Imec and iMinds: a smart marriage

At our annual SAS Forum, we strive to serve our audience with the best speakers. They represent some of the finest companies in Belgium, and never fail to bring some fascinating and inspiring stories. And every once in a while they inspire each other so much that they end up together in a merger, like imec and iMinds last week.

Of course we don’t want to imply that these two outstanding organizations have found each other at our event. They’ve known each other for years and have collaborated in the past. But we do know that one of the assets that both companies share is a passion for data, information, and knowledge.

Imec : health data lead to better health

Chris Van Hoof, Program Director of wearable healthcare at imec, for one, shared some of the fascinating projects that imec is currently working on in the healthcare industry.

His overview of sensors and other wearable devices we will be wearing to monitor our health and prevent many diseases from happening, sounded very promising for each and everyone of us. And even better news: all of the technology that he discussed is being worked on as we speak.

So keep an eye on what should be coming in the near future. Useful technology which can assess your stress level based on the comparison of current and previous observations; wearable sensors that can replace many of the thorax X-rays; personalized wearable health coaches that not only pass on your data to your health practitioners but also provide you with some healthy alternatives for your current behavior.

iMinds: Wisdom of Things

The iMinds speaker, on the other hand, provided us with an insight into their ‘City of Things’ project, using the 200.000 Antwerp citizens as the world’s largest living IoT lab. iMinds is successfully using this lab to achieve ‘Wisdom of things’, by combining the intelligence of connected things with other sources of information, so that they become more contextually aware and can thus make intelligent decisions and respond to the dynamics of the environment.

It takes no data scientist to predict that, by combining the data-centric approach of both organizations and their complementary technology and skills, the resulting organization will play a leading role in the Belgian technology landscape. We wish both companies and all parties involved a very bright and exciting future!  

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