The Amsterdam region has become a global leader in applying artificial intelligence to improving health and healthcare. This has not come about by accident. Instead, it is a result of a concerted effort in community building. Through Smart Health Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Economic Board has overseen the development of a network for collaboration and cross-fertilisation, spanning academic, private and governmental organisations.
On 2 December, the first results were presented for a number of themes within the Green Deal Sustainable out of the crisis - on which the Board is working with partners - during the 'State of the Region' event. The aim is to accelerate current initiatives in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area in a short period of time. The reset of the current pandemic provides scope for making sustainable choices.
The Dutch ICT chain guarantees a continuously growing flow of depreciated ICT hardware. As of this year, we will jointly discard more than 50 million ICT hardware products. Promoting circularity in the ICT chain is crucial to make the increasing digitization in Dutch society feasible and sustainable. With an annual purchasing volume of 43 million ICT products, the Dutch business community in particular has a major impact and can accelerate the transition to circularity in the chain in order to realize the regional ambition of 100% circular purchasing by 2030.
Together with the City of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Bureau Metropolitan Area and many parties from the region, the Amsterdam Economic Board is working on making textiles circular. Within the Green Deal Circular Textiles, various parties are committed to this ambition. “Here in the region there is already a lot of activity in the field of circular textiles,” says Claire Teurlings, Lead Circular Economy at the Amsterdam Economic Board.
In the race against the growing shortage of people in the data center sector, data center provider 'Interxion: A Digital Realty Company' is starting a collaboration with IT and tech study guide 'TekkieWorden.nl'. The advancing digitizing society, partly prompted by the increasingly concrete application of innovative technologies such as AI, machine learning and the increasing use of cloud services due to the extensive use of teleworking, ensures that the data center industry is growing by 10 to 15 percent annually. This also increases the demand for tech talent for innovation, operation and maintenance. The sector is growing from 12,800 jobs in 2019, expected to reach 16,800 in 2024. This growth will be accompanied by an increasing shortage of more than 1,000 people, expected by 2024. With the collaboration, Interxion wants to actively influence the enthusiasm, find, recruit and train new tech talent.
Now that the cultural sector is going through severe weather during the corona crisis, Amsterdam's pop venue Melkweg wants to seize every opportunity to help (former) employees with retraining or further training for promising professions in the IT sector. After a broad (re) education and training program was set up earlier, it now announces a collaboration with IT career program 'PathWays' of TekkieWorden.nl. The collaboration takes Melkweg employees into the world of tech jobs and careers for four weeks and they create their own study and career path in tech in this short time, from home.
The Board is organizing a Purchasing Track that started in November. The aim by the end of 2021 is to have a sustainable impact for at least 10% of the facilities' purchases of each organization, and at least 50% by 2025. To this end, a diverse group of participants will start making a facility purchasing process sustainable in their own organization. Think of work clothing, catering or ICT. In sessions they can share experience and knowledge with colleagues from other organizations. In this way we build a network and we make an immediate impact. This article provides an overview of sources and further information to get started immediately with purchasing with the impact of ICT. It is based on the report (in Dutch) Naar een circulaire keten voor ICT-hardware, by the Utrecht Sustainability Institute, funded by the Amsterdam Economic Board.
Ruud Yap is head of IT and CTO at the Amsterdam Public Library (OBA). Within the organization there is interest in responsible technology because it can give Amsterdammers more control over their digital environment. But a transition to ethical tech is quite a challenge.
In order to achieve the energy transition, we need to be smart with data. And that can also be done in a transparent and democratic way, think Marleen Stikker and Koen Overtoom. 'I think the system will tilt anyway, but I still find it exciting how we can achieve that.'
Zorg2025’s Healthcare Innovation Prize was formulated to celebrate the latest healthcare innovations in the Netherlands – products and services that can potentially have a huge impact on improving the quality of an individual’s life. During 2021’s preliminary regional round the prognosis was clear: maintaining health is preferable to having to cure disease.
