Thomas Germain / Consumer Reports:
New study shows how popular apps including Grindr, OkCupid, Tinder, and the period-tracking apps Clue and MyDays share intimate user data with data brokers — A new study shows how information about your sexuality, religion, and location is sent straight from phones to data brokers
Last week at CES 2020, The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn sat down with OnePlus CEO Pete Lau on The Vergecast for his first official podcast appearance.
OnePlus debuted a new concept phone, the OnePlus Concept One McLaren Edition, at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, so Lau came on the show to discuss what the design of the phone means for the future of the OnePlus smartphone line as well as his thoughts on newer technologies in the mobile world, like 5G and folding phones.
In the interview, Lau says OnePlus has looked into foldable screens, but the company believes that the upside of foldable tech is “outweighed by the shortcomings or the disadvantages of the current state of the technology.”
Lau is not a native English...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Microsoft is patching a serious flaw in various versions of Windows today after the National Security Agency (NSA) discovered and reported a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s handling of certificate and cryptographic messaging functions in Windows. The flaw, which hasn’t been marked critical by Microsoft, could allow attackers to spoof the digital signature tied to pieces of software, allowing unsigned and malicious code to masquerade as legitimate software.
The bug is a problem for environments that rely on digital certificates to validate the software that machines run, a potentially far-reaching security issue if left unpatched. The NSA reported the flaw to Microsoft recently, and it’s recommending that enterprises patch it...
Mercedes-Benz has debuted the Marco Polo camper van that can be controlled by a smartphone at the 2020 Caravan, Motor, and Tourism exhibition.
The system — called the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Control (MBAC) interface — can control different parts of the living areas, such as the lighting and heating. It will come standard on the Marco Polo van by spring 2020.
"Connectivity is an important component of our product strategy which we have been intensively pursuing over the course of the past two years in the motor home segment," head of marketing and sales at MercedesBenz Vans Klaus Maier said in a statement.
The MBAC is not the only new piece of technology that will be integrated into the van: Marco Polo will also include a touchscreen in the cockpit that has similar functions to the MBAC. And the automaker's signature app — the Mercedes me connect — can also be paired with the Sprinter van for different uses, such as geofencing and GPS viewing.
"With this, we can offer camping fans a completely new level of comfort and live up to our aspiration of being the innovative leader in the segment," Maier continued.
Keep scrolling to see inside the Marco Polo that brings a tech-forward angle to #VanLife:
Source: Mercedes-Benz
Google announced today that it is buying AppSheet, an eight-year-old no-code mobile-application-building platform. The company had raised more than $17 million on a $60 million valuation, according to PitchBook data. The companies did not share the purchase price.
With AppSheet, Google gets a simple way for companies to build mobile apps without having to write a line of code. It works by pulling data from a spreadsheet, database or form, and using the field or column names as the basis for building an app.
It is integrated with Google Cloud already integrating with Google Sheets and Google Forms, but also works with other tools, including AWS DynamoDB, Salesforce, Office 365, Box and others. Google says it will continue to support these other platforms, even after the deal closes.
As Amit Zavery wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition, it’s about giving everyone a chance to build mobile applications, even companies lacking traditional developer resources to build a mobile presence. “This acquisition helps enterprises empower millions of citizen developers to more easily create and extend applications without the need for professional coding skills,” he wrote.
In a story we hear repeatedly from startup founders, Praveen Seshadri, co-founder and CEO at AppSheet, sees an opportunity to expand his platform and market reach under Google in ways he couldn’t as an independent company.
“There is great potential to leverage and integrate more deeply with many of Google’s amazing assets like G Suite and Android to improve the functionality, scale, and performance of AppSheet. Moving forward, we expect to combine AppSheet’s core strengths with Google Cloud’s deep industry expertise in verticals like financial services, retail, and media and entertainment,” he wrote.
Google sees this acquisition as extending its development philosophy with no-code working alongside workflow automation, application integration and API management.
No code tools like AppSheet are not going to replace sophisticated development environments, but they will give companies that might not otherwise have a mobile app the ability to put something decent out there.
Google announced in December of 2019 that it will soon require that third-party applications support OAuth 2.0 as a connection method for access to G Suite data. In June 2020 Google will begin denying access to users that attempt to login to less secure apps (LSAs). The company defines LSAs as applications that access your Google account with only a username and password.
Things have gotten worse and worse for Amazon's Ring over the past several months. Once just the pusher of a snitch app that allowed city residents to engage in racial profiling from the comfort of their homes, Ring is now synonymous with poor security practices and questionable "partnerships" with hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the nation.
Ring owners recently discovered how easily their cameras could be hijacked by assholes with no moral compass and too much time on their hands. Using credentials harvested from security breaches, online forum members took control of people's cameras to entertain a podcast audience who listened along as hijackers verbally abused Ring owners and their children.
Ring is now being sued for selling such an easily-compromised product. Ring's response to the original reports of hijackings was to blame customers for not taking their own security more seriously. Ring does recommend two-factor authentication but that's about all it does. It does not inform users when login attempts are made from unrecognized IP addresses or devices, and does not put the system on lockdown after a certain number of failed attempts are made.
Yes, users should use strong passwords (and not reuse passwords), but blaming customers for engaging in behavior most customers will engage in is unproductive. Instead of making two-factor authentication a requirement before deployment, Ring has just repeatedly pointed to its prior statements about its "encouragement" of 2FA -- an "encouragement" that is mostly comprised of defensive statements issued in response to another negative news cycle.
Since it can't keep blaming its millions of customers for its own failings, Ring is taking a very, very small step in the direction of actually taking its customers' security seriously. [Please hold your tepid applause until the end of the announcement.]
Ring has announced that it is adding a new privacy dashboard to its mobile apps that will let Ring owners manage their connected devices, third-party services, and whether local police partnered with Ring can make requests to access video from the Ring cameras on the account. The company says that other privacy and security settings will be added to the dashboard in the future. This new Control Center will be available in the iOS and Android versions of the Ring app later this month.
It's barely enough to make any one feel whelmed, much less overly so. There are two small additions that put this ahead of what Ring offered prior to the newsworthy camera hijackings. First, the app will allow users to see who's logged in at any given time and logout unrecognized IP addresses or locations from within the app.
The second addition finally puts some (baby) teeth into Ring's 2FA recommendation:
[R]ing is continuing to inform its customers of the importance of two-factor authentication on their accounts and will be making it an “opt-out” thing for new account setups, as opposed to the opt-in setup it currently is.
Swell. So that's kind of… fixed. I guess. Now Ring just needs to work on all the other problematic things about itself, like the fact that it's still not going to notify users when new IP addresses, devices, or locations attempt to access their cameras. And it's not going to stop using cop shops as Ring marketing street teams. And for all of its insistence footage is never handed over to cops without the proper paperwork, it still deals from the bottom of the deck by claiming end users own all their footage even as it's handing this footage to law enforcement without the end user's permission or involvement.
Ring has a lot to fix if it's ever going to make its way out of the PR pit it's dug for itself. This is something, but it's just barely something. It's not enough. And it says Ring still isn't serious about protecting its customers -- not from law enforcement and not from malicious idiots who've found a new IoT toy to play with.
Photography by Becca Farsace / The Verge
CES 2020 was a boring year for laptops — at least, it was a boring year for laptops that will be real products that you can actually buy in 2020. The upgrades were incremental at best, and even the more interesting changes are reliant on unproven technology, like AMD’s new processors and 5G internet.
But despite the fact that the upcoming wave of 2020 laptops so far looks like it’s been upgraded even more incrementally than ever before, all is not lost. Among the minor spec boosts, CES 2020 also offered the first glimmers of what might come next for portable computers, with new screen technologies, wild new designs, and 5G modems. Those trends are important for the future of laptops, but we’re not quite in that future just yet.
CES 2020...
Android users in Europe will see something unusual when setting up their new phones for the first time: the option to pick a default search engine that isn't Google.
Google will in early 2020 start offering Android users alternatives to its own search engine in the form of a choice screen that will appear on their phones.
That's thanks to antitrust action by Europe's competition watchdog, which found the search firm behaved illegally to boost its dominance in search and gave handed it a record $5 billion fine.
Now Google has released the list of which search engines will appear as an option on users' choice screens when they're setting up new phones. The choice screen will only apply to 31 European countries, and there are different search engine options offered in each country.
The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is a major winner, and will appear on the choice screen for every European country on Google's list.
Here's what the choice screen will look like:
Google held an auction to comply with EU law, whereby alternative search engines could submit bids to appear on the choice screen.
Business Insider understands the auction was developed with Europe's competition watchdog, and that Google will rerun it every three months, giving alternative search engines the chance to review their bids.
Bing – the search engine developed by Google's longtime rival Microsoft – was only chosen to appear on the choice screens of UK Android phone users.
DuckDuckGo successfully bid to appear on the choice screens of users in all 31 countries, as did Info.com, a search engine developed by InfoSpace.
Founded in 2008 in the US, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that prioritizes user privacy, sporting the tagline "Privacy, simplified." It eschews personalized search results and doesn't profile its users, generally setting itself up as a privacy-focused alternative to data-hungry Google Search.
DuckDuckGo is popular with the pro-privacy crowd, but it's still dwarfed by Google. According to NetMarketShare, DuckDuckGo's share of the search engine market stands at 0.31%, compared to Google's 82.5%.
Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is a known fan of DuckDuckGo, having tweeted in November that he uses DuckDuckGo as his "default" search engine.
A DuckDuckGo spokesperson told Business Insider that, while the company agrees with the idea of users choosing their preferred search engine, it does not think Google's auction served to maximize users' choices.
"We believe a search preference menu is an excellent way to meaningfully increase consumer choice if designed properly," he said. "Our own research has reinforced this point and we look forward to the day when Android users in Europe will have the opportunity to easily make DuckDuckGo their default search engine while setting up their phones.
"However, we still believe a pay-to-play auction with only 4 slots isn't right because it means consumers won't get all the choices they deserve and Google will profit at the expense of the competition."
A Google spokesman declined to provide comment, instead directing BI to a descriptive article about the topic on its website.
Join the conversation about this story »
It's no secret that major streaming services aren't always popular with artists.
Taylor Swift famously pulled her entire catalog from Spotify in 2014, launching a three-year dispute over royalties. Coldplay withheld its "A Head Full of Dreams" album a year later because Spotify refused to make it available to paying subscribers only. And Jay-Z yanked most of his discography from Spotify in favor of his own streaming service, Tidal, in 2017 (although his albums never left Apple Music).
All of these artists have since reconciled with Spotify — at least enough to make their music available on the platform — Jay-Z as recently as last month.
But some independent performers still feel they're not being fairly compensated by streaming services. Their argument, though multifaceted, boils down to the system Spotify and most other leading streaming services like Apple Music use to pay artists: It's called pro rata.
Under the pro rata system, streaming services take all the money generated from listeners, total it up, then divide it proportionally by listening time. This potentially leaves less well-known artists with a smaller piece of the revenue pie than they would have if they were paid on digital downloads.
"If you're a big artist, you're vastly overpaid," said George Howard, a professor of music business at the Berklee College of Music. "The internet was supposed to be the great democratizer, but all it's done is consolidate."
Smaller artists often favor a user-centric system that would result in more linear pay based on exactly what each user is listening to.
The user-centric system means that if one user pays $9.99 a month for Spotify Premium but only listens to independent cellist Zoë Keating, that user's $9.99 would be paid exclusively to Keating.
"These companies are taking power away from listeners, because listeners don't have any say where their money goes," Keating told Business Insider. "If you only listen to me, I should get all the percentage of the money you spend on music."
Streaming services pay artists a few different types of royalties for their music, but the most significant payout comes from sound recording royalties, the royalties paid to the owner of the copyright on the recording of a song.
Sound recording royalties are about four times higher than royalties paid to the rights holder of the composition, for instance, Howard said. (Some artists hold all of their rights.)
For independent artists like Keating who aren't signed to a record label, that money ideally gets paid directly to her. But Keating uses a distributor to make sure her music is accessible on a wide range of services, so that distributor is also entitled to a portion of her royalties.
Keating uses CD Baby, which collects 9% of her monthly royalties, and RouteNote, which takes $30 per album per year.
That left her with an average income of $1,693.18 per month from streaming royalties from January to September in 2019, according to data Keating provided exclusively to Business Insider.
Keating was streamed a total of 2,022,411 times on Spotify during that time period, and earned an average of $759.34 per month from the company. She also racked up 495,460 total streams on Apple Music for an average monthly earning of $642.16.
On average from January to September, Keating earned about $0.003 per stream from Spotify, and about $0.012 per stream from Apple Music.
In September, for instance, Keating's music was streamed about 206,000 times on Spotify. That month, she was paid $753.26 by Spotify, or $0.004 per stream under the pro rata system.
Earnings per stream differ artist to artist and month to month when services pay pro rata. These numbers are only representative of Keating's earnings.
Spotify royalties account for the most significant portion of Keating's monthly streaming revenue. Almost 45% of her streaming income each month comes from Spotify. Another 38% comes from Apple Music, about 8% comes from Pandora, and Amazon Music generates about 6%.
Keating's music is available on international streaming services like Anghami and Kanjian Music as well as less widely used platforms like Tidal, but Apple Music and Spotify alone make up more than 80% of her monthly streaming income.
Since Keating plays instrumental music, she said she earns the vast majority of her income from synchronization licensing when her songs are used in movies or TV shows, not from streaming royalties.
Keating also relies on album sales, merchandise, and live shows to earn money from her music.
Back when most people listened to music by purchasing individual songs on iTunes, Keating said she was able to secure a mortgage on her house based on her iTunes royalties alone.
"I used to joke that iTunes paid the mortgage, except it wasn't a joke," she said. "When my husband and I bought our house in California we were both self-employed, and we were able to show the monthly revenue royalties that I got from iTunes to show the bank that I was making money from Apple."
Music streaming isn't going away, nor should it, but streaming services could do more to support the artists that prop them up, Keating said, even if they choose to stick with the pro rata system.
Streaming platforms could allow for artists to link out to their websites or ticket sales, or even encourage listeners to buy albums to contribute to artist Patreons.
"We need artists to earn a living," Keating said. "I've seen from my data that ... sales have decreased as streaming has gone up."
Additional reporting from Walt Hickey.
Send your tips or questions about music streaming to this reporter at ameyers@businessinsider.com.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns explains why country music is universal
Just weeks after PayPal acquired popular coupon-finding browser extension Honey in November 2019 for $4 billion, Amazon shoppers were served a notification that the extension was a security risk. The security warning was first spotted by Politico editor Ryan Hutchins, and the timing of the message, as a Wired report points out, is suspect. Honey has been compatible with Amazon for years, so why was the retailer suddenly labeling it as malware at the height of holiday shopping season?
A free extension for browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, Honey scours the web for coupon codes and automatically applies them to shoppers’ orders. It also tracks prices for individual items which is especially helpful for sites like Amazon, where...
Image: 1More
Whether it’s Audio-Technica, 1More, Panasonic, or Klipsch, at times, it felt like every headphone manufacturer at CES 2020 had a pair of wireless earbuds to announce. It’s not been long since most of these companies were getting into true wireless in the first place, but many of this year’s models arrived with a new feature: active noise cancellation, which is quickly becoming impossible to leave out of a pair of premium earbuds, just months after Apple added the feature to its true wireless lineup with the AirPods Pro.
At CES this year, there were over half a dozen companies with active noise-canceling headphones to show off. From Audio-Technica’s ATH-ANC300TW to Nuheara’s IQbuds2 Max, they all have pretty awful names but are set to...
Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
In a letter to lawmakers about its security practices, Amazon’s Ring admitted that, over the past four years, it has fired four employees for abusing access to user video data (via CNET).
Ring’s letter was sent to five senators on Monday, in response to a letter they sent to Ring in November with questions about the company’s security practices.
Here is what the company said:
Over the last four years, Ring has received four complaints or inquiries regarding a team member’s access to Ring video data. Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions. In each instance, once Ring was made aware of the alleged...
Customer demands are forcing vendors to interoperate, creating hubs for multichannel experiences.
Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images
We lost the excellent Virgin America airline a few years back, and the virtual cellular network that owes its name to Sir Richard Branson may soon be on its way out too. Sprint announced today that it’s going to be shutting down Virgin Mobile USA starting on February 2nd, transferring existing customers to Boost Mobile instead.
Apparently, the brand will go back to its original owner, Virgin Group, which is trying to decide whether it wants to relaunch a new iteration of Virgin Mobile in the US.
Here’s how a Virgin Mobile rep explained it to us:
As part of the remedy process laid out by the Department of Justice for the merger of Sprint and T Mobile, Sprint is transferring its pre-pay mobile brands to Dish. To facilitate this move...
One day soon, you may walk into an airport, stand shoulder to shoulder with your fellow passengers, and gaze up with them at the same single screen to receive your personal trip information. In fact, if you fly through Detroit later this year, you could actually try this technology because Delta just announced at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show that it plans to test a beta version of the idea at the city’s Metropolitan Airport.
Unlike older multiview technologies, which only allow a couple people to view different things on the same screen, Delta says nearly 100 travelers will be able to look at this particular screen at the same time. The company expects to be able to serve up each person “personalized content tailored to their...
On Monday evening, SpaceX, the rocket company founded by tech mogul Elon Musk, blasted a fresh batch of Starlink internet satellites into orbit. The mission added 60 new versions of the spacecraft to a network of 120 already circling Earth — a total of 180 launched into space.
Though several experimental Starlink satellites launched in May 2019 have stopped working, SpaceX now manages more private space satellites than any company in the world, according to Ars Technica. (About 2,200 functional spacecraft orbit Earth today.)
SpaceX is just getting started, though: The company plans to launch 60 more satellites about every two weeks in 2020, perhaps ramping up missions to get as many as 42,000 flown before the end of the decade. The network should boot up after several hundred are in space, ostensibly getting early adopters online later this year.
Yet it remains an open question how, exactly, anyone will connect to SpaceX's next-generation satellite internet network.
During a press call earlier this year, Musk described a computer-powered antenna terminal that will look like "a small- to medium-size pizza."
On Tuesday, Musk tweeted a colorful new description of a terminal.
"Looks like a thin, flat, round UFO on a stick. Starlink Terminal has motors to self-adjust optimal angle to view sky. Instructions are simply:
- Plug in socket
- Point at sky
These instructions work in either order. No training required."
Musk uploaded no picture of a Starlink terminal, though he's tweeted using a prototype that's reportedly at his home in Los Angeles.
Musk previously said Starlink terminal antennas will be "electronically steered," allowing one can switch connections from one satellite flying out of view to one coming into view "in less than a millisecond."
The addition of a steering motor, according to Musk's tweet, suggests electronic switching alone is not be enough to maintain a reliable connection to satellites in typical use cases.
Musk said in 2015 that SpaceX's terminals (before they earned the name Starlink) would cost $100 to $300 each. However, the cheapest any manufacturer is selling such devices today is around $1,000, according to industry analyst Tim Ferrar. As with Starlink satellites themselves, SpaceX is designing and manufacturing the terminals, which president and COO Gwynne Shotwell told reporters in October is no trivial task.
"This is very different business for SpaceX," she said, according to Space News. "It's leveraging space technology but it's a consumer business."
Starlink is not alone in the push to launch megaconstellations of internet-providing satellites, either. Iridium is beefing up its network, as is OneWeb. Larger tech powerhouses like Amazon, and possibly Apple, are also looking to establish their own fleets.
Though these fleets could bathe Earth in unprecedentedly fast, pervasive, and low-cost internet, not everyone has taken a liking to them.
Astronomers have repeatedly and loudly voiced their complaints about the brightness of the satellites in the night sky (which have prompted many reports of UFOs). SpaceX, to its credit, has coated the bottom, Earth-facing side of its new Starlink satellites with a substance to make it less shiny, though the move is experimental at this point.
There are also concerns about space junk: Launching so many satellites will increase the risk of orbital collisions and debris fields. SpaceX says its Starlink satellites use a small krypton-ion engine to move around and autonomously dodge high-speed threats, though a communications error led to a close call with a European satellite in September.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Why Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are in an epic feud that's lasted years
Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The Communication Workers of America (CWA), one of the largest unions in the US formed initially by telecom workers, has launched a new campaign to help unionize the game and technology industries. Called The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), the initiative is working with grassroots organizing efforts around the US and in Canada to improve working conditions among video game developers and tech workers. The news was first reported on Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.
For years, game developers have complained of brutal working hours, including expected and even planned-for periods of extreme overwork known as crunch. Workers in the industry have also suffered from a culture and economic structure in the game industry that...
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets made some bold predictions for how Google could catch up to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in the cloud-computing businesses. But Wall Street should take note: RBC's projections would require Google to spend big.
The equity-research firm in its 2020 software outlook report said Google could acquire Salesforce to leapfrog Microsoft in the cloud market in a deal that it projects to be valued at as much as $250 billion — a premium of some 70% of its market cap at the time of writing. In such a case, RBC expects Google would have to leverage debt to make it work.
RBC also predicted in the report that Google could acquire the software company Nutanix to bolster its efforts in hybrid cloud and pay as much as $10.1 billion, well over the company's current market cap of about $6.3 billion.
Separately, but on a related note, RBC projected that Google could spin out its entire cloud business into a separate company with a valuation of as much as $226 billion.
The predictions come just as Goldman Sachs reported a slight decline in Google Cloud usage, according to a survey of 100 technology executives from Global 2000 companies.
Google is by far the No. 3 cloud player. Gartner most recently estimated AWS had a 47.8% market share in 2018, compared with Microsoft's 15.5% and Google's 4%. But RBC analysts see potential for the business after Google earlier this year hired Thomas Kurian as the new CEO of Google Cloud.
"Bottom line is that Google Cloud Platform is a clear No. 3 player in the public cloud, significantly trailing both AWS and Azure by annualized revenue market share," the note said. "That said ... Google has been making an aggressive push both with respect to talent acquisition, technology partnerships and M&A to sharpen its strategic enterprise value proposition."
Google could acquire Salesforce and reach its goal to become the No. 2 cloud player by 2023, RBC said.
According to a source who spoke with Business Insider in August, Kurian told employees Google Cloud has a five-year goal to become "at least the No. 2 cloud."
"We don't see a viable organic way to get there," the RBC note said. However, acquiring Salesforce would allow Google to "instantly jump" to the No. 2 spot behind Amazon, displacing Microsoft, RBC said.
Observers have speculated since he took the job that Kurian could be looking to make megadeals to help Google leapfrog closer to cloud supremacy.
Just last week, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider he expected Kurian to lead Google to major acquisitions, including potential deals to buy publicly traded entities, like the cloud-based finance and human-resource firm Workday (valued at some $37 billion at the time of writing), the cybersecurity provider Palo Alto Networks ($23 billion), the cloud-software company ServiceNow ($53 billion), and the data-analytics company Splunk ($23 billion).
RBC also predicted Google would spin out its cloud business into what would be the third most valuable enterprise-technology company behind Microsoft and Amazon.
RBC said a spinout was possible because Google early this year hired Kurian and now "GCP has a clear leader and proven senior executive with Wall Street familiarity steering the proverbial ship," citing Kurian's 20-year tenure at Oracle before coming to the search giant.
The firm also said a separation is more likely because of increasing antitrust scrutiny of Google and the recent changing of the guard at Alphabet, in which Larry Page stepped down as Alphabet CEO and Google CEO Sundar Pichai took over, suggesting "a willingness for the company to optimize operationally across business units."
Amazon Web Services often gets the spotlight when it comes to discussion about cloud spinouts, but RBC said a Google Cloud Platform spinout was more likely. AWS on Tuesday confirmed to Business Insider it has replaced its chief financial officer, a role that would be important in the event of a spinout.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Clinical psychologists debunk 25 of the most common myths about mental health and therapy
Zoom’s secure video conferencing solutions help to improve how healthcare organizations are able to compliantly visit with and treat patients. The Zoom app integration with Epic provides a modern, simplified telehealth process and improves the experience for patients and providers.
Epic is one of the largest purveyors of electronic health records (EHR) technology in the world. With the Epic app for Zoom Meetings, available on Epic’s App Orchard and in the Zoom App Marketplace, providers and patients can easily launch Zoom Meetings right from Epic online health appointments. The app enables HIPAA/PIPEDA compliance through Zoom’s encryption of all audio, video, and screen sharing data. Additionally, the app does not and cannot access any personal health information (PHI), keeping patient data secure.
Communicating face-to-face during an Epic visit over Zoom’s reliable video conferencing solution provides a more convenient and personalized experience for patients, physicians, and other healthcare professionals. This modern, video-first communications strategy further advances population wellness and health equity initiatives to ensure everyone has access to the care they need.
With the Zoom-Epic integration, physicians can:
For patients, this means they can:
Additionally, the Zoom platform offers video breakout rooms, screen sharing with co-annotation features, and other powerful tools, so providers and patients can team up for better health outcomes. These capabilities also enhance communications beyond the patient-provider encounter, enabling video collaboration for review boards, operational sessions, and other important meetings in your healthcare organization.
Dozens of healthcare organizations across the U.S. leverage Zoom for hundreds of Epic-based video visits every day. The Zoom-Epic integration has had a significant effect on the way Vanderbilt University Medical Center provides direct-to-patient care.
Vanderbilt transitioned from a homegrown EHR system to Epic in November 2017 to better enable ambulatory and inpatient care. But the integrated video component required for successful population wellness programs was a challenge.
“It used to be quite expensive to use Epic’s full video integration for telehealth,” said Amber Humphrey, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s director of telehealth. “Epic now allows health systems to bring their video vendor of choice, and we use Zoom because it provides that context-aware linking but with a much lighter video footprint.”
Humphrey added that clicking just a single button in Epic to launch a Zoom video meeting is helpful for providers and attending nurses, but it’s a difference-maker for patients.
“For a patient who’s not used to getting email invites, accepting them, and then joining, the Zoom-Epic video integration ensures they can access their appointment right from MyChart,” she said. “It’s so much less intimidating for them.”
Guthrie Clinic is a nonprofit integrated health system serving patients across an extensively 12-county service area in rural upstate New York and North-Central Pennsylvania. Guthrie uses Zoom to provide telehealth services to patients through direct Zoom-to-Zoom visits and the EpicCare Link platform.
“I have been very impressed with the way Zoom works with Epic,” said Jagmeet Singh, M.D., Nephrology, at Guthrie Clinic. “The quality of the video and the audio is very good, and it’s been a great experience so far.”
In combining Zoom’s easy-to-use and high-quality, scalable video connectivity with Epic’s strong focus on patient engagement and facilitating remote care, healthcare providers are enabling happy encounters for telehealth and other population wellness programs across the U.S.
To learn more about the Zoom-Epic integration or to further understand how Zoom is enabling healthcare organizations of the future, schedule a personalized demo with a Zoom product specialist today!
The post Seamless Face-to-Face Communication Between Patient & Provider Through Zoom and Epic appeared first on Zoom Blog.
Thirty years ago, Nintendo and Sega gave the world the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis, two consoles that defined a generation of video games and gamers.
Since their debuts in 1990 and 1989, respectively, those two devices have never left the popular imagination — as much for the games that they offered as the stories those games told. And now, at CES 2020, My Arcade has brought those consoles together in a beautiful synthesis: the Super Retro Champ, a handheld console that plays carts from the Genesis and the SNES. Behold, the magic of technology!
According to Gizmodo, the Super Retro Champ will top out at five hours of battery life — which is fine, and possibly enough for a satisfying on-the-go...
Earlier today, Lenovo announced the ThinkPad X1 Fold, a 13-inch tablet PC with a folding OLED screen and an Intel processor. But Intel doesn’t expect it to be a one-off. The chip giant has brought its own folding PC concept along to CES, with a view toward providing inspiration for an entirely new category of devices.
The prototype is called Horseshoe Bend, and the biggest difference between it and the X1 Fold is, well, it’s much bigger. The OLED display is 4:3 and 17.3 inches diagonal when unfolded, which means it feels much closer to a traditional laptop size when you fold it at an angle and use it on a desk. There’s also a Surface-style kickstand so you can make use of the full display size when paired with a wireless keyboard.
The surveillance is coming from inside the house.
In the past year, a series of reports have highlighted a troubling new trend in surveillance: hackers are hijacking cameras in people's homes to spy on them.
In other cases, scammers are making use of discreet hidden cameras to spy on people, using the footage for fraud or blackmail.
With the proliferation of smart home devices fitted with cameras — along with increasingly sophisticated hacks — the number of reports of hidden and hijacked cameras has spiked in recent months.
Here's a roundup of some of the most high-profile reports of scammers using hidden or hijacked cameras to record people in supposedly private settings in the past year.
SEE ALSO: Is your Airbnb host spying on you with a hidden camera? Use this simple trick to find out.
Airbnb tenants described finding hidden cameras in their rentals' bedrooms that were designed to look like phone chargers or alarm clocks.
While Airbnb's terms of service allow cameras in outdoor spaces and common areas, they don't allow them in bedrooms — Airbnb has said safety is a priority and that it will ban hosts who break its policies.
Source: The Atlantic
Hackers who stole users' passwords were able to hijack their Ring home security cameras several times in recent months.
One hacker took control of a camera in an 8-year-old's bedroom and harassed her using its microphone. Another woman said a hacker hijacked her camera and yelled at her dog to "wake the f--- up."
Amazon has insisted that the hacks were due to stolen passwords taken from other breaches, and that Amazon's own servers have not been compromised.
Source: Business Insider
Hackers used malware known as PsiXBot to take over unsuspecting victims' computers, turn on their webcam without their knowledge, and record sensitive video footage in order to blackmail them, according to cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.
The malware likely infected users' computers after they downloaded music or videos from unsecure sites, and is thought to have been installed on thousands of computers.
Source: Daily Mail
The iPhone bug was accidentally discovered by a 14-year-old in Arizona who was trying to call friends to play "Fortnite." It's a rare example of a client-side bug, presenting a vulnerability that anyone with an iPhone could exploit, without any hacking required.
Apple patched the bug shortly after it was reported.
Source: NBC
The FBI warned that internet-connected TVs give an opportunity for hardware companies and app developers to spy on users, as well as hackers who gain unauthorized access to their device.
"In a worst-case scenario, they can turn on your bedroom TV's camera and microphone and silently cyberstalk you," the FBI wrote.
Source: Business Insider
While card skimmers at payment stations aren't a new invention, this implementation was unique in that it paired the skimmer with a Bluetooth device, sending images to hackers in real-time instead of storing it on a drive for them to pick up later.
The Las Vegas police said they disabled the skimmer on the same day it was installed.
Source: KrebsOnSecurity
After students reported finding hidden cameras in their hotel rooms during a field trip, the Wisconsin Department of Justice opened an investigation, which is still pending.
Law enforcement is reportedly investigating past trips taken by the same school group, and the school in question responded by placing an unidentified staffer on leave.
Source: CBS
The spying reportedly spanned 10 cities across South Korea, and footage was live-streamed online for paying customers, according to police. More than 4,000 members subscribed to the videos and paid up to $44.95 per month.
Source: CNN
The woman reportedly told Secret Service officers that she was attending Trump's private club for an event that didn't exist. After her arrest, she was found to be carrying four cell phones, a hard drive and thumb drive installed with malware, and a gadget that uses radio frequency to detect hidden cameras.
Source: New York Times
This was the decade that brands like P&G and Nike took a stand on political and social issues while others like Burger King and KFC used humor to sell their products.
Business Insider has compiled 15 of the best ads from 2010 through 2019. Our method isn't scientific, but all are evergreen and have remained memorable months and years after they debuted. Here they are, in chronological order:
This Super Bowl ad by Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy promoted the brand's body wash by targeting female viewers and suggesting that it would help the men in their life smell better.
It became a viral sensation overnight, leading Old Spice to bring back the actor, Isaiah Mustafa, for a follow-up interactive campaign later in the year.
It has such lasting cultural cachet that Tide drew from the spot for its own 2018 Super Bowl ad.
Youtube Embed:
The "Share a Coke" campaign known worldwide got its start in Australia in 2011, when Coca-Cola personalized Coke bottles with the 150 most popular names in the country.
Over time, Coke made it possible to order custom bottles with nicknames and college logos.
Youtube Embed:
This 2011 Volkswagen Super Bowl ad by Deutsch set a precedent by becoming the first ad to be released before the Big Game — and remains the most-watched Super Bowl ad of all time.
It tapped into Star Wars fandom and told the story of a little boy who tries to channel the powers of Darth Vader without success, until he manages to make a VW Passat come to life with his father's remote start.
Youtube Embed:
This PSA features a medley of cartoon characters trying to get across a serious message in a light-hearted way: Loitering near train tracks can be fatal.
The song has garnered 185 million YouTube views since it debuted in 2012.
Youtube Embed:
Oreo set the standard for what quickly came to be known as real-time marketing with its witty tweet timed with the third-quarter blackout during the 2013 Super Bowl final.
The tweet — "Power out? No Problem. You can still dunk in the dark" — set off a gold rush among brands looking to replicate Oreo's success around big cultural moments, and continues to be considered of the best examples of quick creative thinking on social media.
Under Armour has been a challenger brand to Nike and Adidas, a status it also embraced in its campaign "I will what I want." The first spot featured Misty Copeland, the first black woman to be promoted to principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater's history, and promoted the idea that hard work is the key to silencing naysayers and achieving your goals.
Youtube Embed:
British retailer John Lewis has become known for its yearly Christmas ads, and this tear-jerker starring a penguin called Monty who longs for love is one of its biggest hits.
The cutesy ad ends with Monty's best friend, a little boy named Sam, presenting him with a penguin friend on Christmas Day.
Youtube Embed:
The 2015 "Like a Girl" ad for Always that promoted gender equality was one of Procter & Gamble's first to champion social causes.
The campaign by agency Leo Burnett put a positive spin on the insult "like a girl" and swept a series of awards, from a Grand Clio and a Cannes Grand Prix, to a Black Pencil and White Pencil at D&AD as well as an Emmy.
Youtube Embed:
It's hard to turn a marketing catchphrase into a cultural phenomenon, but Bud Light did it twice, with Wassup, then Dilly Dilly.
The series of ads created by Wieden+Kennedy turned a garbled, non-sensical phrase into a recognizable phrase that went viral, and the brand continues to milk it.
Youtube Embed:
Asset manager State Street and advertising agency McCann New York installed the bronze statue in New York's financial district to call attention to the lack of gender diversity in boardrooms. It became an overnight sensation and cultural icon almost instantly, picking up a bunch of awards on the Cannes ad festival's first day.
Controversy followed after State Street was forced to pay $5 million for allegedly underpaying women and minorities, though.
This Amazon Super Bowl ad from 2018 envisions a world where Alexa loses her voice, and is replaced by some well-known voices.
The star-studded 90-second spot featuring a host of celebrities including Rebel Wilson, Gordon Ramsay, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and even Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.
Youtube Embed:
A string of marketers have taken stands on hot-button issues in recent years, but none of them succeeded like Nike.
The brand featured former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled to protest racial injustice during the national anthem before NFL games, in the 30th anniversary celebration of its "Just Do It" campaign.
The ad went on to win several awards and also helped increase the brand's market value by $6 billion.
When KFC's UK restaurants ran out of chicken in February 2018, the brand converted the embarrassing situation into a hilarious marketing stunt that showed it had a sense of humor.
KFC and its ad agency Mother took out a full-page ad in the newspaper Metro, jumbling its initials to respond to its product shortage with a KFC bucket that read "FCK."
Whether it's roasting celebrities on Twitter or hacking a new technology to throw shade at a competitor, Burger King regularly turns heads with its ads.
But "Whopper Detour" — where Burger King used geofencing around McDonald's restaurants to get people to download its app — is one of its most successful campaigns to date.
The campaign drove more than 1.5 million app downloads and won a Grand Prix.
Youtube Embed:
Gillette courted controversy with its ad that challenged toxic masculinity in the midst of the #MeToo. But it was a risk worth taking for the Procter & Gamble shaving brand to try to connect with younger generations and show it's not afraid to have an opinion.
Youtube Embed:
Slack has been under pressure this year from the rival Microsoft Teams chat app.
That's expected to continue into 2020, and it will be more difficult for $12 billion Slack to compete with Teams going forward, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush. In a note to clients, he even invoked a "Game of Thrones" reference: For Slack, he says, "winter is coming."
In the last year, Microsoft Teams has experienced tremendous growth: The company said Teams reached 20 million daily active users in November. Slack, meanwhile, said in October that it had 12 million daily active users. It was also careful to highlight figures that suggest that those users are highly-engaged with the app.
With Microsoft Teams so successful in midsize and larger businesses — in no small part because it's bundled with some versions of the very popular Office 365 productivity suite — it'll be harder than ever for Slack to pick up new users, in Ives' estimation.
"For Slack the focus on [small businesses] will be core, and trying to balance the market opportunity in Redmond's turf will be tricky," Ives told Business Insider in an email.
Ives has argued this before, saying that given Microsoft's stronghold in the workplace, Slack's growth potential may not be as large as it may have seemed in the days when it was one of the hottest privately-held startups around.
While Slack's freemium model, where users start on a free plan and then have the option to pay for business-grade features and functionality, has earned it the devotion of many smaller businesses and teams — but it's apparently been slower going in cracking the lucrative market for larger customers, where Microsoft has a particular specialty.
Indeed, Microsoft Office, and the Office 365 cloud-based variant, are the standard way of getting work done at many companies around the world. That, in turn, means that Slack is going to have to make a compelling case why customers should ditch Teams, which they may already get included in Office 365, and go through the cost and effort of moving to Slack.
To that end, Ives previously wrote that "Only 10% to 15% of the core Microsoft enterprise customer base is potentially 'in play' for Slack."
Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, meanwhile, has been vocal about Microsoft's competitive stance. On his company's last earnings call, Butterfield said Teams user growth isn't organic and users are being forced into using it after older Microsoft products, such as Skype for Business, are deprecated. He also previously suggested that Microsoft uses unsportsmanlike tactics to compete in the workplace productivity space.
Regardless of the reasoning, Ives says that Microsoft Teams is only going to grow from here, and it'll get that much harder for Slack to compete.
"Slack is a great product but competitive headwinds are on the horizon in our opinion and new customer growth is going to be challenging," Ives said.
Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
Join the conversation about this story »
ProtonMail
ProtonMail just launched an encrypted calendar beta to let users manage their schedules privately. It’s the latest tool from a company known for its encrypted email services, and could help users who are looking to wean themselves off Google.
The tool, called ProtonCalendar, is currently available for all users with a paid ProtonMail plan. In the future, the company plans to launch the calendar for all users. “We believe everyone has the right to plan dinner with friends without announcing to Google who will attend,” the company writes in a blog post.
Google has faced growing scrutiny over how it collects and stores user data. This year, fifty state attorneys general opened an antitrust probe into the tech giant, then expanded it to...
Tech banker Aryeh Bourkoff has issued an outlook that startups eyeing the public markets should take note of: the bar has been raised.
Fast-growing but money-losing companies like Uber and Lyft have seen their share prices tank after IPOs this year. And WeWork's planned IPO failed entirely.
The LionTree founder and renowned tech, media, and telecom banker said in his annual letter to staff that a "culture clash" has emerged "between the 'achieve-the-impossible' ethos of the private markets and the fundamental frameworks of the public markets who want to see an eventual path to profitability."
Despite the disconnect, Bourkoff said the IPO market is still open for startups, particularly for private equity-driven companies and exits before the election. During an election season, IPOs historically slow as investors wait to see how results might impact businesses and industries.
The 2019 IPO upheaval is not "necessarily a bad thing," Bourkoff wrote, because it creates "a higher bar" for companies looking to go public.
Generally, public investors are looking for "a more grounded approach to valuation," one based on fundamentals and intrinsic value, rather than "growth at all costs." Bourkoff wrote that investors are looking for "line-of-sight to profitability and free cash flow generation."
Startups seeking to achieve those characteristics benefit from a stronger business model and governance. Those were two sore spots for companies like WeWork, whose IPO the market rejected before it even happened.
Because of the public-private market disconnect, Bourkoff said he expects an increase in companies choosing private exits and sales over IPOs.
In his letter, the banker also touched on how larger companies that survived startup competition will evolve, Business Insider reported.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.
It's become an annual tradition for former US President Barack Obama to release a list of his favorite books of the year.
He posted his top reads from 2019 to Twitter on Saturday, listing a diverse range of 19 titles such as Hilary Mantel's novel about Thomas Cromwell, "Wolf Hall," and Sally Rooney's popular novel "Normal People." The titles also include biographies, histories, and essays.
One book that perhaps surprisingly made Obama's list was the nonfiction title "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by the Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.
As we wind down 2019, I wanted to share with you my annual list of favorites that made the last year a little brighter. We’ll start with books today — movies and music coming soon. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. pic.twitter.com/l5qTGkAPok
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 28, 2019
Zuboff's work was published in 2018 but is a timely exploration of the way companies increasingly rely on the surveillance of users' behavior to inform and enhance their business models.
Obama's promotion of the book is interesting because, as the journalist Avi Asher-Schapiro noted, the book is critical of the Obama administration's embrace of the very companies that benefit from this new way of making money, specifically Google.
Zuboff argued that Google had evolved from a simple search engine into a sprawling behemoth whose core mission had become to make a grab for all data.
Zuboff wrote in one section of the book that "a revolving door of personnel who migrated between Google and the Obama administration" helped the search giant deflect political scrutiny. The company was, she argued, able to help shape US policy in a way that allowed it to continue hoovering up people's data.
Zuboff wasn't the first to observe the possible negative consequences of Google's proximity to the Obama White House.
The Intercept reported in 2016 that Google representatives attended meetings at the White House more than once a week and that some 250 people had passed through the revolving door between the administration and the company. The former Google chairman Eric Schmidt was a substantial donor to Obama's campaign, while the Obama-era US chief technology officer Megan Smith was a former Googler, as was her deputy, Andrew McLaughlin.
Zuboff acknowledged the inclusion of her book on Obama's list, writing on Twitter: "Thank you, @BarackObama. I am honored to see #TheAgeofSurveillanceCapitalism on your 2019 list. We need your support in this new fight for a human future. This is our big work now."
Join the conversation about this story »
Whether by being racist, sexist, or tone deaf, plenty of prominent brands from Pepsi to Peloton ended up with egg on their faces this decade.
Here are some of the most cringeworthy ads from 2010 to 2019, in chronological order. Check out the decade's best ads here.
This 2010 ad was a gamble by Nike to turn the attention away from the scandal around the disgraced golfer's private life and focus on his return to the sport.
The black-and-white spot features a silent Woods staring into the camera hearing his late father's voice asking him what he learned, with the message appearing to be that he has learned from his mistakes and is now getting back to golf.
Business Insider's Jim Edwards (then at CBS News) called it "the worst commercial ever."
Youtube Embed:
Burger King wasn't always the savvy marketer it is today. This 2012 ad for its chicken snack wraps with Mary J. Blige magically appearing and belting out the joy of crispy chicken was ridiculed for perpetuating racial stereotypes about African-Americans. Burger King pulled it and apologize to Blige, who said she didn't know how the commercial would be edited.
Youtube Embed:
Hyundai had a foot-in-mouth moment in 2013 when it used a man's failed suicide attempt to show that its sedan does not produce harmful emissions.
The car company got flak for trivializing suicide and showed the perils of brands trying to use social issues in their marketing.
Youtube Embed:
Body positivity became a prominent theme in the past decade, but apparently Victoria's Secret didn't get the memo.
The lingerie company sparked outrage with this 2014 UK campaign featuring the slogan "The perfect 'body'" that inspired the hashtag #iamperfect on Twitter — and even a petition. The retailer responded by changing the slogan to "A Body For Every Body."
This well-intentioned yet morbid Super Bowl ad from 2015 by Nationwide featured a young boy talking about his life — only to reveal that he had been dead all along and would never experience the things he was talking about.
Immediate backlash followed, and company tried to explain that the ad was meant "to start a conversation, not sell insurance."
An ad meant to invoke feelings of a spontaneous, fun night out with friends became one of Bud Light's biggest gaffes as it led to concerns about the brand promoting alcohol-fueled rape culture with messages on beer bottles calling Bud Light "the perfect beer for removing no from your vocabulary for the night." Bud Light ended up apologizing and pulling the entire campaign.
Starbucks' "#racetogether" effort encouraged its employees to write the hashtag on customers' cups to inspire conversation about race.
The Internet didn't react kindly, and Starbucks acknowledged that "there has been criticism" surrounding the initiative, ending it a few days after it began.
Protein World's outdoor ads in the UK featuring a bikini-clad woman were immediately slammed for being "sexist," "fat-shaming,"and promoting an unrealistic image of women's bodies.
Many of the ads were defaced and more than 71,000 people signed a Change.org petition calling on Protein World to remove them. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority launched an investigation. Although the campaign was deemed "not offensive," it was later banned by London Mayor Sadiq Khan for its "unrealistic" depiction of women.
Pepsi's protest-themed Kendall Jenner ad may have intended to promote the idea that similar tastes bring people together when it showed Jenner leaving work to join a protest, but critics widely perceived it as using the Black Lives Matter movement for profit.
Not only was the ad a nightmare for the brand, it caused other marketers to became wary of jumping on hot-button issues and was used by ad agencies to make the case against taking advertising in-house.
The idea behind Nivea's "White is Purity" campaign was to tout Nivea's antiperspirant as non-staining, but someone clearly didn't think through the racist implications. Making things worse, the ad ran only in the Middle East.
Not only was the ad slammed online for being racist, but was also hijacked by white supremacists. Nivea quickly apologized.
Dove prompted outrage in 2017 when it posted a 3-second Facebook ad showing a black woman removing her top to reveal a white woman underneath. The clip was reminiscent of racist soap ads of years past and dented Dove's longstanding effort to promote itself as pro-women.
The Unilever brand removed the clip and apologized, saying on Twitter that the post had "missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully." Since then, it's instituted a new process for creating and evaluating ad creative.
H&M landed in hot water in 2018 with an ad with a black child wearing a hoodie bearing the slogan "coolest monkey in the jungle."
People slammed the company on social media. Singer The Weeknd cut his ties with the brand. H&M later apologized.
Heineken may have intended to tout its light beer with the tagline "Lighter Is Better," but the ads came across as racist to many, including Chance the Rapper, and were eventually pulled.
Tweet Embed:
The luxury brand sparked online furor with a marketing campaign aimed at China that was ridden with ethnic stereotypes, with one ad showing a Chinese model attempting — and failing — to eat Italian dishes with chopsticks.
Things got worse when Instagram account Diet Prada exposed Dolce founder Stefano Gabbana appearing to engage in racist rants, and the hashtag #BoycottDolce began trending on Chinese social media site Weibo. The brand's cofounders apologized and canceled their Shanghai runway show, costing them millions of dollars.
Instagram Embed:
Peloton's 2019 holiday ad chronicled a thin woman's journey to getting, well, thinner — and was watched and ridiculed around the world.
The ad follows a woman's yearlong selfie journey after her partner gives her a Peloton bike for the holidays, and it was criticized for everything from its awkward structure to her partner seemingly suggesting that she needed to exercise more.
Youtube Embed:
From drinking one’s own urine as a cure for broken bones to blood-letting to sending electrical shocks through a person’s body as a cure for mental illness — healthcare has a somewhat jaded past. Fortunately, as technology has improved our ability to study human physiology, medical professionals have become increasingly adept at diagnosing and curing many different illnesses. Here are four trends that are transforming the future of healthcare.
Still, there’s plenty of room for improvement to be made. Almost 20% of Americans can’t afford healthcare, according to ABC News. And millions of people die from diseases like cancer and diabetes every single year. We might not ever reach immortality, but some trends can radically transform the future of healthcare in some promising ways.
In almost every industry, imaginable – from gaming to every-day transportation – artificial intelligence is making a big splash. And it didn’t skip healthcare. One example of artificial intelligence’s impact on the healthcare industry is OWKIN Socrates, an AI-based technology platform created for medical professionals and their businesses.
The bot can monitor symptoms, diagnose disease, recommend treatments, and even predict outcomes, all much faster than a human can. We’re probably far from being wholly dependent on artificial intelligence for medical services, but who knows what the bots will be doing next – performing surgeries? Will bots be managing pharmacies? How many bots does it take to run a test? How long before bots are diagnosing disease?
One thing’s for sure: AI is going to play a significant role in the future of healthcare – the size and scope of that role are yet to be determined.
Perhaps virtual reality is having a more significant impact on healthcare than any other technological advancement. If that’s the case, it would seem to be for a good reason: it’s working. Already, medical students are using virtual technology to learn and perform mock-surgeries. It’s also being used in physical therapy to help people recover from injury or trauma. VISUALIZE reports on research that shows “VR immersion for those undergoing physical therapy. VR has been used for physical therapy has also been shown to be effective in speeding up recovery time.”
Overall, virtual reality is being used to calm patients, relieve pain, and adjust a patient’s awareness of bodily signals. The effectiveness of this tech on healthcare will likely improve as medical professionals have more time to explore its applications.
If you’re disabled, a senior with low mobility, or at home alone in serious physical pain, what are you supposed to do? You can’t easily drive yourself to the hospital, and calling an ambulance might be unnecessary for the symptoms you’re experiencing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of older adults fall every year, and 20% of those falls are severe.
Companies like Heal let people schedule an appointment with a licensed and certified doctor at their place of residence. Not to mention the advancements of assistive technology – some of which can detect falls and automatically request immediate assistance for seniors who may have been injured due to a fall. And why not? That feels like a natural and necessary progression of the healthcare process. Some unwell people can’t easily leave their home, and they shouldn’t have to.
It might sound overly ambitious, but Prellis Biologics is a company that’s dedicated to “solving the shortage of human organs and tissues for transplantation.” And they’ve got at least one thing right: there is undoubtedly a shortage of organs and human tissue for transplantation. Every single day, about 20 people die waiting for a life-saving transplant that never happened. This information is according to the American Transplant Foundation.
Using laser printing technology, Prellis Biologics has managed to mimic the human cell and replicate human organs. This technology is still partly experimental, but who knows how far it will come if given a few more years or even a decade. Professionals might be able to print a new human organ as easily as prescribing medication.
All of these innovations are exciting trends — but ones that still need more time to develop fully.
The post 4 Trends that are Transforming the Future of Healthcare appeared first on ReadWrite.