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Lindera one of the leading deep-tech companies in the field of computer vision has successfully closed a Series A financing round. The Berlin-based health-tech company is receiving additional growth capital from new investors as well as from its existing shareholders from the Rheingau Founders circle. With its technology, Lindera is democratising the use of high-precision 3D motion tracking in the healthcare sector. Lindera's scientifically tested and validated solution makes it possible to create motion analyses with a smartphone camera, comparable to the gold standard in measurement accuracy (GAITRite).

Karsten Wulf, Co-founder of buw Holding and Shareholder of family office zwei.7, comments on his investment: "Given the demographic developments and ongoing shortage of skilled care professionals, we see enormous potential in digital health and care applications. This is not only about the sustainable improvement of efficiency but also about increasing the quality of patient care. We are convinced that Lindera, with the cutting-edge digital technology it has developed in-house and its scientific excellence, will play an important role in this area while at the same time keep the focus on people." Commenting on the successful financing round, Diana Heinrichs, Founder and CEO of Lindera, says: "Similar to how Amazon has evolved from a pioneer in online book retail to one of the leading tech companies, backed by zwei.7 we are now developing from an AI pioneer in care into a movement specialist along the entire health supply chain."

With its AI-based mobility analysis, Lindera SturzApp, the Berlin-based company is already successfully in use in more than 350 care facilities and therapy centres throughout Germany. Its customer base includes some of the largest German care facility operators. Lindera is also planning to expand internationally via a pilot project in Paris. In addition, long-term cooperations with customers and health insurance companies, as well as deep roots in the care structures, have created the basis for further growth.

In addition to nursing care, Lindera has been deploying its technology in other medical areas for a long time. The company is using patented, self-learning computer vision technology to address inefficiencies in care structures and to standardise billing-relevant movement assessments at the highest level with the goal of increasing the quality of care measurably. As a result, Lindera aims to use its AI-driven medical devices to make lasting changes in other healthcare areas, such as orthopaedics, geriatrics, neurology, and physical rehabilitation. With "LTech" its own software development kit Lindera also provides its smart 3D algorithm to developers of other healthcare applications, contributing to the development of apps, for example, in the field of physiotherapy.

Within the care sector, Lindera has now received one of the largest investments in the DACH region to date. The team intends to use the additional capital to establish an objective, patient-centred quality standard in care, grow internationally, and advance the development for admission, treatment, and discharge management in hospitals.

Issued by news aktuell/ots on behalf of Lindera GmbH

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Artificial intelligence in the healthcare sector: Lindera successfully closes financing round of six million euros - KULR-TV

TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2021 /CNW/ - TD Bank Group has donated a $1-million gift to establish the Augmented Precision Medicine Lab at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. The Augmented Precision Medicine Lab will develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help improve the clinical care that patients receive in the fields of cardiology, cancer and other chronic diseases. Sunnybrook's rich and complex data stores will be harnessed to develop clinical risk prediction models that will enable physicians to provide personalized care to patients and potentially improve outcomes.

With this investment, Sunnybrook will have the resources it needs to build technological infrastructure, attract more talent, and accelerate a number of innovative projects either planned or underway.

"This generous gift will unite medical experts, computer scientists and industry partners to harness the power of big data and machine learning to drive personalized approaches to medicine," says Kelly Cole, President and CEO, Sunnybrook Foundation. "TD has long been a dedicated supporter of innovation at Sunnybrook and we are delighted to take this next step together."

The Augmented Precision Medicine Lab will work closely with industry partners to develop powerful new diagnostic tools, bring them to communities across Canada, and ultimately improve health outcomes.

"AI in medicine will undoubtedly improve the quality of care that patients receive, and, perhaps more importantly, it will improve health-care equity by dramatically widening access to underserved communities and populations," says Dr. Alexander Bilbily, a physician and computer scientist at Sunnybrook who will serve as the director of the new lab. "And by recognizing the essential role that industry plays in health care, we create a clear path from the lab to the patient where these tools can have a real impact on the patient journey."

The Augmented Precision Medicine Lab's first project aims to leverage Sunnybrook's extensive experience with patients with COVID-19 to create AI tools that can identify which patients are more likely to deteriorate. As a result, doctors will be empowered to closely monitor and improve care for these patients. The tool is being developed for use in smaller community hospitals, which demonstrates how AI can extend the reach of medical knowledge to smaller centres with less experience, thereby improving health-care equity for patients in underserved areas.

"The funding announced today will help Sunnybrook enhance its research and develop AI technologies to advance quality health care for patients who need it most," says Janice Farrell Jones, Senior Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Citizenship, TD Bank Group. "Through the TD Ready Commitment, the Bank's corporate citizenship platform, we are proud to support this important initiative that will ultimately help patients living with cardiac conditions, cancer and other chronic diseases access equitable and personalized care."

Together, Sunnybrook and TD Bank Group are inventing the future of health care.

About Sunnybrook

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is inventing the future of health care for the 1.3 million patients the hospital cares for each year through the dedication of its more than 10,000 staff and volunteers. An internationally recognized leader in research and education and a full affiliation with the University of Toronto distinguishes Sunnybrook as one of Canada's premier academic health sciences centres. Sunnybrook specializes in caring for high-risk pregnancies, critically ill newborns and adults, offering specialized rehabilitation, and treating and preventing cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological and psychiatric disorders, orthopaedic and arthritic conditions and traumatic injuries. The hospital also has a unique and national leading program for the care of Canada's war veterans.

SOURCE Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

For further information: Media contact: Samantha Sexton, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 416.480.4040, [emailprotected]

http://www.sunnybrook.ca/foundation

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Sunnybrook launches innovative new artificial intelligence research lab with $1-million gift from TD Bank Group - Canada NewsWire

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) So many families have felt the pain of losing a loved one to a drug overdose, and now, new artificial intelligence technology is being used to help prevent such tragedies.

When you have a family member who lives this lifestyle, its a call you always know could come, Megan Wohltjen said.

Wohltjens brother, Samuel Grunlund, died of an overdose in March 2020, just two days after leaving a treatment facility. He was 27.

Very happy person. He was extremely athletic. Really intelligent, like, straight A student He started, you know, smoking marijuana and then experimenting with other drugs, Wohltjen told CBS2s Natalie Duddridge.

He wanted to get clean and addiction just destroyed his life, said Maura Grunlund, Sams mother.

Since Sams death, his mother and sister have been advocating for a new program they believe could have saved him. Its called Hotspotting the Opioid Crisis.

Researchers at MIT developed artificial intelligence that aims to stop an overdose before it happens.

This project has never been tried before, and its an effort to combine highly innovative predictive analytics and an AI-based algorithm to identify those who are most at risk of an overdose, said former congressman Max Rose, with the Secure Future Project.

The technology screens thousands of medical records through data sharing with doctors, pharmacies and law enforcement.

For example, over time, it might flag if a known drug user missed a treatment session, didnt show up to court or, in Sams case, just completed a rehab program. It then alerts health care professionals.

Im just calling to check in to see how things are going, said Dr. Joseph Conte,executive director of Staten Island Performing Provider System.

Conte says the program trains dozens of peer advocates who themselves are recovering addicts. They reach out to at-risk individuals and find out what they need from jobs to housing to therapy.

Theres no pressure on the patient to enter rehab. The goal is to keep them alive.

We cant help them if theyre dead If youre not ready for treatment, you should be ready for harm reduction. You should have Narcan available if you or a friend overdoses, Conte said.

Health officials say a record number of people, 100,000, died of overdoses in 2020.

This year alone on Staten Island, more than 70 people have fatally overdosed.

The number of opioid deaths per 100,000 people on Staten Island is about 170% higher than the national rate. Officials say fentanyl is largely to blame, and the lethal drug was found in 80% of Staten Island toxicology reports.

I believe that my son would be alive today if he hadnt used fentanyl I really feel that if this was any other disease, people would be up in arms, Maura Grunlund said.

Wohltjen says her brother always encouraged her to run the New York City Marathon, so this year, she did it, wearing his Little League baseball hat and raising thousands of dollars for the Partnership to End Addiction.

If we could save one life it would make a difference, Wohltjen said.

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Staten Island Family Advocating For New Artificial Intelligence Program That Aims To Prevent Drug Overdoses - CBS New York

Current trends in AI are nothing if not remarkable. Day after day, we hear stories about systems and machines taking on tasks that, until very recently, we saw as the exclusive and permanent preserve of humankind: making medical diagnoses, drafting legal documents, designing buildings, and even composing music.

Our concern here, though, is with something even more striking: the prospect of high-level machine intelligence systems that outperform human beings at essentially every task. This is not science fiction. In a recent survey the median estimate among leading computer scientists reported a 50% chance that this technology would arrive within 45 years.

Importantly, that survey also revealed considerable disagreement. Some see high-level machine intelligence arriving much more quickly, others far more slowly, if at all. Such differences of opinion abound in the recent literature on the future of AI, from popular commentary to more expert analysis.

Yet despite these conflicting views, one thing is clear: if we think this kind of outcome might be possible, then it ought to demand our attention. Continued progress in these technologies could have extraordinarily disruptive effects it would exacerbate recent trends in inequality, undermine work as a force for social integration, and weaken a source of purpose and fulfilment for many people.

In April 2020, an ambitious initiative called Positive AI Economic Futures was launched by Stuart Russell and Charles-Edouard Boue, both members of the World Economic Forums Global AI Council (GAIC). In a series of workshops and interviews, over 150 experts from a wide variety of backgrounds gathered virtually to discuss these challenges, as well as possible positive Artificial Intelligence visions and their implications for policymakers.

Those included Madeline Ashby (science fiction author and expert in strategic foresight), Ken Liu (Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author), and economists Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and Anna Salomons (Utrecht), among many others. What follows is a summary of these conversations, developed in the Forum's report Positive AI Economic Futures.

Participants were divided on this question. One camp thought that, freed from the shackles of traditional work, humans could use their new freedom to engage in exploration, self-improvement, volunteering, or whatever else they find satisfying. Proponents of this view usually supported some form of universal basic income (UBI), while acknowledging that our current system of education hardly prepares people to fashion their own lives, free of any economic constraints.

The second camp in our workshops and interviews believed the opposite: traditional work might still be essential. To them, UBI is an admission of failure it assumes that most people will have nothing of economic value to contribute to society. They can be fed, housed, and entertained mostly by machines but otherwise left to their own devices.

People will be engaged in supplying interpersonal services that can be provided or which we prefer to be provided only by humans. These include therapy, tutoring, life coaching, and community-building. That is, if we can no longer supply routine physical labour and routine mental labour, we can still supply our humanity. For these kinds of jobs to generate real value, we will need to be much better at being human an area where our education system and scientific research base is notoriously weak.

So, whether we think that the end of traditional work would be a good thing or a bad thing, it seems that we need a radical redirection of education and science to equip individuals to live fulfilling lives or to support an economy based largely on high-value-added interpersonal services. We also need to ensure that the economic gains born of AI-enabled automation will be fairly distributed in society.

One of the greatest obstacles to action is that, at present, there is no consensus on what future we should target, perhaps because there is hardly any conversation about what might be desirable. This lack of vision is a problem because, if high-level machine intelligence does arrive, we could quickly find ourselves overwhelmed by unprecedented technological change and implacable economic forces. This would be a vast opportunity squandered.

For this reason, the workshop attendees and interview participants, from science-fiction writers to economists and AI experts, attempted to articulate positive visions of a future where Artificial Intelligence can do most of what we currently call work.

These scenarios represent possible trajectories for humanity. None of them, though, is unambiguously achievable or desirable. And while there are elements of important agreement and consensus among the visions, there are often revealing clashes, too.

The economic benefits of technological progress are widely shared around the world. The global economy is 10 times larger because AI has massively boosted productivity. Humans can do more and achieve more by sharing this prosperity. This vision could be pursued by adopting various interventions, from introducing a global tax regime to improving insurance against unemployment.

Large companies focus on developing AI that benefits humanity, and they do so without holding excessive economic or political power. This could be pursued by changing corporate ownership structures and updating antitrust policies.

Human creativity and hands-on support give people time to find new roles. People adapt to technological change and find work in newly created professions. Policies would focus on improving educational and retraining opportunities, as well as strengthening social safety nets for those who would otherwise be worse off due to automation.

The World Economic Forums Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in partnership with the UK government, has developed guidelines for more ethical and efficient government procurement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Governments across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East are piloting these guidelines to improve their AI procurement processes.

Our guidelines not only serve as a handy reference tool for governments looking to adopt AI technology, but also set baseline standards for effective, responsible public procurement and deployment of AI standards that can be eventually adopted by industries.

We invite organizations that are interested in the future of AI and machine learning to get involved in this initiative. Read more about our impact.

Society decides against excessive automation. Business leaders, computer scientists, and policymakers choose to develop technologies that increase rather than decrease the demand for workers. Incentives to develop human-centric AI would be strengthened and automation taxed where necessary.

New jobs are more fulfilling than those that came before. Machines handle unsafe and boring tasks, while humans move into more productive, fulfilling, and flexible jobs with greater human interaction. Policies to achieve this include strengthening labour unions and increasing worker involvement on corporate boards.

In a world with less need to work and basic needs met by UBI, well-being increasingly comes from meaningful unpaid activities. People can engage in exploration, self-improvement, volunteering or whatever else they find satisfying. Greater social engagement would be supported.

The intention is that this report starts a broader discussion about what sort of future we want and the challenges that will have to be confronted to achieve it. If technological progress continues its relentless advance, the world will look very different for our children and grandchildren. Far more debate, research, and policy engagement are needed on these questions they are now too important for us to ignore.

Written by

Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI, University of California, Berkeley

Daniel Susskind, Fellow in Economics, Oxford University, and Visiting Professor, Kings College, London

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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6 positive AI visions for the future of work - World Economic Forum

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. There have been plenty of news reports about labor shortages and businesses unable to fill positions throughout the pandemic. But, there is another side of this story that hasn't gotten enough attention; millions of people looking for jobs and can't get hired because of online algorithms, artificial intelligence, and more.

ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska sat down with St. Petersburg resident Elizabeth Longden. She showed us all of the jobs she's applied for on LinkedIn and Indeed. More than a thousand applications were filed on LinkedIn and more than 140 on Indeed.

"So, business data strategy, talent and culture recruiter, diversity, equity and inclusion specialist, human resources," Longden said as she named off a few of the jobs she's applied for. "There are 128 pages with eight applications per page."

"That's a lot of jobs," Paluska said.

"Yeah, a lot," Longden replied with a half-smile that was more of an acknowledgment of her job woes.

"How do you process 1,000 plus rejections?" Paluska asked.

"It's discouraging, and fortunately, there haven't been 1,000 rejections. Most of the places don't even get back to you one way or the other," Longden said. "So yeah, we're looking at less than that. But it's still a big, you know, it's a big confidence blow, especially when you hear, oh, there's a labor crisis. And nobody wants to work. And like, hi, I would like to work."

According to the Bureau of Labor, a record 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September. That's a new all-time high. So, you would think millions of openings would help Longden. But, that's not the case.

Longden has a college degree, an insurance license, and a decade of work experience in human resources. In May, like many Americans throughout this pandemic, she was laid off from her company. So she took about a month off to reset and started the search in her field as an operations specialist, people ops, HR, and businesses operations.

"Have you ever been in a hole where you lost a job, and you couldn't get another one in the past?" Paluska asked.

"Not where I had lost one and couldn't get another one. I'd had times where I'd moved, you know, and had had trouble finding a job for maybe a month or two. But I was always able to find something," Longden said.

In September, the Harvard Business School released a study called Untapped Workers: Hidden Talent. The study explains this lack of hiring phenomenon. The lead author, Joseph Fuller, estimating millions of Americans are in the same position as Longden.

"So, you have this, this system that systematically excludes people that may not check every box in the employer's description of what they're looking for, but can be highly qualified on multiple parameters, even those the most important for job success, but they still get excluded," Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School said. "But what happens is, the employer in setting up these filters and ranking systems emphasizes some skills over others, intended to rely on two factors to make a decision."

The job search algorithms and artificial intelligence filter out candidates based on keywords before someone like Longden ever talks to a human being.

"And, the algorithms are unforgiving," Fuller said. "If you don't, if you don't have the right keywords, if you're just missing one of those attributes, you can get excluded from consideration even though you check every box on every other attribute they're looking for."

"Whose fault is that the company or LinkedIn or Indeed?" Paluska asked.

"You know, no company sets out to have a failed hiring process," Fuller said. "They provide the tools that their customers regularly ask for. So I think this is a tragedy, without a villain. It's the way companies have gone about it is optimized around minimizing the time it takes to find candidates in minimizing the cost of finding someone to hire. There's some kind of killer variable that is causing the system to say not qualified or not attractive relative to other applicants. The vast majority of those candidates never hear back anything just ghosted."

Longden has been ghosted a lot. One recruiter called her three times in a week asking for her to apply and when she thought she got the job, radio silence. Longden thought he was dead.

"I even was like, 'Are you alive?' You know, like, I just want to know, you're okay, you've just totally gone dark," Longden said.

Longden's job search hell has her skeptical of the entire process.

"I've also discovered that there's been a huge uptick in companies wanting pre-work from people. So all in all, I've probably done about 25 hours worth of pre-work for various companies, none of which has been compensated, and none of which I've even gotten a roll-out of," Longden said.

"Do you think they are using your work for their benefit?" Paluska asked.

"Oh, I'm sure," Longden said. "One of the things I was asked to create was an onboarding process for new employees. So that's what the role at the company would have been doing was onboarding their new employees as they came in. And so, one of the pre-work examples was to create an onboarding process from the offer to the 90-day mark of employment. And I did that. And I'm certain that they're having multiple people do that and pulling what they like best from everyone."

We reached out to LinkedIn and Indeed for comments but did not get a response back.

"Two or three quick suggestions for Elizabeth, the first is be very, very aware of language terms, and make your submission. Match what's being asked for, to the greatest degree you can with integrity," Fuller said. "The second thing I would say is, go on something like LinkedIn and look at the profiles of people who got the job you want. And what are they saying they do? What keywords are they using? Is there a regularly referenced tool that they claim expertise in that she doesn't have?"

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Job hunting nightmare: 1,000 plus job applications and still no offers - ABC Action News