Data Capital The Scotsman

The UK is "walking down a path towards a surveillance state", a technology expert warns in the latest episode of The Data Capital podcast. Stephanie Hare voices her concerns about the different ways that technology and data are affecting our lives in a wide-ranging interview in We Begin As Data.Hare, keynote speaker at The Scotsman's annual data conference on September 27th, also warns of the addictive power of tech platforms like TikTok and their potentially damaging long-term effect on young minds.

Two female data entrepreneurs describe how personal experiences - giving a cancer diagnosis to a child and watching older relatives lose their independence - motivated them to start their own businesses in the latest episode of the Data Capital podcast.Ishani Malholtra, who founded Carcinotech, and Alex Reissig, co-founder of Smplicare, also talk about how vital data is to their business - and the continuing challenges faced by technology businesses founded by women.They praise the support they received from the University of Edinburgh's Data Driven Entrepreneurship (DDE) programme in the podcast, Making a Difference: The Female Data Entrepreneurs Who Want to Change The World.

In the latest episode of The Scotsman’s Data Capital podcast series we speak with Professor Thusha Rajendran (Heriot-Watt University) about the potential for robots to change Scotland.

Businesses who are able to attract the brightest and best technology talent will be those who understand the complex and ever-changing relationship between humans and computers.

This includes an ability to use artificial intelligence smartly to "automate the misery and retain the joy" in people's jobs, the latest podcast in The Scotsman's Data Capital series heard.

Experts from Accenture Applied Intelligence said the market for those working in data and artificial intelligence was "extremely buoyant" - and that businesses who wanted to win the war for talent had to be authentic in their recruitment.

Sam Netherwood, an expert in behaviour change with Accenture Applied Intelligence, said:  "When it comes to data, tell candidates what you are working on. Ask if they want to be part of that, part of solving those problems, part of this innovation. It's about the inside [of an organisation] matching the outside."

Health data has been the foundation for decision-making during the Covid-19 pandemic - but there is room for improvement on how that data is combined and used in future, according to Scotland's National Clinical Director, Professor Jason Leitch.

In The Scotsman's latest Data Capital podcast, A Healthy Relationship with Data?, Prof Leitch discusses public attitudes to using their personal health data for the wider good.

He says: "I think that if you stop 100 people in the street and tell them that when they go into hospital, or care home, you would like to send the care home the fact that they are diabetic, or tell the hospital to know that they can't see out of their left eye, most would say ‘Don’t you do that already? Of course you should tell them that!

"What they might not want [sharing] is their sexually transmitted disease history, or their private mental health data. There's a balance in there about who should get what, but in the round, people expect healthcare data to be shared appropriately, confidentially, with other healthcare teams, and we're quite good at that."

He continues: "Data has been crucial to the pandemic response. It's kind of invisible, but it's the foundation for a lot of decision-making.

"At one level, data helps us make individual clinical decisions for Frank and Mary who are ill, or who need to be tested or vaccinated.

"At the other end is data for decisions. So, what does vaccination do for 5 million people? When should you start to do testing with lateral flow devices for 5 million people - or for the return of students?  You're giving population level advice, allowing elected officials to make the decisions, and you need data at every level to be able to do that.".

He adds: "Sometimes we forget data is in service. It is not the end in itself, it is in service of patients. I think we have got better at it, but it could be smoother as [healthcare] systems sometimes don't communicate like they should, principally because the systems have developed separately. So we've had parallel tracks of our  hospital level data or GP data or dentist data, or optician data, and care home data."

Joanna Boag-Thomson, a Partner in legal firm Shepherd and Wedderburn and another guest on the podcast, says there are definitely lessons to learn about how Scotland has combined health and social care data during the pandemic.

But she stresses that there have been major benefits from the fact that individuals in Scotland have a community health index (CHI) number which stays with them throughout their healthcare journey.

"Access to GP records and hospital records was really important in the initial stages and combining a shielding list of patients to protect the most vulnerable people in society," Boag-Thomson says. .

"And then, in rolling out the vaccines, lists of where to find people and information about their health, has been very important. Although I think that shows one area where there's room for improvement. There did appear to be some issues in actually rolling out the vaccine among sections of the population who don't tend to visit their GP very often."

She believes communication and consultation are crucial to getting data handling right; "They are absolutely key, so that whoever is running a project can understand what the concerns are, think about them, take time to address them and make people feel much more comfortable about understanding what's being done with their personal data."

Looking at human and animal health in a joined-up way is vital to help predict, and address, future outbreaks of Coronavirus and flu, an expert believes.

Professor Bruce Whitelaw says OneHealth - studying human health, animal health and our environment in a coordinated way - had huge potential.

Prof Whitelaw, a geneticist and senior academic at the University of Edinburgh, discusses OneHealth in detail in the latest Data Capital podcast by The Scotsman and the Data Driven Innovation initiative.

In the podcast, he says: “I’d like to see us being able to predict what the next specific virus, what the next likely outbreak, will be. Not only would we be able to predict it, but put in place a whole variety of aspects to mitigate it: drug development, better surveillance to see which animals are better able to resist the virus, and therefore, less likely to transmit it - and policies and strategies to help society adapt.”

Prof Whitelaw says there are different ideas of what OneHealth is, but he feels it is “the interconnection of the health of us humans, and the health of other animals on our planet and that entire ecosystem that we find ourselves in”.