Healthcare's comfort level with artificial intelligence and machine learning models – and skill at deploying them across myriad clinical, financial and operational use cases – continued to increase in 2023. More and more evidence shows that training AI algorithms on a variety of datasets can improve decision support, boost population health management, streamline administrative tasks, enable cost efficiencies and even improve outcomes. But there's still a lot work to be done to ensure accurate, reliable, understandable and evidence-based results that ensure patient safety and account for health equity. There's no doubt that AI's application in healthcare has gone beyond "real" in 2019 to significant investment by providers and payers last year. This year, we've reported on deeper industry discussions focused on trust and best practices.

As technology continues to move globally towards Industry 4.0, the need for digitalization is at an all-time high. With demand for great innovation to meet this need, it is abundantly clear that startups are trailblazing the path toward a more digital, innovative, and sustainable future. Although it is easy to see startups as the industry leaders of tomorrow, that does not mean their journey is without its set of unique challenges. To better support startups, Siemens launched the Frontier Partner Program. This program allows us to partner with and support early-stage software and hardware startups looking to build their groundbreaking solutions on top of our advanced software and transform the product design and manufacturing landscape.

Graph databases are distinguished by relationships. Users can query, for example, the connections that relate a customer to an account that he or she owns, or how many degrees of separation exist between Kevin Bacon and Audrey Hepburn. Ontologies are a key underpinning, providing a data model to describe things in a database. Metadata and data quality matter so that appropriate conclusions are reached -- just which Audrey Hepburn are we talking about anyway? Donna Burbank, the Managing Director at Global Data Strategy, recently presented a webinar that discussed recent developments in graph databases, and the results of the of the survey conducted for the DATAVERSITY Trends in Data Architecture Report on which the topic was based.

TD Bank Group is no stranger to investing in artificial intelligence and Canadian startups; acquiring Layer 6 at the beginning of this year, and partnering with Kasisto in October of last year and Toronto-based Flybits in 2015, now the bank is helping early-stage, Canadian startups patent their work. The Canadian bank announced, on Thursday, the first three startups to join its Patents for Startups Program, which helps companies at the seed stage with the funding and the application process to patent their work, in Canada the U.S. and abroad. The program which was launched last year will now start working with Senso.ai, "The success of young, innovative startups is key to Canada's future," said TD's intellectual property and patentable innovations lead Josh Death, in a press release, "ultimately, the customer wins when banks and startups collaborate." Senso is a cloud-based startup that helps financial institutions personalize retail banking, by using machine learning algorithms the platform detects key talking points for advisors and customers to discuss that focus on personalizing the retail banking needs of the customer.

Lockheed Martin is launching AlphaPilot, an open innovation challenge focused on artificial intelligence for autonomous systems. Your challenge is to design an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) framework capable of flying a drone through several professional drone racing courses without human intervention or navigational pre-programing. By participating in this competition, your knowledge and ideas can contribute directly toward the future of autonomous transportation, delivery, disaster relief, and even space exploration! Lockheed Martin is launching AlphaPilot to address the role of autonomy in our collective futures. Through a fun and challenging objective, AlphaPilot will unite a diverse community of practice and emerging experts around the common challenges of trusted autonomous systems.

Remember those old tube TVs that took minutes to warm up after you turned on the power? How about dial-up modems that took half a minute to connect to the Internet? In the age of fast-booting TVs and always-connected Internet, you probably don't miss the waiting. However, when it comes to waiting there's one bit of technology that's gone backwards. Two decades ago in the time of DOS, you could turn on your computer and it would be ready to go in what seemed like no time.