AskHub DessIA WaToo

Startups AskHub, DessIA and WaToo receive interest-free loans

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On June 7, the Digital Fund of the Grandes Ecoles and Universities Initiative selected three new startups to receive interest-free loans. AskHub and DessIA, from ParisTech Entrepreneurs, the Télécom ParisTech incubator, and WaToo, from the IMT Atlantique incubator, will each receive €20,000 interest-free loans. These financial aid programs co-financed by Fondation Mines-Télécom, la Caisse des Dépôts and Revital’Emploi provide these growing companies with the funds they need to pursue their development.

 

[one_half][box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]askhub

AskHub is a platform that analyzes requests that were not understood by chatbots and then offers an ecosystem of ready-to-use chat plug-ins to improve the user experience. Find out more

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[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]DessIA

DessIA is design software for mechanical engineering. Using an approach based on artificial intelligence, the software can select the solution best adapted to users’ needs from among billions of possibilities. Find out more

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logo watoo

WaToo offers a solution to prevent the misappropriation and falsification of sensitive documents by authorized users by concealing digital watermarks in the documents to protect them. Find out more

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Learn more about previous winners

 

GDPR

GDPR comes into effect. Now it’s time to think about certification seals!

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The new European Personal Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on May 25. Out of the 99 articles contained in the regulation, two are specifically devoted to the question of certification. While establishing seals to demonstrate compliance with the regulation seems like a good idea in order to reassure citizens and economic stakeholders, a number of obstacles stand in the way.

 

Certification marks are ubiquitous these days since they are now used for all types of products and services. As consumers, we have become accustomed to seeing them everywhere: from the organic farming label for products on supermarket shelves to Energy certification for appliances. They can either be a sign of compliance with legislation, as is the case for CE marking, or a sign of credibility displayed by a company to highlight its good practices. While it can sometimes be difficult to make sense of the overwhelming number of seals and marks that exist today, some of them represent real value. AOC appellations, for example, are well-known and sought out by many consumers. So, why not create seals or marks to display responsible personal data management?

While this may seem like an odd question to citizens who see these seals as nothing more than red labels on free-range chicken packaging, the European Union has taken it into consideration. So much so, that Articles 42 and 43 of the new European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are devoted to this idea. The creation of seals and marks is encouraged by the text in order to enable companies established in the EU who process citizens’ data responsibly to demonstrate their compliance with the regulation. On paper, everything points to the establishment of clear signs of trust in relation to personal data protection.

However, a number of institutional and economic obstacles stand in the way.  In fact, the question of seals is so complicated that IMT’s Personal Data Values and Policies Chair* (VPIP) has made it a separate research topic, especially in terms of how the GDPR affects the issue. This research, carried out between the adoption of the European text on April 14, 2016 and the date it is set to come into force, May 25, 2018, has led to the creation of a work of more than 230 pages entitled Signes de confiance : l’impact des labels sur la gestion des données personnelles (Signs of Trust — the impact of seals on personal data management).

For Claire Levallois-Barth, a researcher in Law at Télécom ParisTech and coordinator of the publication, the complexity stems in part from the number and heterogeneity of personal data protection marks. In Europe alone, there are at least 75 different marks, with a highly uneven geographic distribution. “Germany alone has more than 41 different seals,” says the researcher. “In France, we have nine, four of which are granted by the CNIL (National Commission for Computer Files and Individual Liberties).” Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has only two and Belgium only one. Each country has its own approach, largely for cultural reasons. It is therefore difficult to make sense of such a disparate assortment of marks with very different meanings.

Seals for what?

Because one of the key questions is: what should the seal describe? Services? Products? Processes within companies? “It all depends on the situation and the aim,” says Claire Levallois-Barth. Until only recently, the CNIL granted the “digital safe box” seal to certify that a service respected “the confidentiality and integrity of data that is stored there” according to its own criteria. At the same time, the Commission also has a “Training” seal that certifies the quality of training programs on European or national legislative texts. Though both were awarded by the same organization they do not have the same meaning. So saying that a company has been granted “a CNIL seal” provides little information. One must delve deeper into the complexity of these marks to understand what they mean, which seems contradictory to the very principle of simplification they are intended to represent.

One possible solution could be to create general seals to encompass services, internal processes and training for all individuals responsible for data processing at an organization. However, this would be difficult from an economic standpoint. For companies it could be expensive — or even very expensive — to have their best practices certified in order to receive a seal. And the more services and teams there are to be certified, the more time and money companies would have to spend to obtain this certification.

On March 31, 2018, the CNIL officially transitioned from a labeling activity to a certification activity.

The CNIL has announced that it would stop awarding seals for free. “The Commission has decided that once the GDPR comes into effect it will concentrate instead on developing or approving certification standards. The seals themselves will be awarded by accredited certification organizations,” explains Claire Levallois-Barth. Afnor Certification or Bureau Veritas, for example, could offer certifications for which companies would have to pay. This would allow them to cover the time spent assessing internal processes and services, analyzing files, auditing information systems etc.

And for all the parties involved, the economic profitability of certification seems to be the crux of the issue. In general, companies do not want to spend tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of euros on certification just to receive a little-known seal. Certification organizations must therefore find the right formula: comprehensive enough to make the seal valuable, but without representing too much of an investment for most companies.

While it seems unlikely that a general seal will be created, some stakeholders are examining the possibility of creating sector-specific seals based on standards recognized by the GDPR, for cloud computing for example. This could occur if criteria were approved, either at the national level by a competent supervisory authority within a country (the CNIL in France), or at the European Union level by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). A critical number of seals would then have to be granted. GDPR sets out two options for this as well.

According to Article 43 of the GDPR, certification may either be awarded by the supervisory authorities of each country, or by private certification organizations. In France, the supervisory authority is the CNIL, and certification organizations include Afnor and Bureau Veritas. These organizations are themselves monitored. They must be accredited either by the supervisory authority, or by the national accreditation body, which is the COFRAC in France.

This naturally leads to the question: if the supervisory authorities develop their own sets of standards, will they not tend to favor the accreditation of organizations that use these standards? Eric Lachaud, a PhD student in Law and Technology at Tilburg and guest at the presentation of the work by the Personal Data Values and Policies Chair on March 8, says, “this clearly raises questions about competition between the sets of standards developed by the public and private sectors.” Sophie Nerbonne, Director of Compliance at the CNIL, who was interviewed at the same event, says that the goal of the national commission is “not to foreclose the market but to draw on [its] expertise in very precise areas of certification, by acting as a data protection officer.”

A certain vision of data protection

It should be acknowledged, however that the area of expertise of a supervisory authority such as the CNIL, a pioneer in personal data protection in Europe, is quite vast. Beyond serving as a data protection officer and being responsible for ensuring compliance with GDPR within an organization that has appointed it, as an independent authority CNIL is in charge of regulating issues involving personal data processing, governances and protection, as indicated by the seals it has granted until now. Therefore, it is hard to imagine that the supervisory authorities would not emphasize their large area of expertise.

And even more so since not all the supervisory authorities are as advanced as the CNIL when it comes to certification in relation to personal data. “So competition between the supervisory authorities of different countries is an issue,” says Eric Lachaud. Can we hope for a dialogue between the 28 Member States of the European Union in order to limit this competition? “This leads to the question of having mutual recognition between countries, which has still not been solved,” says the Law PhD student. As Claire Levallois-Barth is quick to point out, “there is a significant risk of ‘a race to the bottom’.” However, there would be clear benefits. By recognizing the standards of each country, the countries of the European Union have the opportunity to give certification a truly transnational dimension, which would make the seals and marks valuable throughout Europe, thereby making them shared benchmarks for the citizens and companies of all 28 countries.

The high stakes of harmonization extend beyond the borders of the European Union. While the CE standard is criticized at times for how easy it is to obtain in comparison to stricter national standards, it has successfully imposed certain European standards around the world.  Any manufacturer that hopes to reach the 500 million-person market that the European Union represents must meet this standard. For Éric Lachaud, this provides an example of what convergence between the European Member States can lead to: “We can hope that Europe will reproduce what it has done with CE marking: that it will strive to make the voices of the 28 states heard around the world and to promote a certain vision of data protection.”

The uncertainties surrounding the market for seals must be offset by the aims of the GDPR. The philosophy of this regulation is to establish strong legislation for technological changes with a long-term focus. In one way, Articles 42 and 43 of the GDPR can be seen as a foundation for initiating and regulating a market for certification. The current questions being raised then represent the first steps toward structuring this market. The first months after the GDPR comes into effect will define what the 28 Member States intend to build.

 

*The Personal Data Values and Policies Chair brings together the Télécom ParisTech, Télécom SudParis graduate schools, and Institut Mines-Télécom Business School. It is supported by Fondation Mines-Télécom.

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Personal data certification seals – what is the point?

For companies, having a personal data protection seal allows them to meet the requirements of accountability imposed by article 24 of the GDPR. It requires all organizations responsible for processing data to be able to demonstrate compliance with the regulation. This requirement also applies to personal data subcontractors.

This is what leads many experts to think that the primary application for seals will be business-to-business relationships rather than business-to-consumer relationships. SME economic stakeholders could seek certification in order to meet growing demand amongst their customers, especially major firms, for compliance in their subcontracting operations.

Nevertheless, the GDPR is a European regulation. This means that compliance is assumed: all companies are supposed to abide by the regulation as soon as it comes into effect. A compliance seal cannot therefore be used as a marketing tool. It is, however, likely that the organizations responsible for establishing certification standards will choose to encourage seals that go beyond the requirements of the GDPR. In this case, stricter control over personal data processing than what is called for by the legislation could be a valuable way to set a company apart from its competitors. [/box]

working classes digital, classes populaires numérique

How working classes use digital tools: The Facebook example

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For over a decade now, the use of digital tools and internet connectivity has greatly developed among households, including among working classes. Yet very few studies exist on this part of the population’s specific uses of digital technology. In the context of the Poplog project, which counts Télécom ParisTech among its partners, Dominique Pasquier, a researcher in sociology, has studied this question through interviews and with help from a data set from Facebook accounts.*

 

Among low-income households, internet connectivity figures have skyrocketed. According to INSEE (the French national institute for statistics and economic studies), in 2006, 47.9% of employees and 37% of manual workers had access to the Internet at home. These figures rose to 88% among manual workers and 91.5% among employees. Within 10 years, internet use became fully integrated into the daily lives of working classes.

Yet, within the social sciences, barely any studies have focused on how the working classes relate to digital technology. “There is no reason to believe that internet uses are the same at the top and bottom of the social ladder,” explains Dominique Pasquier, researcher in sociology at Télécom ParisTech and Director of Research at the CNRS (the French national center for scientific research).

This observation is what led to the creation of the Poplog project. Funded by the ANR (the French National Research Agency), the partners for this project include Télécom ParisTech, the Centre Atlantique de Philosophie and Université de Bretagne Occidentale. The researchers looked at the use of digital technology among working classes with stable employment. Unlike very low-income classes that live on the outskirts of urban areas, the studied individuals live in rural areas and most own their own home. “This fraction of the population consists primarily of traditional families, there are very few single-parent families,” Dominique Pasquier explains. “In general, few have earned degrees and they work as manual workers or employees.”

In the framework of this project, in order to study this category of the population and its relationship with digital tools, Dominique Pasquier looked specifically at how they use Facebook.

 

Data from Facebook accounts as research material

The researcher in sociology first attempted to collect information using various survey methods, particularly interviews. Yet very few people responded positively to requests for interviews. These difficulties are common in general sociology, according to Dominique Pasquier, especially when the study focuses on working classes. “These individuals do not have a clear understanding of what sociology is and do not see the point of these discussions,” she notes. “And this is a group that primarily welcomes family to their homes, but not strangers. Therefore, we face a rejection phenomenon.”

This problem was avoided thanks to another project called Algopol, led by the Center for Social Analysis and Mathematics, Orange Labs France Télécom, LIAFA and Linkfluence from 2012 to 2015. The team carried out a major survey on the Facebook networks and recorded and anonymized data from approximately 15,000 accounts. Only 50 of the 15,000 accounts matched the social profiles Poplog was interested in. This number was suited to a qualitative study of the data.

“The principle was that I was not allowed to meet the people who owned these accounts,” Dominique Pasquier explains. “The only information I had was their age, sex, municipality of residence, number of friends and the content they exchanged, excluding personal photos.” Yet this limited content was sufficient for conducting a sociological analysis of this data. Especially since this content complemented the information obtained during the interviews. “The two different formats do not provide the same insights,” the researcher continues. “The Facebook data reveals discussions in which the sociologist was not involved. Whereas during an interview, the person wants to give a good impression of themselves and therefore will not talk about certain subjects.”

Certain topics related to the use of digital technology was only available in the interviews, such as searches for information or online purchases. On the other hand, some topics were only available on Facebook, such as employment problems, or difficulties related to undesired singleness, a reality that affects unskilled male workers in particular.

 

Significant variations in how Facebook is used

“The 50 accounts were exactly what I was looking for: adults between 30 and 50 years old who live in rural areas and are manual workers or work in personal care services,” Dominique Pasquier explains. “This is where we saw that the uses of Facebook are extremely varied.” There were many different types of users: some attempt to use the social network but do not know what to say, do not receive enough feedback and give up. Others try their hardest to attract attention, sharing ready-made catchphrases and impressive links. Some are very prolific in sharing events from their daily life, whereas others never talk about this aspect.

However, certain behaviors and phenomena were frequently observed throughout this selection of accounts. “There is a whole set of phrases about life that express a kind of circulating common ethic. During the interviews, people called them ‘quotes’,” Dominique Pasquier explains. “Furthermore, when someone posts a status update, those who respond are intergenerational and both male and female.”

Finally, some things men shared about romantic difficulties, situations of undesired singleness or separation, caught Dominique Pasquier’s attention. She analyzed these comments and how others responded to it. “Some of what was shared was very aggressive, with misogynistic remarks. In this case, the comment always brought a response from the poster’s contacts, especially from women, who counteracted the remarks.”

The researcher’s goal was to analyze both what is shared on the social network and others’ reactions to it: “I analyze this content as things the individuals considered worthy of sharing and making known to their Facebook contacts who, in the context of this group of individuals from working classes with stable employment, are primarily made up of close friends and family.”

 

A different use of digital tools

“I think this survey also demonstrates that these individuals are faring well with the internet, but in a completely different way,” Dominique Pasquier explains.  “In the case of Facebook, the social network is mainly used to maintain a kinship group.”

Through these interviews and analysis, the researcher noticed other specific features in the use of digital tools among the studied population. “It is a social universe that presents different uses and it is important for the public authorities to be aware of this,” says Dominique Pasquier. Public policy is indeed moving towards establishing fully digital means of communication via email with social assistance institutions like Pôle Emploi and the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales. This digital transformation poses a problem. In the course of her study, the researcher observed that the individuals she surveyed did not use email as a means of interpersonal communication; they used it only to make purchases.  “These email addresses are shared by spouses or the entire family. With all the online purchases, the emails from Pôle Emploi will be lost among hundreds of spam emails and ads,” the researcher observes. “There is also a sort of rage that develops among this population, because of this inability to contact each other.”

This shows how important it is to continue this work on the issue of digital technology and its use by working classes… while remaining vigilant. Although many sociology students are interested in studying digital corpora, these types of materials pose methodological problems. “Much of the data is anonymous, we often do not know who has produced it,” Dominique Pasquier explains. “Also, we often do not realize that 50% of online participation is produced by 1% of the population, by heavy contributors. We therefore mistake anecdotal occurrences for mass social phenomena.” Yet despite these challenges, digital data has “enormous potential, since we can work on large volumes of data and network phenomena…” Offering enough information to provide an understanding of how certain social groups are structured.

 

[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]* The i3 seminar on digital data analysis methodologies in the social sciences

The Poplog project and Dominique Pasquier’s research were presented at the Methods for the Analysis of Online Participation Seminar, organized by i3, a joint CNRS research unit of which Télécom ParisTech is a member. This seminar, which will run through June 2018, focuses on issues surrounding methods for processing digital data for research in the humanities and social sciences. The discussions focus on how the corpus is formed, analysis methods and the relationship between digital data and conventional survey methods.[/box]

 

MT 180, surgery, chirurgie, thesis, thèse

MT 180: 3D organ models facilitate surgery on children

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Alessio Virzì, Biomedical Engineer – PhD student in Medical Image Processing, Télécom ParisTech – Institut Mines-Télécom, Université Paris-Saclay

The original version of this article (in French) was published on The Conversation, in connection with Alessio Virzì’s participation in the competition “My thesis in 180 seconds”.
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What area have you chosen to focus on for your thesis?

I am interested in developing new tools for processing medical images for pediatric minimally invasive pelvic surgery.

This type of surgery involves a technique in which small incisions are made to enable the surgeon to reach the target area while limiting surgical trauma as much as possible. The technique involves robotic tools and a video imaging system that helps guide the surgeon’s movements. Due to the anatomical complexity of a child’s pelvis, the surgical planning stage, based on the study of medical imaging, is a crucial step.

What will your thesis work contribute to this area?

My thesis proposes new methods for processing medical images adapted to children with pelvic tumors or malformations. I am developing IT solutions for generating virtual 3D models of organs, tumors and nerve fibers based on MRI images.

Surgeons can view these 3D models before and during the surgery, thus improving the way they plan for the operation and providing more information than a simple video imaging system.

For example, I used artificial intelligence to analyze the pixels in the images to detect the different anatomical structures. I also used generic models of organs that I then adapted to the child to obtain the final 3D model.

I integrate all of these IT methodologies into interactive software that makes the surgeon the main actor in the image analysis process. In addition, thanks to this software, surgeons can easily verify the quality of the 3D models obtained and can make corrections as needed, based on their anatomical knowledge.

I developed this software based on existing open-source software that I improved by integrating specific models for MRI images of children’s pelvises.

It was very important for me to offer a tool that could easily be used in a clinical context by surgeons who are not specialized in computer science.

Example of a 3D model of the pelvis (right) obtained by processing MRI images (left).

What challenges have you faced along the way?

The first challenge was the limited amount of scientific literature on this topic, since this research area is underexplored. I therefore had to base my work on medical imaging studies on other anatomical structures like the adult brain.

Another major challenge was the need to develop methods that could be used in clinical practice. They needed to be extremely effective and easy for surgeons to use. This required additional efforts in the design and development of the software.

My communication with surgeons and radiologists played a crucial role in developing my research and allowed me to discover anatomical knowledge that I had not necessarily been aware of before and helped me understand their requirements for IT tools.

When did you decide to start a thesis?

My desire to do a thesis first arose during a research internship I did for my Masters 2 studies in biomedical engineering, that provided an opportunity to work on new applications in neuro-imaging.

In the future, I would like to continue working in the medical field because I find this area very motivating. My desire to find new applications has led me to explore the possibility of working in medical imaging in the private sector.

What are your thoughts on “My Thesis in 180 Seconds”?

I think the ability to share scientific knowledge is a key skill for researchers.

Unfortunately, I believe this aspect is not sufficiently present in scientific training. As researchers, we often have the unfortunate habit of using terms that are too specific and not accessible for non-scientists. Yet it is essential for us to help everyone understand what we are doing, both to demonstrate the importance of our work and stimulate its development.

This experience will definitely help me improve my skills in popularizing scientific knowledge and help me become more comfortable presenting this information to the public. It is also a very motivating challenge to have to present my thesis in a language that is not my first language and that I began using three years ago when I arrived here from Italy.

 

 

Q4Health

Q4Health: a network slice for emergency medicine

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Projets européens H2020How can emergency response services be improved? The H2020 Q4Health project raised this question. The European consortium that includes EURECOM, the University of Malaga and RedZinc has demonstrated the possibility to relay video between first responders at an emergency scene and doctors located remotely. To do so, the researchers had to develop innovative tools for 4G network slicing. This work has paved the way for applications for other types of services and lays the groundwork for the 5G.

 

Doctors are rarely the first to intervene in emergency situations. In the event of traffic accidents, strokes or everyday accidents and injuries, victims first receive care from nearby witnesses. The response chain is such that citizens then usually hand the situation over to a team of trained first responders — which does not necessarily include a doctor — who then bring the victim to the hospital. But before the patient reaches the doctor for a diagnosis, time is precious. Patients’ lives depend on medical action being taken as early as possible in this chain. The European H2020 Q4Health project studied a video streaming solution to provide doctors with real-time images of victims at the emergency scene.

The Q4Health project, which was started in January 2016 and completed in December 2017, had to face the challenge of ensuring that the video flow was of high enough quality to make a diagnosis. To this end, the project consortium which includes EURECOM, the University of Malaga in Spain and the project leader SME RedZinc, proved the feasibility of programming a mobile 4G network that can be virtually sliced. The network “slice” created therefore includes all the functions of the regular network, from its structural portion (antennas) to its control software. It is isolated from the rest of the network, and is reserved for communication between emergency response services and nearby doctors.

Navid Nikaein, a communication systems researcher at EURECOM sates that “The traditional method of creating a network slice consists of establishing a contract with an operator who guarantees the quality of service for the slice“. But there is a problem with this sort of system: emergency response services do not have complete control over the network; they remain dependent on the operator. “What we have done with Q4Health is to give real control to emergency response services over inbound and outbound data traffic,” adds the researcher.

Controlling the network

In order to carry out this demonstration, the researchers developed application programming interfaces (API) for the infrastructure network (the central portion of the internet, that interconnects all the other access points) and the mobile network that connects 4G devices, such as telephones, to an access point (this is referred to as an access network). These programming interfaces allow emergency response services to define priority levels for their members. The service can use the SIM card associated with a firefighter or paramedic’s professional mobile phone to identify the user’s network connection. Via the API, it has been determined that the paramedic would benefit from privileged access to the network, enabling dynamic use of the slice reserved for emergency services.

In the Q4Health project, this privileged access for first responders allows them to stream video independent of data traffic in the area, which is a great advantage in crowded areas. Without such privileged access, in a packed stadium, for example it would be impossible to transmit high-quality video over a 4G network. And to ensure the quality of the video flow, a system analyzes the radio rate between the antenna and the first responders’ device — for the Q4Health project, this is not necessarily a smartphone but glasses equipped with a camera to facilitate emergency care. The video rate is then adjusted depending on the radio rate. “If there is a lower radio rate, video processing is optimized to prevent deterioration of image quality,” explains Navid Nikaein.

Through this system first responders are able to give doctors a real-time view of the situation. These may be doctors at the hospital to which the patient will be transported, or volunteer doctors nearby who are available to provide emergency assistance. They obtain not only visual information about the victim’s condition, which facilitates diagnosis, but also gain a better understanding of the circumstances of the accident by observing the scene. They can therefore guide non-physician responders through delicate actions, or even allow them to perform treatment which could not be carried out without consent from a doctor.

Beyond its medical application, Q4Health has above all proved the feasibility of network slicing through a control protocol in which the service provider, rather than the operator, has control. This demonstration is of particular interest for the development of the 5G network, which will require network slicing. “As far as I know, the tool we have developed to achieve this result is one of the first of its kind in the world,” notes Navid Nikaein. And highlighting these successful results, achieved in part thanks to EURECOM’s OpenAirInterface and Mosaic5G platforms, the researcher adds, “Week after week, we are increasingly contacted about using these tools,” This has opened up a wide range of prospects for use cases, representing opportunities to accelerate 5G prototyping. In addition to emergency response services, many other sectors could be interested in this sort of network slicing, starting with security services or transport systems.

 

confiance numérique, digital trust

20 words for understanding digital trust

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The issue of digital trust has never been more relevant. The 15th IMT Personal Data Values and Policies Chair Meeting, held on 8 March a few weeks before the European general data protection regulation (GDPR) enters into force, was devoted to presenting its book “Signes de confiance : l’impact des labels sur la gestion des données personnelles” (Signs of Trust: The impact of labels on personal data management). Here is a closer look at some key terms surrounding digital trust.

 

API – Application Programming Interface, an interface that enables the user to connect to an application in order to access the data it produces.

Auditability – The availability of proof that information has been supplied in an authenticated and non-repudiated manner.

Audit trail – The complete history of a transaction

Blockchain – Technology that stores and transfers intangible assets without an intermediary in a transparent, secure, reliable and inalterable manner.

Read more on our blog: What is a blockchain?

Confidence – Trust related to a social context and established institutions.

Consortium – Refers to a hybrid blockchain that is not public, involving participants with different rights.

Crypto-currency – Electronic currency used in a peer-to-peer or decentralized computer network that relies on the principles of cryptography to validate transactions and issue currency.

Decentralized autonomous organization –A program that maintains an organization’s governance by embedding it into a blockchain. It involves several smart contracts (see definition below) that interact together.

Decentralized consensus – Mechanisms used to ensure that all the nodes within a network have the same information available and the same overall internal status.

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) – Refers to private blockchains and consortia.

Immutability – The property of being inalterable once created.

Ledger – Book of accounts, a register. A blockchain is a decentralized ledger or register.

Oracle – A service that gathers data from one or more services (private or public databases, social networks…) which it submits to be used by smart contracts (see definition below).

Pseudonymity – An individual’s ability to prove a coherent identity without providing a real name.

Side chain – A secondary blockchain attached to the primary one that can be used to increase the (otherwise limited) volume of information the blockchain can process.

Smart contracts – Autonomous programs that automatically apply the terms of a contract without requiring any human intervention once initiated.

Token – Generic name for a transactional information unit within a blockchain, which does not necessarily refer to the idea of currency.

Transaction – Refers to an operation involving the transfer of assets or information between two participants.

Trust – An individual accepting something as true based on a personal frame of reference.

Trusted Third Party – an entity authorized to perform transactions that must remain confidential and secure on behalf of a third party.

To find out more about this topic, check out our series on trust in the digital age.

 

 

 

Koovea

Koovea: an intelligent system for monitoring temperature-sensitive drugs

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Koovea offers a service for monitoring temperature-sensitive drugs that ensures safe packaging conditions throughout the entire shipping process. The startup has just raised €60K through Créalia Occitanie. The interest-free loan will help the startup finance its R&D and strengthen its own capital before launching its product in June 2018.

 

One out of every two drugs is temperature-sensitive. These fragile and expensive drugs are vulnerable to alterations during shipping if the cold chain is broken. This could result in serious consequences: time lost in transit, significant financial loss for the laboratories, safety risks for patients if they consume altered, ineffective or even dangerous drugs. In response to this problem, Koovea has invented a connected tracking and recording solution that reports data in real time.

Adrien Content and his associates worked together for two and a half years to develop this solution. The incubator and mechatronics platform at IMT Mine Alès provided the startup with the support it needed to overcome technical challenges and create a prototype. This dual assistance combining both economic and technological support helped structure the company as it developed and offered the opportunity to present its innovation at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in January 2018.

From manufacturing to use, the integrity of the cold chain is guaranteed

Koovea’s solution makes it possible to track the temperature and location of batches of drugs in real time, providing an opportunity to react if necessary. Its major benefit is that it sends warnings if it detects a deterioration in storage conditions for a supply of products.  The young company’s solution is based on three elements. First, it relies on a flexible temperature sensor the size of a credit card, which features a system for recording and displaying data.  This sensor is complemented by an intelligent and self-reliant router which can report data in real time, anywhere in the world. Finally, a “Koovea” application provides an optimal solution for sharing and using this data.

The device is currently in the midst of a full-scale test phase in the French Hérault department. It has already proven its appeal by winning several awards: Coup de Pousse 2016, Bourse French Tech Emergence 2016, Booste Ton Projet 2016. Today, the startup’s growth has reached a new milestone thanks to the interest-free innovation loan it received from Créalia Occitanie.  Koovea makes no secret of its desire to become a benchmark in the intelligent monitoring of drug product. It then hopes to branch out to include other costly and sensitive products.

Better monitoring solutions for fragile and expensive products

Koovea’s solution is an interesting one for stakeholders in the medical sector: specifically, for laboratories and transport systems for blood, bone marrow and organs. Yet other sectors could also benefit from intelligent real-time monitoring. All the sensitive and expensive products handled in the agri-food sector, viticulture, cosmetics, luxury market and the art world could benefit from this type of solution. This is especially true since Koovea aims to extend its range to integrate other controlled parameters, such as brightness and humidity.  This expansion would pave the way for numerous fields of application. The data could even make it possible to predict the time, place and circumstances under which a product was altered.

virtualisation, virtualization

From design to management, virtualization is inventing the industry of the future

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How is industry reinventing itself? Three startups from the Télécom ParisTech incubator give us a glimpse of the changes underway in industry.

 

If the industry of the future is difficult to define, it is because it is as nebulous as the term used to describe it. Does it still make sense to talk about the “future” when the industrial world is already several years into its digital transformation? Although artificial intelligence and object network technologies may still be little-used, the modernization of processes is already a pressing issue for today’s industries. We can hardly use the term “industry of the present”— it isn’t sexy enough—and some prefer the term industry 4.0 over “industry of the future.” If indeed industries 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 can be precisely defined and no one wonders what patch 2.1 or 3.2 refer to, we are free to choose our favorite term for this rapidly changing industry. Would “industry in transformation” not be a better name? This concept encompasses a plethora of technologies that do not have much in common, other than contributing to the same goal: reorganizing production facilities in a more intelligent way. This makes it difficult to attempt to identify a common thread to explain how industry is transforming. However, virtualization remains a cross-disciplinary theme for many different types of technologies. Technicians, engineers and managers increasingly rely on virtualization in their approach to the technical and organizational challenges they face.

Modeling and simulation software have been used in the design sector for several decades. The abbreviation CAD (computer-aided design) has become an everyday word for those involved in designing and manufacturing industrial parts. But the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought its share of changes. Smart tools are being developed. These tools do more than simply make it possible to design engineers’ ideas more efficiently: they have become an integral part of the design stage. “What’s important with AI is optimization,” explains Pierre-Emmanuel Dumouchel, founder of the startup Dessia. “The engineer works on pieces at the unit level and it’s difficult for him to optimize complicated layouts because he has to think about a large number of structures to find the best one.”  The startup has developed a software program that uses AI to study a large number of layouts at the same time and find the best ones. The tool then models them virtually and provides engineers with different propositions.  Engineers may then print the engineering drawings after they have been approved. In sectors such as the automotive industry, where drive shafts are increasingly complex, the Dessia software helps save time on the design and prototyping stages. Here, virtualization goes beyond helping to visualize systems. It bypasses a long process of study, reflection and comparing.

“A major headache”

For Philippe Gicquel, founder of CIL4Sys, there are other benefits to virtualization. One of them is that it helps simplify product specifications. The specifications stage involves establishing a written description of the product’s behavior, part by part. “This must be done to create specifications books for suppliers” explains the entrepreneur. With the rise of electronics, parts function in increasingly complex ways, making specifications increasingly long to write. “The electronic control unit for a car, which includes GPS, telephone and other functions, requires specifications with over 10,000 lines of text,” says Philippe Gicquel. “This is a huge headache for the engineering teams!” Rather than continuing to work on increasingly complicated documents, CIL4Sys uses advances in software engineering to simplify the specifications stage. Instead of writing out lines of text, engineers can use the startup’s tools to create diagrams to describe the objects involved, their actions and their interactions. In short, they create a sort of tree covering the events associated with the object and how it works (see video below). The generated codes may then be executed in a simulator developed by the startup and the specifications text is automatically generated. “We still send the requirements in a text document, but before doing so we also send a model showing how the product works and a simulation to ensure that the product behaves as it is supposed to,” explains the founder.

 

Example of the use of CIL4Sys tools on an automated parking lot management system:

 

The benefits of the CIL4Sys tools were demonstrated in a concrete example, when PSA put the startup in competition with an engineering firm to develop a specifications document. “We only used one engineer instead of the two our competitor used and we were given a 30% higher score by the PSA experts,” says Philippe Gicquel. By virtualizing this step the startup helps improve the clarity of operations. Engineers can now quickly get a sense of the progress of the specifications process for a given part, whereas before they had to decipher a lengthy text. “The design process is often represented as a V-shaped cycle: throughout the process leading to the prototype, the downward portion of the V, teams make their way through a dark tunnel because no one really knows where they are in the process. By introducing simulation starting in the specifications stage, we bring some light to this tunnel.”

Looking to video games for inspiration

Design in the broad sense has greatly benefited from the virtualization of specific processes in industrial activities, but it is not the only field to take advantage of the technology. The startup Perfect Industry develops tools for managing production lines inspired by technology from the video gaming world. The startup’s founder, Emmanuel Le Gouguec, sees two major strengths to draw on: “In the world of video games, there aren’t any consultants who spend hours training the player. And there is a motivational aspect that makes the experience fun and lively.” Based on this observation, the startup provides a complete virtualization of production lines. Sensors are installed in key locations to aggregate data about the machines’ performance. Using its Perfect Twin product, a manager can therefore visit a production line from his office using virtual reality (VR) and can access different data, such as the speed of the machines. This data may also be consulted using smartphones. “We are developing applications based on this idea, such as tracking virtual trips made by individuals with VR headsets,” says the founder. This helps provide a better understanding of how the space is situated and how people move through this space.

The entire goal of Perfect Industry’s projects focuses on managing the complexity for operators. Improving the performance of production lines is one of the challenges facing industry today. The data collected and quick immersion make it easier to identify losses. “Our tools provide managers with the same sorts of recommendations made by consultants,” explains Emmanuel Le Gouguec. To prove his point, he cites the example of a SME that needed to optimize its production line to reduce the cost of a product to respond to a call for tenders. “The recommendations made based on an analysis of data and the production space allowed them to increase line speed by 15%,” he says. He was able to achieve these results by looking for tools in another sector, that, according to the founder is not that different from industrial data processing. “There is a major division in the digital sector between people who do the same thing: make codes. From a technical perspective, what we do is a common part of the video gaming world. We simply apply it to factories.” So transforming industry may not only mean looking to future technologies. Importing what is done in neighboring sectors also appears to be a promising way to drive progress.

 

 

connected objects

Healthcare: what makes some connected objects a success and others a flop?

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Christine Balagué, Institut Mines-Telecom Business School (ex Télécom École de Management)

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[dropcap]W[/dropcap]earing the Oura connected ring on your finger day and night can help you find out how well you sleep. A connected patch diabetics wear on their arms enables them to monitor their blood sugar levels without pricking their fingers. On February 9, these two objects received one of the mobile healthcare trophies presented at Paris-Diderot IUT, awarded by a panel of experts, attesting to their significant added value for users.

In recent years manufacturers of watches, bracelets, glasses and other connected objects have made many promises. Too many, judging by the gap between the proliferation of these objects and the modest role these devices play in our daily lives. For the most part they are seen as gadgets, bought on a whim then quickly forgotten in the back of a drawer. The time has not yet come where these devices are as familiar and vital to us as our smartphones.

While connected objects for well-being struggle to prove their usefulness, certain connected medical devices have become indispensable for patients. They are primarily used for diagnostic or preventative purposes or to help treat a disease, such as blood glucose monitors for diabetes. This leads us to explore the process through which users make these objects their own.

More connected objects than humans on our planet

In 2017, for the first time, the number of connected objects surpassed the number of humans on our planet. There are now 8.4 billion of these devices that collect, store, process and transmit data, according to the Gartner technological consulting firm. And it expects this number to exceed 20 billion by the end of 2020.

Connected blood glucose monitor by Freestyle Libre

Health and well-being devices are expected to grow just as dramatically. The number of these devices is set to increase from 73 million worldwide in 2016 to 161 million in 2020, according to the Grand View Research consulting firm.

But what do users think? They remain… doubtful. Though 73% of French people believe that connected objects may useful for their health, according to a survey carried out by Opinion Way in March 2017, only 35% say that they see the benefit of such products for monitoring their health. And just 11% report owning a connected watch.

High prices, risk of dependence and lack of reliability measurements

So how can this lack of enthusiasm amongst users be explained? In 2017, the two associations that group together the major manufacturers of connected objects, Acsel and the Carrefour de l’Internet des objets, published an Observatory of Connected Life. Their study revealed several obstacles for these devices: excessively high prices, the fear of having personal data used without informed consent, the risk of becoming dependent, problems with reliability and measuring security.

Even beyond these concerns, it would seem that manufacturers were a bit too quick to believe that these revolutionary objects would win over their fellow citizens. As a result, though some consumers have adopted them, very few have actually taken ownership of these objects.

These are two entirely different concepts, as manufactures are only starting to find out. A product or service is “adopted” by consumers when they decide to try it out or buy it. “Taking ownership,” of these objects, however, involves a longer process and is only achieved when the technology has become a part of an individual’s daily life.

A physical object, coupled with a service for the individual

Taking ownership of a connected object means taking ownership of each of its four specific aspects.

First, users must take ownership of the product itself, in its physical aspects. A connected watch, for example is first and foremost a watch, meaning it is an object worn on the wrist to tell the time.

The ring Oura records information about sleep quality

Then, users must take ownership of the service provided by the object, its intangible dimension–often through a mobile application. This service involves presenting data collected in the form of graphs or charts and usually offers a coaching function or program designed to improve the user’s health. For example, connected scales transmit weight and body fat percentage measurements to an app. The app then provides recommendations to help us stabilize them.

The object itself is connected to one or several other objects. It transmits data to a smartphone, to other connected objects or to a data platform. This dimension goes beyond the object itself, and must also become part of the individual’s everyday life.

Lastly, the object makes it possible to communicate with others, by sharing the number of steps taken during the day with a group of friends participating in a challenge, for instance. Users may only get used to this human-to-human social connectedness through a process in which they take full ownership of the device.

Four steps for taking ownership of connected objects

Before making a connected object part of our daily lives, we must go through four different steps without realizing we are doing so. Studies carried out in recent years in our team at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Cnam), with individuals who own these devices, has allowed us to describe each of these steps.

The first stage is taking ownership of the object on a symbolic level. This either happens in the store before purchasing the object, or the first time the individual sees the connected object if it is a gift. The interactions are primarily sensory-based: seeing, touching, hearing. For some people a so-called “wow” factor can be observed: this user reaction expresses astonishment or even fascination for an object seen as “smart.” At this stage, the user projects an imagined value onto the object and service.

Then the user enters the second stage, called “exploration.” This stage involves physically handling the object to learn about the device and its application, interactions that give rise to a cognitive process for the user to understand how it works; object-to-object interactions where the object interacts with the mobile phone to transfer data collected and to enable the application to provide the service. During this stage, use of the object leads to real value creation for the user.

Measuring heart rate to strengthen the heart

The third phase of taking ownership of an object is determining the object’s function for its user. Individuals may use an object for one of many specific functions available, such as measuring physical activity, heart rate or weight. This phase is accompanied by joint value production between the object and the user—the user determines and sets his/her desired function. For example, someone who wants to strengthen his heart decides to monitor his heart rate on a daily basis.

In the final phase known as “stabilization” the user makes the object a part of in his/her daily life. The user’s interactions with the device become passive. For example, the user wears a connected bracelet but forgets that it is there, while the object continuously collects data and automatically sends it to the mobile application on the user’s smartphone. This stage also gives rise to emotional responses, forging a relationship between individual and object.

During this stage, the perceived value of the object is “transformative,” meaning that the object has transformed the individual’s habits. For example, he/she may have made a habit of getting off the subway two stops early to walk more during his/her commute, or automatically choose the stairs over the elevator.

Different uses than those intended by manufacturers

If manufacturers of connected objects were to carry out a closer study of how individuals take ownership of devices and focus their strategies on users, they could better anticipate uses and increase objects’ value. In the hyperconnected world of today, it is paradoxical to observe such a great “disconnect” between manufacturers and users. This distance contributes to individuals’ limited use of connected objects and their tendency to abandon them in time.

And yet, most companies do incorporate use cases in the development of objects. But these strategies are based on imagining how users may behave, while it has been shown that in real life, individuals do not use connected household objects as manufacturers imagined they would! This was observed in 2015 by American researchers Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak.

For individuals to really use their connected objects, manufacturers must develop responsible technologies: secure, reliable devices that respect privacy, both in terms of data collected and algorithms for processing the data. Most importantly, these devices must gain real value in the eyes of users. For this to happen, companies must learn how to study users’ behavior in real-life situations and how they come to take ownership of these objects.

Christine Balagué, Professor and holder of the Connected Objects and Social Networks Chair at Institut Mines-Telecom Business School (ex Télécom École de Management)

The original version of this article (in French) was published on The Conversation.

 

data-moove

Seamless vacations thanks to a research lab

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Belles histoires, Bouton, CarnotFor four years now, researchers from EURECOM and the startup Data-Moove have worked together to radically improve the tourist experience in various regions. With help from technological innovations from laboratories, they have succeeded in aggregating the information available on the web and social networks to create a local and comprehensive picture of what a geographical area has to offer.

 

Finding a restaurant, concert hall or hotel when traveling abroad can turn into quite an ordeal. Every restaurant and event has a Facebook page and website, yet few sites gather all a destination’s activities into one spot. For tourists, this means spending time on social networks, time they would rather spend enjoying their vacation. Data-Moove’s challenge was therefore significant: the French startup’s mission was to offer a solution to this problem by creating a comprehensive overview of a region’s tourism offering. On March 2nd, the young company inaugurated an interactive board in the Saint-Barthélemy airport in the West Indies. Travelers arriving on the island can now see an overview of the activities available to them in the area and can create an itinerary for their stay. This interactive board is complemented by a mobile application offered by the island’s Tourism Board which is free for the end user.

This service responds to tourism offices’ growing demand for digital technology to help promote their regions. To meet this need Data-Moove worked together with EURECOM research teams, which are part of the Télécom & Société Numérique Carnot Institute. Their partnership started in 2015. At that time, Raphaël Troncy, a researcher in data science at EURECOM, and his team were involved in the European project 3cixty led by EIT Digital. “We were working to automate the collection of tourism and cultural information,” the scientist recalls. “We wanted a platform that would bring together all the information about accommodation, places of interest, and seasonal, sports and cultural activities…” In short, offering comprehensive and local information. The project was launched a year earlier and already provided a fully developed technical solution. All that was missing was a commercial partner. Data-Moove, which had just been founded, met this need throughout the entire project, which ended in 2016.

Searching social media

During the three-year 3cixty project, the EURECOM researchers needed to solve the problem posed by the heterogeneity of the information sources. TripAdvisor and Facebook do not use the same language and information about a restaurant is not always available in the same format. They therefore needed to represent this stream of data collected from social networks by using semantic graphs: word clouds were linked together based on how they were related. People, places, dates and actions were described in a standardized way and then processed to provide the user with streamlined information, regardless of the source.

“Because we aggregate information from many sources, there is a good chance the same information will be presented twice in the data stream,” says Raphaël Troncy. This brings us to the second technological challenge: solving the problem of duplicates involved measuring the similarity in the references to places, dates and names of events.  “We therefore developed a learning algorithm to automatically carry out this work of studying the similarities,” the researcher explains. Another learning model was established to automatically predict the category of an event without much description. This makes it possible to directly present information as being related to sports, theater or music, for example.

A tourism application for discovering all the tourist attractions Saint-Barthélemy has to offer.

Data-Moove implemented the technical solutions developed during the 3cixty project in its first product: City Moove, based on an application like the one used by Saint-Barthélemy. “Our technology for aggregating flows of information can also be connected to a preexisting application,” explains Frédéric Bossard, co-founder of Data-Moove. The goal is to avoid having an excessive number of digital tools for a region. The company also prefers to work with tourist offices to improve the tools they already use. “The problem many regions have is that they often have too many applications, each for a specific area,” he explains.

Tourism of the future, brick by brick

The two partners decided to capitalize on this success by taking the use of digital technology in tourism a step further. In 2017, they began partnering with the European PasTime project—also supported by EIT Digital—which is intended to make suggestions for activities when people are traveling. “The idea is to ask end users when they will arrive in a city and then directly propose an itinerary,” Raphaël Troncy explains. Once again, they carried out machine learning research on large volumes of data. They developed standard profiles based on interactions with users on social media. “The real challenge is to develop a package, in other words, connect interests with tastes in food and preferences for events,” the researcher explains. Here they were able to build on City Moove, to take the technology to a new level by adding a customized aspect.

And a third level is underway. Since February 2018, EURECOM and Data-Moove have been working on a new product: a smart conversational assistant to answer questions about a region’s tourist attractions.  Their work, entitled MinoTour, is being carried out in the context of the European project H2020 Data Pitch. The chatbot they develop will also learn from users’ searches and provide answers based on the aggregated data flow from City Moove. “There is a logic to our products,” says Frédéric Bossard: “we build brick by brick, from the database to the chatbot, developing solutions that are best adapted to the geographical areas.”

After Saint-Barthélemy, Data-Moove will test its solutions in Saint-Tropez, Madeira, and on a wider scale in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Areas with significant tourism activities, which will allow them to continue improving their products to better meet the needs of both the regions and the tourists.

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The advantage of a partnership with Eurecom: “An operational perspective”

Frédéric Bossard, co-founder of Data-Moove

One of the objectives of the Télécom & Société Numérique Carnot Institute is to professionalize relations between companies and researchers. Frédéric Bossard, co-founder of Data-Moove, can testify to this: “It is nice to work with EURECOM because the researchers truly have an operational perspective, which is rare among academic partners. They quickly understand our constraints and what we want to accomplish. The quality of these discussions convinced us to enter a partnership rather than a simple collaboration. Today, EURECOM is a partner of Data-Moove since the school has taken shares in the company. By making their laboratories and knowledge available to us, they allow us to take the development of our products to whole new levels.”

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The TSN Carnot institute, a guarantee of excellence in partnership-based research since 2006

Having first received the Carnot label in 2006, the Télécom & Société numérique Carnot institute is the first national “Information and Communication Science and Technology” Carnot institute. Home to over 2,000 researchers, it is focused on the technical, economic and social implications of the digital transition. In 2016, the Carnot label was renewed for the second consecutive time, demonstrating the quality of the innovations produced through the collaborations between researchers and companies.

The institute encompasses Télécom ParisTech, IMT Atlantique, Télécom SudParis, Télécom École de Management, Eurecom, Télécom Physique Strasbourg and Télécom Saint-Étienne, École Polytechnique (Lix and CMAP laboratories), Strate École de Design and Femto Engineering. Learn more [/box]