Max Healthcare Launched AI Enabled Remote Patient Monitoring Network

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June 29, 2021

Max Healthcare has launched an artificial intelligence-powered remote patient monitoring network in association with MyHealthcare. The device-integrated patient monitoring framework will help patients across India connect to the Max Healthcare doctors from the comfort of their homes.

Patients can monitor their vitals with clinical devices connected to the Max MyHealth app. The app monitors these readings and forwards them to the electronic medical records (EMR) for the doctor’s review. It can monitor Spo2 levels, blood pressure, blood sugar, ECG, and heart rate.

All these vitals are tracked via artificial intelligence tools that aid with ECG interpretation and send alerts to the doctors in the nearest healthcare center if the parameters range outside permissible limits. The launch of the app during the second wave of Covid-19 will help with the crowding of hospitals, reducing the spread of the virus by eliminating trips to the hospitals.

“At Max Healthcare, our constant endeavor has been to use the advancements in digital technology to provide best in class medical support to our patients. Our focus is to expand the geography of care for the Max Healthcare group,” said Prashant Singh, Director IT and Group CIO, Max Healthcare.

He also mentioned that the launch of the remote patient monitoring platform is an initiative to help and enhance the healthcare services to patients at their homes. The service will help extend post-hospitalization services to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, making quality healthcare accessible for a wider population.

In the press meet, Max Healthcare announced that patients would get access to various complex care programs involving daily/regular inspection such as cardiac care, diabetes, and hypertension management and monthly/bi-weekly virtual consultations with Max Hospital doctors.

Self-Driving Startup Pony.ai Considers Going Public

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 29, 2021

Self-Driving Startup Pony.ai Considers Going Public

Self-driving startup Pony.ai, backed by Toyota Motor Corp, is now considering going public in the United States to help fund its motive of commercializing driverless ride-hailing services.

The company is currently active in the United States and China, and it plans to install its technology in hundreds of vehicles by 2022, rising to tens of thousands in 2024-2025, said the chief executive of Pony.ai.

Recently, the company announced that it aims to launch its Robotaxis in the United States by 2022.

CEO of Pony.ai, James Peng, said to Reuters, “For autonomous driving, it’s a big opportunity. But at the same time, it’s also a long term, big opportunity.” He further mentioned that in order to achieve their goal, the company would require to raise more funds to support their research and operations.

The company, on Friday, said in a statement that it had tapped the vice chairman of investment banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co, Lawrence Steyn, as their chief financial officer to help the company grow its customer base at a global scale.

Many other Self-driving startups, including Pony.ai, like Alphabet Inc’s Waymo and General Motors Co’s Cruise, have also been racing to raise funds as the industry prepares to scale up operations. Peng said to Reuters that they are still considering and debating about the time frame for a public share sale.

He also said that this fresh move by the startup is yet another way of raising funds. According to Peng, the next big challenge for the self-driving vehicle industry is to reduce the manufacturing cost while speeding up their expansion to different parts of the world.

The company was founded by former employees of Google and Baidu in 2016. Pony.ai has raised over $1 billion, including a $462 million funding from automobile manufacturing giant Toyota.

IIIT Hyderabad Announces Online Course On Foundations Of Machine Learning

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 28, 2021

IIIT Hyderabad Announces Online Course On Foundations Of Machine Learning

IIIT Hyderabad recently announced the launch of its new 50-week foundation course in Modern Machine Learning for engineering students.

The online course is available for undergraduate engineering students who are in their third or fourth year pursuing a program in Information Technology, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, or other related branches from any technical institution in India.

Nominations of participants have to be placed by universities which IIIT will scrutinize before declaring the list of selected students. This 50-weeks certificate program in Modern Machine Learning will offer online modules with a personalized learning experience for each student.

The course will also pay equal attention to the foundation and practical implementation of machine learning. It would also provide discussion opportunities with industry leading researchers from academics.

Core instructors of this online course include eminent professors of IIIT Hyderabad, including Anoop Namboodiri, Ravi Kiran Sarvadevabhatla, and C. V. Jawahar.

The participation fee for the course is INR 10,000 + tax, with an opportunity for deserving students to get financial assistance. The course will also provide cash rewards of INR 25,000 to the top 5% of participants after completion. INR 15,000 to the following top 20%, INR 10,000 to the next top 25%, and INR 8000 to all the students who will complete the course, respectively.

Prof C V Jawahar, Dean research and development, said, “Since IIITH has the largest artificial intelligence and machine learning academic lab in the country we’ve started this course to allow learners from various colleges to gain from our expertise and set them on their career paths should they choose to specialize in machine learning in the future.”

DeepMind Partnered With DNDi To Cure Neglected Diseases

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 28, 2021

DeepMind recently announced its partnership with the Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative (DNDi) to use artificial intelligence for treating neglected diseases.

In 2020, DeepMind unveiled its new artificial intelligence platform, AlphaFold, which was capable of mapping protein structures accurately way faster than scientists could do.

Alphabet-owned research company used the platform to map out a number of the Sars-CoV-2 virus’ protein structures predictions that were later confirmed to be accurate after analysis.

Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative (DNDi) is a non-profit pharmaceutical enterprise that has been attempting to tackle some of the most fatal diseases in the developing world for 18 years. DNDi is a tweet mentioned about the collaboration, which would fast-track their efforts to find cures to widely neglected diseases like Chagas and leishmaniasis.

What if the most powerful #AI technology could help the most neglected patients? We are partnering with @DeepMind’s #AlphaFold project to fast-track our efforts to find safe & effective drugs for people with #Chagas and #leishmaniasis. @demishassabis 1/2 https://t.co/AESo7IZdNI
— Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (@DNDi) June 23, 2021

In the past, DNDi has already contributed to finding a cure for sleeping sickness and has replaced a drug called melarsoprol with fexinidazole as a new standard treatment for the disease.

A research conducted at the University of Washington by scientists of DNDi found a molecule that can bind to a protein on Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas disease-causing parasite) and kill it. Now, with the help of DeepMind’s AlphaFold platform, scientists can easily study and analyze the protein structure of the molecule to understand how the drug is prohibiting the parasite from functioning.

Ben Pery, a medicinal chemist and project leader at DNDi, said, “ This could allow us to crack Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis a lot quicker than it looked like we were going to be able to do a couple of years ago.” He also added that with AlphaFold’s technology of generating protein structures, it has become a lot easier for scientists to design multiple drug candidates to neutralize the effects of an infection.

Both companies aim to use AlphaFold to democratize the drug discovery process, which would enable scientists from nations that lack the necessary infrastructure to contribute to finding cures for fatal diseases.

New Map Created By Artificial Intelligence Reveals Hidden Links Between Milky Way And Andromeda Galaxies

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 28, 2021

New Map Created By Artificial Intelligence Reveals Hidden Links Between Milky Way And Andromeda Galaxies

A new cosmic map created by artificial intelligence shows hidden constructions connecting galaxies, which would help scientists predict a future collision between the Milkyway and Andromeda galaxies, which is our nearest neighbor.

An announcement from Pennsylvania Negate University mentioned that the map generated using machine learning would also help scientists to discover more about dark matter and its involvement in the creation of the universe.

Researchers said that the map charted the expected collision of the two galaxies in 4.5 billion years, including dark matter filaments that bridge the two galaxies that can affect the merger. Dark matter and dark energy account for roughly 80% of the matter in the universe, but the scientists poorly understand it.

Dark matter is invisible in wavelengths of light. Hence it can’t be seen with telescopes. But, scientists can trace the influence of dark matter’s gravity on large cosmic structures, such as galaxies.

New map created by AI reveals hidden links between Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies https://t.co/op1gNadVod pic.twitter.com/tJPk6yaLQw
— SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom) June 25, 2021

An associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Donghui Jeong, said, “Because dark matter dominates the dynamics of the universe, it basically determines our fate.” He further added that it is possible to generate a map for billions of years to predict what will happen in the local universe using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It can also help to evolve a model back in time to understand the history of our cosmic neighborhood. The map also portrayed many new filaments that the researchers plan to study further, including those that connect the Milky Way to Andromeda.

The accuracy of the map is expected to increase after the launch of NASA’s $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which will gather data to help scientists see fainter and distant galaxies.

“Having a map of the cosmic web opens up a new chapter of cosmological study,” said Jeong. The map has enabled scientists to study the nature and distribution of dark matter across the universe better.

Dataiku Launches In AWS Marketplace Enabling Better Features

By

Manisha Kalagara

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June 28, 2021

Dataiku announced that it would be launching in the AWS marketplace, enabling the AWS customers to use Dataiku’s visual interface to build various AI and machine learning tasks. The users will be able to prepare data, data pipelines, and build and deploy machine learning models on the cloud.

Anyone who possesses an AWS account can leverage the leading AI and machine learning platform, Dataiku, for elastic cloud computing. The enterprise had made the usage more flexible for the ones starting in AI and machine learning by removing the barrier of contracts or legal issues.

“We believe that every company, no matter how large or small, can benefit from AI/ML products like ours; launching in AWS Marketplace only makes that easier,” said Florian Douetteau, CEO of Dataiku. “Now, more organizations will be able to leverage AI to automate key business processes, allowing customers to make smarter, faster decisions and deliver better customer experiences.”

Developers who use Dataiku through AWS will have coherent access to stored data on AWS and read and write an entry to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and managed SQL services. Users can take advantage of this entry to scale data pipelines and machine learning processes by grasping compute clusters like Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) through visual components or a coding language. Not only that, but the developer can have access to connect, transform, visualize and analyze datasets with Amazon Redshift with visual recipes or custom SQL code.

The elastic integration of Dataiku takes advantage of the cloud computing resources to enable automatic computing for the data preparation, model building, and model scoring jobs orchestrated on Dataiku. Customers can also easily access the AWS Machine Learning Services for the smooth inclusion of computer vision or text analytics into Dataiku projects.

ZzappMalaria Wins $5 million IBM Watson AI XPRISE

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Dipayan Mitra

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June 28, 2021

ZzappMalaria, a startup based in Israel, wins $5 million by bagging the 1st prize in IBM’s Watson AI XPRISE competition. ZzappMalaria also won the People’s Choice Award as the “Most Inspiring Team.”.

The startup aims to eliminate malaria with artificial intelligence-powered solutions. The enterprise was selected as one of three finalists for the prize earlier this year, competing amongst ten semi-finalists following presentations of their solutions to a panel of judges at an event held at TED headquarters in New York City in 2020.

On Wednesday, IBM, in an event in Los Angeles, declared the results of the competition where ZzappMalaria captured the first spot, followed by Alfred Health and Marinus Analytics, which won $1 Million and $500,000, respectively.

Arnon Houri, founder and CEO of ZzappMalaria, said, “The Zapp team is very grateful to Xprize and IBM Watson for recognizing the importance of the fight against malaria.” He further mentioned that they aim to utilize the funds to ramp up the process of eliminating malaria in sub-Saharan Africa using artificial intelligence.

The startup is currently operating in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zanzibar with a few local partners, including NGOs and government organizations. The company also hinted that they would soon start their operations in India which hosts 3% of the world’s malaria infections.

CEO of XPRISE, Anousheh Ansari, said, “After five years of hard work and dedication, XPRIZE is excited to announce Zzapp Malaria as the grand prize winner of IBM Watson AI XPRIZE.” ZzappMalaria was founded in 2016 by Armor Hourin to eradicate malaria with its self-developed artificial intelligence software.

Their map-based platform predicts stagnant water bodies caused due to rain and sends the information to healthcare workers to treat the area with pesticides. The application is capable of functioning in low-connectivity areas and works on low-end smartphones as well.

Jio Collaborates With Google Cloud To Enable 5G Technology

By

Manisha Kalagara

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June 28, 2021

Jio announces a long-term strategic relationship with Google cloud to enable enterprises with 5G technology. Google Cloud’s scalable infrastructure will be utilized by Reliance to achieve better growth, operational efficiency, and also to modernize their customers/enterprises.

For a faster network, Google Cloud will be providing a fully automated lifecycle management with a complete end-to-end cloud offering. Google’s Edge Cloud infrastructure will provide a highly scalable, open, and high-performing platform to assist Jio subscribers in using 5G services. Jio and Google Cloud will also work together to bring a portfolio of 5G edge computing solutions to aid enterprises in addressing real business provocations.

Jio’s 5G network and Google cloud’s transformations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data, analytics, and other cloud-native technologies will be used to explore the new service in the fields of healthcare, gaming, education, and video entertainment.

Cloud solutions are the key area for collaboration with Google. Jio will be using Google Cloud’s technologies to power 5G solutions and internal growth of Reliance businesses such as JioMart, JioSaavn, JioHealth, and Reliance Retail.

“We are delighted to announce a new 5G partnership with Reliance Jio to help Indian consumers connect to a faster and better internet and support businesses in their digital transformation and help Jio build new services in sectors like health, education, and more” said Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google. He also added that as a part of the collaboration, Reliance will be shifting its core retail businesses on to Google Cloud infrastructure, which will enable Reliance scale up and improve customer experience.

Google Cloud’s telco-specific capabilities for performance, security, and resilience and its emerging innovation will aid Jio in meeting the consumer demand with 5G service, henceforth strengthening Jio’s position as a service provider and as multi-division enterprise in the country.

LinkedIn’s Job-Matching Artificial Intelligence Was Biased

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 27, 2021

Linkedin's artificial intelligence was biased

The use of artificial intelligence in recruitment is quickly gaining popularity as more companies absorb this technology. However, most of the companies rely on third-party service providers like LinkedIn and Monster to meet their hiring needs, where they are able to collect and screen resumes of millions of potential employees.

These platforms also utilize artificial intelligence to cater their services to several organizations. Most of the matching engines are optimized to create job applications. Recommendations of these engines are based on three types of data: data assigned to users based on other people with similar skills, information directly provided by users to the platform, and behavioral data, like the frequency of users replying to messages or interacting with job openings.

LinkedIn excluded a person’s name, age, gender, and ethnicity from their algorithm as they might result in a bias in the automated system. But John Jersin, former vice president of product management at LinkedIn and his team, found that even so, the service’s algorithm can still detect the behavior patterns of groups with specific gender identities.

Jersin said, “For example, you might recommend more senior positions to one group of people than another group, even if they have the same level of qualifications.” He further added that those people would not be exposed to the same opportunities, which is a matter of concern.

As a solution, Jersin and his team have developed another artificial intelligence that generates more representative results. It is entirely a different algorithm designed to counter biased recommendations towards certain groups. The new artificial intelligence makes sure that the recommendation system includes even distribution of transgender users before referencing the matches planned by the original engine.

The CEO of CareerBuilder, Irina Novoseelski, said that she intends to use the data gathered by the service to train the workers so that they can eliminate bias in recruitment information.

Walmart Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Provide Better Grocery Deliveries

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 27, 2021

Walmart is using artificial intelligence to help both customers and Personal Shoppers choose the best substitute for an out-of-stock item. In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, food and grocery delivery apps experienced a rapid change in customer behavior, which led to a skyrocketing boost of their user base.

Walmart recently surpassed Amazon as the # 1 shopping app on both Google Play and the App Store. The decision on how to substitute is highly complicated and very subjective to each customer, as wrong choices can negatively impact customer satisfaction and increase costs.

Walmart’s artificial intelligence-powered platform takes into account numerous factors that are involved in decision making before showing substitute options to its customers, which would be extremely difficult and time consuming to do if performed manually.

The implementation of this technology into grocery delivery is not something new. Last year in May, Walmart reported how it used artificial intelligence technology to determine eligibility for its newly launched express delivery service in the United States.

Srini Venkatesan, Vice president of Walmart Global Tech, said, “The technology we developed uses deep learning artificial intelligence that can consider hundreds of variables – size, type, brand, price, aggregated buyer data, individual customer preferences, current inventory, and more in real time to select the best next available item.”

He further added that the customer is asked to approve the suggested item or to tell the platform that they don’t want it, as it is an important data which the company uses to refine its artificial intelligence platform to provide better suggestions.

Walmart officials said, “Following the deployment of this tech, customer acceptance of substitutions has increased to over 95%.” The company intends to further improve its platform by continuously learning from consumer feedback to ensure complete customer satisfaction.