How can Mixed Reality and AI improve emergency medical care?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Mixed reality (MR) refers to technologies that create immersive computer-generated environments in which parts of the physical and virtual environment are combined. With potential applications that range from education and engineering to entertainment, the market for MR is forecast to record revenues of just under $25 billion by 2032. Now, in a ground-breaking partnership, Singapore-based company Mediwave is teaming up with Sri Lanka’s 1990 Suwa Seriya to deploy MR and artificial intelligence (AI) to create a fully connected ambulance.

1990 Suwa Seriya is Sri Lanka’s national pre-hospital emergency ambulance service, which boasts response times that surpass even some services in developed countries. The innovative ambulance it has deployed uses Mediwave’s integrated Emergency Response Suite, which combines the latest communications equipment with internet-of-things (IoT) and AR capabilities to enhance the efficiency of the emergency response eco-system.

The connected ambulance ensures swift response times and digitises critical processes, while specialised care can be provided remotely through a Microsoft HoloLens. The technology enables Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) – staff who man ambulances in Sri Lanka – to connect with physicians at the Emergency Command and Control Centre. These physicians help the EMTs provide care during the so-called ‘golden hour’ of medical emergencies – the concept that rapid clinical investigation and care within 60 minutes of a traumatic injury is essential for a positive patient outcome…

Other applications of extended reality in the Springwise library include holograms that are used to train doctors, virtual environments for treating phobias, and an augmented reality contact lens…(More)”.

Measuring Global Migration: Towards Better Data for All

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Frank Laczko, Elisa Mosler Vidal, Marzia Rango: “This book focuses on how to improve the collection, analysis and responsible use of data on global migration and international mobility. While migration remains a topic of great policy interest for governments around the world, there is a serious lack of reliable, timely, disaggregated and comparable data on it, and often insufficient safeguards to protect migrants’ information. Meanwhile, vast amounts of data about the movement of people are being generated in real time due to new technologies, but these have not yet been fully captured and utilized by migration policymakers, who often do not have enough data to inform their policies and programmes. The lack of migration data has been internationally recognized; the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration urges all countries to improve data on migration to ensure that policies and programmes are “evidence-based”, but does not spell out how this could be done.

This book examines both the technical issues associated with improving data on migration and the wider political challenges of how countries manage the collection and use of migration data. The first part of the book discusses how much we really know about international migration based on existing data, and key concepts and approaches which are often used to measure migration. The second part of the book examines what measures could be taken to improve migration data, highlighting examples of good practice from around the world in recent years, across a range of different policy areas, such as health, climate change and sustainable development more broadly.

Written by leading experts on international migration data, this book is the perfect guide for students, policymakers and practitioners looking to understand more about the existing evidence base on migration and what can be done to improve it…(More)”. (See also: Big Data For Migration Alliance).

The case for adaptive and end-to-end policy management

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Pia Andrews: “Why should we reform how we do policy? Simple. Because the gap between policy design and delivery has become the biggest barrier to delivering good public services and policy outcomes and is a challenge most public servants experience daily, directly or indirectly.

This gap wasn’t always the case, with policy design and delivery separated as part of the New Public Management reforms in the ’90s. When you also consider the accelerating rate of change, increasing cadence of emergencies, and the massive speed and scale of new technologies, you could argue that end-to-end policy reform is our most urgent problem to solve.

Policy teams globally have been exploring new design methods like human-centred design, test-driven iteration (agile), and multi-disciplinary teams that get policy end users in the room (eg, NSW Policy Lab). There has also been an increased focus on improving policy evaluation across the world (eg, the Australian Centre for Evaluation). In both cases, I’m delighted to see innovative approaches being normalised across the policy profession, but it has become obvious that improving design and/or evaluation is still far from sufficient to drive better (or more humane) policy outcomes in an ever-changing world. It is not only the current systemic inability to detect and respond to unintended consequences that emerge but the lack of policy agility that perpetuates issues even long after they might be identified.

Below I outline four current challenges for policy management and a couple of potential solutions, as something of a discussion starter

Problem 1) The separation of (and mutual incomprehension between) policy design, delivery and the public

The lack of multi-disciplinary policy design, combined with a set-and-forget approach to policy, combined with delivery teams being left to interpret policy instructions without support, combined with a gap and interpretation inconsistency between policy modelling systems and policy delivery systems, all combined with a lack of feedback loops in improving policy over time, has led to a series of black holes throughout the process. Tweaking the process as it currently stands will not fix the black holes. We need a more holistic model for policy design, delivery and management…(More)”.

Informing Decisionmakers in Real Time

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Robert M. Groves: “In response, the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposed the creation of a complementary group to provide decisionmakers at all levels with the best available evidence from the social sciences to inform pandemic policymaking. In May 2020, with funding from NSF and additional support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, NASEM established the Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) to connect “decisionmakers grappling with difficult issues to the evidence, trends, and expert guidance that can help them lead their communities and speed their recovery.” We chose to build a network because of the widespread recognition that no one small group of social scientists would have the expertise or the bandwidth to answer all the questions facing decisionmakers. What was needed was a structure that enabled an ongoing feedback loop between researchers and decisionmakers. This structure would foster the integration of evidence, research, and advice in real time, which broke with NASEM’s traditional form of aggregating expert guidance over lengthier periods.

In its first phase, SEAN’s executive committee set about building a network that could both gather and disseminate knowledge. To start, we brought in organizations of decisionmakers—including the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the International City/County Management Association, and the National Conference of State Legislatures—to solicit their questions. Then we added capacity to the network by inviting social and behavioral organizations—like the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, The Policy Lab at Brown University, and Testing for America—to join and respond to questions and disseminate guidance. In this way, SEAN connected teams of experts with evidence and answers to leaders and communities looking for advice…(More)”.

How to make data open? Stop overlooking librarians

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jessica Farrell: “The ‘Year of Open Science’, as declared by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), is now wrapping up. This followed an August 2022 memo from OSTP acting director Alondra Nelson, which mandated that data and peer-reviewed publications from federally funded research should be made freely accessible by the end of 2025. Federal agencies are required to publish full plans for the switch by the end of 2024.

But the specifics of how data will be preserved and made publicly available are far from being nailed down. I worked in archives for ten years and now facilitate two digital-archiving communities, the Software Preservation Network and BitCurator Consortium, at Educopia in Atlanta, Georgia. The expertise of people such as myself is often overlooked. More open-science projects need to integrate digital archivists and librarians, to capitalize on the tools and approaches that we have already created to make knowledge accessible and open to the public.How to make your scientific data accessible, discoverable and useful

Making data open and ‘FAIR’ — findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable — poses technical, legal, organizational and financial questions. How can organizations best coordinate to ensure universal access to disparate data? Who will do that work? How can we ensure that the data remain open long after grant funding runs dry?

Many archivists agree that technical questions are the most solvable, given enough funding to cover the labour involved. But they are nonetheless complex. Ideally, any open research should be testable for reproducibility, but re-running scripts or procedures might not be possible unless all of the required coding libraries and environments used to analyse the data have also been preserved. Besides the contents of spreadsheets and databases, scientific-research data can include 2D or 3D images, audio, video, websites and other digital media, all in a variety of formats. Some of these might be accessible only with proprietary or outdated software…(More)”.

‘Turning conflicts into co-creation’: Taiwan government harnesses digital policy for democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by  Si Ying Thian: “Assistive intelligence and language models can help facilitate nuanced conversations because the human brain simply cannot process 1,000 different positions, said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA).  

Tang was speaking at a webinar about policymaking in the digital age, hosted by LSE IDEAS, the think tank of the London School of Economics, on 1 December 2023.  

She cited Talk to the City, a large language model that transforms transcripts from a variety of datasets into clusters of similar opinions, as an example of a technology that has helped increase collaboration and diversity without losing the ability to scale…

“The idea is to establish value-based, long-term collaborations based on the idea of public code. This is evident in many of our government websites, which very much look like the UK’s,” said Tang. 

Public code is defined by Foundation of Public Code as an open-source software developed by public organisations, together with policy and guidance needed for collaboration and reuse…

The government’s commitment to open source is also evident in its rollout of the Taiwan Employment Gold Card, which integrates a flexible work permit, a residence visa for up to three years, and eligibility for national health insurance and income tax reduction.  

According to Tang, the Taiwan government invites anyone with experience of eight years or more in contributing to open source or a Web3 publicly available ledger to enrol in the residency program…(More)”.

Can AI solve medical mysteries? It’s worth finding out

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bina Venkataraman: “Since finding a primary care doctor these days takes longer than finding a decent used car, it’s little wonder that people turn to Google to probe what ails them. Be skeptical of anyone who claims to be above it. Though I was raised by scientists and routinely read medical journals out of curiosity, in recent months I’ve gone online to investigate causes of a lingering cough, ask how to get rid of wrist pain and look for ways to treat a bad jellyfish sting. (No, you don’t ask someone to urinate on it.)

Dabbling in self-diagnosis is becoming more robust now that people can go to chatbots powered by large language models scouring mountains of medical literature to yield answers in plain language — in multiple languages. What might an elevated inflammation marker in a blood test combined with pain in your left heel mean? The AI chatbots have some ideas. And researchers are finding that, when fed the right information, they’re often not wrong. Recently, one frustrated mother, whose son had seen 17 doctors for chronic pain, put his medical information into ChatGPT, which accurately suggested tethered cord syndrome — which then led a Michigan neurosurgeon to confirm an underlying diagnosis of spina bifida that could be helped by an operation.

The promise of this trend is that patients might be able to get to the bottom of mysterious ailments and undiagnosed illnesses by generating possible causes for their doctors to consider. The peril is that people may come to rely too much on these tools, trusting them more than medical professionals, and that our AI friends will fabricate medical evidence that misleads people about, say, the safety of vaccines or the benefits of bogus treatments. A question looming over the future of medicine is how to get the best of what artificial intelligence can offer us without the worst.

It’s in the diagnosis of rare diseases — which afflict an estimated 30 million Americans and hundreds of millions of people worldwide — that AI could almost certainly make things better. “Doctors are very good at dealing with the common things,” says Isaac Kohane, chair of the department of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School. “But there are literally thousands of diseases that most clinicians will have never seen or even have ever heard of.”..(More)”.

Speak Youth To Power

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by The National Democratic Institute: “Under the Speak Youth To Power campaign, NDI has emphasized the importance of young people translating their power to sustained action and influence over political decision-making and democratic processes….

In Turkey, Sosyal Iklim aims to develop a culture of dialogue among young people and to ensure their active participation in social and political life. Board Chair, Gaye Tuğrulöz, shared that her organization is, “… trying to create spaces for young people to see themselves as leaders. We are trying to say that we don’t have to be older to become decision-makers. We are not the leaders of the future. We are not living for the future. We are the leaders and decision-makers of today. Any decisions that are relevant to young people, we want to get involved. We want to establish these spaces where we have a voice.”…

In Libya, members of the Dialogue and Debate Association (DDA), a youth-led partner organization, are working to promote democracy, civic engagement and peaceful societies. DDA works to empower young people to participate in the political process, make their voices heard, and build a better future for Libya through civic education and building skills for dialogue and debate….

The New Generation Girls and Women Development Initiative (NIGAWD), a youth and young women-led organization in Nigeria is working on youth advocacy and policy development, good governance and anti-corruption, elections and human rights. NIGAWD described how youth political participation means the government making spaces to listen to the desires and concerns of young people and allowing them to be part of the policy-making process….(More)”.

Making democratic innovations stick

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by NESTA: “A survey of 52 people working on participation in local government in the UK and the Nordic countries found that:

  • a lack of funding and bureaucracy are the biggest barriers to using and scaling democratic innovations
  • enabling citizens to influence decision making, building trust and being more inclusive are the most important reasons for using democratic innovations
  • tackling climate change and reducing poverty and inequality are seen as the most important challenges to involve the public in.

When we focused on attitudes towards participation in the UK more broadly, and on attitudes to participation in climate change more specifically we found that:

  • the public think it is important that they are being involved in how we make decisions on climate change. 71% of the public think it is important they are given a say in how to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions and transition to net zero
  • the public doesn’t think the government is doing a good job of involving them – only 12% thought that the government is doing a good job of involving them in making decisions on how we tackle climate change
  • not having the ability to influence decision makers and not having the right skills to participate are seen as the biggest barriers by the public….(More)”.

Internet use does not appear to harm mental health, study finds

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times: “A study of more than 2mn people’s internet use found no “smoking gun” for widespread harm to mental health from online activities such as browsing social media and gaming, despite widely claimed concerns that mobile apps can cause depression and anxiety.

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, who said their study was the largest of its kind, said they found no evidence to support “popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk” from the technology.

However, Andrew Przybylski, professor at the institute — part of the University of Oxford — said that the data necessary to establish a causal connection was “absent” without more co-operation from tech companies. If apps do harm mental health, only the companies that build them have the user data that could prove it, he said.

“The best data we have available suggests that there is not a global link between these factors,” said Przybylski, who carried out the study with Matti Vuorre, a professor at Tilburg University. Because the “stakes are so high” if online activity really did lead to mental health problems, any regulation aimed at addressing it should be based on much more “conclusive” evidence, he added.

“Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age” was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science on Tuesday. 

In their paper, Przybylski and Vuorre studied data on psychological wellbeing from 2.4mn people aged 15 to 89 in 168 countries between 2005 and 2022, which they contrasted with industry data about growth in internet subscriptions over that time, as well as tracking associations between mental health and internet adoption in 202 countries from 2000-19.

“Our results do not provide evidence supporting the view that the internet and technologies enabled by it, such as smartphones with internet access, are actively promoting or harming either wellbeing or mental health globally,” they concluded. While there was “some evidence” of greater associations between mental health problems and technology among younger people, these “appeared small in magnitude”, they added.

The report contrasts with a growing body of research in recent years that has connected the beginning of the smartphone era, around 2010, with growing rates of anxiety and depression, especially among teenage girls. Studies have suggested that reducing time on social media can benefit mental health, while those who spend the longest online are at greater risk of harm…(More)”.