 Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE. We're here for the AWS Executive Summit, part of re-invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've got a great segment focused here on Half-Food, Art of the Possible is a segment, Josh Bain's Chief Executive at Half-Food, and Jamie Smith, Director of Research and Innovation, and Letitia Calutu, who's the Global Lead of Conversational AI in Accenture. Thanks for joining me today for this Art of the Possible segment. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about Half-Food and what you guys are doing with the community, because this is a really compelling story of how technology and home care is kind of changing the game and putting a stake in the ground. Yeah, so Half-Food is one of the largest not-for-profits in Wales. We employ about 1,400 colleagues. We have three strands of service, which focuses on key demographics of people who are vulnerable and socioeconomic disadvantaged. Three core strands of service are affordable housing. We provide several thousand homes to people in housing need across Wales. We also are an extensive provider of social care provision, both residential and in the community. And then we have a third tier, which is a hybrid in between. So that supports people who are not quite ready for independent living, but neither are they ready for residential care. So that's a supportive provision. I suppose one of the things that Mark's have out and why we're here in this conversation is that we're uniquely placed as one of the organizations that actually has a research and innovation capacity. And it's the work of the research and innovation capacity led by Jamie that brought about his collaboration with Accenture, which is great meaning and benefit to thousands of our customers. And hopefully universal application as it develops, John. You know, this is really an interesting discussion because multiple levels. One, the pandemic accelerated this need. So I want to get comments on that. But two, if you look at the future of work and work and home life, you're seeing the convergence of where people live. And I think this idea of having this independent home and the ecosystem around it is a societal impact as well. So what brought this opportunity together? How did this come together with Accenture and AWS? We're going for Jamie and Natasha. Yeah, I can start. Well, we were trying to apply for the healthy edging grand challenge in the UK. So the United Kingdom recognized the need for change around independent living and run a grand challenge. And then we got together as part of this grand challenge. We had some technology, we had trialed with AGUK before and we hand over housing association. Aford was really keen to actually start trying some of that technology with some of their residents. And we also worked with the Swansea University, which is doing a lot of work around social isolation and loneliness. And we came together to kind of pitch for the grand challenge. And we went quite far actually. And unfortunately we didn't win, but we had built such a great collaboration that we couldn't really let it be, not going any further. And we decided to all continue to invest in this idea. And now we're here probably 18 months on with a number of people at Aford using the technology and a number of feedbacks and returns coming back and us having a grand ambition to actually go much broader and scale this solution. Jocelyn, Jamie, I'd love to get your reaction and commentary on this trend of tech for good. Because I mean, I'm sure you didn't wake up as well. This would have do some tech for good. You guys have an environment, you have an opportunity, you have challenges, you're going to turn into opportunities. But if you look at the global landscape right now, things that are jumping out at us are looking at the impact of social media on people. You got the pandemic with isolation. You're seeing, this is a first order problem in this new world of how do we get technology to change how people feel and make them better in their lives? Yeah, I think for us, the first has to be a problem to solve. It's got to be a question to be answered. And for us, that was in this instance, how do we mitigate loneliness and how do we take services that rely on person-to-person contact and not particularly scalable and replicate those through technology somehow. And even if we can do 10% of the job of that in-person service, then for us it's worth it because that is scalable. And there are lots of small interventions we can make using technology which is a really efficient way for us to support people in the community when we just can't be everywhere at once. So John, just to add, I think that we have about 1,500 people living in households that are living alone and isolated. And I think the issue for us was more than just about technology because a lot of these people don't have access to basic technology features that most of us would take for granted. So for us, this is a two-pronged journey. One is about improving accessibility to tech and familiarizing people so that they're comfortable with these devices' technology. And two importantly, make sure that we have the right means to help people reduce their loneliness and isolation. So the opportunity to trial something over the last 12 months, something that's bespoke, that's customized, that will undoubtedly be tweaked as we go forward has been an absolutely marvelous opportunity. And for us, the collaboration with Accenture has been absolutely key. I think what we've seen during COVID is cross-fertilization. We've seen multidisciplinary teams. We've had engineers, architects, manufacturers and clinicians and scientists all trying to develop new solutions around COVID. And I think this probably just exemplifies the spirit of post-COVID where industry and in our case, quasi-public sector and academia are working together. Yeah, that's a great example and props to everyone there and congratulations on this really, really important initiative. Let's talk about the home care solution. What does it do? How does it work? Take us through what's happening. Okay, so home care is actually a platform which is obviously running on AWS technology and this particular platform the service offered are accessible via voice through the Alexa device. We use the Echo Show to be able to use voice but also visuals to kind of make the technology more accessible for end user. On the platform itself, we have a series of services available out there. We're connecting in the background a number of services from the community. So in the particular case of effort, we had something around shopping during the pandemic where we had people wanting to have access to their food bag or we also had during the pandemic, there was some need for having access to financial coaching and things like that. So we actually brought all of the service on the platform in the skills and the skill was really learning how to interact with the end user. And it was all customized for them to be able to access those things in a very easy way. It did work almost too well because some of our end users have not been digital literate before and it was working so well. They were like, but why can't it do pretty much anything on the planet? Why can't it do this or that? So the expectation were really, really high but we did manage to bring comfort to afford residents in a number of their daily kind of need. Some of the things during COVID because people couldn't meet face to face. There was some challenge around understanding what events are running. So the coaches would publish events through the skills and people would be able to subscribe and go to the event and meet together virtually instead of physically. The number of things that really kind of brought a voice-enabled experience for those end users. You mentioned that people like the solution just before we get, I'm going to get to Jamie in a second but I want to just bring up something that you brought up. This is a digital divide evolution because digital divide as Josh was saying is not about technology. First you have access, you need access, right? First you have broadband or internet access and then you have to get the technology in the home but then here it seems to be a whole nother level of digital divide bridging to the new heights. Yeah, completely, completely. And I think that's where COVID has really accelerated the digital divide before the solution was put in place in the sense that people couldn't move and if they were not digitally literate that it was very hard to have access to services. And now we brought this solution in the comfort of their own home and they have the access to the services that they wouldn't have had otherwise on their own. So it's definitely helping. It's just another example of people refactoring their lives or businesses with technology. Jamie, what's your take on the innovation here and the technical aspects of the home care solution? I think the fact that it's so easy to use, it's personalized, it's a digital companion for the home. It overcomes that digital divide that we talked about which is really important. If you've got a voice, you can use home care and you can interact with it in this really simple way. And what I love about it is the fact that it was based on what our customers told us they were finding difficult during this time, during the early lockdowns of the pandemic. Those 1500 or so people jazz talked about were living alone and at risk of loneliness. Now we spoke to a good number of those through a series of welfare calls and we found out exactly what it is. They found challenging. What were some of the things that they were? They were finding challenging. So tracking how they feel on a day-to-day basis. What's my mood like? What's my well-being like? I know in how that changes over time. Just keeping the fridge and the pantry stocked up. What can I cook with these basic ingredients that I've got in my home? You could be signposted to basic resources to help you with that. Staying connected to the people who are really important to you. But the bit that shines out for me is the interface with our services, with our neighborhood coaching service where we can just give these little nudges, these little interventions, just to mitigate and take the edge of that loneliness for people. And we can see the potential of that coming out to the pandemic where you can really encourage people to interact with one another, to be physically active and do all of those things that sort of mitigate against loneliness. Let me ask you a question I think at a very important point. The timing of the signaling of data is super important. Could you comment on the relevance of having access to data if you're getting something connected, when you're connected like this? I can only imagine the benefits is all about timing, right? Knowing that someone might be thinking some way or whether it's a tactical, you know, in any scenario, timing of data, the right place at the right time, as they say. What's your take on that? Because it sounds like what you're saying is that you can see things early when people are in the moment. Yeah, exactly. So if there's a trend beginning to emerge, for example, around somebody's wellbeing, which has been on a low trajectory for a number of days, that can raise a red flag in our system. And it alerts one of our neighborhood coaches just to reach out to that person and say, well, John, what's going on? You haven't been out for a walk for a few days. We know you like to walk. What's happening? And these early warning signs are really important when we think of the long-term effects of loneliness and how getting upstream of those and preventing it reaching a point where it moves from being a problem into being a crisis. And the earlier we can detect that, the more chance we've got of these negative long-term outcomes being mitigated. You know, one of the things we see in the cloud business is kind of a separate track, but it kind of relates to the real world here that you're doing is automation and AI and machine learning bringing in a lot of value if applied properly. So how are you guys seeing, can almost imagine the patterns are coming in, right? You see patterns in the data. How does AI and analytics technology improve this process, especially with the wellbeing and emotional wellbeing of the elderly? I think one of the things we've learned, you know, through the pilots that we've done is, you know, there's not one size fit all, you know, all those people are very different individuals. They have very different habits. You know, there's some people not sleeping over the night. There's some people, you know, you know, wanting to be at early, wanting to be social. Some people you have to pull in much more. So it's definitely not one size fit all. And it is, you know, automation and digitalization of those kind of services is really challenging because if they're not personalized, you know, it doesn't really catch the interest or the need of the individuals. So for me as an IT professional being in the industry for like a 20 plus year, I think this is the time where personalization has really a true meaning, personalization at scale for those people that are, you know, not digitally literate, but also in more renewable settings because there's just so many different angles that can make them renewable. Maybe it's their body, maybe it's, you know, their economic condition, their social condition, you know, there's so many variations of all of that. So I think this is one of the use case that has to be powered by technology to complement the human side of it. If we really want to start scaling the services we provide to people in general, meaning obviously, you know, in all the Western country, now we all growing old, you know, it's no secrets, yeah? So, you know, in 20 years time, you know, we will, the majority of everybody will be old, you know, and we obviously need people to take care of us. And at the moment, we don't have that population to take care of us coming up. So really to crack on those kind of challenges, we really need to have technology powering and just helping the human side to make it more, you know, efficient, connected and human. It's interesting, I just said a story where you have these bots that look at the facial recognition via cameras and can detect for either hospitals and or in care patients how they feel. So you see that where this is going. Joss, I got to ask you where, how this, all this changes the home care model and how far it works, your workforce, the careers, culture, the consortium you guys are bringing to the table, partners. You know, this is an ecosystem now, it's a system. Yes, John, I think that probably it's also worth talking a little bit about the pressures on state governments around public health issues, which are coming to the fore. And clearly we need to develop alternative ways that we agree, that we engage with mass audiences and technology is going to be absolutely key. One of the challenges I still think that we've got resolved here at the UK level, this is probably a global issue is about data protection. When we're talking to cross governmental agencies, it's about sharing data and establishing protocols and we've enjoyed a few challenging conversations with colleagues around data protection. So I think those need to be set out in the context of the journey of this particular project. I think that what's interesting around COVID is that has it materially changed the nature of what we do things? Probably not in our focus and outlook remains the same. But what we're seeing is very clear evidence of the ways I mean, who would have thought that 12 months ago that majority of our workforce would be working from home. So rapid mobilization to ensure that people can use their IT at home effectively. And then how does that relationship impact with people in the communities who we're serving? Some of whom have got access to technology, others who haven't. So that's spinning I think the biggest change and that is a fundamental change in the design and delivery of future services that organizations like us will be providing. So I would say that overall, some things remain the same by and large, but technology is having an absolutely profound change in the way that our engagement with customers will go forward. Well, you guys are in the front end of some massive innovation here with this, are the possible and you're really delivering impact. And I think this is an example of that. And you brought up the data challenges. This is something that you guys call privacy by design. This is a cutting edge issue here because there are benefits around managing privacy properly. And I think here, your solution clearly has value, right? And no one can debate that. But as these little blockers get in the way, what's your reaction to that? Because this certainly is something that has to be solved. I mean, it's a problem. So we designed the solution. I think we had, when we designed or co-designed with our end users actually, we had up to 14 lawyers working with us at one point in time, looking at different kind of angle. So definitely really tackle the solution with privacy by design in mind. I think some of the, and with end users, but obviously you can't co-design with thousands of people. You have to co-design with a representative subset of the court, yeah. And some of the challenge we find is obviously, the media, I've done a lot of scaremongering. Around technology, AI, and all of that kind of things, especially for people that are not necessarily the digitally literate people that are just not in it. And when we go and deploy the solution, people are a little bit worried when we make them, we obviously explain to them what's going to happen, if they're happy, if they want to consent, and all of that kind of things. But there was, the people are scared. They're just jumping on the technology and on top of it, we're asking them some question around consent. So I think it's just that the solution is super secure. And we've gone over millions of hoops within Accenture, but also without itself, so it's been taken, it's more that like the type of user we're deploying the solution to are just not in that world and are a little bit worried about sharing. Not only they're worried about sharing with us, but in home care, there's an option as well to share some of that data with your family. And there we also see people are kind of okay to share with us, but they don't want to share with their family because they don't want to have too much information kind of going potentially worrying or bothering some of their family member. So there is definitely a huge education kind of angle to embracing the technology, not only when you create the solution, but when you actually deploy it with users themselves. It's a fabulous project. I am so excited by this story. It's a great story. It has all the elements, technology innovation, societal impact, data privacy, social interactions whether it's with family members and others internal, external in attempts themselves. You guys doing some amazing work. Thank you for sharing. It's a great project. We'll keep track of it. My final question for you guys is what comes next for the home care after the trial? What are Halfords plans and hopes for the future? Maybe if I just give an overview and then invite Jamie and Latisha. So for us, without conversations you don't create possibilities. And this really is reflection of the culture that we try to engender. So my ask of my team is to remain curious to continue to explore opportunities because it's home care up today. It could be something else tomorrow. We also recognize that we live in a world of collaboration. We need more cross industrial partnerships. We'd love to explore more things with Accenture, Amazon, others as well. So that's principally what I will be doing is ensure that the culture invites that. And then I hand over to the clever people like Jamie and Latisha to get on with the technology. Well, I think for me, we've already learned an awful lot about home care and there's clearly a lot more we can learn. We'd love to build on this initial small scale trial and see how home care could work at a bigger scale. So how would it work with thousands of users? How do we scale it up from a cohort of 50 to a cohort of 5,000? How does it work when we bring different kinds of organizations into that mix? So what if, for example, we could integrate it into healthcare so a variety of services can have a holistic view of an individual and interact with one another to put that person on the right pathway and maybe keep them out of the health and care system for longer, actually reducing the costs to the system in the long run and improving that person's outcomes. That kind of evidence speaks to decision makers and political partners. And I think that's the kind of evidence we need to build. Financial impact is there brutal. It's great. Financial impact in the system, efficiency, better care, everything. Yeah. And we were 100% on board for whatever comes next. What about you, Mattishman? Great program you got there. Amazing story. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations on this awesome project. So much to unpack here. I think this is the future. I mean, I think this is a case study of represents all the moving parts that need to be worked on. So congratulations. Thank you. The art of the possible here inside the cube, part of AWS re-invent executive summit. I'm John Furrier, host. Thanks for watching.