Big Data Conference Aims To Help Understand New Technologies

New technology and Big Data helps businesses, academia and public bodies better understand and tackle urban and neighbourhood challenges.

This is the message of the Big Data conference taking place in Belfast today.

Speaking ahead of the conference, Senior Consultant at Smart Cities Team Belfast City Council, Deirdre Ferguson, said the value of data, the insights it provides and its potential to transform services will benefit the city's ratepayers. 

Ms Ferguson said: "The Smart Belfast team is looking at data and how unlocking and exploiting data can transform our services and help us address key city challenges. Smart Belfast has already helped us to identify new innovations in our local economy by sharing data and learning new insights in a way we hadn't previously."

Data shared during a recent SBRI initiative in collaboration with local SMEs highlighted the potential for councils and the NI Executive to draw in hundreds of thousands of pounds from commercial rates that hadn't been drawn in before. 

She continued: "This approach has not only helped stimulate innovation but supported SMEs in the development of new products that can be deployed locally and exported internationally."

Consultant Clinical Information Specialist with the Health and Social Care Board, Dr Brendan O'Brien, said that a range of data science initiatives are due to be rolled out over the coming months: "A very exciting project in the pipeline has been created through seed funding from The Executive Office, Department of Health and from Atlantic Philanthropies. This will allow us to build on our data analytics capabilities and to look at the analytics we will need to have in the health service 10 to 15 years from now.

"We are also working to join all aspects of the patient record across the health economy in order to create the most comprehensive picture we can of the individual patient to better meet their needs.

"The Board has also been working closely with GP practices across Northern Ireland to use aggregated data to better inform health service planners - so that we have better decisions around population health and what services we need to deploy in order to achieve improved outcomes."

Another significant transformation programme, called Encompass, is being advanced by HSC NI which seeks to better position HSC NI to capitalise on digitally-enabled whole system approach to the delivery of safer, better informed care. It aims to reduce unwarranted variance in care, remove paper notes and enhance integration between primary, secondary and community health and social care professionals.

Dr O'Brien concluded: "This will provide more information to front line clinicians at the point of care."

The fifth annual Big Data Belfast conference - which takes place today at Titanic Belfast - aims to drive thought leadership and supply practical information for those who want to understand more about data and how it impacts our daily lives.

(MH/JP)