Archive for the ‘Tech Focus’ Category
Friday, May 22nd, 2020
Microsoft Build 2020 was the first time the annual developers’ event was held completely online, because of COVID-19. Here are some interesting snippets from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during his keynote address for the conference.
“Already, we’ve seen something like two years’ worth of digital transformation in just two months. And we’ve seen how critical digital technology is in the three phases of this crisis, from emergency response to the recovery phase to the reimagining the world going forward,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO at Build 2020.
How has developers come together with those on the frontlines in the fight against COVID-19?
Here were some examples that Nadella highlighted.
- At Johns Hopkins University, epidemiologists and software developers created a canonical dashboard to track the spread of COVID-19.
- Adaptive Biotechnologies is using cloud compute and AI to decode the immune system’s response to the virus.
- In the United Kingdom, a cross-section of manufacturers adjusted their production lines to build ventilators for the NHS, using mixed reality to guide workers through the process.
- The NBA is using the power of the cloud and Xbox to engage fans and maintain the joy of the game.
What would developers need to be capable of going forward?
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Tags:Azure, Build, CEO, GitHub, Microsoft, Office, opinions, Teams, trends, Visual Studio, Windows
Posted in Brief, Business IT, Enterprise IT, Events, events, Interview, Interview, Microsoft, News, Opinion, Seminars, Software, Tech Focus, Windows, Windows 10 | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 29th, 2020
Just as IoT is taking the tech world by storm, ingestible pills enable doctors and researchers to emplace micro sensors in our bodies to monitor sustained measurements for diagnosis or research.
In this guest blog, Nick Van Helleputte and Chris Van Hoof discuss how ingestible or electronic pills can revolutionise the way stomach ailments are diagnosed.
Mock-up of an ingestible pill with prototype transceiver. Image: Imec.
Speak about an electronic pill or a small ingestible machine that can be swallowed by patients to monitor their bodies – and what comes to mind is often swarms of nanobots.
The reality is a little different.
Today, breakthroughs in electronics are making it possible to imagine such ingestibles, which are small enough to be swallowed so they can stay inside a body to monitor, say, a person’s stomach condition over a period of time.
Editor’s Comments
These nifty gadgets open up a whole new frontier in medical diagnosis and research.
Think the Internet of Things (IoT) but applied to the interior of our bodies.
By emplacing sensors within our bodies, doctors and researchers don’t just get a one-off snapshot of the organ of interest.
The sensors can provide sustained monitoring of measurements over a period of time, enabling the identification of trends in the data, or triggering of alerts to flag out anomalies breaching threshold levels.
This means a doctor would be able to more accurately see the changes in a person’s digestive tract, for example, instead of having only a quick look by using a scope or collecting stool samples.
So, instead of a number of nanobots swimming inside a person, ingestibles are miniaturised versions of electronic devices that require low power and have reliable wireless communication to relay the signals that they are reading.
In February 2020, Belgium-based research outfit imec presented the world’s first fully integrated millimetre-scale wireless transceiver for ingestibles or electronic analytical devices that can be swallowed.
This breakthrough, presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2020 conference at San Francisco in February, means that in the future, ingestible devices could be easier to be manufactured and be more effective in staying in a stomach to monitor important signs of diseases, such as diabetes, Crohn’s Disease or coeliac.
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Tags:diagnosis, healthcare, imec, ingestibles, IoT, MedTech, research, sensors
Posted in Brief, Gadgets, gadgets, Healthcare, Internet of Things, IoT, Medical, Opinion, Tech Focus | No Comments »
Monday, April 27th, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is spurring the healthcare industry to turn to robots for help. Darrell Adams shares how cobots – collaborative robots – reduce the risk of healthcare workers by minimising in-person contact with patients who are isolated.
* Darrell Adams is the Head of Southeast Asia & Oceania at Universal Robots.
A UR5 cobot collaborating with a healthcare worker.
COVID-19, the global pandemic, took the world by surprise and suddenly the healthcare system has to confront one of the toughest challenges on a global scale.
Millions of Nurses Needed
The global healthcare system is cracking under the strain of this global pandemic.
Yet, a recent report shows that globally, we are in need of 6 million more nurses to achieve global health targets, even without a global pandemic.
This is an alarming number, and it is unlikely that over a short period of time, the demand can be met.
Healthcare workers are working round the clock and the intense workload at the frontline led to exhaustion in many, virus infection in others, and some sadly passed away in their line of duty.
Human Factors and Errors
In the study of human factors and fatigue, factors which contribute to human errors within the confines of human factors include sleep deprivation, shift schedules, repetitive tasks, physically demanding tasks, and of course, stress.
In the medical sector, besides the lack of nurses, the healthcare industry faces other challenges such as a high instance of human error due to a pressurising and non-automated environment, working on shifts, with a substantial amount of time dedicated to administrative tasks, which takes away precious time from patient care.
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Tags:byline, cobots, healthcare, robots, Tech Focus
Posted in Brief, Enterprise IT, Healthcare, Robots, Tech Focus | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 25th, 2020
Close to 65% of Singaporeans are open to the idea of adopting a digital-only bank, according to the Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study.
* All infographics in this story courtesy of Visa.
It comes as no surprise that if consumers were to adopt a digital bank – interest is highest for an existing issuer given the trust already associated with the issuer. Click on infographic to enlarge.
The Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study was conducted in October 2019 by ENGINE Insights with 511 Singaporeans aged 18-65 years of age.
3 in 4 Singaporeans are aware of the concept of Digital Banking – whilst nearly 2 in 3 would be curious of adopting a digital only bank. Click on infographic to enlarge.
This is part of a regional research project conducted in Southeast Asia on 5,000 consumers across seven markets in Southeast Asia.
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Tags:banking, Fintech, neobanks, payments, Singapore, Tech Focus, technology, Visa
Posted in Brief, Business IT, Figures, Fintech, Infographic, infographics, Press Release, Seminars, Study, Tech Focus, Visa | No Comments »
Friday, March 20th, 2020
Here are some tips from Google on digital wellbeing and how our devices can contribute to our daily happiness.
The first step toward digital wellbeing is often understanding more about how you interact with technology in the first place. Tools like the Digital Wellbeing Dashboard in Android 9 Pie and YouTube’s Time Watched offer ways to keep you more informed about your habits.
Despite being one of the wealthiest nations globally, research has shown that Singaporeans are amongst the unhappiest people in the world.
Disconnect when you need to. Take advantage of tools that help make it easier to take a break from your devices, and switch off at the end of each day.
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Tags:Android, Google, happiness, health, Pixel, tips
Posted in App, Apps, gadgets, Google, Holiday, Infographic, infographics, Internet, Opinion, smartphones, Tech Focus, Tips | No Comments »
Saturday, February 22nd, 2020
I just watched the Oscar-winning Parasite during the week with the family. It was entertaining as a comedy and thought-provoking as a satire. Great movie. Here’s some data on how people searched about the movie during Oscar season.
A refreshing treatment of the age-old dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots.
My family and I watched the movie over dinner time and thoroughly enjoyed the dark but refreshingly directed satire, including my teenage son, although he did express a desire to take a hiatus from the genre in the coming months.
A friend of mine thought Parasite was a sci-fi/horror movie about aliens hijacking human bodies and spreading like a zombie apocalypse.
But I told him the Oscars do not typically give the top award to that genre.
So here’s what Google shared about the interest that global viewers showed in the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture – instead of just the traditional Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
As a Best Picture nominee in the week prior to the awards, Parasite was the third-most-searched nominee behind “1917” and “Jojo Rabbit”.
Incidentally, we’ve also watched Jojo Rabbit and found it an excellent movie. We’ll probably watch 1917 after my son’s hiatus.
What does winning the Oscars do for our career and business?
On Oscars day, Parasite searches jumped almost nine-fold to become top-searched.
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Tags:Academy, analytics, data, entertainment, Google, movies, Oscars, Parasite, Search, Tech Focus, trends
Posted in Big Data, Entertainment, Figures, Google, Infographic, Internet, Lists, Opinion, Reference, Shows, Study, Tech Focus, Wiki | No Comments »
Friday, January 3rd, 2020
Atish Gude, NetApp’s Chief Strategy Officer shares three predictions for 2020, putting the spotlight on 5G, Blockchain and infrastructure virtualisation solutions.
* This article is contributed by Atish Gude, based on his professional experience and personal opinions.
What does 2020 hold in store?
2019 was a year of rapid innovation – and disruption – for both the IT industry and the broader business community.
With the widespread adoption of hybrid multicloud as the de-facto architecture for enterprise customers, organisations everywhere are under tremendous pressure to modernise their infrastructure and deliver tangible business value around data-intensive applications and workloads.
Multiclouds & Virtualisation
As a result, organisations are shifting from on-premises to leverage public cloud services, building private clouds, and moving from disk to flash in data centers – sometimes concurrently.
These transformations open the door to enormous potential, but also introduce the unintended consequence of rising IT complexity.
We predict that a demand for simplicity and customisability will be the number-one factor driving IT purchasing decisions in 2020.
Data-driven transformations
Vendors will need to provide customers modern, flexible technologies with the choice of how to use and consumes these technologies to meet evolving business models.
As IT departments look to de-emphasise maintenance and hardware, reduce overhead, and adopt pay-as-you-go models, simplicity and choice will be key.
Achieving this simplicity will serve as the foundation for companies as they navigate the exciting technological trends we’ve identified below.
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Tags:5G, AI, Blockchain, IoT, NetApp, predictions, Tech Focus, trends, virtualisation
Posted in AI, Blockchain, Business IT, Cloud, Enterprise IT, infographics, Internet of Things, Interview, IoT, Opinion, Tech Focus, Technology | No Comments »
Saturday, September 28th, 2019
How can technology help in the fight against zoonisis? Aspiring vet, Erin Tan, did some research on the topic and shares what she thinks in this second article in a two-part series.
* This article first appeared in HalenessMe.
The web-based app Supramap uses genomic data to track the global movement of avian influenza virus.
Emerging technology can help in mainly two ways.
Firstly, through harnessing the power of Big Data, information from previous outbreaks, and studies conducted independently around the world, can be collated to help predict where a deadly zoonotic virus will strike next.
About The Author
Erin Tan is an aspiring Veterinarian.
She will be reading Veterinary Medicine at Emmanuel College in the University of Cambridge.
The vast availability of health data today means that data must be intelligently handled, using the right tools to derive helpful trends.
For instance, Google Flu Trends collated data from users’ searches to estimate influenza activity, and was found to show strong correlation with official data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2009 flu pandemic.
The web-based app Supramap uses genomic data to track the global movement of avian influenza virus.
Google Flu Trends collated data from users’ searches to estimate influenza activity.
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Tags:analytics, Big Data, healthtech, medicine, MedTech, Tech Focus, technology, veterinary medicine
Posted in Big Data, Brief, Healthcare, Opinion, Tech Focus, Technology | No Comments »
Saturday, September 21st, 2019
The word ‘zoonosis’ is not one that is popular in the common lexicon, and yet it is something that can affect our lives profoundly. Aspiring vet med student, Erin Tan, did some research on the topic and shares what she thinks in this two-part story.
* This article first appeared in HalenessMe.
Zoonoses. Source: GAO.
A zoonosis is a disease which can be transferred from animals to humans, and there are many examples of zoonoses which many are familiar with.
About the Author
Erin Tan is an aspiring Veterinary Medicine student.
She has been offered a place to study Vet Med at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Veterinary College in London, and the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
She is still deciding which of these places to take up.
One has only to recall the SARS outbreak of 2003 to recognise the destructive potential of zoonoses.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a disease which originated from viruses in bats that jumped to palm civets and then to humans, severely impacted countries like Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and even Canada.
774 lives were claimed globally by this never-before-seen disease.
Stories of doctors, nurses and other health workers who had perished saving the lives of SARS patients filled the papers.
International travel to affected areas dropped sharply by 50-70%, resulting in the closure of many tourism-related businesses.
The civet cat is closely associated with the outbreak of SARS in Asia.
Clearly, while the containment of SARS – especially in Singapore – is generally hailed as a success story, the outbreak did result in significant social and economic drawbacks.
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Tags:healthtech, medicine, MedTech, Tech Focus, technology, veterinary medicine
Posted in Brief, Healthcare, infographics, Opinion, Tech Focus | No Comments »
Saturday, February 16th, 2019
Pet ownership is on the rise, and so is telemedicine for humans. Is telemedicine also useful for diagnosis and treatment of animals? Aspiring vet med student, Erin Tan, did some research on the topic and shares what she thinks.
Consult a vet from home via the Internet. Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash.
Pet ownership is on the rise.
With canine pets licensed in Singapore increasing by 32% in the past decade – according to the Agri-Veterinary Authority of Singapore – and the booming pet industry in places like China and India, it is evident that pet owners form a large, and valuable, market.
With teleconsultation, the vet can “see to” animals needing medical consultations even when he/she is not in the clinic.
The pet-care market in Asia is valued at around US$1 billion a year, and is expected to grow to US$1.5 billion by 2020.
Another trend in recent years is the rise of telemedicine in the human health industry.
There has been a proliferation of apps like MaNaDr, Doctor Anywhere and MyDoc, which aim to connect patients with doctors over a digital platform and make the provision of healthcare much more convenient.
There is much potential in marrying the two thriving industries together, by making telemedicine available for veterinarians to deliver medical advice and consultations to pet-owners, through virtual means.
Manifestations of veterinary telemedicine would include platforms for pet-owners to ask vets for advice by sending photos and messages to vets on duty, or tele-consults via video calls.
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Tags:healthtech, MaNaDr, medicine, MedTech, Tech Focus, technology, telemedicine, veterinary medicine
Posted in Apps, Healthcare, Internet, Opinion, Tech Focus | No Comments »
