We are creating some awesome events for you. Kindly bear with us.

Paola to promote physical well-being for Australians

The pilot of ‘Paola’, the new virtual assistant of the University of South Australia, is the first foray of artificial intelligence (AI) into the healthy lifestyle sector.

According to a recent report, Paola piloted in a world-first Mediterranean lifestyle and physical study that aims to show how chatbot technology can facilitate improved health and physical activity.

Paola promotes physical well-being

Not only that, but the chatbot will also prove that it can aid in reducing risk factors of cardiovascular disease including blood pressure and body weight.

Paola will be running the program solely.

The virtual assistant will guide the volunteers through a 12-week program wherein they will be adopting a Mediterranean diet, increase their physical activity, and interact with a custom-designed website.

The lead researchers claimed that this is one of the first times that chatbot technology is used in health research.

Chatbots are increasingly appearing in service industries. However, they can only answer a limited set of common questions and would require human steps to complete the conversation in most cases.

A different kind of chatbot

Paola is different as she is not merely a first-level response chatbot.

She has the ability to learn and modify her responses, giving the potential to deliver an entire health program, without additional support from a dietitian or an exercise professional.

The virtual assistant technology has been further enhanced to bring a personal and natural feel to the way Paola converses.

This enables her to refer to users by name and send them friendly reminders to complete their check-ins.

The research presents a significant opportunity for emerging technology to be applied in the health domain, where Australia’s health expenditure currently exceeds economic growth.

Based on the statistics report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia spent A$ 180.7 billion on health in 2016-17. This is equivalent to more than A$ 7400 per person.

The rise in health costs signals a need to drive better outcomes for patients and citizens.

Researchers can help improve health outcomes while also potentially reducing costs by embracing new technologies like AI.

Healthy Lifestyle

A Mediterranean diet and lifestyle can offer enormous benefits in terms of longevity, health and well-being.

But, according to one of the lead researchers, Associate Professor Maher, these benefits come from following a particular eating pattern, as well as taking opportunities to be active throughout the day.

Often, people do not understand the specifics of a Mediterranean diet or how to adopt it into their lifestyle.

In order to shift to that kind of lifestyle pattern, people need detailed and personalised information, typically from a dietician or exercise physiologist, which is both time-consuming and expensive.

Hopefully, Paola will offer people an alternative.

She presents the potential for many more people to access and take advantage of healthy diet and lifestyle information, which potentially will successfully support them to make long term changes to improving their health.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Send this to a friend