Information Policy

Empowered Patients + Automated Medical Processes + Intelligence = Smart City Medical Systems

Complex clinical trials, controlling medical systems downtime, cumbersome regulatory documentation and skillset scarcity are the key pain points that hinder achieving a Smart City with connected healthcare and medical systems. Though the life sciences and healthcare industry is evolving, a huge chunk of the industry is still, largely not digitized.

Open Society Foundation of South Africa, Omidyar Network and MDIF launch South Africa Media Innovation Program

29 August 2017, Johannesburg: Today saw the launch of the South Africa Media Innovation Program (SAMIP) to provide dedicated funding and capacity building support to independent media in the country, focused on digital innovation. The Program will promote innovation in the sector, fund the development of public interest digital publications with a focus on young audiences, and drive transformation and foster new and diverse voices.

Newcastle’s four-year smart city plan unveiled

Aims to improve liveability, sustainability and economic diversity

The NSW city of Newcastle has adopted a smart city strategy, describing it as a roadmap for creating a smarter and more innovative Newcastle and Hunter Region to maximise opportunities in technology, advanced manufacturing, the digital economy and the creative industries.

The importance of data in smart cities

During the London 2012 Olympics the Transport for London (TfL) network needed to manage 18 million local journeys made by spectators. One can only imagine the volume of data generated during this time; the data and analytics, mostly from the games, was utilized by TfL to predict the number of people who were likely to use public transport during that time, in order to ensure that the system was running effectively.

How to implement an open data policy

Opening data is the start of many smart city journeys. That open data, of course, should consist of information that the city has collected for years, which may be siloed offline — but it also needs to include data collected from new cameras and other sensors that are a part of other smart cities projects.