How AI is spicing up the food industry - Huawei Developers

Hexa Food’s IoT team has deployed Huawei’s ModelArts coupled with the intelligent device Atlas 500 to accurately identify the quality of the chilies it uses in spice blends. The AI can distinguish good chilies from bad, improving production efficiency and the quality of spices available to chefs and homes across Malaysia.
Known as the “Kingdom of Spices”, Malaysia is a multi-ethnic nation comprising Malays, Chinese, Indians, and the indigenous Orang Asli people. Its diverse culture is reflected in its cuisine, which draws from a multicultural heritage that sees hundreds of spices add flavor to the Malaysian diet. And of these, the colorful, aromatic, and spicy chili powder is a mainstay of many of the nation’s signature dishes.
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Sorting the good from the bad
The quality of chilies determines the flavor of the spice blends that produce chili powder. Hexa Food believes that good spice blends can only be made from outstanding ingredients, so sorting raw materials is a priority for the company.
Hexa Food has been producing herbs, spices, and seasonings since 2007. Staff spend much of their time attempting to differentiate between good and bad chilies, selecting only the best ones to add to spice blends. However, sorting chilies like this is both labor- and time-intensive and, with subjectivity in the mix, leads to inconsistent quality.
AI: The new expert
To remain competitive, Hexa Food has already embarked on the digital transformation journey, setting up an online concept store and establishing an IoT team to study how to apply AI, big data, and IoT to intelligent production. The IoT team has built and trained a chili identification model on the ModelArts platform, with the Atlas 500 deployed at the edge. The Atlas 500’s image recognition technologies can quickly and accurately identify chili quality, distinguishing good from bad, and improving production efficiency and the quality of spice blends. The solution provides the following functions:
Provides intelligent AI-powered sorting, which eliminates errors in manual sorting and improves efficiency by 50 percent. With the auto-learning capability of ModelArts, developers with little coding or model development experience only have to perform one step in the AI development process.
Simultaneously processes 16 video streams at the edge to analyze chili appearance and quality. The Atlas 500 integrates multiple data interfaces and can achieve edge-cloud synergy with Huawei Cloud. The training models are sent from the cloud and updated at the edge in real time.
For Hexa Food, the AI distills human experience and the traditional recipes of Malaysia's unique food culture to ensure maximum quality. Currently, Hexa Food provides high-quality spices for customers such as Giant, Tesco, AEON BiG, LIFE, and MISSION, and as a result of its noted quality, recently won second place in Malaysia’s prestigious Enterprise 50 (E50) awards.
AI will continue to ensure that the company remains a major player in Malaysian cuisine..
The original article is written by Wu Bin and is published in HUAWEI's publication: WinWin Magazine: https://www.huawei.com/en/publicati...ic_medium=hwdc&ic_source=corp_boxrow3mid_hexa

Leaf_Leaf said:
Hexa Food’s IoT team has deployed Huawei’s ModelArts coupled with the intelligent device Atlas 500 to accurately identify the quality of the chilies it uses in spice blends. The AI can distinguish good chilies from bad, improving production efficiency and the quality of spices available to chefs and homes across Malaysia.
Known as the “Kingdom of Spices”, Malaysia is a multi-ethnic nation comprising Malays, Chinese, Indians, and the indigenous Orang Asli people. Its diverse culture is reflected in its cuisine, which draws from a multicultural heritage that sees hundreds of spices add flavor to the Malaysian diet. And of these, the colorful, aromatic, and spicy chili powder is a mainstay of many of the nation’s signature dishes.
Sorting the good from the bad
The quality of chilies determines the flavor of the spice blends that produce chili powder. Hexa Food believes that good spice blends can only be made from outstanding ingredients, so sorting raw materials is a priority for the company.
Hexa Food has been producing herbs, spices, and seasonings since 2007. Staff spend much of their time attempting to differentiate between good and bad chilies, selecting only the best ones to add to spice blends. However, sorting chilies like this is both labor- and time-intensive and, with subjectivity in the mix, leads to inconsistent quality.
AI: The new expert
To remain competitive, Hexa Food has already embarked on the digital transformation journey, setting up an online concept store and establishing an IoT team to study how to apply AI, big data, and IoT to intelligent production. The IoT team has built and trained a chili identification model on the ModelArts platform, with the Atlas 500 deployed at the edge. The Atlas 500’s image recognition technologies can quickly and accurately identify chili quality, distinguishing good from bad, and improving production efficiency and the quality of spice blends. The solution provides the following functions:
Provides intelligent AI-powered sorting, which eliminates errors in manual sorting and improves efficiency by 50 percent. With the auto-learning capability of ModelArts, developers with little coding or model development experience only have to perform one step in the AI development process.
Simultaneously processes 16 video streams at the edge to analyze chili appearance and quality. The Atlas 500 integrates multiple data interfaces and can achieve edge-cloud synergy with Huawei Cloud. The training models are sent from the cloud and updated at the edge in real time.
For Hexa Food, the AI distills human experience and the traditional recipes of Malaysia's unique food culture to ensure maximum quality. Currently, Hexa Food provides high-quality spices for customers such as Giant, Tesco, AEON BiG, LIFE, and MISSION, and as a result of its noted quality, recently won second place in Malaysia’s prestigious Enterprise 50 (E50) awards.
AI will continue to ensure that the company remains a major player in Malaysian cuisine..
The original article is written by Wu Bin and is published in HUAWEI's publication: WinWin Magazine: https://www.huawei.com/en/publicati...ic_medium=hwdc&ic_source=corp_boxrow3mid_hexa
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Great articles and very informative.

It's still need to break the point when it will be more than nuance like "molecular kitchen" only for a few in special restaurants

Related

Thrive Digitally in a Mobile Future

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This article is derived from a speech given at Huawei’s 2020 Global FSI Summit, a global ICT event hosted by Huawei that is focused on partnerships and trends in FSI. It was founded in 2013 and features thought leaders, consultants, and experts from the industry.
2020 is set to be a tough year. There have been unprecedented disruptions to all industries with workforces largely restricted to working from home. Yet, many companies in the Financial Services Industry (FSI) have still successfully managed to provide essential services to customers. Indeed, we have seen that a substantial number of financial institutions have made big strides in their use of digital technologies and digital functionalities, to better cope with the challenges of the pandemic. Many industry leaders have already shared their insights for accelerating industry digital transformation as well as improving industrial operations.
I would like to give you a brief introduction to the progress Huawei has already made in the finance industry. As things stand today, we have already worked with more than 1600 financial institutions, including 45 of the world’s top 100 banks, spanning across more than 60 countries.
2019 was a tough year for Huawei, but we managed to overcome the challenges, gaining the trust of our customers in the process. In 2019 alone, we added over 300 new global FSI customers, who chose Huawei as a trusted transformation partner, recognizing the competitive positioning of our products and the value they bring, regardless of external challenges. I would like to thank every Huawei customer for their interest and support.
Indeed, in 2019, we built or strengthened partnerships with leading banks, and insurers as well as securities houses in France, Italy, Singapore, Brazil, Turkey, India, and beyond. We were able to enhance the reliability and resilience of legacy IT systems and boost digital capabilities for customers. These typical success stories reflect the real-world capabilities and real-world value Huawei products provide. We have become an integral partner for global FSI customers for their digital transformation needs.
We are committed to building a robust ecosystem with our global partners, providing them with innovative solutions and helping customers accelerate digital transformation. With the increasing demand for cashless and smart finance, Huawei works closely with leading global partners to help banks improve digital capabilities, ensuring that more people have access to financial services.
The construction of this global ecosystem is one of our core focuses, and we’ve been working extremely hard on it. Our goal is to build a comprehensive ecosystem and provide more services globally through Huawei’s rapidly growing cloud services. For example, in the near future, an African bank will be able to use a Chinese or European AI partner’s outbound call service over cloud .
In China, banks are accelerating their digital transformation. Here, Huawei has played an active role and has become the largest digital transformation partner for China’s financial industry.
For instance, Huawei has helped leading Chinese banks complete the migration of massive data from traditional data warehouses to Huawei GaussDB platforms. This allows for the improved data processing and analytics capabilities specifically required in the mobile Internet era, further driving business innovation.
We are also working with leading banks to migrate their core credit card systems from a mainframe to an open distributed platform, with over 100 million customers involved. In addition to offering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), Huawei also takes part in the construction of cloud platforms for numerous large-scale banks.
In China, Internet tech giants possess unique competitive advantages as they explore disruptive FinTech applications, making competition from them in the financial sector extremely fierce. The competition and cooperation between these Internet giants and the Chinese financial industry has therefore been both unique and extremely interesting.
Of course, this year, this is all happening against the backdrop of COVID-19, with financial institutions around the world continuing to strive to ensure service continuity for customers. Huawei is doing the same.
We are customer-centric and committed to supporting our customers in Business Continuity Management (BCM), making the most of our global capabilities. Huawei has the global resources to efficiently respond to customer needs, providing urgent deliveries and enhanced digital support, for example, as well as ensuring the normal operation of data centers.
With the majority of technical experts working from home during the pandemic, the use of remote Proof of Concept (PoC) tools has emerged. To date, we have successfully completed over 500 remote PoCs with global customers. Our innovative set-up allows customers to implement all configurations and complete load testing and functional testing, all without the need to leave their homes.
Huawei and Chinese financial institutions have also accumulated vast experience in adapting to remote offices and the closure of a significant number of physical branches. Over the past three months, we have hosted online exchanges with over 50 financial clients from our headquarters in Shenzhen and offices overseas. This has allowed us to share our experiences and exchange views on the global financial picture.
Looking ahead to the future, uncertainty is the biggest problem as we look to enter the post-pandemic era. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook, the global economy will shrink sharply, by at least 3% in 2020, a larger contraction than the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Work, life, and business have all been profoundly affected, ushering in a “new normal.” We need to consider what this mean for financial institutions. How can we deal with such uncertainties?
Over the short term, global economic contraction will affect banks’ loan-loss reserves. Even with central bank intervention, the impact is likely to remain severe.
Twitter, a huge global company has announced that its employees can choose to work permanently from home if they prefer. However, banking has not made such a dramatic change. Overall, this is unsurprising in a sector traditionally viewed as conservative.
However, on the contrary, banking’s rapid embrace of digital strategies during these times belies that image. So, in wealth management for example, banks can and have offered consulting and transaction services digitally, allowing customers more time to look after their investments. As a result, wealth management has boomed and there has been a dramatic change in client behavior.
To underline the main point: we have found that digital technology is a critical way to address the impact of the pandemic. This digital space is where leading global financial institutions work their best amid the process of digital transformation. China Merchants Bank (CMB), for instance, has continued to efficiently issue large loans to corporate customers through a zero-contact process. Meanwhile, China Life held an online training live broadcast for over one million insurance agents. It is therefore abundantly clear: financial institutions with high-performing digital capabilities will thrive in the future.
As I have just said, we have had numerous exchanges online with numerous financial executives across the world. They all believe that remote work capabilities and business agility are particularly critical in the new normal. And we can surely all agree that financial institutions must move quickly into this digital world. It is further predicted that e-commerce, digital payments, and super apps will gain further traction and become major trends. Rapid changes must come with renewed models for Business Continuity Management (BCM) covering mobile offices, digital transformation, risk management, internal control processes, and more.
Simultaneously, digital transformation will be more effective with the well-timed introduction of new technologies including 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), to accelerate the process. Early adopters will be able to convert today’s challenges into competitive advantages in the future and take a comfortable lead in the digital world.
The digital world will be based on mobility, with connectivity becoming exceedingly important: customers will need and demand full access to financial and non-financial services anytime, anywhere. 5G is not just an innovative connection point but also one that drives business innovations, to enable all-round customer experiences. In the future, powerful real-time connections must be ubiquitous, and 5G, IoT, and flexible networks are key technologies in delivering this.
We believe that mobile capacity will be the core capability of future banks. It will not only serve as a point of contact with clients, but also as an interface for internal operations and collaborations with partners. The mobile apps of banks will become a key operational platform. To support such a mobile-centric model requires new Information Technology (IT) architecture and key capabilities in 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and cloud. As a leader in these fields, Huawei is uniquely positioned to support the cloud transformation of financial institutions as well as build new connectivity capabilities, helping financial institutions improve agility and innovation
Mobile apps will be the main arena for future banks, with digital customer acquisition dictating app traffic. Banking apps will become the core platform for digital operations, and will turn into super apps by combining multiple services for all scenarios, creating an ecosystem.
Banks will therefore need to transform into mobile-centric IT architecture, including building mobile internet based on 5G technology, restructuring flexible cloud-based and distributed IT architecture, building AI-powered data platforms, and building agile micro-service architecture, open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) , and more.
Over the past ten years, we have gained a wealth of experience in the global financial industry. In particular, in the Chinese market, we have invaluable firsthand experience working with top banks undergoing digital transformation at the same time as they are competing with tech giants exploring FinTech disruptions to the industry. The rapid development in the mobile app era of these banks has also provided a great deal of insight. We are more than happy to share our experience and ecosystems with our customers and partners around the world, to enter the mobile digital world together.

Online Retailers Must Adapt to New Technology to Keep Pace with Evolving Industry

The retail industry is undergoing a monumental shift. Brick-and-mortar stores and traditional high streets around the world have experienced a gradual decline over recent years due to shoppers preferring to buy goods online. Enforced retail closures and worldwide lockdowns have only served to accelerate consumers’ shift towards online shopping. While these behaviour shifts have spelled problems for many retailers struggling to attract and retain traditional customer bases, it’s also opening exciting opportunities for businesses that are ready and willing to launch into a new age of online retail.
The changing world of e-commerce
It’s no secret that online shopping, also known as e-commerce, continues to represent a growing share of the retail industry. According to Digital Commerce 360, Research and Market Statistics, global ecommerce sales through all channels reached a total $3.53 trillion in sales by the end of 2019, and that growth rate of 20% is expected to extend into the foreseeable future – by 2040, it is expected that 95% of all purchases will be made online. While international giants such as Amazon and Alibaba are often the first to spring to mind when thinking about online retailers, there are an estimated 1214 million e-commerce websites across the globe, with more coming online every day.
New consumer trends are shaping how online retailers conduct their business. People are increasingly looking to their smartphones and mobile apps to find and buy products, and high-quality, tailored content on retail platforms is becoming the baseline expectation for consumers. Furthermore, consumers are growing more familiar with new technology such as augmented reality and artificial intelligence and are looking for online retail platforms that integrate these capabilities.
With such a competitive market dominated by a core group of leading marketplaces, and consumers expecting more innovative experiences from their mobile phones, merchants will need to look at new and unique ways of piquing the interests of prospective customers and improving customer conversion rates. In this sense, new and innovative technology can help online sellers create more interactive and intelligent online shopping experiences and find new ways of gaining new customers.
Earlier this month, Huawei’s annual developer conference, HDC 2020, looked at how AppGallery and Huawei are helping developers in the e-commerce sector address these challenges and succeed in a continually changing industry, and we’ve summarized some of the key trends and insights from the conference.
How to stick out from the crowd and gain new customers
It’s an age-old challenge for retailers of all shapes, sizes, and sectors – how to attract and retain new customers. Having quality products or low prices can only get you so far in the modern day, and the saturated online market makes it hard for retailers to get noticed.
As more and more consumers gravitate to mobile and smartphone technology, Huawei understands that the success of its app marketplace, AppGallery, and its wider ecosystem is dependent on the success of its developers and partners. That is why it allocates extensive resources and has implemented a range of measures to help merchants drive traffic onto their platforms. Huawei offers cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to drive more intelligent shopping solutions and enable retailers to create more tailored shopping services for their customers. For example, its Precision Marketing feature uses Push Kit and ML to ensure marketing is carried out in the most precise manner to accurately reach the right audiences. The Intelligent Shopping function, combines product display, customer searching, reviewing, and purchasing to drive sales, while the Smart Photo Searching feature utilises deep learning technologies to help customers easily find the products they want through an image search rather than relying on outdated text-based search options. AR also enables a ‘try before you buy’ feature, which allows consumers to use their smartphone camera to place products into real-life scenarios. This enables consumers to understand the functions and design of a product and to view how it would look in the ‘real environment’, such as viewing a new piece of furniture in their lounge of living room.
These solutions are helping deliver tangible success for AppGallery partners. Banggood, one of the largest cross-border ecommerce apps in South East China, implemented the Smart Photo feature to allow customers to quickly and easily find specific items in its extensive product selection, leading to a much smoother shopping experience and a higher visit-to-purchase conversion rate.
These features are complemented by the wide range of innovative capabilities available through HMS Core, Huawei’s toolkit for developers, which also help drive more intelligent targeting. Huawei’s Ads, Push, Scan, and Analytics Kits enable retailers to deliver targeted campaigns such as advertising, push notifications, and QR code-based coupons. For example, Lenta, the largest hypermarket and supermarket chain in Russia, uses push notifications to remind customers of discounts, leading to the app’s 16 million active users increase expenditure by 3%.
Furthermore, for e-commerce brands that rely solely on web-based platforms, Huawei’s Quick Apps help platforms become smartphone compatible by allowing developers to wrap an existing web-based store into an app that is present in AppGallery, all in under an hour.
These resources are in addition to the unparalleled marketing support, promotional opportunities, and branding resources Huawei and AppGallery offer its partners to help them attract new users throughout AppGallery’s 490 million monthly active users. KUMU, a community platform where you can get paid by becoming a live streamer, demonstrated how apps can take full advantage of AppGallery’s in-app resources after it featured in Top Banners, Flash Screens, and recommended app lists. KUMU also launched joint marketing promotions with Huawei, including a Mother’s Day campaign and an AppGallery KOL contest, which resulted in premium users increasing 220%; IAP revenue increasing 40-fold; and a reach of more than 1million users.
Creating a more immersive and visual experience for consumers
Gone are the days when online retailers could simply list products on their website and trust that new customers will click through and make a purchase. While this model might work for established online marketplaces that have thousands of products at competitive prices, smaller players need to do more to truly engage users and differentiate themselves from the swarm of competitors.
That is why Huawei focuses on providing platforms and retailers with the tools and resources to create a more intelligent user experience, without the need for extensive technical expertise and expensive software. There are many ways to utilise technology to improve user experience, but one method that has been proven to boost user acquisition and customer conversion rates is live commerce, where a seller presents a product to a live online audience of prospective customers.
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Earlier this year Huawei launched a new live commerce solution to help make ground-breaking technology accessible to online retailers without using costly and resource-intensive studio equipment. The solution combines some of Huawei’s most innovative technology such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (HiAI) to enable online retailers to create more immersive and intelligent visual experiences. For example, Huawei’s powerful AR capabilities can create an advanced visualization experience, where chosen products can be displayed separately to those being shown by the presenter. Meanwhile, HiAI also revolutionizes the consumer experience by allowing the use of scenario-based sales, such as the presenter setting alternative backdrops to their live stream. The solution also enables presenters to use a second camera position that is perfect for showing alternative shots for modelling products, while enhanced 5G and Wi-Fi capabilities help deliver a faster and smoother live stream.
As the e-commerce and retail industry continues to evolve, AppGallery and Huawei is committed to helping retailers of all shapes and sizes keep pace with ongoing changes in the sector and embrace new technology to succeed in today’s online world.

The Development of AI and Custom Models

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have become hot topics in recent years. Many predict that the mobile network era will ultimately lead to a future driven by AI. But where did AI come from? How does it work? And how can it improve our lives?
To get some answers, let's look back over the history of AI.
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AI has a long history. We can perhaps trace its origins to the scientist Alan Turing (1912–1954), who along with his contemporaries, attempted to solve complex tasks by simulating human consciousness and mentality. The famous Turing Test was created to test whether a machine was truly "intelligent".
Later, the computer was invented, and used to store and process data. This made the creation of AI a more tangible possibility. In 1956, at the Dartmouth Workshop, Marvin Minsky clearly defined what AI was for the first time, using the neural network as a data model, an idea which had been proposed by neuroscientists. At this workshop, he also improved the programming language used for AI, which made the technology even more tangible.
The neural network, which is the basis of human thinking, essentially relies on function and feedback between neurons. The question of how to simulate the human brain has long been a focus of AI experts. In 1958, a computer scientist named Frank Rosenblatt introduced an algorithm called a perceptron. This is the simplest form of neural network, consisting of just two neuron layers, and was used for the binary classification of data. The scientific world realized then that AI had a bright future. More and more people became aware of, and interested in developing, this technology.
However, AI still had a long way to go. In 1969, Minsky proved that the perceptron could only handle linear classification, and struggled to handle even the simplest XOR problems. This issue became a huge stumbling block for AI specialists at that time, and as a result, the potential of AI was not recognized by many, and the field stagnated for nearly 20 years.
In 1986, Geoffrey Hinton advocated the backward propagation of errors (or backpropagation for short). This method was useful for dealing with nonlinear classification and was widely applied in multi-layer neural network structures. It once more kindled some enthusiasm for deep learning. To obtain more precise results, increasing numbers of layers were added to the network structure. But this came at a price: deeper layers gradually lost the effective learning that shallower layers had achieved. Because of backpropagation's vanishing gradient problem, people chose to use shallow learning methods instead when solving real-life problems.
Deep learning did not find favor again until 2006, when Hinton proposed a solution to the vanishing gradient problem. Meanwhile, passion for deep learning began to spread from the academic community to industry. More and more companies and institutions started to apply it to things like voice recognition and image classification. It was in these sectors that deep learning began to show the significant advantages it has over traditional, shallow learning.
Since 2012, neural network structures and optimization algorithms have been emerging in quick succession. This has led to a dramatic improvement in the performance of deep learning. However, despite optimized algorithms and computing power, deep learning still puts many people off because training data requires long periods of time.
Another hurdle the technology had to overcome was the question of how to reuse acquired knowledge for sectors which had limited training data. Transfer learning was developed as a solution to this problem. With this method, knowledge gained during a task is transferred to a target task. Because this method effectively utilizes the model parameters it obtains, it requires much less time to train models. Transfer learning is now considered to be the future of AI algorithms.
Over the course of AI's long history, algorithms have been developed which have the ability to solve a wide range of complex problems. To truly unleash the power of AI, we need to minimize the cost of using deep learning neural networks, so we can resolve problems in different sectors.
It's highly possible that in the coming years, AI will profoundly change the world. In fact, the technology's integration with the Internet has already changed all aspects of our daily life. But AI will also transform all industrial sectors, including IoV (internet of vehicles), home appliances, health care, agriculture, and manufacture. To solve intricate tasks within these sectors, we need methods which can provide more accurate results.
This is where HUAWEI ML Kit's custom model service comes in. This service utilizes the transfer learning method to help you quickly customize your models. By simply providing it with a small amount of data for your chosen sector, you can obtain a model that is applicable to that sector.
Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to fully harness AI. Instead of being a tool which is useful to just a handful of people, it can be applied in all aspects of society, bringing us services which are intelligent and tailored to our needs.

Closing the Digital Skills Gap for Inclusive Prosperity

ByJay Chen
May 18, 2021
We are not just entering an intelligent world, we are now living in one. All things are sensing, converting our physical world into digital signals. All things are connected, from humans to machines. And all things are intelligent, powered by big data and artificial intelligence. These advances make our lives easier, more responsive, and more autonomous.
The foundation of all this is new ICT includes 5G, IoT, big data, and cloud computing. But, we face a huge labor shortage. Korn Ferry research finds that Asia Pacific is facing an imminent labor shortage of 47 million people by 2030 and an annual opportunity cost of US$4.238 trillion. According to PwC’s 20th CEO Survey, more than 50% of APAC CEOs say it’s difficult to hire digital talent with the right skills.
Asia Pacific is facing an imminent labor shortage of 47 million people by 2030 and an annual opportunity cost of US$4.238 trillion​
To combat this talent shortage and also help address current learning challenges as a result of COVID-19, Huawei has launched multiple initiatives throughout Asia Pacific to provide learning services that help facilitate remote learning and enhance technical skills.
From our partnership with Bijoy Digital and UNESCO in Bangladesh to provide digital solutions to facilitate distance learning through a project called “Bridging the Education Gap”, to our efforts in Indonesia where Huawei Cloud and ULearning have partnered to provide an online learning management system (e-learning), we’re helping provide connectivity and e-learning to everyone from elementary school students, to universities, and professionals.
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63,000 women have already received training through the Digital Training Bus project in Bangladesh, launched by Huawei & its partners in 2017.
Education, along with AI Healthcare and Enterprise on Cloud, is one of the three foundation services launched by Huawei Cloud as part of our global action plan to help customers fight COVID-19 with cloud and AI services. We’re actively working with partners to provide online teaching services to schools and universities during this pandemic so that teaching and learning activities can continue undisrupted.
The cloud platform will support distance learning where teachers and students can interact through audio, video, and chat rooms. Online tools will enhance the efficiency of curriculum development and allow teachers to work together remotely and share teaching materials. Apart from empowering students to learn on their own using low-latency HD VOD, the platform will distribute teaching content distribution faster, enable online exams, and monitor learning progress in real time.
Read more: How Sharing Education Resources Gives Children Wings to Fly
Huawei has called for closer collaboration with its local partners to boost the development of joint solutions as countries move into the stage of economic recovery. As part of this, we also announced our Virtual Academy, with more than 140 free online courses to accelerate training and up-skilling of ICT professionals and SME digital transformation.
Similar programs have been established in Asia Pacific countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, providing thousands of ICT courses and hundreds of skilled trainers to nurture a national digital talent ecosystem. The Huawei program includes a top level design with well-defined ICT talent certification standards and a Huawei ICT Academy cooperation project for global universities. More importantly, we hold ICT competitions and job fairs for students to develop their skills, get recognized for it, and immediately secure employment opportunities in fields of their choosing.
This year, our ICT talent ecosystem cultivation programs will be extended to countries and regions such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, through which we aim to develop 100,000 ICT professionals and popularize digital skills over the next five years in this dynamic region by collaborating with local governments, universities and industrial partners.
At scale, Huawei supports collaborative education with programs like Train the Trainer and our authorized training partners can deliver Huawei certification training globally. With academies and training partners established, we can promote the value of certification and help cultivate the much needed talent for the ICT industry.
We leverage our knowledge of the industry and provide Huawei certification through development solutions that allow students to learn and acquire new skills. We then use the Huawei ICT Competition and Job Fairs to allow students to get recognized and secure valuable employment at either one of our customers or partners, or even at Huawei directly.
The world ahead will be one dominated by devices: connecting, sensing, and reacting to everything around us. We hope our education programs not only reaffirms our commitment to social responsibility, but also prepares the next generation of experts to design and navigate this digital landscape.
Our future depends on it.
Save the Date​Learn more about the upcoming Digital Talent Regional Summit at which I’ll be speaking.

Transforming Healthcare with 5G

5G promises a new health ecosystem, one that can meet patient and provider needs efficiently and at scale.
By Xushenglan
5G promises a new health ecosystem, one that can meet patient and healthcare provider needs accurately, efficiently, conveniently, cost-effectively, and at scale. 5G networks are poised to transform all critical components of healthcare, a transformation that’s especially meaningful today given how the pandemic has placed tremendous stress on healthcare systems around the world.
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A shot in the arm for healthcare​Since the early days of 5G trials, the technology’s potential to transform the medical sector has been frequently cited in scenarios ranging from remote diagnosis to remote surgery. In a GSMA Intelligence survey of mobile operators in early 2020, 62 percent of respondents cited telehealth and telemedicine as sectors offering long-term business opportunities, 12 percentage points higher than security and almost as high as data analytics systems.
Although surgical procedures performed remotely over mobile networks are still likely many years away, plenty of applications using modern network technology, and systems are being rolled out globally, alongside many other trial projects.
Lu believes that 5G has the power to solve many of the problems that have prevented the wider uptake of telemedicine, “In China telemedicine has been studied for 20 years, but communications technology has remained a big problem. However, 5G will solve a lot of the legacy connectivity problems,” he says. Potentially game-changing use cases for 5G-based applications tend to involve AI and big data; for example, the way professionals and patients will be able to access vital pieces of medical information like the results of CT and MRI scans. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, 5G eMBB technology will enable remote healthcare support and reduce patient exposure to contagions by minimizing in-person visits to doctors or healthcare facilities. For patients who can’t easily travel to healthcare providers, 5G will allow the provider to visit them via immersive telepresence systems.
High-quality 5G connectivity systems can boost collaboration between medical professionals, allowing them to collaborate on things like scans to improve diagnosis and patient care. “5G technology will support terminal-to-terminal communications, making communications easier and real-time,” Lu says. “It will make telemedicine accepted by both the doctors and patients.”
According to Lu, the COVID-19 pandemic has made people realize the advantages of telemedicine and of reducing the risk of spreading the virus by traveling to hospitals. “We can use telemedicine to get help from skilled specialists to local hospitals. Patients can stay at home and get prescriptions through the Internet. Medicine can be delivered to their front door.”
In a project supported by Huawei at the National Telemedicine Center, a remote diagnosis system designed for fighting COVID-19 was set up earlier this year. It connected 147 hospitals covering 108 counties and 18 cities, aiding collaboration between professionals, allowing better resource allocation, and providing treatment guidance by experts. The system made high-quality medical resources available to remote areas, facilitated remote checks on patients in isolation wards, and powered online workshops with coronavirus experts. Patients and medical centers in towns and counties could get help from large hospitals, boosting response capabilities and decreasing the risk of cross infections due to patient transfer.
The rise of AI​Alongside the advancement of health IoT networks and devices, the possibility of smart, data-driven algorithms in healthcare will also increase. 5G infrastructure will make it much easier and more reliable to use AI software to analyze real-time patient data sent to cloud platforms. In fact, AI will truly arrive with the advent of 5G technology.
AI allows doctors to analyze individual patient statuses in real-time, offering improved diagnosis and healthcare delivery regardless of where the patient is located. This provides cost savings, reduces the time taken to access care, and provides flexibility for the end user.
Analyzing medical images is a daunting task due to the high volume of data. Clinicians have to interpret their complexity and dynamic changes, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors due to visual fatigue. Recent advances in machine learning systems have demonstrated that AI can extract more information from images with higher reliability and accuracy, and identify features that are not be easily detectable by the human eye. Applications range from analyzing large numbers of images from screening programs to the enhanced diagnosis of specific problems such as fractures.
The large amounts of data used in real-time machine learning require ultra-reliable high-bandwidth networks, particularly if clinicians wish to access data from mobile devices. By switching to high-capacity 5G networks, healthcare organizations can use machine learning systems to provide the best care possible from wherever they are in the hospital or clinic.
"5G networks can support the precise real-time transmission of massive data, guaranteeing the accuracy and reliability of medical data through AI systems," says Lu. 5G and AI will remove obstacles for hospitals to interconnect and enable advanced diagnosis and treatment experiences to be shared between large and small hospitals, which will benefit underserved rural areas. It’s often difficult for medical facilities in rural areas to install and use AI applications due to financial and technical limitations, but 5G will enable them to connect with bigger hospitals to make use of their AI applications.
Roadblocks in healthcare​Although the advantages are clear, many barriers remain. Lu is currently involved in a national study project in China, which seeks to address these concerns and define how to help care providers use 5G to deliver medical applications. “On the hospital side we have a big problem with connecting the old equipment to the 5G network,” Lu says, highlighting the need to add 5G communication modules into existing equipment used to perform procedures such as CT and MRI scans.
ICT platforms could allow easy access to real-time information by doctors, managers, and patients, and save time and money due to better collaboration and efficiency.
One of the current challenges in 5G is the lack of concrete specifications. It isn’t just a faster and bigger version of previous generations; instead, 5G will present as a set of services that can integrate M2M, audio and video services, and other services spread over a much larger spectrum range than any previous network generation.
“In the future, most treatment systems will be connected to 5G as the network connection becomes real time,” says Lu. “The family doctor can connect with specialists in real-time and the patient can have access to the family doctor in real time. Communication about treatment will be easier and family doctors can get help much easier. This will benefit the whole medical system.”
For the patient, benefits will include reduced traveling time, lower costs, and fewer missed work days. According to Lu, telemedicine has government support and policies have been introduced to encourage its use. While China is beginning to embrace 5G in medical settings, low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity technology is underpinning advanced telehealth and aiding hospital logistics worldwide.
5G is also providing the basis for experimentation into advanced uses such as surgery performed remotely by experts using robotic arms connected through communications networks. These applications can also form new revenue streams for operators, which play a central role in enabling this exciting use of modern network technology.
5G has generated a buzz due to the capabilities of the technology itself, potential use cases, and its ability to catalyze a chain reaction of digital transformation. Those within the healthcare industry feel that 5G and the hype around it will help drive the innovation, adoption, and implementation of new technologies and solutions.
Original Link:https://www.huawei.com/en/technology-insights/publications/winwin/38/transforming-healthcare-5g

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