Summary of the impact

The key impact of this project, in the form of `proof of concept', has been by influencing the practice of medical professionals (haematologists) at the Transfusion Medicine & Immunohematology section (in the hospital wing) of the Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore (India). This has been achieved by developing and implementing system software for segmenting (and watermarking) of the nuclei of the White Blood Cells (WBCs) of peripheral blood smear images to overcome the challenge of identifying various pathological conditions. Segmentation of medical images is a highly challenging process, especially when dealing with blood smear images, which are known to have a very complex cell structure. The project has led to a significant improvement in the work process of haematologists at CMC's hospital wing where the output of this research (software system pilot) is being used. This has had an impact on the way smear slides are digitised, archived, and includes the segmentation, analysis, and watermarking of medical images at CMC. Christian Medical College (CMC) and Hospital at Vellore is an educational and pioneering research institute and a tertiary care hospital (which is the CMC's hospital wing), located at Tamil Nadu in Southern India.

Summary of the impact

Researchers in Cambridge have developed a data standard for storing and exchanging data between different programs in the field of macromolecular NMR spectroscopy. The standard has been used as the foundation for the development of an open source software suite for NMR data analysis, leading to improved research tools which have been widely adopted by both industrial and academic research groups, who benefit from faster drug development times and lower development costs. The CCPN data standard is an integral part of major European collaborative efforts for NMR software integration, and is being used by the major public databases for protein structures and NMR data, namely Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) and BioMagResBank.

Summary of the impact

Visual analytics is a powerful method for understanding large and complex datasets that makes information accessible to non-statistically trained users. The Non-linearity and Complexity Research Group (NCRG) developed several fundamental algorithms and brought them to users by developing interactive software tools (e.g. Netlab pattern analysis toolbox in 2002 (more than 40,000 downloads), Data Visualisation and Modelling System (DVMS) in 2012).

Industrial products. These software tools are used by industrial partners (Pfizer, Dstl) in their business activities. The algorithms have been integrated into a commercial tool (p:IGI) used in geochemical analysis for oil and gas exploration with a 60% share of the worldwide market.

Improving business performance. As an enabling technology, visual analytics has played an important role in the data analysis that has led to the development of new products, such as the Body Volume Index, and the enhancement of existing products (Wheelright: automated vehicle tyre pressure measurement).

Impact on practitioners. The software is used to educate and train skilled people internationally in more than 6 different institutions and is also used by finance professionals.

Summary of the impact

The research in this case study has pioneered knowledge management technology. It has had major impact on drug discovery and translational medicine and is widely adopted in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The impacts are:

1. The formation of InforSense to commercialise the technology. The company had 150 employees in June 2009 when it merged with IDBS Ltd to create the world's second largest life science informatics company.
2. The results from knowledge management technology and associated software platform have enabled the integration of molecular, imaging, clinical data and analytics, to identify biomarkers for disease identification, treatment selection and side effect prediction.
3. Since 2002 the technology has been deployed by major pharmaceutical companies (including GSK, AZ, Roche, Pfizer, Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim) and leading healthcare institutions e.g. Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and King's Health Partners, generating significant social, health and economic impact.

Summary of the impact

Data-to-text utilises Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology that allows computer systems to generate narrative summaries of complex data sets. These can be used by experts, professional and managers to better, and quickly, understand the information contained within large and complex data sets. The technology has been developed since 2000 by Prof Reiter and Dr Sripada at the University of Aberdeen, supported by several EPSRC grants. The Impact from the research has two dimensions.

As economic impact, a spinout company, Data2Text (www.data2text.com), was created in late 2009 to commercialise the research. As of May 2013, Data2Text had 14 employees. Much of Data2Text's work is collaborative with another UK company, Arria NLG (www.arria.com), which as of May 2013 had about 25 employees, most of whom were involved in collaborative projects with Data2Text.

As impact on practitioners and professional services, case studies have been developed in the oil & gas sector, in weather forecasting, and in healthcare, where NLG provides tools to rapidly develop narrative reports to facilitate planning and decision making, introducing benefits in terms of improved access to information and resultant cost and/or time savings. In addition the research led to the creation of simplenlg (http://simplenlg.googlecode.com/), an open-source software package which performs some basic natural language generation tasks. The simplenlg package is used by several companies, including Agfa, Nuance and Siemens as well as Data2Text and Arria NLG.

Summary of the impact

Based on research within the Digital Media Technology group, innovative multi-media technologies for capturing, structuring, and analysing real-time crash test data were developed, between 1996 and 2006, leading to transformational impacts on the professional practices of the global vehicle crash testing industry. Initially realised through an award-winning technology transfer programme with MIRA, the systems have been widely deployed by leading crash test organisations, supported faster vehicle design iterations and contributed to the design of safer vehicles. The underpinning research has directly contributed to the ISO standard (ISO/DTR 13499) and its current version. The impact is ongoing and long lasting since most systems in current use are largely based on the original technologies.

Summary of the impact

Research into 3D visualisation of shipwreck sites with historical significance or that pose a threat to the environment e.g. Costa Concordia, Deepwater Horizon, has led to multiple impacts:

• Changes in the business practices of international salvage companies
• Environmental clean-up of disaster sites
• Providing virtual access for the general public to maritime heritage sites

The research also led to the formation of a University spin-out company (ADUS) which surveys and visualises shipwrecks with great detail and accuracy. This informs critical decision-making during salvage, wreck removal and environmental clean-up operations.

Summary of the impact

A quiet technology revolution in the UK has been changing the way that police officers on the beat and hospital nurses access and record information, using handheld electronic notebooks that bring large time and cost savings. This revolution began as a University of Glasgow research programme and led to the creation of a successful spin-out company, Kelvin Connect. Acquired in 2011 by the UK's largest provider of communications for emergency services, Kelvin Connect has grown to 30 staff. Its Pronto systems are now in use by 10% of UK police forces and nursing staff in several UK hospitals.

Summary of the impact

The research improves digital data archives by embedding computation into the storage controllers that maintain the integrity of the data within the archive. This opens up a number of possibilities:

• Data analysis can be automated and incorporated into the archiving process;
• The approach improves the archiving of all types of digital objects, from television broadcasts to genomes;
• The approach can be applied to distributed data and to datasets that are too big for traditional approaches.

This has impact on three different classes of beneficiary:

• Providers of national data infrastructure in the UK and US, who are incorporating Cheshire 3 into national data repositories;
• Data Users, such as Astra Zeneca, RAI, Sanger Institute, who are using Cheshire 3 to extract valuable information from their data;
• Equipment vendors, such as NetApp, Xerox and Bellerophon Mobile, who are developing commercial systems that will use Cheshire 3.

Summary of the impact

KCL research played an essential role in the development of data provenance standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body for web technologies, which is responsible for HTTP, HTML, etc. The provenance of data concerns records of the processes by which data was produced, by whom, from what other data, and similar metadata. The standards directly impact on practitioners and professional services through adoption by commercial, governmental and other bodies, such as Oracle, IBM, and Nasa, in handling computational records of the provenance of data.