Ruter, Posten and the Norsk helsenett (NHN) joins NORA.ai as strategic partners!

The partnership will contribute to strengthening Norwegian collaboration within artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics between academia and the public sector. We are thrilled to add valuable partners such as Ruter, Posten and the Norsk helsenett (NHN) to the Industry Network and we are excited about the opportunities for new projects within AI innovation and research.

"NORA's board and partners have expressed a strong interest in collaborating with the industry and public sector within the field of artificial intelligence. NORA is currently facilitating research projects and building a national research school. We also have a strong network for supporting startups and regularly organize conferences.

Including the industry and public sector in our ecosystem will create opportunities for collaboration in the areas of research, innovation, and education. This is just the first step in our mission to build the AI ecosystem of tomorrow, which will be based on strong collaboration between academia, industry, and the public sector. I am optimistic about the potential of this collaboration to drive progress in the field of AI for Norway".

Klas Pettersen, CEO, NORA

Posten AS

Posten AS has a long tradition of innovation, and over the course of their 375 years of service they have continuously reinvented themselves in order to accommodate societal changes brought on by technological innovation. Developing innovative customer centric services is a top priority, and in 2017, 2019 and 2022 Posten Norge was named the most innovative company in Norway. The nomination was made by [Innomag](https://www.innomag.no/) and presented to Tone Wille, CEO at Posten Norge, by Truls Berg, editor of Innomag and CEO of Open Innovation Lab Norway.

The Department of Emerging Technologies and Data Science is central in evaluating and deploying new technologies, such as autonomous delivery - their new Ottobot (a fully autonomous robot developed to drive among pedestrians on sidewalks and in environments with mixed traffic)  is currently being tested in Oslo. As well as industrial use of Artificial Intelligence, from automatic letter sorting (developed with Solystic) through an AI powered chatbot for customer service (Boost.ai), to new AI-based services developed in-house: better estimates for delivery times and package volumes - particularly important now before Christmas.

Going forward, Posten will explore new and exciting ways to utilize AI solutions within their infrastructure, providing new and better services.

“We are looking forward to joining the NORA community, sharing our experiences of using AI at scale, and learning from the experiences of others from academia, startups and industry”.

Mikkel Hinnerichsen, Head of Data Science, Posten

Ruter

Ruter is a publicly owned company that is responsible for public transport in Oslo and Viken. The use of AI in public transportation poses many opportunities for the use of artificial intelligence, and Ruter’s innovative AI & Data Science team have many ongoing AI projects. For instance, Ruter's customer center handles loads of customer inquiries every single day, and in 2021 Ruter set out to find a better way to manage and collect insight from these inquiries. Led by the Ruter AI Innovation Lab, a project to develop a solution was set in motion, and Ruter invited students to help develop an AI solution. The solution uses Natural Language Processing in order to organize and process customer inquiry data, based on customer feedback submissions through their own online contact form, phone calls, twitter and email.

Ruter has also implemented AI case managers and today this is a part of the production team, responding to customer inquiries with a 90% accurate answering rate. The project has contributed to increasing Ruter's customer satisfaction through research and Innovation.  

Other notable projects done by Ruter using A.I are Fleet optimization for Ruters on demand buss service; Optimizing route for ticket controllers (by using A.I to predict which stops people could be travelling without tickets); Using A.I to predict capacity on busses thereby reducing the load on transport infrastructure and making Oslo/Viken a sustainable city; And finally Ruter implemented machine learning using Quantum computing.

Thanks to their work developing solutions using AI, Ruter received a nomination for the Public Transport Award (kollektivprisen) in 2021. 

Currently Ruter is seeking new ways to utilize AI based technology to combat the reduced use of public transport in Oslo. Current projects aim towards understanding customer travel habits and needs in order to improve their services, mainly through the Ruter travel app. Ruter is also collaborating with Datatilsynet and have a project in the Regulatory Sandbox for AI focusing on  utilizing customer information to ensure customer safety. 

“Ruter is one of the most innovative companies I have ever worked with. One of the reasons we are able to do so much in so less time is because of the support and guidance we receive from our leaders. Its important that the senior management is aligned with your goals and sees the potential in innovative technologies.

Therefore, we wanted to work with like-minded companies and came across Nora who have done an excellent job in the field of A.I. Nora is also a forward thinking and an innovative company who shares most of the community building values of Ruter”. 

Umair M. Imam, Head of Data & AI, Ruter

Norsk helsenett (NHN)

Norsk helsenett (NHN) is a national service provider of e-health solutions and is responsible for facilitating secure and efficient electronic interactions. NHN play a key role in the efforts being made to achieve the goals for digitalization in the health- and care sector and aim to support strategies and plans in the e-health market. The Center for Test and Quality Assurance Department at NHN is currently working on a project that is aiming towards delivering a self-service solution using machine learning to create synthetic data. The solution will provide the means to enable users to search for, edit and create new test persons in order to test functionality in, for instance, helsenorge.no and the Summary Care Record (kjernejournal). Furthermore, the development of this solution aims to produce customized synthetic data for training artificial intelligence models. The department, led by Per-Morten Rummelhoff, has a dedicated team to ensure continued effort towards becoming one of the leading competence group within the area of synthetic data made by artificial intelligence and machine learning, in the Norwegian health sector. "Giving you the data you need when you need it".

“Information is critical – it can be a matter of life and death, and the secure and efficient flow of information in the health sector concerns all of us. We may have come a long way, but we haven't achieved our main goal until all citizens and healthcare providers have access to the patient information they need, whenever and wherever they need it. As a national service provider within e-health, we are tasked with contributing to high-quality e-health solutions and services, the efficient fulfillment of our remit and the best possible utilization of the private supplier market. Supporting and strengthening quality assurance,  innovation and research we need huge amounts of data and we believe synthetic data is the future”. 

Per-Morten Rummelhoff, Department Head, Center for Test and Quality Assurance