London Data Week

📢 London Data Week is back in 2025! #LondonDataWeek is London’s public data festival, open to all, and will take place for the third year from July 7-13. It is the week of the year where we celebrate the organisations and people who use data to improve London and the lives of Londoners! We invite organisations from every size and sector to apply to host an event and be part of the community of data innovators who connected with over 2000 Londoners last year. This year we are also delighted to announce our first grant programme to help small and diverse organisations from across London to run their events, through the support of the Mayor of London! Learn more and apply here: www.londondataweek.org #LondonDataWeek

🧠New on our blog! 📜 In its recently published 10-year plan for health, the UK government set out an ambitious vision: for the NHS to become the "most artificial-intelligence-enabled care system in the world". As DHSC begins to develop an AI Strategic Roadmap to realise this vision, dialogue between government, industry and academia will be essential to ensuring that the Department sets the right course of action. 🤝 Our latest blog explores how the AI Policy Fellowship programme — designed for senior civil servants — is helping to advance this critical dialogue. 🩺 We also share insights from Policy Fellow Dr Colin Wilson, who recently spoke at the AI for Healthcare Centres (AI4Health) event during London Data Week. In his talk, Dr Wilson emphasised the need for sustained trust-building efforts to support the successful integration of AI into clinical practice. 📖 Read the blog here: https://lnkd.in/e8qK7M4T

Good times in the U.K. recently for London Data Week with The Tesseract Academy!

Fantastic insights from Rockborne at London Data Week on closing the gender gap in generative AI. The sessions focused on honest, practical conversations aimed at making AI more approachable, inclusive, and relevant to a broader audience. These kinds of discussions continue to raise important questions for the industry. Watch the recap below ⤵️ #LondonDataWeek #GenerativeAI #WomenInData

“Since 2021, our event has brought together pioneers from across tech, health and the regulatory space to discuss how we can make AI safe and impactful in medical settings.” (Ahmed Fetit, PhD) The workshop served not only as a showcase of cutting-edge work but also as a call to action for stakeholders across the health-tech ecosystem to work collaboratively toward a smarter, more resilient future. As London Data Week looks ahead to 2026, the AI4Health Centres’ recurring workshop has made it clear: the convergence of AI and healthcare is not just a possibility, it’s happening now, and its impact will be profound. Ensuring this impact is positive demands a firm commitment to regulatory safety, transparency and responsible innovation. Read more:https://lnkd.in/eCP3Z5GK UK Research and Innovation, Prof. A. Aldo Faisal

Last week at London Data Week, we collaborated with Red Badger to run a few sessions focused on one important question: Why aren’t more women using Generative AI? The aim wasn’t to hype the tech. It was to ask honest questions, and make AI more approachable, practical and inclusive. The event included a panel discussion with Waseem Ali, Helen Crooks & Mursal Hedayat MBE and practical hands on workshops from Rockborne's lead data trainer Bruna Tessaro, PhD. The insights from the event were clear: → Some people felt unsure where to start → Others worried about losing critical thinking → Many just hadn’t been encouraged to try 📹 Watch the recap from the event below to hear insights from the those who joined us, and key takeaways from the sessions. #LondonDataWeek #GenerativeAI #WomenInData #Rockborne

The week before last, we partnered with King's College London and the NHS to deliver our first Women’s Health in Tech Hackathon! As part of London Data Week, us at UKBlackTech as well as the South East London Integrated Care System came together at the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence to explore how tech and innovation can support Women’s Health in South East London. A huge shout out to Dr Catherine Healy for her vision and leadership, Alice Gough for her brilliant organisation and dedication and Mark Martin ⭐️ for his brilliant hosting, skilful facilitation, and the innovative energy he brought to the day. This time, the spotlight was on heavy menstrual bleeding – a challenge that affects countless women but often remains under-discussed and under-resourced. The energy in the room was electric. Interdisciplinary teams brought bold ideas, compassionate thinking, and deep expertise. Big congratulations to all participants and to the winning teams - your ideas really moved us. Thank you to our brilliant partners at King's Health Partners and Health Innovation Network and UKBlackTech for continuing to spotlight real-world challenges.

This year I could only make it to London Data Week Thursday's activities, but they didn't disappoint! 1️⃣ Started with Priti Pandurangan’s data walk in the Docklands - collecting what we could see, hear, smell, and touch. ➔ Key takeaway: I fall back on being analytical when I should be more creative. Watching others categorise their observations by childhood memories and emotional associations was eye-opening. 2️⃣ Then to Flourish for an afternoon of workshops. Here's one quote from each workshop that I jotted down: ➔ Lyndsey Pereira-Brereton: “Can someone understand the chart if I’m not there to explain it to them?” ➔ Valentina D'Efilippo: “Sketching is about problem solving. Drawing is a process of iteration.” I totally agree with this! Sketching is all about thinking and communicating with others. ➔ Simon Rowe: “Pixels are free - make more slides.” His point about creating different versions for presenting vs emailing was spot on. ➔ Jason Forrest & Jen Ray (Data Vandals): “When people become participants, they want to talk about the data.” Sticker charts create real-time databases and turn attendees into collaborators. We finished off the afternoon by making our own sticker charts and sticking them on Flourish’s windows. Sticker charts should become a data viz staple! ✅ They are fun ✅ Everyone loves using them ✅ They immediately get people talking about the data

Connecting Data with Community at London Data Week We recently joined London Data Week and took part in the first KQ Data Social to celebrate the ongoing partnership between UCL Grand Challenges and Knowledge Quarter. "UCL is committed to working with communities around the world to ensure data, AI and compute are used in ways that are driven by and empower humans. These projects presented at the KQ Data Social emphasise how digital data can be used to empower communities, by supporting them to identify the challenges they face, track progress, and make informed decisions. Many of our partners are indigenous communities that sometimes are under-represented. By working in partnership with these communities, UCL colleagues are helping to drive forward equitable change." Allison Littlejohn, PVP to the Grand Challenge theme of Data Empowered Societies Learn more about how the event went and read the news story: https://lnkd.in/de6F8aer Max Gillingham James Paskins

On 10th July, OpenMined and UCL STEaPP - Science Technology Engineering and Public Policy hosted an event as part of London Data Week to explore opportunities for addressing data access barriers through the UK’s National Data Library initiative. I had the opportunity to moderate panel discussions, present, and run tech demos alongside great people doing fantastic work in this space: Jack Hardinges, Anastasia Bektimirova, Jesse Sowell, Neil Majithia, Eli Holderness, Camilla de Coverly Veale, Matt Davies. Thanks to everyone who participated, to UCL for hosting us in their gorgeous East campus, and to Elise Pi for being an amazing co-host! Check out a full recap of the day (and more pics!) in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/ek6QybY2