A Last Farewell: Databooster Finale
December 10, 2024, by Gundula Heinatz Bürki, data innovation alliance
The Innovation Booster Databooster, powered by Innosuisse, was a success story as a program. 4 years of promoting innovation – from community building to organizing ideation and co-creation sessions to co-financing innovative ideas. So it was time to come together one last time and offer a platform to a selected number of innovation teams with fascinating ideas to tell their personal success story. More than 50 participants gathered at the Technopark Zurich for the Databooster Finale on December 05, 2024, to share the experiences and to set-up the next steps with a collaborative and open innovation mindset. It was truly inspiring to learn so many innovative ways how data-driven methods can improve the lives of humans, animals and society as a whole.
Read on to gain an insight into the projects that the Databooster has supported over the course of its activities. If you want to see the full overview of all supported projects, have a look at our website.
The keynote speaker Kerstin Johansson Baker from the Federal Statistical Office informed the audience about the usage of Data Science for Public Good. Kerstin presented some projects of the Data Science Competence Center for the Swiss public administration and how researchers can collaborate with the center. It was interesting to hear how far the public sector has come in making data available – not only in terms of data quality, e.g. with regard to standardized metadata, but also in terms of access options that enable seamless integration into third-party applications. A treasure trove of data that is still underused by the private sector and offers great potential for developing innovative products and services.
The project presentations started with Polina Veltmann and Romain Meisterhans from Smilamind, who presented the professional support for efficient treatment of youth mental health and wellbeing with smart remote monitoring for. It was important to co-create with young people the solution, to collect feedback from stakeholders to optimize clinical effectiveness, and of course to ensure the correct handling of legal requirements and ethical-moral issues.
In the following presentation, Mel Zürcher from rewoso informed the audience about a medical database supporting medical outcomes with quick insights in the current state of science. Together with the Bellevue Medical Group, the team addressed the challenge of the limited availability of medical data in structural form. Finally, they shifted the idea to an individual dashboard for patients.
The next presenter Fabio Lambruschi from Sourceway Sarl presented their project about cervical spine assessment for the range of motion. Cervical spine pathology is becoming increasingly prevalent leading to significant social and healthcare costs worldwide. Together with the stakeholders, they developed an AI-driven mobile app as technology for everyone. It creates economic value by reducing the need for in-person clinical visits, thus lowering healthcare costs and enabling faster preliminary clarification for a larger part of the population.
Nic Lenz from Litix demonstrated how to access a large archive of documents in the field of geology from the past 60 years. The innovation team used interviews with potential customers from public administration, notary office, fire fighters and insurance companies to develop a vision and to test the idea with AI-powered maps. This idea once again highlighted the great added value that can be found in existing data archives when using current methods and technologies.
Joana Kühne from Artificialy presented the innovation journey together with Forbo to improve the tile manufacturing process using AI technology. The involved stakeholder got a deeper understanding of the process and specific defect types .It was nicely demonstrated here how collaboration between larger industrial organisations, agile SMEs, and research can create added value for all parties involved.
In the next project presentation from Martin Beth (OST), the challenges of the building industry were discussed. The team addressed the existing needs of digitalization in the building industry and in the frame of Building Information Modeling (BIM). The team investigated this challenge and built a first solution from a rule-based to an AI-based quality management of BIM models.
Maaz Sheikh from Ageospatial Sàrl presented their innovation journey together with the University of Geneva to address the challenges of geoinformation systems in Switzerland. The team identified the limits and potentials of GeoLLMs and created a proof of concept with Swiss Federal data. This approach used location intelligence for supporting informed decisions by different stakeholders from the insurance industry as well as from municipalities.
Other highlights included the presentation from Benoît Buchs from PrecisionFly. Their project aims at AI-based pipe inspection with the city of Winterthur. Additionally, Wolfram Willuhn from Plutinsus demonstrated how they could optimise the scaling of the heating system through stakeholder collaboration and building a digital twin. Johannes Löckinger from AI-Tails explained the challenges of identifying and tracking animal pain. First, the team realized that they have to ask the right questions to the stakeholder to understand the user and market interest. The team designed a solution filling an existing gap in the market for pets and livestock.
Before the networking apéro, the Databooster outcomes were presented after four successful years funded by Innosuisse. We would like to thank everyone who has supported us over by supporting our ideation events, evaluating the innovation ideas, submitting innovative projects, fuelling ideas or working behind the scenes. Without your help this would not have been possible.
Christoph Heitz, as president of the Leading House, concluded that the innovation journey of the IB Databooster came to an end, but new opportunities are arising with other Innovation Boosters, such as the IB Artificial Intelligence, and other instruments. Innovation never sleeps – and the data innovation alliance will continue to be at the forefront of innovation in the field of data and AI.
