On Friday, November 20, the Comes Awards 2020: Digital Technologies Against COVID-19 Awards Ceremony was held. 2020 in Russia and the world was marked by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which radically changed the way of life, pastime, doing business and the work of authorities.
To a large extent, the impact of the new virus was mitigated thanks to digital technologies, which allowed companies and government agencies to transfer communication, social activities, business processes and all business use to a remote online format. Even those technologies and services that were deployed before COVID-19 required adaptation and expansion for mass use.
But many digital solutions had to be developed in response to the challenges of the pandemic – quickly and from scratch. That is why the traditional annual Cones Awards is focused on the best digital projects and solutions against COVID-19, with forced self-isolation and remote activity.
In the first nomination “The best digital solution in the field of healthcare”, the majority of the jury’s votes received a project for the recognition of computed tomography images of the lungs, which was implemented by companies from the Sober digital ecosystem – Becloud and SberZdorovye. With the help of this project, anyone can upload their CT scan to the site and receive its transcript within 5-10 minutes. The system uses artificial intelligence algorithms developed at the Sberbank’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and operates on the computing power of SberCloud’s Christopher supercomputer.
The award was received by the leader of the AI / ML Becloud product group Oteri Melikishvili, the executive director of the AI laboratory at Burbank Vladimir Koch, and the technical director of SberZdorovye Alexander Karson. “We did not expect a victory. This project is a complete coincidence. We had a ready-made neural network, and we decided to make such a product. Literally over the weekend, we organized a service. One week, five people, and the project was implemented,” Oteri Melikishvili said from the podium.
The constantly hanging “Electronic Diary” already in the second wave of the pandemic – this fall – is another example of the unpreparedness of the federal education system to use digital technologies. Therefore, the jury decided not to award a prize in this nomination. At the same time, among the projects submitted for the competition and studied by the editors of Comes,
a bright initiative was found. This is the Digital School project, which was launched by 1C Firm. During the creation of the Digital School information system, its modules were integrated both with each other and with regional information systems, which made it possible to provide a single data entry, unify information and reduce labor costs. So far, this project has been implemented only in secondary school No. 36 named after Gavriil Radanovich Derzhavin in Vilify Novgorod – therefore, it was awarded a diploma,4.
which was received by the project manager for promoting solutions for education of the 1C Firm Vitaly Mudarisov and the head of the automation group of preschool and general education institutions of the 1C Firm Zulia Yanakuna …
“Thank you. Colleagues are now stuck to the screen and watching. Our project demonstrates the ability to scale in a very short time”, – thanked Zulia Yanakuna.
Finding themselves in forced self-isolation in the spring, many Russians have found an excess of free time (at least at first), so the demand for digital content has increased dramatically. This trend is associated with two Comes Awards nominations at once. The first is “Best Digital Entertainment Solution (TV & Media)”. The prize in this category was awarded to the SPB TV Rising project for the Key Buyers Event, the first online content market in Russia.
This year’s Key Buyers Event was subtitled Digital edition and took place online in June. Dmitry Kabana, Ruskin executive director, Irma Abshilava, Ruskin CEO assistant, and Denis Perepelitsyn, director of external communications at SPB TV, took the stage to receive the award. “Thanks to SPB TV, we developed a unique concept in a month and a half, they met our expectations and the hopes of the entire industry,” said Dmitry Kabana.
The second announced nomination for digital entertainment is “Best Online Concert During a Pandemic.” Online concerts have become a new reality. Some musicians organized online broadcasts of concerts on YouTube, Facebook and VKontakte platforms. Telecom operators also succeeded – most of all online concerts were able to organize
The trade sector also experienced a shake-up during the pandemic, hastily transforming into digital retail. The demand for online purchases has increased several times, and the delivery of orders has become the bottleneck. Although the creation of courier services can only be called digital projects. Lockdown undoubtedly became a catalyst for the introduction of digital technologies into the entire retail chain, but the jury did not see special projects that responded specifically to the challenges of the coronavirus.
Therefore, in the nomination “Best Digital Solution in Retail” they decided not to present the award. At the same time, the jury singled out two projects from the stream of applications that stand out strongly from the rest – they were awarded with Comes Awards diplomas.
The first was implemented by i-Retail, which developed a solution that allows retail outlets to move all trading operations online within one day. The project involves the creation of an online storefront, the connection of online payment, the integration of the new program with the checkout in the store and, if necessary, the launch of advertising on the Internet. The second striking project in retail is a multifunctional platform for solving business problems Dialog X5, which was implemented by X5 Retail Group. . The diploma was received by Dmitry Provo, Director of the Sales Department of Big Data Products “X5 Technologies”.
In the nomination “The best digital socially significant project during a pandemic” the jury awarded the prize to the portals “vse.online” (in Cyrillic) and vseonline.online, which collected information about digital services and services for citizens in isolation due to the spread of coronavirus … These portals have collected over 500 services for a comfortable life in self-isolation. There were several similar initiatives (for example, the # Peterhouse platform from Mailer Group),
but “everything. Online” differs in the number of services, the quality of their selection, and intuitive presentation “. The award went to Oleg Pileated, Communications Director of the Digital Economy organization. He said: “In March 2020, we presented a website that, a month later, began to define the categories of digital services. We received the attention of Russians who found themselves in self-isolation.”