Breaking the Mould
Social Inclusion Award Winners 2019
We are proud to have been awarded a ‘Social Inclusion’ award at the inaugural Keele University Breaking the Mould Awards earlier this month. Held in the atrium of the recently opened and our new home, the Smart Innovation Hub. Liam and Jakub were at the celebration to pick up our stunning award.
Whilst putting it pride of place on the office bookshelf we nearly broke the award, turns out it’s a very sturdily made piece of kit!
It’s really good to be recognised for the work that we do. It gives us the opportunity to highlight the importance of working in collaboration to improve the lives of others. Bitjam’s purpose is not to profit but to use business as a force for good.
As Liam announced on stage at the awards ceremony, Bitjam’s next move will be into the satellite technology sector. Watch this space!
To read more about our recent projects check out our News section and Twitter @bitjam. For collaborations contact Carl Plant.
Santander Universities Partnership
Bitjam will be showcasing our Santander-Keele intern success story on 10th December at the Smart Innovation Hub, at the ‘Celebrating Keele Talent’ event.
Carl, Liam and Klaudia will be on hand to discuss all things Santander Universities and how it has fast-tracked Liam into a permanent role within the company and given Klaudia the opportunity to research accessibility for the visually impaired community within the NHS.
Keele University has been running successful internship schemes for a number of years, placing hundreds of students and graduates into businesses.
Eligible companies can benefit from this service free-of-charge, as Santander pays for half of the interns’ wages.
An internship is beneficial for both the intern and the hosting company. For the student (or graduate), they can gain important workplace skills and experience, whilst it is an excellent way for companies to add fresh talent to their workforce for short-term projects.
Keele University graduate, Liam, started as a Santander intern on a Software Developer placement. He was offered a permanent position within the team on completion of the internship. Liam has been an integral part of the team since day one. His professional and hard-working outlook
Liam worked with Klaudia, on a project funded by Santander to allow equal opportunities. Together they tested the ‘Nellie’ telehealth software. Klaudia is a visually impaired student and in this project took on the role of user, with Liam demonstrating the functionality.
Klaudia was also able to complete a piece of research for Bitjam which was very useful to see the world of NHS through the perspective of a patient with additional needs. Klaudia’s evaluation of digital and physical NHS services, allowed her to produce three white papers on her findings and recommendations for NHS service providers, which have been published on Bitjam’s blog.
For more information on the Santander-Keele partnership check out the Santander Universities website.
Smart Energy Network Demonstrator
Working towards sustainability
Being an ethical company we still feel we can do more. With our move into the environmentally focussed Smart Innovation Hub at Keele Science Park, we are moving towards a more sustainable future.
Keele is one of the first UK universities to declare a ‘climate emergency’. A key strategic aim of the campus is to be environmentally sustainable in all that they do, and we are pleased to be part of it.
How the SEND Fund is helping us
We have partnered with Keele Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND), a fund giving businesses in Staffordshire 12 hours of consultancy to help us analyse our environmental impact. This consultancy period will help us evaluate our environmental policy, looking at issues such as staff transport and office habits. It will analyse the positive impact on Bitjam being located at the green energy focussed Smart Hub.
Our consultancy hours have given us the opportunity to revamp company environmental policies and evaluate company procedures, in relation to travel and emissions as well as office supplies and the supply chain.
In their own words:
The Keele University Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) – a European first, is an at scale environment providing a platform that allows energy generation, distribution, storage, forecasting and energy balancing to be intelligently carried out across different energy sources using the Keele University campus as a genuine ‘living laboratory.’ … the demonstration facility and data generated by SEND will underpin new research and innovation partnerships with local, regional and international business, generating new products, services and knowledge to drive sustainable high value economic growth and jobs locally as part of a UK-wide commitment to lead internationally as the home of ‘clean growth.’
Keele University
Future goals
By 2023, the Smart Energy Network Demonstrator will:
- Support more than 240 local businesses
- Create up to 440 higher value jobs
- Save around 4,000 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide each year
- Generate £40m GVA from £16m investment (>2:1 ROI) (Increasing to £80m GVA by 2036 – >5:1 ROI)
More information on SEND can be found on Keele University’s website.
Smart with your Heart: Data Analysis Dashboard
Alongside our work with the partners of the Innovate UK testbed project Smart with your Heart, we were delighted to be able to facilitate their data analysis with a purpose-built dashboard for all data to be processed, integrating with University Hospital of North Midlands Trust’s (UHNM) Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) system.
Bitjam won the contract to evaluate the Smart with your Heart service because of our expertise with Big Data. Our dashboard imports data from the HES system, community services provided by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the 3 digital technologies partners.
Future additions to the service will be data from GP surgeries in the area, which will be a groundbreaking achievement, to bring together primary and secondary healthcare data.
It has been a complex Information Governance (IG) task, and Bitjam have worked closely with the IG team at UHNM. Hosted on the Hospitals mainframe system. Our valuable healthcare experience has enabled us to create a robust, user-friendly and IG compliant piece of software which we are proud of.
The dashboard’s aim is to see in real-time how the service is doing, and if it is meeting its Key Performance indicators (KPIs). In essence, it allows clinicians and management the ability to see how many patients are signed up and using the system and of those patients how many have been able to manage their condition in the community and prevent readmittance into hospital.
Please note: This image is exclusively for demonstration purposes and is NOT a reflection of current project data.
The data will be academically evaluated by two participating universities, Staffordshire University and University of East Anglia. They will have access to anonymised data to perform their analysis. An interim report is due to be published before this pilot project ends. Once full data analysis has taken place, then a full report, including a medical journal article, will be published for public view.
This project has been a great challenge which all the team at Bitjam has really enjoyed developing. We have worked hard with UHNM to ensure this is a robust system and feel it is a big achievement.
For future healthcare project work, get in touch with us in the new Smart Innovation Hub at Keele University.
