Karen Parrish, Vice President, Industry Solutions, IBM
By Karen Parrish
This week, professionals from around the world are attending eHealthWeek to discuss trends, innovations and solutions to address the ongoing challenges in healthcare. There certainly won’t be a lack of data and discussion about cost, wellness, aging populations and dealing with chronic conditions. While there are plenty of opinions, what’s missing from this deluge of points of view is a holistic approach to meeting needs of individuals – an approach IBM calls Smarter Care.
We’ve known for decades that health and social systems are interdependent and have a critical impact on each other. Yet the complex matrix of public and private stakeholders in the health and well-being of citizens still operate largely within silos, providing separate and disparate care. Continue Reading »
Alfred Vanderpuije, Mayor of Accra, Ghana
By Alfred Vanderpuije
This week at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, leaders will come together to discuss Africa’s future. One of the three focus themes is the importance of ‘Strategic Infrastructure’ as a foundation for the continent’s growth. As Mayor of Accra and Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, I would say that there are few areas as crucial for infrastructure investment as cities.
Buoyed by an emerging oil and gas industry and a rapidly growing consumer class, Ghana’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. Investors are flocking to the country’s capital Accra to take advantage of new business opportunities and become part of this success story. Mastercard recently identified Accra as one of Africa’s top cities in terms of economic growth potential over the next few years. Local and foreign firms are also driving a number of urban development opportunities such as Ghana Cyber City, King City and Appolonia City which aim to set up modern, high-tech hubs within and around Accra. Continue Reading »
Takreem El-Tohamy, GM, IBM Middle East and Africa
By Takreem El-Tohamy
There’s a wonderful word in Swahili that I think expresses one of the imperatives for the future of Africa. The word is “harambee.” It means pulling together, collaborating and supporting each other. I believe that one of the key factors in the ability of African countries to create sustainable and equitable economic growth will be the emergence of innovation ecosystems. Harambee perfectly captures an essential element of such ecosystems—the ability of institutions and individuals to pull together and build a mutually supportive environment.
Innovation ecosystems are complex organisms that are difficult to create yet tremendously powerful when they work. Think Silicon Valley. They require a melding of all of the capabilities of governments, businesses, financiers, universities, and individuals. Together, these organizations and individuals provide the web of support that makes it easier for startups to launch and grow quickly, and for established companies to innovate more aggressively. With that kind of support, African entrepreneurs and businesses will find it easier to produce new products and services, or even create whole new industries. You can think of an innovation ecosystem as a collective intelligence—harnessed for the good of society. Continue Reading »
Larry Bowden, Vice President, Web Experience Software, IBM
By Larry Bowden
When people talk about “social” adoption, the conversation usually doesn’t shift to government. But maybe it should.
Today a growing number of cities and counties are embracing social technologies to create “Smart Communities.” According to the World Foundation for Smart Communities, these are communities that make a “conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work within a region in significant and fundamental, rather than incremental, ways. This transformation is beneficial to the community and attracts local participation and cooperation among community groups, government, business and education.”
At its core, a Smarter Community has the ability to deliver exceptional “citizen experiences” and services – something the City of Windsor, and the County of Essex, Ontario, are doing right now. Continue Reading »
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Deepak Advani, General Manager, Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure, IBM
By Deepak Advani
The Internet Age has made it possible for dramatic amounts of information to be available at our fingertips. And as capacity expands and accessibility grows, we push ever closer to the Internet-of-things, where our physical and digital worlds are tightly coupled and leveraged.
With the ability to generate, share, store and access increasing amounts of data – Big Data – the challenge soon becomes one of management and analysis. Left alone, the mountains of seemingly disparate information are useless. But when mined intelligently, they become treasure troves of insight that can unlock benefits, such as improved customer service, equipment-saving predictive maintenance, and new business opportunities, to name a few. Continue Reading »
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Rick Padinha, GM, IBM Global Operations and Delivery Excellence
By Rick Padinha
Terry F. Yosie, President and CEO of the World Environment Center
By Terry F. Yosie
Environmental issues are big, thorny problems. Scarcities in water, food and raw materials are too complex for any single company or non-governmental organization to solve on its own. In order to make a difference, it’s necessary to collaborate with like-minded partners to achieve shared goals.
Collaboration is a normal feature of customer-supplier relationships, government-business partnerships and initiatives with universities and other partners. It’s also typical for organizations looking for new business models that can sustain profitability while addressing societal needs, natural resource management, product and service innovation, and differentiation of brand value, to name a few. Collaboration can spur organizations to redefine their business purpose by utilizing society as another kind of R&D lab for innovation. Continue Reading »
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Mitzie Hunter, CEO, Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance
By Mitzie Hunter
Like many city-dwellers worldwide, residents of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) have reached an impasse. Our congestion problems are getting worse and worse, and we now have some of the longest commuting times in North America. Congestion is not only taking a toll on our economy and our environment, but also on our health and our quality of life.
IBM’s Social Sentiment Index research pulled tens of thousands of tweets about traffic from five major cities across Canada. The exercise homed in on what our residents feel is most important—not surprisingly, Toronto’s commuters were the most active to vent their opinions. Toronto had 10,000 tweets about traffic over an 11-month period, 40 percent of which were explicitly negative. By contrast, only 20 percent of tweets in Halifax were negative. Continue Reading »
Juerg von Kaenel, Senior Research Manager, IBM Research, Australia
By Juerg von Kaenel
Only with sustained investment in innovation can countries improve the most fundamental quality-of-life indicators for their citizens. For complex and vital disciplines like disaster management, this requires comprehensive collaboration across community, government, industry and academia and on a global scale. By focusing on common social goals – such as reducing and mitigating the impact of natural and man-made disasters – best practices and collective technical knowledge can be used to help improve community resilience and potentially save lives.
The newly-announced teaming of IBM, the University of Melbourne, and the National ICT Australia (NICTA) research centre, to develop and implement the Australia Disaster Management Platform (ADMP) will enable collaboration between innovators in the critical fields of disaster planning, response and recovery. The ADMP promises to remove some of the major historical obstacles to innovation in this increasingly critical field. Continue Reading »
Ahmed Simjee, Smarter Planet Leader, IBM South Africa
By Ahmed Simjee
When I was growing up in South Africa, my family was fortunate. We had access to fresh drinking water. At first we lived on a small farm near Johannesburg, where we used a well. Later, when I moved closer to the city, I had good tap water. But many of my fellow South Africans weren’t so lucky, and, even today, many people in the rural areas and in informal settlements near the cities don’t have ready access to fresh drinking water. That’s why I’m extremely pleased to be spearheading an initiative in South Africa, WaterWatchers, which is aimed at using mobile phones and crowdsourcing to cut down on leaks and wasted water.
We’re launching our free WaterWatchers app today in Gauteng Province, home of Johannesburg and the capital city, Tshwane. With 12.3 million residents, the province represents 23% of South Africa’s population. We timed the launch to coincide with the United Nations’ World Water Day. If you’re in South Africa, please download the app. Continue Reading »
