AI Innovation of the Year

Disseminating good information and advice to help people navigate adult social care (ASC) is a challenge for every local authority. AI offers a unique opportunity to proactively support service users, carers, family members and advocates. This emerging technology has huge potential, but with it comes a high degree of risk due to the personal nature of ASC services, as such it needs to be deployed safely and securely.

The work we have been progressing allows councils to design, build, test and deploy AI to understand and evaluate the impact it could have on ASC services. By working collaboratively, the project is able to share learning, build systems at pace (to keep up with evolving AI world), and support councils to deliver this critical information in more useful, accessible ways. Service users (et al) can ask their questions, in their language, on their preferred channels, 24/7 - and get trusted responses.

In 2023, Salford Council secured funding as part of the Planning Software Investment Fund from DLUHC. We worked with three software providers to deliver AI capability in our planning application process – Agile Applications, Objective and Arcus Global. We aimed to see all information related to planning applications; drawings, supporting documents and associated data, flowing seamlessly between multiple systems so that our planning officers could efficiently process and assess applications, delivering quality outcomes from within one system. We built open APIs between our three main systems, so that information collected by the AI validation system (Agile), could pre-populate our back-office system (Arcus) and provide access to our assessment system (Objective). Planning application information became more data-rich and easier to process. The AI system pulls applications from the national planning portal, performs configured checks on the data, presents the officer processing with a % validation, and highlights any aspects for further checks.

Founded by three University of Cambridge Machine Learning Ph.D.s who helped bring conversational AI to consumer products at Apple and Google, PolyAI builds customer-led voice assistants that carry on natural conversations with customers to solve their problems. PolyAI voice assistants understand callers, regardless of what they say or how they say it. PolyAI serves enterprises where customer conversation is an important part of doing business, including transformative visionaries in global banking, hospitality, home services, insurance, energy, retail, healthcare and telecomms, as well as NGOs and organizations in the public sector.

“Hello EA” is implemented in flood risk areas where the EA have a limited understanding of community perceptions and feedback, using a two-way text or mobile browser conversation with AI via mobile phones, to facilitate instant conversations with people in local places. Signage, including a QR code and text message number, is installed on EA flood assets and in public locations, encouraging members of the public to join a virtual conversation using their mobile phones. The tool has increased EA audience reach and provided new insights into community understanding about flood risk in their local areas, as well as our flood risk schemes and services. “Hello EA” has helped us to identify public concerns and gaps in public knowledge, make evidence based strategic decisions on asset management and engagement plans, and quickly respond to the needs of local communities to help improve flood resilience.

Automatic triaging - LLM based technology to do a ‘first pass’ prioritisation of new cases based on vulnerabilities detected in the intake information

Risk alerts - these are visual representations of flags like medical conditions or equipment needs, young children, and people of pensionable age. You can roll over one of these flags to see a summary of why it is present.

Supervisors get a real-time dashboard of case mix per team member, so they can allocate new cases accordingly.

MDOTM's Sphere platform revolutionizes asset management with its AI-driven solutions, enhancing decision-making, operational efficiency, and client engagement. The core proposition of Sphere is its ability to integrate advanced AI technologies to provide:
- AI-Driven Investment Insights: Offering comprehensive market analysis and forward-looking insights to improve portfolio accuracy and performance.
- Portfolio Rebalancing at Scale: Enabling efficient management and rebalancing of thousands of portfolios simultaneously, streamlining complex processes and aligning with strategic objectives.
- Generative AI for Portfolio Commentaries and Reporting: Providing personalized, coherent commentaries and reports at scale, boosting client engagement and transparency.
Sphere empowers asset managers to navigate complex markets confidently and effectively, leveraging AI to optimize investment strategies and enhance client relationships in a dynamic market environment.

Imagine a team of experienced professionals, their invaluable knowledge isn't documented -it's tacit, locked away in their minds. Daily inefficiencies arise from searching for information, tracking down experts, or sifting through outdated documents, massively impacting productivity. Challenges extend through on-boarding, team scaling, and knowledge-retention when someone leaves.

80% of organisational knowledge is trapped in people's minds. Knowledge-workers spend at least a fifth of their time searching for information within their business, absorbing 26% of salaries. Outdated and inaccessible information is costing the UK economy a staggering £25B yearly, with many existing knowledge sources considered "useless", according to new research.

Existing tools like wikis, file-sharing platforms, and chat apps fall short. Enter TeamBrain, a game-changing solution designed to capture, curate, and make team knowledge easily accessible. It enhances productivity and innovation, initially benefiting Product and Software Teams. TeamBrain promises to transform how teams manage and leverage their collective-wisdom, doubling/tripling productivity.

The idea behind the service was threefold. Firstly, we wanted British nationals to have access to vital FCDO information quicker and easier than before. Secondly, we wanted to make life easier for the FCDO staff themselves – by allowing users to self-serve in the majority of cases, it frees up staff to handle more vulnerable cases that require more urgent and personal attention (particularly crucial during times when FCDO must concentrate all efforts when crisis happens abroad).

But we also wanted to show that AI-enabled technology could be used ethically, responsibly, inclusively, and innovatively for the benefit of everyone. By eliminating the chance of bias and hallucinations we have ensured the service is safe for everyone – this was only possible because of the innovative way we built the service using the LLM to do the thinking but not the chatting.

InformedDECISION© is a first-of-its-kind AI and Natural Language Processing platform that allows organisations to make better, faster, more informed decisions by integrating with and AI-enabling existing systems, data stores and analytical capabilities.

Designed using Informed Solutions’ Queen’s Award-winning digital transformation methodologies, InformedDECISION™ is a flexible, secure and scalable cloud-native solution that enables decision makers to extract meaning from large, distributed and unstructured data sources in real time, identifying anomalies, similarities, and patterns to support and enhance decision making.

By automatically unifying data from existing case management, document management, geospatial systems and external services using AI-based feature extraction and innovative data integration techniques, InformedDECISION™ transforms how organisations organise, view, analyse, and interpret their data to make better decisions.
A key strength lies in its ability to unify and extract value from existing data sources without requiring system replacement or upgrading, or the need to migrate or restructure data. This avoids disrupting existing workflows, minimises impact on existing infrastructure, and ensures rapid benefits realisation.

The platform has been developed based on the principles of Informed’s AI Charter. This charter sets out principles for the use, integration and delivery of AI solutions in a manner which is ethical, safe, and responsible. These principles are the ‘ground rules’ that guided the behaviours and delivery techniques to realise the benefits that AI can offer, whilst simultaneously identifying and mitigating risks.

Zero Gravity is a social mobility tech start-up revolutionising opportunities for students from low-income backgrounds in the UK. Our proprietary tech enables us to reach and empower these students, guiding them to top UK universities and careers. We continue to grow exponentially - a small team of 25 people tripling our user and revenue numbers every year - whilst driving the social mobility movement for over 20,000 students from low-income background and boosting their lifetime earnings significantly.