Sofia the chatbot helps locate halal food for Muslim travellers, 24x7

Source: Microsoft. Built upon Microsoft's Azure cloud platform and LUIS, HHWT’s chatbot Sofia can automatically provide quick answers to questions posed by users.

Have Halal, Will Travel (HHWT) was started because founder Mikhail Goh had trouble finding halal food in South Korea five years ago. 

“If there were websites out there that discussed halal food in South Korea, they were either hard to find, or any information that I came across wasn’t of much help,” recalled Goh, who is now based in Singapore. “Many times, you have to make decisions based on limited information as a Muslim traveller.

“Do I take the trip down? It’s a 40 to 45-minute ride, based on a single grainy picture, and with very little information to rely on.”

The content platform helps Muslims travel with confidence in countries where locating halal food can be a challenge. HHWT currently hosts hundreds of articles and guides online, and also has a mobile app and social media channels. It now reaches over 9 million Muslims from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia each month. 

As readership and site traffic on HHWT continued to grow, it became clear that the platform needed to grow its backend infrastructure in tandem. Fielding 8,000 users looking for halal food options in Tokyo over platforms like Facebook, e-mail or website comments would be best served by a chatbot, the company behind HHWT decided.

Combining Microsoft’s Azure cloud and its Language Understanding Intelligence Services (LUIS), HHWT’s chatbot now answers most of the questions that travellers ask through the platform every day. Called Sofia - chosen after users voted for the name in a public poll - the chatbot is online 24x7, allowing the HHWT team to significantly increase their engagement level with users daily.

“We created Sofia simply because people have been asking us questions which we found could be answered largely through automation,” said Goh.

At the same time, through the responses and feedback received from users interacting with Sofia, HHWT can now analyse and contextualise all that input to help provide more personalised content for each individual user, thus serving customers’ needs better.

Sofia was set up in a surprisingly short amount of time. Instead of creating a chatbot from scratch, the HHWT team relied on existing tools that Microsoft provides on the cloud to create Sofia, with the help of technology partner PleoData.

The Azure cloud platform comes with an application programming interface (API) for a QnA Maker. The feature creates a FAQ from existing content. This was the first building block the team tapped on to form answers to commonly-asked questions. Microsoft’s LUIS, a machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and devices then enabled chatbot designers to draw on datasets already in existence. This allowed the team to match users' questions, which can come in many forms, with the right answers. 

“I think one of the really big benefits of Microsoft Azure is the QnA Maker,” said Rachel Tan, MD, PleoData. “It allows any company to be able to release a working chatbot in less than seven working days, which is quite an amazing feat.”

It helped that HHWT already had an existing FAQ, which was input into the QnA maker. Though that was sufficient to launch a chatbot as-is, the team went one step further to customise the chatbot so that it could offer more intelligent content to users.

Currently, Sofia uses what is known as a decision tree that lets users narrow down the answers they are looking for. In future, this process will be simpler and more intuitive—the system will automatically answer questions with a deeper understanding, without having to seek clarification.

This next step for HHWT involves sinking its teeth more deeply into machine learning. With larger datasets to draw on after running the chatbot over time, HHWT would be able to develop contextual and personalised content.

Today, HHWT works with tourism boards from countries around the world and global brands to reach out to the Muslim community. As the same time, they are also working with partners to provide functionalities such as the ability to complete travel bookings and payment transactions on the website. With the scalability of Azure cloud, as well as LUIS, powering the Sofia chatbot, HHWT is now looking towards expansion to more countries within Southeast Asia and beyond.

Goh reinforced that their focus over the next two years is to build on their understanding of their consumers' needs and wants. “One of the things we are seeking to improve for our chatbot is its search and response – to give us a better understanding of what people are searching for, and from there, better responses and better content,” he said.

“As a Muslim myself, I feel that Muslims shouldn’t be restricted to just kebabs or nasi biryani,” Goh noted. “To really understand different cultures, you have to eat their food, speak their language, and really get lost in their country. Muslims shouldn’t be deprived from that opportunity.” 

Explore:

Watch the video introducing Sofia the chatbot

Download the Microsoft Business Owners’ Guide to Technology

Hashtag: #HHWT

Intel backs modernisation at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre

King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) provides advanced specialised care to patients in Saudi Arabia. With facilities in Riyadh and Jeddah, plus a children’s cancer centre, KFSHRC provides care for the most seriously ill patients from anywhere in the country. Along with delivering advanced treatments, the centre conducts leading-edge research and helps train the next generation of physicians, nurses and other clinicians.

With demands on its healthcare system rising rapidly, KFSHRC is using Intel-based servers, storage, network adapters, and end user computers to modernise its IT infrastructure and prepare for the future in a reliable, cost-effective way. The centre is migrating much of its data centre infrastructure to servers and storage systems based on the Intel Xeon processor E5 family. KFSHRC is also adopting 2 in 1 devices with the Intel Core i5 vPro processor for clinicians on the go.

The strategy brings many benefits. These include:

More coordinated, patient-centred care. Powerful healthcare IT solutions and mobile computing can empower treatment teams to provide more coordinated care before, during, and after the patient’s hospital stay.

Higher patient satisfaction and engagement. Patients and their families can experience shorter wait times, greater convenience, and fewer redundant procedures. Tools such as portals can help engage patients in managing their own health. On 19 October, KSFHRC launched the Sehaty app, which enables users to access their healthcare records from a mobile device. The app manages appointments, offers recent updates to health records and accepts requests for prescription renewals among other features.

Improved productivity, hiring, and retention. Healthcare IT solutions can help medical professionals work more productively and reduce stress. Healthcare IT modernisation helps KSFHRC attract and retain doctors, nurses, and other clinicians.

Leaders at KFSHRC say Intel technologies are helping at the micro level to reduce costs, optimise floorspace, and enhance disaster recovery. Their virtualised infrastructure also helps the hospital deliver a better patient experience, enhance productivity, and increase access to high-quality, coordinated care throughout the kingdom. In addition the PCs and mobile devices powered by Intel help enhance productivity.

posted from Bloggeroid

Go for ijarah sukuk and have respected shari'ah scholars certify them: IMF working paper

The type of sukuk and the choice of shari'ah scholar could affect interest in a sukuk issue.

In Do the Type of Sukuk and Choice of Shari'a Scholar Matter?, a working paper* from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released in August 2014, authors Christophe Godlewski, Rima Turk, and Laurent Weill study a sample of 131 sukuk from eight countries from 2006 to 2013 and find both criteria do indeed matter.

Some observations from the analysis include: 

• The average coupon is above 4%, maturity is 8 years, and the average amount issued is US$1,270 million with a large standard deviation. 
• An average of three scholars certify an issuer’s sukuk. 
• On average, half of the team of scholars is from the same country as the issuer. 
• A typical scholar certifies on average 24 sukuk per year, or almost 75 issues over three years. 
• Issuing firms have issued on average more than 11 bond issues.

According to the working paper, ijarah (اجارۃ) sukuk "exert a positive influence on the stock price of the issuing firm". The authors suggest that ijarah structures may benefit the most from the expansion of sukuk markets because of the better investor reaction to them compared to other structures. 

The authors observe that sukuk in the musharakah and mudarabah formats, which are partnership contracts in which the financier and entrepreneur share profits based on pre-agreed ratios but also the losses that are proportional to their contributions (financial or physical) to the partnership, are not as popular. "Ijarah is a debt-based instrument that is not based on profit and loss sharing principles; hence, it does not suffer from the possibility of attracting borrowers of poor financial condition as would a musharakah instrument," the authors suggested.

A similar positive impact was observed with sukuk that had been certified by prominent shari’ah scholars from the same country as the sukuk issuer. In more than half of the sample, at least one scholar is from the same country as the issuer, the authors observed. 

"Our finding provides some evidence that high compensation for reputable shari’ah scholars certifying sukuk may be justified on the grounds of better valuation of issuing firms," the authors said.

*Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. The views do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF or IMF policies.