#helthtech

Tim Woolliscroft: Could Smart Communities improve the efficiency of Cancer Services in Sheffield?

Tim is a graduate tutor and PhD research student at Sheffield Hallam University who is investigating the potential for digitally-enabled networks and related technology to change the way things are currently done in healthcare. How could such networks enable communities to foster better services and outcomes? How could they better connect patients and carers with professionals? How can this be inclusive? How can data be used without impacting on privacy? What is the relationship between healthcare and smart cities? What might utopia and dystopia look like, and how might the latter be avoided?

To try to answer questions such as these, and to help develop realistic models for how such a change could come about, Tim has organised a series of workshops to investigate particular elements of this vision. He is looking to make connections with a broad range of people, including healthcare professionals, managers, ICT experts, local government employees, cancer survivors and members of the general public, and would also like to reach out to the smart city community for anyone who is also interested in changing the way things are done in health.

The first of these workshops was held last month and looked at the current system of cancer services (you don't need to have attended this event to participate in future ones).

The second workshop, subtitled "The Future", will take place on the 10th May, and begins to shift the focus to what an alternative model might look like. You can register for this event here.

The third event is scheduled for June 8th and is subtitled "Time to Get Critical". This workshop will take a critical look at the information gathered in the first two workshops to determine which ideas offer value and whether they point to efficiency improvements that could be pursued. You can register for this third workshop here.

The fourth event will be announced in due course.

This is a really good opportunity for anyone interested in smart health to get involved in understanding the real challenges and opportunities, and to meet other people involved in this field. We'll report further on this and hopefully Tim will come back and talk about the outcomes from the workshop series later in the year.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to Tim’s presentation and the video of his talk in Trello.

Urban Flows Observatory (UFO)

The Urban Flows Observatory is a new four year research project from RISE, the Resources, Infrastructure Systems and built Environments group at the University of Sheffield, led by Prof Martin Mayfield and Dr Danielle Tingley. RISE is a recently established research group that “seeks to enable the creation of a built environment that allows humanity to thrive within the carrying capacity of the planet.”

The guys at Rise really wanted to come and talk to the SmartSheffield community about the new project, but unfortunately none of them was available on the day, and so instead of waiting until the next event (which will likely be in June), we decided they should send over their presentation and we would collectively try to make sense of it. I have to say, this was a quite enjoyable thing to do and got everyone engaged - I’m now wondering whether we should do this as standard! Equally though, this is not from the horse's mouth, so many apologies for any misrepresentations!

Here’s a summary what (we think) the UFO project is about:

At it’s highest level, the vision for the the Urban Flows Observatory is to create a “metabolic” map of the city of Sheffield, i.e. a holistic picture of energy flows and transformations in and out of the city.

To enable this the project will create a technology platform that consists of sensors (fixed, mobile and atmospheric), data storage, data processing and visualisation tools, along with all the middleware necessary for these parts of the software stack to exchange data.

The funding is primarily for the technology to build the sensor infrastructure and software platform, additional funding and partnerships will be sought to fund applications and specific research that leverages the observatory.

It’s a four-year research project in which Sheffield is in partnership with Bristol and Newcastle. 

Along with the sensor network and platform, the project will also develop a LIDAR and sensor equipped vehicle that will take readings of building materials and use machine vision and deep learning to identify the materials and assess their properties, e.g. heat absorption, etc. In other words the project aims to literally understand what Sheffield is made of.

There are a whole range of applications that can come out of this project, along with original research obviously, for instance evaluating building material reuse potential, how newly constructed buildings are actually performing, where electricity micro-grids  could be effective, etc.

RISE also want to engage with the local smart city community to help them define the platform and its capabilities with a view to what kinds of application might be possible once it’s in operation. To this end they are looking to schedule a number of workshops, in the next month or so and we’ll have more on this in due course.

RISE’s presentation is published on our Trello board here.

Sheffield Things Network

As those who’ve attended the last couple of meetups know, the Things Network is an international community of people who are setting up community-based communications networks in their home cities (LoRaWAN for long range, and Bluetooth 4.2, including LE, for short range).

Such a community-based LoRaWAN network would allow devices and sensors to talk to each other at city-wide scale using very low energy (i.e. devices could be in the field for years on a single battery), and could be used to try out all sorts of new applications and digitally enabled experiences for very little cost.

We are also hoping that a commercial provider will install their own LoRaWAN network, which, as long as there’s no spectrum conflict, will provide a route to commercialisation and scaling to other cities. We know there are currently some discussions going on at the city region level around this.

Anyway, we’ve been talking about setting up a Sheffield Things Network for a while, and Scott Knowles and I have now decided to launch that effort. Scott applied to the Things Network for official status last year, and this community is now live.

The community page will be the main coordination point, and will chart the progress of the project and link to all relevant resources. You can access and register with the network here.

In addition, we have also set up a twitter account (@ThingsSHF) for public communications, and a dedicated channel (#ThingsSHF) on the Sheffield Digital Slack team for project chat & coordination.

We are looking for:

Gateway sponsors I.e. people or companies who would be willing to purchase a LoRaWAN gateway. These gateways cost E300+VAT and provide a range of roughly 6 miles (depending on surrounding structures) and can serve up to 10,000 nodes each.

Gateway hosts I.e. people or companies who are willing to install a gateway in their premises (preferably up high), connect it to power and an open internet connection (it’s low bandwidth so shouldn’t have a noticeable effect on speeds), keep the firmware up to date and perhaps reboot it occasionally.

Organisers & collaborators I.e. people who can help us develop the network and then mobilise a community of makers and innovators to use it.

If you would like to help with this effort, please register at the Things Network and join the Sheffield community! 

You can see the presentation on our open Trello Board, and comment on it there as well.

SmartSheffield News

Finally, I presented this month’s SmartSheffield News. Here are the headlines:

Sheffield Public WiFi

Not much to report on this other than the Council’s procurement effort is progressing, the bids are in and have been shortlisted, and I have been asked to provide some evaluation as an independent expert. More info to follow over the coming weeks & months.

Sheffield’s Destructor Lamps

Sheffield once had the country’s largest network of ‘destructor lamps’ - street lamps that used excess gasses from the sewer system to provide lighting - back in the early 20th century. These were a terrific example of early smart innovation, reusing a dangerous waste product to provide a social good. At its height, the network consisted of over 80 of these lamps, but up until a couple of years ago one a handful remained and only a couple of them provided light. However, the remaining lamps are now being refurbished and decommissioned ones are being restored and placed back in the city, as part of the city-wide Streets Ahead project with Amey/Ferrovial. In addition, the lamps are being put back into operation and although they will no longer use waste sewer gas (the sewage system is much more efficient these days), some of them are being reconnected to the gas supply while others are being fitted out with solar-powered lighting that has been adapted to fit inside the original lamp casings.

Here’s a great interview with Amey’s Street Lighting Operations Manager, Jonathan Skill, that that explains more:

Distributed Urban Water Infrastructure facility

In addition to the Urban Flows Observatory, the University of Sheffield has also been awarded £3.7m as part of the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC) to invest in a new facility to house research into urban water flows, which will make it the largest urban water research group in the UK.

You can find out more about this new facility here.

SOLAR: Walking at the Speed of Light

SOLAR is a new augmented reality walking trail in Sheffield that maps the solar system to the local geography, with the sun at the Peace Gardens and virtual artworks to discover along the way. The project is a collaboration between the Walking Arts Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University, Epiphany VR and Opus Independents, and has been produced as part of the University’s Catalyst Festival of Creativity.

You can find out more about the project here, and there’s background from the Walking Arts Research Group here.

The SOLAR app is now available on the Apple AppStore and Google Play - search for “Solar Walk Sheffield”.

Smart Cities MOOC

For the last couple of years MK SMart, the smart cities development initiative in Milton Keynes, has been running a MOOC - a massive open online course - on the smart cities concept and its various approaches. They have run six of these courses so far, and the final one commenced on the 10th April. A number of us from the SmartSheffield meetup have joined, and there is still time to register and catch up with progress. The course takes about 3 hours per week to complete, and runs over six weeks. It’s worth joining just to have continued access to the course materials, and you can complete the course at your leisure although of course you will miss out on the access to the course leaders and the lively debate around each topic that people are contributing ‘live’.

The course details and registration page are here.

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And that’s it for this month - see you in June hopefully!