Technology

Posted on September 5, 2019 by staff

Liverpool urged to make data its secret weapon

Technology

A leading academic has called on Liverpool to join up all its data and become a fully ‘e-Connected’ population capable of competing with the best in the world.

Louise Kenny is the executive pro vice chancellor at Liverpool University’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences department, which has a turnover of £220m and employs 2,000 staff.

Kenny has been identified as one of five inspirational individuals that embody five newly identified values that best sum up Liverpool and form the basis of a new brand narrative that can be communicated to the world.

Brand Liverpool was launched on Wednesday at a special event at Liverpool Football Club attended by an audience of 150 leading representatives of the public and private sectors.

The five values were: Dare to dream; Take a stand; Come together; Live, learn, prosper; and Think again.

Kenny, who helped discover the first set of markers for pre-eclampsia, a condition which effects one in 12 pregnancies, said the people of Liverpool were the region’s secret weapon because of their data.

She explained: “We have a very stable, unique population with not that much emigration away from Liverpool and there’s a small amount of immigration in.

“We’re also ahead of the curve in connecting our health data. By that I mean connecting data that’s generated at primary care; GP surgeries with data in the hospitals and further connecting it to civic data, like school attainment, employment and unemployment statistics.

“We’re ahead of the curve on the health side. If we can manage  to connect the data  across the entire piece we’ll have a fully e-Connected population and where that’s special is the actual footprint of Liverpool City Region – the 1.2 million people in the immediate region and the 3.6 million in the extended region – will give us the same sort of data power as countries like  Norway, Denmark or Israel.

“These countries have already done this. In the case of the Scandinavian countries they did it decades ago and became a powerhouse and a commodity that they can market.”

The academic said that data was hugely valuable. “It brings significant inward investment; companies come in to use those datasets; academics use them across the world but also it has a beneficial effect for their population,” she added.

Kenny said her home city of Liverpool now had that same opportunity as the likes of Norway, Denmark and Israel.

“All the cutting-edge technology will flow to Liverpool and our population,” she said. “We know from data around the world that a population that is fully immersed in research, where all the population  take part in research, have 30 per cent better outcomes. We have a civic responsibility to do that.”

Julia Bradley, sales and marketing director of Peel Ports Group and chairman of the Brand Steering Group, opened the Brand Liverpool event by explaining why Liverpool needed a narrative to communicate to the world.

“There wasn’t a single compelling shared narrative about Liverpool’s long-term economic future presented to the different regional, nationally and international audiences,” she said. “What we’ve seen is competing messages which have prevented us from delivering a consistent brand message.

“By creating a narrative, underpinned by five key values, we can get our message across to potential investors, existing businesses, communities, residents, government, students and cultural organisations. This represents a massive opportunity for Liverpool going forward.”

The narrative was produced by Liverpool creative agency Black and Ginger and was backed by a succession of speakers including: Asif Hamid, MBE,  CEO of The Contact Company and chairman of Liverpool LEP; Peter Moore, CEO of Liverpool Football Club; Liverpool City Region’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram; Camilla Mankabady, director of communications at Liverpool City Council; and Dame Janet Beer, vice-chancellor of the University of Liverpool.

In addition to Louise Kenny (Take a stand) the other four individuals picked because they best reflect Liverpool’s new values were: Robyn Dooley, partner of Thoughtfully and founder OH (Live learn prosper); Yaw Owusu, who is behind the Liverpool International Music Festival (Dare to Dream); Alison Kennedy, director of the high performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) research facility at the Hartree Centre (Think forward); and Mark Lawler, managing director of Baltic Creative (Come