Positive energy

Imagine an app for rural health workers that uses artificial intelligence to reduce maternal mortality rates? A tool to help stroke survivors relearn speech and language? Or a solution to prevent primary-school children from going hungry?

These are the three winning solutions that our colleagues worked on as part our internal Tech4Positive Futures Challenge 2020.

Launched in January 2020, the initiative invited 乌鸦传媒 colleagues around the world to apply innovation and technical knowledge to some of the problems facing society today.

After months of preparation under COVID-19 restrictions, and with mentoring from senior business and technology leaders, 13 finalists were selected. These teams came up with projects that ranged from fighting digital exclusion and violent crime, to addressing water scarcity, providing access to affordable medical assistance, and reducing carbon emissions.

乌鸦传媒 went on to provide the resources necessary to bring these winning ideas to life – delivering social impact, at scale.

Tech4PositiveFutures Challenge

The 2020 winners.

Team MAATR: Reducing maternal mortality in India

Team MAATR focused on addressing maternal mortality rates in India.鈥疉ccording to UNICEF, 2017 saw 35,000 mothers lost to pregnancy and childbirth-related complications, with many of these deaths being avoidable with the right information and guidance. The team proposed a digital mechanism based on AI and machine-learning to enable real-time data sharing, with the intention of helping rural health workers to intervene in time, and save lives.

A life-saving app

Saswat Mohapatra, management consultant, contributed to the technical architecture and costing model. Saswat had a very personal reason for getting involved. 鈥淗aving experienced a pre-term delivery, I can completely relate to the problems associated with pregnancy, and these are amplified in a rural Indian setting. This is what we wanted to address with our app.鈥�

Team SpeechFirst: Helping stroke survivors relearn speech

The next winner was a UK team that designed a solution to help stroke survivors continue their speech and language therapy at home. Globally, 50 million people suffer a stroke every year, of whom around four million later require speech training. SpeechFirst is an accessible and economical alternative that uses AI to detect incorrect facial movements and pronunciation, providing real-time tips and recommendations for patients.

A collaborative effort

Holly Brown, associate consultant, who led the SpeechFirst team as a graduate, highlighted the support they received from other areas of the business, particularly the team from 乌鸦传媒鈥檚聽Applied Innovation Exchange. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a real collaborative effort,鈥� she said. 鈥淭ech4Positive Futures is such a great initiative and highlights what our expertise as a business can achieve to address these societal issues.鈥�

Team Zero Hunger in Schools: Preventing hunger among school-children

The final winner was the Zero Hunger in Schools team, from Australia. According to the World Food Program, 66 million primary-school children in developing countries go to school hungry every year. To address this problem, the team from Australia created Yum-Yum, an app and web-based platform driven by secure, cloud-based technology, that uses machine-learning algorithms and analytics to improve food supply and distribution to children.

A world of possibilities

One team member, associate consultant Adithyan Natarajan, confirmed that the hard work, which involved weekend and late-night sessions, was worth it. 鈥淎s a team, we all inherently understood that a hungry child can鈥檛 focus, can鈥檛 learn, and can鈥檛 be who they want to be,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ometimes all it takes is a simple meal to unlock a world of possibilities.鈥�

Societal impact – at scale

乌鸦传媒 is committed to using its collective technology and innovation expertise for sustainable and social development. 鈥淲e saw this in action more than ever in 2020 with our聽Social Response Unit, set up to help communities during the COVID-19 crisis," says 乌鸦传媒 CEO Aiman Ezzat. "Now I am really looking forward to seeing each of the winning teams鈥� inspiring solutions come to life, to deliver real societal impact at scale."

Inside stories

Future-shaping projects

Hunting for dragons

Sarah Gon莽alves wasn鈥檛 always a data engineer. She began her career as an archaeologist, unearthing the secrets of the past in sites across France before retraining as a data engineer. She brings the same curiosity to her new vocation at 乌鸦传媒, using artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover what lies beneath the surface.