Day of reckoning as UK scientists eliminate HIV from “Patient X”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities. Around the world there are thousands of researchers and scientists trying to find a cure...
Google and UK NHS team up to use AI to improve cancer treatment
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Machine learning could cut the time it takes to plan a patient’s radiotherapy treatment by hours. Working out how to zap a tumour with radiation is a laborious process for physicians and Google’s machine learning division, DeepMind, thinks AI can help ease the burden. When...
From line to plate, Tuna gets its own blockchain
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Tuna becomes the world’s first fish to get its own blockchain to track it’s provenance from net to plate. Most people have heard of bitcoin but fewer people are familiar with blockchain, the revolutionary technology that underpins it. And now this technology, which ostensibly began life in the...
World first as virtual reality helps legally blind man see for the first time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An unlikely union – VR and a blind man – makes history. A solitary plinth stands in the center of a dark room. It is surrounded by glowing computer screens of various sizes. Each of these screens is a portal to a different experience, a different...
Researchers build a wirelessly powered drone that can fly forever
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Now drones never need to “sleep” again. Quadcopter drones are great for all kind of things from filming to delivering small, sometimes dubious, packages but every drone, irrespective of whether it’s a hobbyists DJI drone or a US military MQ-9 Reaper, is limited by...
London boroughs new face of customer services is a bot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The London borough of Enfield has enlisted artificial intelligence Amelia to take on customer service tasks for its residents starting late this year. Developed by IPSoft, Amelia is a cognitive agent – that’s bot to you, I and most people, capable of automating certain...
New medical breakthrough restarts hearts with light
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Researchers have jump started hearts with light paving the way to get rid of electrical defibrillators for good. Current treatments for arrhythmia, a dangerous irregular heartbeat, involve administering an intense burst of electricity from a defibrillator in times of cardiac arrest, but these pulses...
NASA MinION ushers in a new era of space healthcare
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF NASA successfully sequences DNA in space, ushering in better healthcare for astronauts and a new era in space biology. For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend...
Futurist keynote, London: Building Disruptive Organisations, Clearvision BBQ in the Clouds
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world is going “Digital” and the majority of companies in today’s world are either already becoming software companies, or thinking about it, and DevOps is an increasingly important tool in today’s corporate arsenal. Firstly, a big thank you to George the event organiser...
Nerve zapping dust sized electrical implants could be the future of medicine
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Hundreds of millions of people suffer every day from chronic disease, pain and illness but now a new class of medicine is on the horizon Imagine a world where we can treat diabetes, chronic pain and autoimmune disorders with a small zap of electricity delivered by...
Researchers find evidence that ancestors memories are passed down in DNA
Researchers have shown for the first time that our ancestors memories can be passed down in DNA
DoNotPay’s famous robo-lawyer helps people avoid homelessness
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The power of Bots is only just starting to be realised and it’s looking increasingly likely that the first industry they’ll disrupt is the legal profession. The idea started with a desperate email from a woman in a UK hospital. She was scared of being discharged at...
Team GB cyclists get ready to unveil their seven percent advantage at Rio 2016
Olympic teams used to look for marginal gains but now new technology gains appear to be anything but marginal Update Team GB win gold and set new World Record of 3:50:570, a time that “shocked the world of cycling” Great Britain’s cyclists are pursuing Olympic gold in Rio...
Gourmet 3D printed food restaurant pops up in London
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Move over Heston Blumenthal there’s a new printer in town. Later this month, a 3D Printing pop up restaurant, called “Food Ink”, will open in London and settings start at £250 per head. The restaurant promises to offer a completely different dining experience,...
Robo-Lawyer overturns 160,000 parking tickets
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF An artificial intelligence lawyer chatbot has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chatbots can actually be useful. Dubbed as “the world’s first robot lawyer”, a title which actually belongs to an American AI called “Ross”, by...
Rolls Royce plans to deploy fully autonomous cargo ships by 2020
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Just like many other forms of transportation cargo ships aren’t immune from the march of technological progress, as such in time they too will become increasingly autonomous and electric. Rolls Royce and the led Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) believe the future of...
Scientists develop “Stem cell fillings” that trigger teeth to repair themselves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Never visit the dentists again and eat all the sweet stuff you like. Marvellous! Scientists in the UK have developed a new Biomaterial that can be inserted into teeth, via a traditional dentists filling, that can repair and regenerate dentin – the hard, bone like material...
BAE’s trials a molecular assembler that one day will grow drones in the field
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Growing your own products just became a thing. If you needed to be convinced just how fast technology is progressing then think of this. For Millennia humans have assembled individual, pre crafted components together to make products of every shape and form. In 1986...
JLR turns UK motorways into a test track for autonomous cars
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF V2x will revolutionise the worlds transportation systems. Jaguar Land Rover has announced the launch of a 40 mile “living lab” on public roads in the UK to support the development of its Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) technology and to hasten and support the transition from...
CIO Insight Series: Getting supplier relationships to work
CIO’s are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial but very few feel their suppliers provide any meaningful value During the course of my interviews with CIO’s over the past couple of years I’ve witnessed the growth of a worrying trend – the fact that many CIO’s feel that their suppliers are becoming...
