A national youth mental health service provider turned to KI Design for managed privacy services. At the time we were engaged, our client was a pioneer in online mental health service delivery, yet privacy governance was at a basic level. KI Design CEO Wael Hassan took on the role of privacy officer and began the work of reviewing policies and practices, developing governance processes and training staff.

Approach

As privacy officer, Dr. Hassan began with a review of the organization’s privacy policies, practices, and third-party agreements. Our team drafted recommendations and proposed policy updates. We met regularly with our client to plan step-by-step implementation of changes. We developed training modules for frontline staff, management, and communications and donor relations staff, addressing each department’s role in protecting privacy.

We also conducted Privacy Impact Assessments for several new initiatives, including a website chatbot. We provided detailed recommendations for the ethical use of AI in such a sensitive context. Dr. Hassan offered specific guidance around detecting and remediating biases during AI training. Our advisory was critical in charting a path for the safe and effective use of new technology in youth mental health service delivery.

In addition to privacy services, we provided media and social media monitoring using our KI Data platform. Our extensive media access enabled us to deliver time-sensitive insights into our client’s reputation. We used the same technology to monitor use of the organization’s intellectual property, helping them to shut down unauthorized uses of their logo and web content.

Results

We continue to work with this client to build a robust privacy program. Our advisory has led to greater privacy awareness across the organization and better communication with service users about their personal information. Privacy is now a key consideration in decisions about technology adoption. Stronger protections are in place for data shared with partners and researchers.

Our media monitoring service has enabled our client to measure the impact of their online presence and respond quickly to issues affecting their reputation. Our service delivers immediate feedback on our client’s communication campaigns. Social media monitoring has provided important insights into the experiences of service users, leading to improved performance management. Monitoring intellectual property has further helped to prevent misrepresentation of the organization.

With support from our expert privacy officer and account team, our client is in a stronger position to protect the public trust that is foundational to their work, while innovating to reach youth through new channels.

The post Youth Mental Health Provider Transforms Privacy first appeared on KI Design.

Before and after Canada’s legalization of cannabis in 2019, our public sector client sought to understand the impacts of this major policy change on cannabis users, the cannabis market and public opinion about cannabis use. Our client chose to look to publicly-available social media content for insights into the complex topics of:

1. Public sentiment towards cannabis legalization.
2. Sentiments of people regarding public safety-related issues associated with legal recreational cannabis use.
3. Self-reported behaviour associated with cannabis.
4. Public sentiment regarding cannabis culture and commerce.

KI Design was engaged to conduct an analysis of public discourse on social media on these topics.

Approach

KI Design sourced data from Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, blogs, news, forums, and review sites to explore conversations related to cannabis. Our data scientists reviewed existing public opinion research to establish detailed research questions, and developed queries to extract data relevant to each question, based on keywords, phrases, demographics (location, gender and age), and time frames. Our team used a combination of automated and manual noise reduction to curate pertinent data samples.

Using AI tools, we categorized the sentiment (positive, neutral or negative) and emotional tone (anger, fear, disgust, joy, surprise, or sadness) expressed in posts. We evaluated correlations of sentiment and emotion with data regarding the age, gender, and geographical location of social media users active on this topic. Our research report documented findings related to public concerns around cannabis use, geographical differences in attitudes towards cannabis, and self-reported cannabis use patterns among different age groups.

Results

KI Design authored a 60-page report on its research, results, and analysis. Our findings confirmed that public education campaigns targeted the most prevalent public concerns around cannabis use, and that the majority of Canadians accepted cannabis legalization. Our analysis of patterns of self-reported cannabis use indicated areas of concern that can inform future public education campaigns and public health interventions.

The post KI Design Delivers Public Opinion Insights first appeared on KI Design.

Mackenzie Health employs over 450 physicians and 2,600 other staff members, processes nearly 55,000 patient medical record accesses every day, and has just one privacy officer to monitor everything. It is critical that clinicians have easy access to records when treating patients, and also that safeguards be in place to prevent inappropriate access to records (e.g., snooping).

Identifying healthcare employees who may be accessing patient records for inappropriate reasons requires an in-depth understanding of healthcare workflows. Commonly used rule-based audit solutions detect specific scenarios, such as employees accessing co-workers’ or family members’ records. These systems are imprecise, and can quickly flag far more accesses for review than can be reviewed manually. Mackenzie formed an innovative procurement partnership – the Privacy Auditing Innovation Procurement Project – with Michael Garron Hospital, and Markham Stouffville Hospital. Together, the hospitals initiated a competitive dialogue process to procure a customized smart auditing solution.

KI Design collaborated with the hospitals to define the desired functions, performance and benefits of an access audit solution. KI Design was selected as the preferred vendor. We continued to optimize our proposed solution during a six-month pilot phase, and were awarded a contract with the hospitals participating in the project.

Approach

The privacy laws that govern access to personal health information focus on purpose: why each person collects, uses, or discloses personal information, and whether the reasons are appropriate. KI Design rejected rule-based audit systems and instead developed a smart auditing system that uses machine learning to analyze the clinical and operational reasons that staff access records. The core of this technology is more commonly known as an explanation-based auditing system (EBAS) designed and patented by Dr. Fabbri of Maize Analytics.

To detect unauthorized accesses, the technology identifies an intelligible connection between the patient and the employee accessing the patient’s records. AI changes the fundamental question underlying auditing tools from “who is accessing patient records without an authorization?” to, “for what purpose are hospital staff accessing patient records?” Asking this question helps the technology break down staff workflows and identify common and unique purposes for accessing any given medical record. The technology is able to filter out accesses with appropriate explanations so that the Privacy Officer can focus on the much smaller number of suspicious accesses.

Results

Dr. Fabbri’s explanation-based auditing system is generally able to identify appropriate clinical or operational explanations for 95-99% of records accesses, and prioritizes the remaining 1-5% for review based on risk rankings. An evaluation of the pilot phase of the Mackenzie Innovation Institute project found that the smart auditing system configured by our data science team was able to explain 98% of records accesses. The evaluation study provided recommendations for additional data inputs that could further reduce the number of unexplained accesses. These recommendations have informed our subsequent projects.

Our customized KI Audit solution has been adopted by five Ontario hospitals, and we have begun implementation across one of Canada’s largest health networks.

The post Mackenzie Health Adopts Smart Privacy Auditing first appeared on KI Design.

Challenge

Media monitoring is critical for effective brand management and corporate communications, and can be expensive and time-consuming. Our client, an information technology service provider to prominent US healthcare organizations, was seeking comprehensive automated monitoring of online, print and broadcast media, with analysis of sentiment and customer affinities. They needed access to data from all major news networks, including searchable transcripts of broadcast media. They also needed data science assistance to develop advanced queries to locate and analyze all mentions of their brand, while filtering out noise.

Approach

KI Design’s KI Data monitoring service provides comprehensive yet cost-effective media and social media access as well as proprietary AI-powered analytics. KI Data searches online and print news media, including specialized and paywalled publications, TV and radio broadcast transcripts, and media sharing sites, all in near-real-time. Our service allowed our client to:

• Instantly find TV and radio mentions: sound bites, interviews and audio clips
• Identify and track specified content such as brand mentions, impact, and audience engagement 
• Uncover and share valuable insights from various new media through interactive, customizable dashboards and reports

KI Design delivered dynamic tracking and analysis of online and print media coverage. We measured impact for our client’s brand in order to direct campaign strategies and broaden their audience. We provided analytics and reports focused on sentiment as well as client affinities based on different groups.

KI Design’s onboarding methodology involved assessments of the client’s needs, objectives, and criteria for success. We provided hands-on training workshops, check-ins, and on-going support. A five-stage timeline was developed to define deliverables: project initiation, a discovery workshop, KI Data configuration, user training, and, lastly, follow-up and support.

KI Design worked with our client to refine queries and analyze results. We provided our client with a better understanding of competitors’ actions, more feedback around their product, and new industry insights. Our data scientists developed reports analyzing the company’s and their products’ perceived reputation in traditional and social media, as well as potential client functions and needs.

Results

KI Design provided our client with a user-friendly media monitoring portal with the following features:

1. Powerful search tools that find relevant content in seconds
2. High-quality, searchable automated transcripts of broadcast media available in near-real time, with a simple tool to extract audio and video clips from source recordings
3. Custom, multi-dimensional and interactive dashboards which allow users easily to consume and share valuable data
4. Automated notifications in near real-time to alert staff to brand mentions in public media
5. Curated daily content summary
6. Audience measurement data
7. Shareable reports, collections, and assets

Our data scientists also developed in-depth monthly and annual reports analyzing media coverage of our client and their clients, with a particular focus on presence/position in media outlets. We also provided a searchable, updated and targeted list of media contacts and influencers.

The insights we delivered enabled our client to improve their online reputation management, public relations, media relations, and customer service. Alerts and automated analytics enhanced our client’s crisis management capability. Campaign analysis and competitor analysis reports informed marketing and communication strategies, leading to greater earned media value. Specialized news monitoring queries even enabled our client to deliver intelligence on privacy risks to their healthcare clients, helping them better to protect patients’ health information.

The post KI Data Media Monitoring for Brand Management first appeared on KI Design.

Our client, an election management body, needed to quickly detect and address various threats to the integrity of an election, including online misinformation/disinformation, illegal campaign donations, and operational problems on election day.

KI Design was engaged to develop a customized data analytics system to help detect issues affecting the election. Our client wanted a commercially available, reliable, and adaptable social media and open-source data monitoring tool that incorporated real-time data from all major social media platforms and online open sources, including blogs, forums, domestic and international online news.

Approach

KI Design provided a customized version of our KI Data media monitoring service. KI Data enables users to search and monitor social and news media from multiple sources through a single interface. We integrated dozens of public and private data sources to help detect threats to the election:

• All relevant data from the open internet and publicly available social media, including political candidates’ and parties’ websites and social media accounts, as well as online news, blogs, and social media commentary;
• Campaign donation and political advertising data, including data provided by social media platforms in compliance with election finance laws;
• Federal and provincial corporate registrations and business information; and,
• Geographic data pertaining to electoral divisions, polling districts, polling stations, as well as postal data and weather data.

In addition to technical integration of data sources, we advised on communication with social media platforms regarding their obligations to provide data pertinent to compliance with election finance laws. We were able to obtain useful data from all major platforms targeted for the project.

We enabled unlimited access for election management staff to create and define queries based on the latest issues of interest. We delivered full data science services, including advanced query writing and analytics to zero in on relevant data. Our developers created specific dashboards and reports to track operational issues, public support concerns, electoral finance compliance, and media impact to meet our client’s needs. 

Results 

With KI Data, our client was able to: 

• Understand the electoral environment by monitoring specific hashtags, keywords, handles, and accounts; 
• Detect, through timely and accurate notifications, potential incidents and trends, including geo-located incidents and trends, affecting the integrity, security, and administration of the election; 
• Identify and prioritize elections-related integrity, security, and operational issues or incidents such as: 
  • Impersonation of the election management body;
  • Threats that could affect citizens’ ability to register and vote; 
  • Threats that could negatively impact citizens’ confidence in the administration of the election; 
  • Operational issues that could impact the administration of the election. 
• Geolocate where electors were facing issues at the polls (e.g., long line-ups, inclement weather, road closures, power outages) and understand where the trends originated, at an aggregate level; 
• Monitor, in real time, the administration of the election; 
• Monitor, in real time, key influencers to identify potential issues that could affect the election early on; and 
• Report on various metrics quickly, accurately and in a structured and consistent manner. 

By cross-referencing campaign finance records with corporate and candidate registries, we also enabled our client to detect illegal campaign donations. We were able to identify donations by political candidates and corporate directors, and ultimately provided actionable information on illegal donations.

We also added a triage and ticketing system to our platform that automatically flagged potential violations of election advertising rules, prioritized them based on selected criteria, and allowed election management staff to categorize issues and assign them to staff members for follow-up.

In addition to monitoring campaign finance and advertising, our system used advanced analytics and AI to isolate and identify sources of election disinformation and misinformation on the web and social media. We were able to identify examples of interference by international news outlets.  Our client credited their customized KI Data election monitoring system with enabling them to get disinformation and misinformation removed from social media platforms and websites.

The post KI Data Insights for Election Monitoring first appeared on KI Design.