Mysterious smart home company Leeo is finally pulling back the curtain on its first product: a smoke detector aid.
Unlike, say, Nest’s Protect smoke detector or even its thermostat, you don’t have to play electrician and start dismounting and rewiring devices to install Leeo’s product. You simply plug Leeo’s smart smoke detector aid into an electric socket, and you can get to work making your existing alarm smart as soon as you download Leeo’s companion iOS app and input a few pieces of info.
While it’s in the “smoke alarm” realm, it is actually using sound detection rather than smoke detection to do its job.
Since 2010, corporate investors have participated in over 140 deals totaling $1.37B to cybersecurity companies. Notably, 2014 YTD has seen corporate investors participate in a higher number of large cybersecurity deals than in years past. Cybersecurity funding in 2014 YTD with corporate participation is already 29% higher than in all of 2013 and 129% larger than that of 2012. And there are still a couple of months remaining in the year.
In the 1990s, Procter & Gamble’s Product Supply Organization kicked off a major Reliability Engineering program, much like the efficiency initiatives of companies such as Toyota. They institutionalized the use of data collection systems in their manufacturing facilities to understand how products and machines would “behave” and could be optimized. By collecting machine failure data via manual sources as well as PLCs (programmable logic controllers), they were able to plot statistical distribution curves that predicted the failure rates of machines, along with the specific causes.
One of the biggest challenges of primary healthcare is ensuring frontline providers receive necessary guidance for managing complex and chronic health problems, especially as advances in treatment change rapidly.
This need is particularly acute when treating poor and underserved populations. But a new tool that leverages technology to link specialists with primary care providers is making big inroads, with the hope of reaching 1 billion people by 2025.
Skeptics of patient empowerment would be advised to tune into the real-time dashboard of Twine Health, which will be demonstrated for the first time publicly at HealthBeat, October 27-28.
The cloud-based platform is designed to put some of the management of chronic disease in the hands of patients. It’s based on a coaching model that sees the patient as apprentice in their own health care. With clinicians and patients working together using synchronized apps, they create plans to reach important health goals decided on together.
The push to provide minute-by-minute patient monitoring may seem excessive at first hearing, but the impact both on patient management and patient outcomes can be significant.
In a typical hospital, patients are checked about every 4-8 hours. In an acute care situation it may be more frequent, but the truth is that nurses aren’t always available to give patients the attention they need — and sometimes these patients can become quite ill as a result.
If you’re hoping to provide home care for a sick or elderly family member, startup CareZapp is building a technology platform to help.
The company just announced its public beta on-stage as part of the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Europe. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Macfarlane told me that his interest in the field began with his mother’s death from cancer more than two decades ago, and the “challenges and difficulties” that he faced in providing for her care. Understandably, he didn’t go into too many details, but he did suggest that not much about the industry has changed since then.
The European Union can slash natural gas imports from countries such as Russia by half and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 49% if it ramps up energy and efficiency improvements, a new report has argued.
Cost-effective measures in energy supply, industry and buildings would be good for the climate and boost energy security, the study by independent consultants Ecofys said.
The 49% cut to carbon, compared to 1990 levels, goes “far beyond” projections in the EU’s 2030 Climate and Energy Framework, the report said.
EU leaders will meet in Brussels later this week (23-24 October) to try and reach agreement on the package, which calls for a 40% greenhouse gas reduction, a 30% energy efficiency improvement and a 27% renewable energy target.
Member States are expected to bring the 2030 Energy & Climate objectives closer to people’s housing needs, next week. Responsibility and innovation, resident empowerment and financial schemes are all parts of the strategic mix, writes Marc Calon.
Marc Calon is the President of Housing Europe, the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing.
