Speed to Modern Tech KPMG

All throughout this first season of Speed to Modern Tech, we’ve been exploring the high stakes problems many businesses are facing and how technology is being applied to help solve them. In this final episode, host Tori Weldon sat down with three leading thinkers from KPMG who oversaw the projects featured in past episodes — Todd Lohr, Swami Chandrasekaran and Cliff Justice — to talk about how these challenges will evolve and the impact of future technologies.

Ransomware is one of the biggest forms of cybercrime that businesses face today. And the threat is only growing – in 2021, businesses suffered 50% more cyberattack attempts per week than in 2020. Companies with non-secure and disparate IT systems are especially vulnerable to attack – so how can businesses rebuild after cybercriminals breach their systems, steal data, and hold it ransom? In this episode, host Tori Weldon explores what it takes to recover from a ransomware attack, and how businesses can strengthen their IT systems to protect themselves.

For millions of low-income Americans, Medicaid is a lifeline to accessing care. Yet many struggle to find healthcare providers who will accept this form of public insurance. Providers say the software Medicaid uses is complex and outdated, making processing claims too time-consuming and expensive. In this episode, host Tori Weldon explores the human cost of this technology lapse, and the renewed effort to modernize Medicaid systems.

If you’ve applied for credit recently, it’s likely an AI system provided the approval. But how is the algorithm reaching its conclusion? And in a world where thousands of data points are being fed into AI models, how can businesses ensure their AI systems are making fair decisions — free from bias? In this episode, host Tori Weldon explores how AI bias can perpetuate racism and “redlining”, and how adopting better AI governance and oversight can help build more responsible AI.

It’s a common refrain on customer care lines. “Press one for billing”. But if the question doesn’t fit the phone tree, it can mean long waits on hold for help. In the healthcare industry, these interactions can be frustrating at best and life threatening at worst. In this episode host Tori Weldon explores the challenges many patients face in accessing health information, and how conversational AI-technology and natural language processing are being used to answer complex questions accurately, without ever having to wait on hold.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many American colleges and universities were forced to close their campuses. The road to reopening relied on the ability to track symptoms and test results for thousands of students and staff - all in real time. So technologists worked around the clock to create a solution that could scale. In this episode, host Tori Weldon dives into the problem of safely reopening campus and how a progressive web application helped bring back in person learning.