Gamers play with the Pokémon Go application on their mobile phone, at the Grote Markt in Haarlem, Netherlands, on July 13.
It’s Friday, so it’s time once again to take a look at what you may have missed in the world of technology outside healthcare this week. (We might have missed some of these, too, because we were busy with our successful MedCity CONVERGE conference in Philadelphia.)
Here are five interesting general technology stories from the past seven days that people in healthcare should pay attention to. These issues could have an impact on health tech in the future.
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3D medical animation services have emerged as a groundbreaking tool in the healthcare industry, revolutionizing the way medical concepts are taught, understood, and marketed.
1. “How Pokémon Go could change the course of technology” (MarketWatch)
Pokémon Go provides a needed example of how the digital and physical worlds might be able to coexist through mobile devices, though. While virtual reality requires a complete retreat from the surrounding physical world, augmented reality lives within it, potentially making it more attractive to a mainstream audience.
“Augmented reality is the bigger play because humans still get to touch, and still have a better connection with, their immediate real-time physical world,” said Todd Richmond, an IEEE member and director of advanced prototype development at University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. “It is an easier transaction to process.”
2. “US, NSF to put $400M into Advanced Wireless Research Initiative for 5G networks” (TechCruch)
As President Obama approaches the end of his tenure in the White House, his team is launching a wireless networking research project that it hopes could be part of his wider legacy in the world of tech. [Friday], the Obama administration announced the Advanced Wireless Research Initiative, a group backed by $400 million in investment that will work on research aimed to “maintain U.S. leadership and win the next generation of mobile technology” and specifically developing wireless networking tech that will offer speeds 100 times faster than the 4G and LTE networks that are being used today.
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3. “Wearables could compromise corporate data” (Computerworld)
“As of now, wearables and Internet of Things devices are not getting attached to employer networks and so it’s not been viewed as a serious problem,” [labor attorney Peter] Gillespie said in an interview. “But I do think employer IT and HR departments should be aware that the consumer rollout of wearables has not been designed with enterprise data security in mind.”
4. “MIT Anonymity Network Riffle Promises Efficiency, Security” (ThreatPost)
Researchers from MIT believe a new anonymity scheme they’ve devised dubbed Riffle could contend with Tor, claiming it’s every bit as secure as Tor, and bandwidth-efficient, to boot.
According to a paper, “Riffle: An Efficient Communication System With Strong Anonymity,” (.PDF) released this week, the system can guarantee anonymity among a large group of users, as long as there’s one honest server.
5. “How our voices could unlock the connected world” (BBC News)
Physical characteristics, such as the length of your tongue and the thickness of your vocal cords, contribute to the uniqueness of your voice. Then there are personality traits — the tone and pitch, the way you pronounce certain syllables and words.
The latest computer algorithms can analyse all these hundreds of variables and come up with a near-certain authentication within three seconds.
Photo: REMKO DE WAAL/AFP/Getty Images