Meet Julian Everett, CTO at Data Innovation Consultancy & Solution Provider: Data Language

Data Language is a UK-based data innovation consultancy and solution provider that has worked with organisations such as News UK, Syngenta and Cochrane to deliver digital transformation solutions using knowledge graphs and AI.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Data Language was founded in 2014 by myself and my colleagues Paul Wilton, Data Language’s CEO, and Silver Oliver, our Head of Information Architecture. We worked together at the BBC, where we delivered the first large-scale knowledge graph project in UK digital publishing, moving BBC Sport from a classic content-led approach to a data-led product that could support rapid and continuous innovation.

We recognised the need for this market-leading expertise across publishing and in many other sectors. Since 2014, Data Language has grown, taking this pragmatic knowledge graph paradigm across publishing and beyond, helping organisations with their data-led digital transformations. Digital publishing was the first sector to adopt large-scale knowledge graphs to connect and contextualise core business information, and now we are seeing implementations across all sectors. We have since launched a product suite that includes knowledge graph, AI and video tools to further support data-led digital transformation.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

During the pandemic, we continued to deliver digital transformation solutions to solve our customers’ data management pain points. The speed at which knowledge graphs enable new data-driven products to be deployed was demonstrated when, in the very early days of COVID-19, we built a new service for Cochrane, the global not-for-profit organisation whose core mission is to put evidence at the heart of health decision-making all over the world.

Due to an unprecedented demand for the most up-to-date, reliable evidence to inform frontline clinical decision-making in response to the coronavirus crisis, Cochrane urgently needed a way to collate, formalise and navigate COVID-19 living evidence.

We had previously helped Cochrane implement a radical new data architecture centred around linked data and knowledge graph technologies, to give the business a flexible information backbone. Thanks to our previous collaborations we were able to rapidly launch an entirely new clinical evidence service focused entirely on Covid-19 data to help healthcare professionals globally.

Within weeks we had launched the Cochrane Covid-19 Register together – a precisely scoped, authoritative source of the latest clinical evidence on the Covid-19 pandemic from around the world.
 

What can we hope to see from Data Language in the future?

 
Our ambition is to be the go-to vendor for knowledge graphs and AI products that enable global brands to leap ahead of the competition. You can also expect to see us continuing to expand our partnerships in the months and years to come.