The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Update ⋅ Paul Sonnier ⋅ Mar 27, 2018 ⋅ #319

I made this announcement to 62,038 members of the Digital Health group on LinkedIn. If you’re on LinkedIn, please do join the group, which allows you to opt in to receiving these announcements in addition to connecting with thousands of other global stakeholders in digital health. I also send out a weekly Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter, which you can sign up for and receive for free, here.

The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Update ⋅ Paul Sonnier ⋅ Mar 27, 2018 ⋅ #319

Dear Group,

I’ve just returned from the XPOMET Convention in Leipzig, Germany (via Paris for 3 days on the return trip) and am incredibly grateful to the XPOMET team, who were all amazing and put together an incredible program attended by 2,000 of the leading innovators in Germany and beyond. I shared some pics from the event in my most recent newsletter: http://bit.ly/4th-Wave-Digital-Health-Newsletter-Mar-26-2018

My next speaking engagement is in Toronto, Canada, where I’ll be presenting to 300 attendees at a corporate innovation day event. Following that, I may be headed to Australia to speak at a national conference and a business roundtable.

Please reach out if you’re seeking a unique speaker to set the overarching framework for your conference or corporate event. My presentation is based on my book and is both entertaining and accessible to all stakeholder groups: from consumers to students, to tech, health, and healthcare innovators, to business and government leaders.
The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Mar 26

Subscribe here.

My book, “The Fourth Wave: Digital Health” is available in digital and paperback at Amazon.com, here. You can also learn more about the book, here.

Follow me on Twitter @Paul_Sonnier for all the news I share each day.

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I’m available to deliver my keynote address at conferences and corporate events. I also offer event and entity advertising in my group announcements, newsletter, and on my website. Advertising with me puts your event, content, product, and/or service in front of tens of thousands of global readers each week. I’m also available for strategic consulting. Contact me for my media kit, standard plans, and pricing.

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The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Mar 26

In light of the recent news about Facebook allowing Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal information of millions of Facebook users, I really like what Luke Stark wrote in Slate regarding the critical nature of our personal data and the need for laws that better protect our privacy: “The behavioral, demographic, and personal information Facebook and other social media platforms now collect through what I call algorithmic psychometrics has the sensitivity of medical data, and should be treated as such by regulators around the world. In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects medical and other health information—but only if that information is collected and used by organizations like health care providers and insurance plans. Instead, regulators need to rethink health privacy laws by focusing on both how demographic, behavioral, and psychological data is collected and used across all sectors of the digital economy. The long history of psychology’s role in computing means the Cambridge Analytica bombshell makes unfortunate sense—and makes immediate regulation of these forms of data an urgent necessity.”

By now, of course, nearly everyone around the world has heard about the 50 million Facebook profiles harvested by Cambridge Analytica and that these were subsequently weaponized to benefit now-President Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Surprisingly, this story is not new, but was first reported in Germany’s ‘Das Magazin’ in December 2016. Also preceding the recent news is an even darker story of actions taken by the social media giant. A Bloomberg article published in Dec 2017 details how Facebook created a political unit within the company that “actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition.” The unit is headed by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist. She and her team have reportedly “traveled the globe helping political clients use the company’s powerful digital tools. In some of the world’s biggest democracies—from India and Brazil to Germany and the UK—the unit’s employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide technical assistance for live streams at official state events.”

Also making international headlines this past week was a fatal, incident involving one of Uber’sautonomous vehicles, which struck and killed a womanin Tempe, Arizona. The woman—who was not in a crosswalk at the time—was pushing a bicycle across a darkened roadway where traffic was moving at 40 mph. The Tempe Police Department postedvideo of the crash on Twitter. It appears that while a human driver may not have seen the potential collision, the sensors in a self-driving vehicle like Uber’s are able to see in the dark and predict the trajectory of someone approaching the vehicle’s path. Unfortunately, it seems Uber’s system did not respond by braking in this instance.

I had a great experience in Leipzig, Germany last week, where I delivered my keynote presentation at the XPOMET Convention. Next up I’ll be in Toronto. Please do reach out if you are seeking a speaker to provide the opening keynote and establish the overarching theme for your conference or corporate event.

LIVING AND SOCIETY

While a new US government spending bill allows for the CDC to study gun violence, as Dr. Garen Wintemute, an expert on gun violence and a professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis points out: “There’s no funding. There’s no agreement to provide funding. There isn’t even encouragement. No big questions get answered, and there’s nothing here, yet, of significance for the research community.”

A camera-based AI system developed in Spain can be used to automatically detect guns or knives wielded by people under surveillance and then sound an emergency alarm. According to the researchers, the object recognition tecnology is self-training and can continue improving itself via machine learning. It was trained by using Hollywood movies like Pulp Fiction and Mission Impossible and was found to be 96% effective. The system could be used in airports and other public areas.

Google is apparently the self-appointed Puritan police when it comes to what you can store on your Google Drive account. Sex workers say that legal pornographic content they have on their Google Drive storage account is suddenly locked or disappearing.

“People sending me pictures of young people turning my tweets into their protest signs are making me cry. Solidarity, love, respect, love, love, all love.” – Bess Kalb @bessbell

HEALTHCARE

Writing in HBR, David Blumenthal and Aneesh Chopra claim that Apple’s partnership with thirteen prominent healthcare systems—including Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania—that allows Apple users to download their electronic health data “might actually disrupt the industry.” However, as Eric Topol tweeted: “Think the world of David and Aneesh, but this is ≠ “liberation.” That would be individuals owning their medical data.”

The Australian Digital Health Agency hasannounced that Berrigan, NSW is the very first Australian town where all key healthcare providers are connected and using the My Health Record digital system. According to MP Sussan Ley, “My Health Record allows Australians and their health professionals to securely access their health information to improve their care, whether at home or in a metropolitan hospital.”

REGULATION

The FDA has launched an app that lets you search for drug information. CalledDrugs@FDA Express, the app is designed to help people search for information about FDA-approved name brand and generic pharmaceutical drugs and therapeutic products. According to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb: “Consumers are embracing digital health technologies to inform everyday decisions. These digital tools can empower consumers with a wealth of valuable health information.”

The FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) states that it is ready to begin expanding the digital health pre-certification program by year’s end. According to the Agency’s Digital Health director Bakul Patel, the development program—which was co-created with FDA, experts in digital health, and other stakeholders—is still being figured out.

GENOMICS

In a possbile breakthrough for treating the joint disease osteoarthritis, scientists at the University of Sheffield and the Wellcome Sanger Institute have uncovered 9 genes responsible for the painful condition. The gene locations will serve as targets for new drugs to treat the incurable disease.

A massive genome-sequencing effort is coming to India via a partnershp between Singapore-based Global Gene Corp and Regeneron. A major benefit of this effort will be improved diversity in genomic data, as most data is currently from people of European heritage.

Yaniv Erlich, a digital-era geneticist, genome hacker, and Chief Scientific Officer at MyHeritage has mapped a 13-million-person family tree using Geni.com’s huge crowdsourced genealogy databases. According to Erlich, this presents an opportunity to overlay DNA information on top of family trees to study genes implicated in disease.

FUNDING

Singapore- and Orlando-based ObvioHealth has raised $3M in Series A funding. The investement was led by life science and healthcare venture fund TKS I. ObvioHealth helps make clinical trials faster and more cost effective by digitizing the process and integrating with smartphones and other devices.

Israel plans to invest $275M to further digitize the health records of its nearly 9 million citizens in order to aid in the development of new drugs, preventive medicines, and personalized care. German software giant SAP SE is partnering with the country to create a database for use by academics and foreign health care companies

Oxford Nanopore Technologies has announced a massive $140M fundraising from global investors. Among its products, the company makes the MinION, the “only portable real-time DNA/RNA sequencer.” The funding will help support the creation of a new high-volume manufacturing facility, commercial expansion, and new product development. CEO Dr Gordon Sanghera states that: “Our business is moving quickly, from personal sequencers into high-end sequencing and distributed analyses… We are driving a change in how scientists and industries access DNA information by introducing smaller, accessible, low-cost formats, including our forthcoming smartphone sequencer SmidgION. Our investors are ambitious and support our long-term vision: to enable the analysis of any living thing, by anyone, anywhere.”

I feature the MinION in my keynote presentation, as it fits into a number of subject areas and represents a key example technology driving The Fourth Wave: Digital Health

TwoXar has raised $10 million from SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, and OS Fund. The company leverages AI to identify new treatments that can be tested on animals, and then ideally with human trials, without using a traditional lab.

OS Fund cofounder Jeff Klunzinger also wrote a post on Medium: ” Moving drug discovery into the fast lane: OS Fund invests in twoXAR’s AI-driven approach“

According to Jeff: “Applying computational advances to improve drug discovery is one of the most promising areas in healthcare. Data-informed decisions can guide developers toward auspicious drugs by augmenting human acquired wisdom, and away from costly detours by helping to keep biases in check. OS Fund has been watching these developments very carefully, because such breakthroughs have the potential to help hundreds of millions or even billions of people in great need. This opportunity has attracted numerous companies to try their hand in tackling this complex challenge. After diligencing many efforts, we’ve found a few teams that will break away from the pack.”

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Copyright © 2018 Paul Sonnier, Story of Digital Health

Paul Sonnier
Author ⋅ Speaker ⋅ Technologist ⋅ Social Entrepreneur
Book: The Fourth Wave: Digital Health
Founder, Digital Health group on LinkedIn
Creator, Story of Digital Health
Twitter: @Paul_Sonnier
San Diego, CA, USA

 

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