Posts Tagged ‘future’
Teaching Computers to Hear Emotion
01/30/2013
Listen to the podcast above, as Steven Cherry introduces the topic and then interviews professor Wendi Heinzelman.
Listen carefully, because it’s short:
“March 21st”
That person sounded sad, right? Let’s try another one.
“Six hundred five!”
Definitely not sadness. Could you tell? It was pride. Listen again.
“Six hundred five!”
High Tech Advancing Future of Personalized Cancer Care
01/19/2013
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM to Collaborate
in Applying Watson Technology to Help Oncologists
IBM Watson combined with MSKCC’s clinical knowledge will help
physicians access and integrate latest science and knowledge
New York City – 22 Mar 2012: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and IBM have agreed to collaborate on the development of a powerful tool built upon IBM Watson in order to provide medical professionals with improved access to current and comprehensive cancer data and practices. The resulting decision support tool will help doctors everywhere create individualized cancer diagnostic and treatment recommendations for their patients based on current evidence.
CES 2013, Digital Health Revolution: Body, Mind & Soul
01/15/2013
On the first day of CES I attended a Digital Health Summit panel discussion hosted by Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post. To introduce the discussion, she described Americans’ increase in antidepressants, sleep medications, and stress, and how 75% of healthcare spending is spent on preventable diseases, and 80% of medications are for pain. All of these conditions are preventable through other means, she said.
The panel discussed a perfect storm of multiple trends: (1) stress (and I’d add sleep deprivation) is a killer, (2) our broken & expensive sick care system, and (3) technology & wearable devices that can help us focus on health & wellness. Market researchers note that 30 million wearable devices shipped in 2012, going to 60 million in the next year. In addition, 44 million health apps will be downloaded to smartphones and tablets this year.
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Dr. Oz on Technology in Medicine
01/15/2013
While many doctors naturally disagree, Dr. Oz believes the future of medicine will depend more on technology than doctors. “I see the car, which is right now one of the most unused spaces in our lives, becoming a mobile examination suite for you,” says the heart surgeon, turned talk show host. “It can weigh you and tell how stressed you are by how you grip the steering wheel, the sweat on your fingers, and heart rate variability.” (1:29 VIDEO, below)
As a technologist watching this space and reporting on health & wellness innovations at CES, I concur with Dr. Oz and have explored the effect of technology, automation and healthcare robots and on jobs. That’s why I was attracted by this CBS 60 Minutes segment on The March of the Machines and how automation is likely to effect the job market, including positions in medicine. Read the rest of this entry »
Will Robots Take Over in Health Care?
01/06/2013
Tech solutions for home healthcare naturally include healthcare robots, some of which can enhance our physical abilities or make up for disabilities, while others assist healthcare workers or in some cases replace their jobs entirely. But what does the future hold for such devices? Will robots take over? And if a robot replaces your job, what will you do next? I addressed these questions previously from two different perspectives in Automation, Robots and The Pink Collar Future. Today I extend the series based on the latest issue of WIRED, which explores the future of tech innovation, robots and automation. It’s a long and well done article that I can’t reproduce here, so I’ll just include some highlights and the reader comment I added.
In an opening essay, comedian Jimmy Fallon asks, “Why hire a human when a machine can do it better and faster?“ Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs
Consider the effect that automation has already had. Two hundred years ago, 70% of American workers lived on farms. Automation in the Industrial Age has since eliminated all but 1% of farm workers, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. They moved to cities to work in factories and industry, filling millions of entirely new jobs. But change in the Information Age is happening more quickly, and many fear that technology is replacing jobs faster than creating new ones. That anyway is the perspective I added in my comment. Read the rest of this entry »
Bringing Dead Back to Life & Envisioning a Healthy Future
01/01/2013
The beginning (or end) of a year is a good time to remember & reflect on the past while pondering & planning the future. So today’s post comes from Huffington Post, with ties into other articles about Personal Memoirs & Memories, Perpetual Websites & Memorials, the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, and Future Forecasts. It’s about the well-known futurist and inventor, Ray Kurzweil.
- Recalling & Recording Your Life’s Story,
- The Legacy of a Digital Generation,
- Friends from Beyond and Your Digital Will,
- CES in PJs – 2011,
- CES 2012… in Pajamas,
- A Consumer Electronics Christmas 2012,
- Getting Ready for CES 2013,
- Future Forecasts, and
- Market Research Resources & Articles.
Adding Kurzweil to the executive staff at Google may help the company stay vibrant and even increase its impact on information technology. Google also invested in Kurzweil’s Singularity University, which strives to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially-advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges. He envisions using a search engine to access a database of your thoughts, stored in the Cloud, in a way that mirrors your values and personality.
Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director Of Engineering, Wants To Bring The Dead Back To Life
Inventor Ray Kurzweil hopes to develop ways for humans to live forever, and while he’s at it, bring back his dead father (at least virtually). Behind him is the support of a tech giant. This month, Kurzweil, a futurist, stepped into the role of Director of Engineering at Google, focusing on machine learning and language processing.
Health & Medicine Outlook 2013
12/28/2012
“Human actions could become more accurately predictable, thanks to neuroscience. Nano-sized robots will deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly to their targets. And though many recently lost jobs may never come back, people will find plenty to do (and get paid for) in the future,” according to forecasts you’ll find in this roundup of the most thought-provoking possibilities and ideas published in The Futurist magazine over the past year.
I’ve extracted the following Health & Medicine forecasts from the World Future Society’s special report, Outlook 2013. It’s a promotional piece to attract new members who then get a subscription to The Futurist.
- Better health, but fewer doctors.
A projected shortage of more than 90,000 doctors by 2020 will drive technological innovations such as low-cost, point-of-care diagnostics—i.e., Lab-on-a-Chip technologies. A cell-phone-sized device could analyze your blood or sputum while you talk to a health provider from the comfort of your home. —Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, “The Abundance Builders,” July-Aug 2012,p. 17
Read the rest of this entry »
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Smart Car Features for Older Drivers
12/05/2012
Nearly Nine in 10 Seniors Drive a Car that Doesn’t Fit their Aging Needs
AAA research helps “silver tsunami” match vehicle features to health concerns
This photo by Henry Fountain pictures one of Google’s fleet of self-driving vehicles. The Lexus hybrid has a range-finder on top but otherwise looks reasonably conventional. We may eventually be able to buy cars that drive themselves (see comment below), and three states already license experimental models for operation on public roads, but until they’re commercially available, AAA offers advice on selecting car features for older drivers.
Washington, D.C., (Dec. 3, 2012) – With nearly 90 percent of motorists 65 and older suffering from health issues that affect driving safety, finding a car that not only adapts to conditions, such as lack of flexibility or muscle strength, while maintaining safety and comfort can be difficult. Data from a new AAA survey also reveals that only one in 10 senior drivers with aging health issues are driving a vehicle that has features like keyless entry and larger dashboard controls that can assist with such conditions.
To better equip the “silver tsunami” for driving safety and comfort, AAA has updated its Smart Features for Older Drivers resource to address a broader range of health conditions and include new data on 2012 vehicle features. As a leading advocate for senior driver safety, AAA launched Smart Features for Older Drivers in partnership with the University of Florida’s Institute for Mobility, Activity and Participation in 2008. In the update, Smart Features identifies vehicle features that optimize older driver safety and comfort, lists current vehicles with those features, and allows users to explore their individual needs through an interactive online tool. Read the rest of this entry »
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BioEnergy: Harvesting Power from the Body to Run Devices
11/27/2012
As computing devices shrink in size, price and power consumption, they are being embedded in all sorts of everyday objects, including light bulbs, hearing aids, and even the human body. But what happens in 8-10 years when the pacemaker battery wears out? Today that requires another operation to replace it, but in the foreseeable future medical devices might be powered by the body itself, from heart beats, blood flow, lung contractions and arm and leg movements, as well as by electrical energy already produced by the inner ear.
That’s the message of the Wall Street Journal video below, which shows researchers investigating ways to harness the body’s energy – such as heat, sound and movement – to power medical devices.
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Population of over 60-year-olds to reach 1 billion by 2020
10/10/2012
New UN report calls for urgent action by governments to address the needs of the “Greying Generation”
- 80% of world’s older people will live in developing countries by 2050
- Over 60 population will be larger than the under-15 population in 2050
The number of older persons is growing faster than any other age group, says a new report, Ageing in the Twenty-first Century: A Celebration and a Challenge, released 10/1/2012 on International Day of Older Persons by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and HelpAge International.
The new report underlines that, while the trend of ageing societies is a cause for celebration, it also presents huge challenges as it requires completely new approaches to health care, retirement, living arrangements and intergenerational relations.
In 2000, for the first time in history, there were more people over 60 than children below 5. By 2050, the older generation will be larger than the under-15 population. In just 10 years, the number of older persons will surpass 1 billion people-an increase of close to 200 million people over the decade. Today two out of three people aged 60 or over, live in developing and emerging economies. By 2050, this will rise to nearly four in five.
