The advent of Big Data promises great opportunities for the healthcare field. In this article, we attempt to describe the challenges developing countries would face and enumerate the options to be used to achieve successful implementations of Big Data programs.

As approaches to computation in architecture are shifting from a new way of making towards a new way of thinking, the term ‘digital architecture’ must be reconsidered in order to find value in increasing computing power that is centered around communities and a reconsideration of labour, instead of neoliberal paradigms or postmodern principles. Automated Architecture Labs (AUAR) at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and the spinoff company Automated Architecture Ltd, argue that ‘digital architecture’ is not so much a paradigm as rather a collection of methods that fails to address fundamental issues in the contemporary built environment such as the construction industry’s slow digitisation and the field’s inclination to adopt automated technologies such as robotics without questioning work-flows. The paper discusses these issues through a politicised lens using two main concepts, the assembly problem and the automation gap, as starting points for a fundamental reconsideration around frameworks of digital labour. The authors argue that we must radically and creatively rethink our practice in order to formulate a new architectural politics and production framework that is capable of coping with increasing automation. By using discrete parts as the foundation of architectural platforms, the paper introduces a paradigm shift towards participatory community building and digital labour that instrumentalizes automated technologies for a democratising approach to the digital in which humans and machines complement each other.

There has been significant research into large-scale 3D printing processes with industrial robots. These were initially used to extrude in a layered manner. In recent years, research has aimed to make use of six degrees of freedom instead of three. These so called ``spatial extrusion'' methods are based on a toolhead, mounted on a robot arm, that extrudes a material along a non horizontal spatial vector. This method is more time efficient but up to now has suffered from a number of limiting geometrical and structural constraints. This limited the formal possibilities to highly repetitive truss-like patterns. This paper presents a generalised approach to spatial extrusion based on the notion of discreteness. It explores how discrete computational design methods offer increased control over the organisation of toolpaths, without compromising design intent while maintaining structural integrity. The research argues that, compared to continuous methods, discrete methods are easier to prototype, compute and manufacture. A discrete approach to spatial printing uses a single toolpath fragment as basic unit for computation. This paper will describe a method based on a voxel space. The voxel contains geometrical information, toolpath fragments, that is subsequently assembled into a continuous, kilometers long path. The path can be designed in response to different criteria, such as structural performance, material behaviour or aesthetics. This approach is similar to the design of meta-materials -synthetic composite materials with a programmed performance that is not found in natural materials. Formal differentiation and structural performance is achieved, not through continuous variation, but through the recombination of discrete toolpath fragments. Combining voxel-based modelling with notions of meta-materials and discrete design opens this domain to large-scale 3D printing. Please write your abstract here by clicking this paragraph.