MAKING STOCKHOLM A WARMER PLACE WITH COMPASSION AND PURPOSE

STOCKHOLM EXERGI

SEARCHING FOR SOLITUDE SOLUTION

Stockholm Exergi is an energy company that pro-duces district heating, district cooling, and electric-ity. They provide more than 800.000 Stockholmers with heat every day. For more than 100 years, Stock-holm Exergi has made the city warm. When team-ing up with us, they decided to take this one step further by making the city even warmer — in a new and innovative way.

There are 250.000 people living alone in Stock-holm, mak ing it one of the loneliest cities on earth1. Studies show that unwanted loneliness is as dan-gerous as smoking and alcohol, and it can trigger depression, accelerate early-stage dementia and even lead to suicide2. An expert in the field states that one of the best remedies is simply to have someone to talk to regularly3. And though it might seem somewhat paradoxical, we turned to voice technology to find a human solution.

USING VOICE TECH TO WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

As an Artificial Intelligence innovation, Memory Lane provides people with a conversational partner, com-batting loneliness and contributing to a warmer and more inclusive society. Many of the lonely people in Stockholm have unique stories to tell, but not every-one has someone willing to listen.

Memory Lane brings long-lost memories to life and avoids extraordinary stories to fall into oblivion. It has required more than two years of research and devel-opment to shape the highly advanced technology behind the reverse-engineered voice assistant.

Together with organizations active in assisted living and nursing, we conducted in-depth inter-views with leading doctors within elderly care and dementia. Stockholm Exergi carried out factual research on the consequences of unwanted lone-liness and isolation, both locally and globally, and interviewed senior citizens.

1 http://rufs.se/globalassets/f.-demografiska-prognoser/demografiska-prognoser/demografiska-rapporter/2018/2018_8-hushallsstrukturen-i-stockholms-lan-kommuner-och- delomraden-2017--en-registerstudie.pdf2 https://www.aginglifecarejournal.org/health-effects-of-social-isolation-and-loneliness/3 Eero Hinkkanen, doctor at Capio

Based on a technology that was developed by Ac-centure Interactive R&D Center in Sophia Antipolis, France, we created a solution powered by the com-bination of AI and human interventions. The solution consists of three key technical components:

• Automatic Interviewer: The Automatic Inter-viewer functions thanks to a feedback loop and a global database of interview questions. The Automatic Interviewer doesn’t simply ask pre-defined questions, it creates the most appropri-ate questions to be able to drive a meaningful conversation.

• Memory Graph: The Memory Graph encodes information from the voice conversation history in a graph structure. This structure is based on classified taxonomy where information is repre-sented in the graph as nodes, and the relation-ship between them as edges.

• Advanced Summarizer: The Advanced Sum-marizer enables an efficient and intelligent way of summarizing content from the conversation history into coherent stories.

Memory Lane is running in a secured and encrypted private environment and is currently patent pend-ing. It’s platform agnostic and works on any smart speaker, both Google Home and Amazon Alexa.

REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL INTERACTION

When installing Memory Lane in the participants’ homes, it instantly sparked intimate conversa-tions and brought memories to life — some that had never been told before. To enable the pres-ervation of these stories, the technology has a built-in feature compiling the conversations into the world’s first co-authored book and podcast made by man and AI. It transcribes the story told, and as it’s connected to a printer, it immediately prints the transcription of the conversation. Every conversation is also recorded and turned into an AI-driven podcast series. Memory Lane demonstrates the power of story-telling and voice technology by improving the well-being of seniors living in unwanted loneliness and it has been recognized and awarded for its ability to efficiently contribute to greater good through technology.

The dire consequences of unwanted loneliness are incredibly important to raise and actively counteract. By putting this on the agenda and incorporating it into our cultural conversations, we’ve helped Stockholm Exergi make the city a warmer and more inclusive place.

“We wanted to make Stockholm a warmer place for all and we knew Accenture Interactive could help us develop something that would create true impact.”

THOMAS GIBSONCMO, Stockholm Exergi

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions — underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network — Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 492,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Accenture Interactive helps the world’s leading brands transform their customer experiences across the entire customer journey. Through our connected offerings in design, marketing, content and commerce, we create new ways to win in today’s experience-led economy. Accenture Interactive is ranked the world’s largest digital agency in the latest Ad Age Agency Report for the fourth year in a row, and was named a 2019 Most Innovative Company in Advertising by Fast Company. To learn more, follow us @AccentureACTIVE and visit www.accentureinteractive.com.

Awards

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Winner of Grand Prix Stratégies de l’Expéri-ence Client 2019

Winner of The Drum DADI Awards

Shortlisted for Cannes Lions Digital Craft

Shortlisted for Cannes Lions Sustainable Good

Shortlisted for D&AD Impact Awards