself, and your position within Anaeko?

KOMALA: My name is Komala Rama, and I am a Senior Software Engineer at Anaeko.

TIM: Perfect, so how would you summarise what you do on a daily basis, what does a Senior Software Engineers day look like?

KOMALA: I spend most of my day working with our internal team members on analysing and developing various application features, Attending meetings like standup, retro, sprint planning, demos, knowledge sharing, support issues etc. My day can look very different depending on which project I am on, so the variety keeps things very fresh and exciting.

TIM: How long have you worked for Anaeko and what made you want to work for the company?

KOMALA: I have been working with Anaeko for just over a year. So I haven’t been here for long, but I really feel valued at Anaeko. The team is very friendly, flexible and although the work can be challenging, it is also very rewarding.

My current job cannot be compared to any previous roles I have had, the hybrid working model and the people within Anaeko allow for an incredibly unique working landscape.   Communication is very important at Anaeko, and this has been incredibly strong considering I started my position remotely, and have built a strong working relationship with many colleagues despite our geographical location.

TIM: Tell me about a recent project you worked on or a nice encounter you had with a co-worker.

KOMALA: At Anaeko, I mainly work on IBM cloud storage Application. My project is mainly about taking snapshots of the storage volumes as a backup and restoring them anytime from these snapshots. IBM cloud storage is a complex application with so many different teams involved in its maintenance and development. The Anaeko team have been so helpful with my understanding of the projects concepts and have always shown great appreciation on completion of my work.

TIM:  What do you look forward to most at work? 

KOMALA: I look forward to further improving my knowledge on the latest technologies and any new challenges that can help me broaden my experience.

If a career at Anaeko sounds like the perfect fit for you, or someone you know! View our current vacancies HERE.

INVENT is an annual competition organised by Catalyst with headline partner Bank of Ireland, that recognises and rewards local innovations and proof of concept ideas that have the greatest commercial potential.

Invent is an opportunity to gain high profile exposure, validate your idea, unlock a quality network of influencers and to win a share of the £47,000 prize fund. If you have come up with an innovative product or solution that you are passionate about then this is the competition for you.

INVENT CATEGORIES 

Your innovation must fit into one of the following five categories:

• Greentech – Products, solutions and tech that enable a sustainable future.
• Health and Wellbeing – Improving the quality of life through pushing the boundaries in life sciences, med tech and health promotion.
• Product – A physical product designed and fabricated to offer the consumer or business a novel innovative solution.
• Business Software – Computer software products or solutions used to satisfy the needs of an organisation rather than individual users.
• Consumer Software – Consumer software is a class of commercial software that is sold directly to end-users as opposed to businesses.

Anaeko will be sponsoring the Business Software category and supporting the next wave of entrepreneurs in Northern Ireland. Our Sales Director Dermot Walsh will be acting as the lead judge within this category.

Dermot is an experienced Senior Sales and C-level Executive having spent 30 years in Technology Fast-Growth Environments.

Dermot is responsible for Anaeko’s Partnerships and Direct Sales strategies, both in Ireland and internationally.

Prior to Anaeko, Dermot has held a variety of interim and permanent sales leadership roles, both in international and early-stage Technology and BPO companies.  In particular, he has helped companies in the Cloud Computing space since 2009 – the very early days of ‘Cloud’.

MEET THIS YEARS #INVENT2022 BUSINESS SOFTWARE FINALISTS!

Thunder

Changing how businesses innovate by empowering teams to share their problems and ideas.

AA+

Food safety and allergy management to support both the food industry and consumers.

We can’t wait to see who will win within our category, and wish everyone the best of luck as we get closer to the final on September 1st!