It’s Friday, so it’s time to take a look at what you may have missed in the world of technology outside healthcare.
Here are five interesting general technology stories that people in healthcare should pay attention to, since these issues could have an impact on health tech in the future.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
1. “A new report paints an alarming picture about the kind of cybercrime you rarely hear about” (Business Insider)
North Korea may be able to hobble a major movie studio, and the Chinese government has frequently stolen information on US defense hardware.
But individuals are much softer targets than governments or major corporations. And every individual has access to information — ranging from medical data to bank-account numbers to online passwords to basic biographical information — off which enterprising hackers can profit.
2. “Is technology causing us to ‘evolve’ into a new SPECIES? Expert believes super humans called Homo optimus will talk to machines and be ‘digitally immortal’ by 2050” (Daily Mail)
If you’re under the age of 40, there is a good chance you will achieve ‘electronic immortality’ during your lifetime.
This is the idea that all of your thoughts and experiences will be uploaded and stored online for future generations.
That’s according to a futurologist who not only believes technology will let humans merge with computers, that this will create an entirely new species called Homo optimus.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
3. “Why AT&T’s attempt to kill municipal broadband in Tenn. matters to all Americans” (CIO)
Chattanooga, Tenn., is more than 2,400 miles from Silicon Valley, but residents of the Southern city have access to broadband that’s 50 times faster than the majority of Internet connections in technology’s capital. Why, you ask? Chattanooga’s municipally owned electric utility, EPB, provides its broadband Internet.
Chattanooga’s neighbors would like to set up a similar arrangement, but AT&T, which delivers much slower broadband in the area — when it delivers at all — is trying to block the plan, saying the government should not compete with private enterprise.
4. “Mozilla will stop supporting Firefox OS for smartphones in May” (Engadget)
Mozilla’s Firefox OS isn’t strictly speaking dead, but it may as well be as far as smartphones are concerned. The company announced via email that it would stop supporting the mobile OS after releasing Firefox OS 2.6 (currently slated for the end of May), a move that’ll free up staff that will try to figure out how exactly Firefox OS fits into the growing internet-of-things scene.
3. “The Malware Museum: An online archive of computer viruses of yore” (Venture Beat)
Courtesy of online security guru Mikko Hypponen, the Malware Museum is an Internet Archive-hosted compendium of prominent malware programs from the 1980s and 1990s, mainly viruses. Once actioned, many viruses would display messages or animations to let you know your PC had been infected.
