Amazon Echo

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5 Ways Humanitarian Bots Can Save the World

Mariya Yao | TOPBOTS | November 6, 2016

Fifteen year old Sarafina, a female student in the capital city of Liberia, had a distressing problem at school: Her math teacher refused to give her a report card unless she had sex with him. Every day at school, he would request sexual favors and touch her inappropriately. Embarrassed, Sarafina kept the issue hidden from everyone, even her parents, until her father overheard a sexually harassing phone call the teacher made to their home. Sarafina’s father successfully confronted the man and got the report card, but his daughter was reprimanded for reporting her teacher’s sexual advances and forced to move to another school...

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A New Meaning for Connected Health at 2016 Symposium (Part 3)

Andy Oram | EMR & HIPPA | October 7, 2016

The previous section of this article paused during a discussion of the accuracy and uses of devices. At a panel on patient generated data, a speaker said that one factor holding back the use of patient data was the lack of sophistication in EHRs. They must be enhanced to preserve the provenance of data: whether it came from a device or from a manual record by the patient, and whether the device was consumer-grade or a well-tested medical device. Doctors invest different levels of trust in different methods of collecting data: devices can provide more objective information than other ways of asking patients for data. A participant in the panel also pointed out that devices are more reliable in the lab than under real-world conditions. Consumers must be educated about the proper use of devices, such as whether to sit down and how to hold their arms when taking their blood pressure...

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Amazon Digital Health Talent Grab: Box Exec Reportedly Joins Team

Chris Davies | Slash Gear | July 21, 2017

Amazon is quietly building up its digital health tech talent, reportedly poaching a healthcare exec from Box. The Seattle behemoth may be best known for its retail business, but in the background it has a growing footprint in all manner of health technology areas. This latest Amazon talent grab appears to be another move to shore up those...

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Amazon Echo’s Alexa Has Great Potential in Healthcare

David E. Williams | MedCity News | June 2, 2016

I bought an Amazon Echo this week and have been enjoying using it in the kitchen. I can ask, “Alexa, what time is it in Germany?” and it will tell me. Or I can say, “Alexa, play music by the Beatles,” or ask, “Alexa, how many ounces in a cup?” and it will let me know. It’s remarkably easy –and not at all frustrating– to use. The whole family is enjoying it. Naturally I started almost immediately to think of healthcare uses, so I wasn’t at all surprised to pick up the Boston Globe yesterday and see that my friends from Boston Children’s Hospital are a step or two ahead...

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Halamka on What's Next for Electronic Health Records

With the Department of Justice announcement of the $155 million dollar eClinicalWorks settlement (including personal liability for the CEO, CMO and COO), many stakeholders are wondering what’s next for EHRs. Clearly the industry is in a state of transition. eCW will be distracted by its 5 year corporate integrity agreement. AthenaHealth will have to focus on the activist investors at Elliott Management   who now own 10% of the company and have a track record of changing management/preparing companies for sale. As mergers and acquisitions result in more enterprise solutions, Epic (and to some extent Cerner) will displace other vendors in large healthcare systems. However, the ongoing operational cost of these enterprise solutions will cause many to re-examine alternatives such as Meditech...

Why 2018 Was a Breakout Year for Open Source Deals

Klint Finley | Wired | December 23, 2018

At the beginning of 2018, it didn't seem like the open source movement could get any bigger. Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system; websites including Facebook and Wikipedia; and a growing number of gadgets have open source software under the hood-literally, in the case of cars. The world's largest companies, including Walmart and JP Morgan Chase, not only use open source but have released their own open source software so the rest of the world can modify and share their code. Then, in June, Microsoft announced plans to buy GitHub, the platform used by millions of developers and companies, including Google and Walmart, to host popular open source projects, for $7.5 billion.

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