Trends Disrupting Healthcare As We Know It

The one constant in many industries today is change, thanks to the unabated infiltration of advanced technologies. The healthcare industry is no different. The image of the doctor taking notes after examining a patient and filing information in folders is giving way to the doctor entering data into a handheld device which will communicate with a central online database containing patient information.

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FDA OKs mHealth App That Uses AI to Spot Strokes, Alert Specialists

The FDA has approved an mHealth app that uses artificial intelligence software to analyze CT scans for signs of a stroke, then sends a text message to a neurologist. The clinical decision support tool could help speed up time to treatment for stroke victims.

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Blockchains and health care: promising and moving quickly, though no silver bullet

The buzz about opportunities for blockchains in the health care and pharmaceutical industries continues to ramp up. This technology can give us new tools to secure medical information, track pharmaceutical supply chains, and more. While blockchains have promise, they are not a panacea for health care.

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NIH takes steps to safeguard participant data for PMI national cohort

As the National Institutes of Health looks to build one of the world’s largest biomedical datasets under the Precision Medicine Initiative’s All of Us research program, NIH is grappling with how to keep the data of a million or more Americans private and secure.

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Brigham and Women’s Hospital leverages digital pills to track opioid use

Tracking the use of opioids has never been more important than during the ongoing drug epidemic. That’s why Brigham and Women’s Hospital has turned to digital pills—gelatin capsules containing ingestible sensors and medication—to help track patterns of opioid usage among patients.

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How does an Amazon Echo vulnerability enable attackers to eavesdrop?

Research from MWR InfoSecurity Ltd. shows that threat actors can install malware on an Amazon Echo and turn it into a listening device. How effective is this attack, and is there any way to determine if an Amazon Echo has been compromised?

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Health, wellness apps pose risks to consumer privacy

While there are federal regulations governing how personal health data is shared, only a fraction of the increasingly popular consumer apps on the market are actually regulated, leaving enormous amounts of information largely unprotected.

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With Fitbits, STSI Adds mHealth to its Precision Medicine Project

Scripps Health’s Digital Health research unit is providing as many as 10,000 Fitbits to participants in a precision medicine program to track how home activities may affect their health.

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mHealth Data Adds Detail, Meaning to Population Health Programs

Smartphones have long been considered an ideal mHealth tool for personalized medicine, capable of collecting individual data and pushing out targeted reminders and information. Now that data is being used to power population health programs, with strong success.

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LiveWell RERC Releases Amazon Echo Skill That Reads TechWatch and LiveWell News Blogs

LiveWell RERC development staff recently released an Amazon Echo Skill that will read aloud the latest posts from our two blogs, TechWatch and LiveWell News.  The new skill can be installed on the Amazon Alexa app and then utilized on any Amazon Echo product.  The skill taps into the RSS feeds from our blogs and is called the LiveWell News Skill.    Once enabled, saying the command “Alexa, what’s the news”, or “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing,” will allow your Echo to read aloud the latest LiveWell RERC news feeds.  A user will only get information if it has been updated within the past week.  The LiveWell RERC developer of the new skill from Duke University, Leighanne Davis, says “The new skill will make the news feeds more accessible and convenient to a variety of users by providing speech output.”

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Alibaba challenges Google, Amazon with new Echo-like device

The competition in digital speaker-assistants is getting more intense, as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. unfurled an Amazon Echo-like device and fellow Chinese internet giants Tencent and Baidu prepare to develop their own.

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App economy to grow to $6.3 trillion in 2021, user base to nearly double to 6.3 billion

The global app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021, up from $1.3 trillion last year, according to a new report this morning from app analytics firm App Annie. During that same time frame, the user base will almost double from 3.4 billion people using apps to 6.3 billion, while the time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours in 2021, up from 1.6 trillion in 2016.

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Is Apple iMessage HIPAA Compliant?

Think twice before texting your patients and staff.

iMessage is a go-to technology for Apple users in the medical field because it so easily integrates into pre-existing office infrastructure. Using iMessage for office communication can facilitate quick conversations among office staff -- but when it comes to sending and receiving patient data, the question of whether or not iMessage is HIPAA compliant needs to be taken into account.

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Google I/O 2017 Updates on Disability, Accessibility, Assistive Technology (AT), and Emerging Technologies

An experience to be remembered and referred to throughout the year, Google I/O 2017 lived up to its hype. Sessions, sandbox demonstrations, Code Labs, and Google expert office hours boasted topics on Android, machine learning, Internet of Things, the Google Assistant, Accessibility, and others. By giving accessibility the center stage for a variety of sessions, sandbox demonstrations, and expert office hours, Google has again shown the AT community its dedication to closing the gap in accessibility and usefulness of technology for people with disabilities. Google’s many technologies and products also show big implications for the disabled community to leverage throughout life.

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