Healthcare is arguably the only major industry in the world that hasn’t embraced automation — and it shows.
According to CMS, the annual U.S. spend on healthcare is nearly three trillion dollars (more than 17 percent of GDP), and yet the World Health Organization ranks our healthcare system below almost every other industrialized nation in the world. Despite all the money being spent, there is still pervasive inefficiency and frustration, with minimal relative value to the patient.
According to the data, yes, the venture capital industry is shrinking. And it has been shrinking for several years. We have documented a trend of industry consolidation since 2009, and our latest analysis confirms that the trend persists. We find that venture capital dollars continue to concentrate increasingly in the hands of fewer and fewer venture capital firms.
OcuSciences, an Ann Arbor, MI-based medical device startup spun out of technology developed at the University of Michigan, has been named the “innovator of the year” by Medical Main Street, an initiative to establish Oakland County as a center of innovation in medical research and development, education, and commercialization.
In early research, McKinsey emphasized that the distinctive character of the Internet of Things — which is predicted to be a $7.1 trillion market by 2020 — lay in its ability to operate with little or no “human intervention.” The initial vision involved embedding sensors and actuators in physical objects like UPS packages and factory machinery to sense the environment, transmit “huge volumes of data,” and facilitate new kinds of automation.
n recent years Apple, Google, and Microsoft have invested heavily in speech-recognition technology, encouraging people to issue voice commands to their smartphones and games consoles. A new device called the Ubi that launched Wednesday aims to extend that idea to your entire home. You can call out commands to do things like turn up the thermostat or draw the blinds.
The Ubi is meant as an easy way to control many different connected home devices. In recent years, many home appliances and devices that can be controlled over the Internet have appeared. Among them are thermostats, door locks, and lightbulbs. But most must be managed using their own dedicated mobile app or Web service.
The severe drought gripping the Western United States has put a national spotlight on America’s relationship to water. Indeed, the changing landscape of our nation’s water supply necessarily demands a critical look at our water sector and at opportunities to improve the way we regulate, price, and consume water. In this post, we explore the current state of the U.S. water sector and the challenges of a de-centralized system.
Only 5.8% of the student population is enrolled in the Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences programs at Purdue University, but healthcare startups make up half of the university’s new Startup Class of 2014. Twelve of this year’s 24 class members are working on healthcare challenges. Doctoral students, professors, and engineers are using technology licensed from the university to bring personalized medicine closer to reality, help people with autism and Parkinson’s communicate more easily, and create 3D maps of arteries.
How do you keep small drone aircraft safe in the world’s busiest national airspace? One idea is to have them use cellphone networks to feed data back to an air traffic control system made just for drones.
A startup called Airware is working with NASA on a project exploring how to manage the swarms of commercial drones expected to start appearing in U.S. skies. The four-year program will create a series of prototype air traffic management systems and could shape how widely commercial drones can be used. Airware’s main business is selling control software and hardware to drone manufacturers and operators.
A report carried out for the European Commission by BIO by Deloitte demonstrates the need to clearly define Extended Producer Responsibility, and fix measurable targets for waste management. EurActiv France reports.
The European Commission asked BIO by Deloitte to examine waste management systems in sixteen EU member states, and how successful policies of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) are implemented.
The study focused on six product categories: batteries, electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), end-of-life vehicles, packaging, graphic paper and oils.
Ahead of the 23-24 October EU summit, on Thursday (16 October), the Commission presented a first-ever analysis of the consequences of a disruption of Russian gas supplies, or even a complete halt of such imports to the Union, and neighbouring states. The result, which was not difficult to predict, is that some countries would be much more affected than others.
With the winter approaching and the Ukraine crisis still smouldering, the Commission said it wanted to have a clear picture of where the biggest shortfalls would arise and how they could be mitigated.
The “stress test” exercise consisted in a simulation of two main hypothetical disruption scenarios during autumn/winter (for periods of one month and six months in each case):
