A new UK initiative has stirred debate about DNA analysis for healthy people. The program allows patients to pay to get their genome sequenced and analyzed if they agree to let the data be used in research. Author Salisbury says the UK controversy largely misses the point. More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 20 of 22 results for “data”
Community Insights Innovation Media & Marketing
Facebook’s Failures Invite an Entirely New Industry
In the wake of the Facebook data breach, a new industry will emerge, one that truly puts our data to work serving us. More
New Efforts Promote Open Data in Science and Medicine
For American healthcare to improve, institutions must be able to share data. But they can’t. HIPAA and restrictive consent forms are among the challenges to data accessibility. But new approaches are emerging, and it may usher a new open data era. More
Analytics & Data Finance Security & Privacy
The Fin-ternet of Things: Connecting Everything Means Rethinking Money
The coming world of the Internet of Everything means driverless cars making per-minute toll payments, lightbulbs that pick an energy vendor, IP royalties paid by devices themselves in real time, and investment decisions made by robo-advisors. This more efficient world will mean changes for banks, investment, and the way all of us live. More
Can We Balance Human Ethics With Artificial Intelligence?
Who determines the values behind artificial intelligence? Complicated decisions, even life and death ones, will soon be made by software. This groundbreaking article explores the complex choices facing society, business, and technologists. “We should not let Silicon Valley be the mission control for humanity,” argues one futurist. More
New Rules I: Government Engagement
With tech changing business and societal norms, where does that leave government? Will it exist as we know it in 20 years? Can governments become as agile as businesses? What should evidence-based policy and data-driven government look like? More
At Techonomy 2016, a Vision of Disrupted Healthcare
Medicine will be unrecognizable in the coming decades, with technology changes leading to better care at home, vanishing hospitals, and doctors who can monitor patients’ activity and health between visits. Leaders in various sectors who spoke at Techonomy 2016 contributed to the futuristic picture. More
This Company’s Business is Opening Up Government Data
Boston and Barcelona, Spain have something in common with Yelp and Zillow–they’re taking advantage of open data. Along with all the ways it’s reshaping business, opening up data to the use of outsiders is beginning also to reshape how city, state, and federal agencies work. Socrata, a privately-held government-data platform provider based in Seattle, is making a business out of facilitating this trend. More
Bio & Life Sciences Global Tech Healthcare
The Superbugs are Coming. Data Science Can Help.
Thanks to miraculous advances in public health and medical science over the past century, we can prevent and treat many common microbial infections.Yet some in the health industry fear that may be changing. We misuse and overuse antimicrobial drugs on a massive scale, and the bad bugs are beginning to evolve new resistance mechanisms. Data science can play a central role in the fight against the looming global threat. More
Analytics & Data Business Techonomy Events
Techonomy NYC Is a Lens on a New Kind of Society
We curated an astonishingly diverse group of speakers to provoke us on May 26 about how tech and the Internet of Things points to an entirely new sort of society. It changes health, cities, how we'll work, business structure and strategy, the future of marketing, and more. The entire event, which took place Thursday May 26, is now available on video. Program details here: https://techonomy.com/conf/nyc/agenda/. More
Manufacturing Startup Culture Techonomy Events
From Techonomy Detroit: In Manufacturing, Speed Trumps Scale
A tech trifecta is transforming manufacturing: Cloud connectivity, cheaper, computing, and easily-shared digital information. When speed-to-market is valued over all else, businesses that best utilize these tools for R&D, production, and delivery will win. The new synergies are transforming one-man manufacturing startups as much as giants like Ford. More
Analytics & Data Business Healthcare
Can Open Data Drive Innovative Healthcare?
As healthcare systems worldwide become increasingly digitized, medical scientists and health researchers have more data than ever. Yet much valuable health information remains locked in proprietary or hidden databases. A growing number of open data initiatives aim to change this, but it won’t be easy. More
Baby Wearables: The Next Big Thing in “Smart” Parenting?
With the seemingly endless variety of smart wearables out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, not only by the options available but also by the data produced. What does all the data mean, how is it applied, where does it go, and does it really improve your life? Or just further complicate it? Compound all of these questions with the fact that today’s wearables aren’t just tracking you, they’re also tracking your baby. We’ve already seen Huggies’ TweetPee, a wetness sensor that clips onto diapers and wirelessly connects with an app, Tweeting at parents when a diaper needs changing. And diaper alerts are just the tip of the wearable iceberg. More
Analytics & Data Cities Techonomy Events
The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance
What is citizenship in the digital age? Policy experts Susan Crawford of Harvard University and Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution discuss themes from Crawford’s new book about civic engagement, innovation, and the role of tech and the Internet for Detroit and other major cities. More
Media & Marketing Techonomy Events
Ford’s Data-Driven CMO on Mobile, Newsrooms, Tesla, and More
Jim Farley of Ford joined David Kirkpatrick onstage at Techonomy 2013 in Tucson. Farley leads Ford’s drive to connect more closely with customers, and serves not only as Ford's chief marketing officer, but also as chief of its Lincoln division. Farley says that data makes marketers better by enabling greater responsiveness to trends and better targeting. "But," the adds, "there's a whole piece of consumer data we haven't figured out yet. More
Self-Tracked Consumers Can Steer Health Decisions with Data
Most people want to control certain kinds of data. Consider banking information: you may share account access with a spouse, but beyond that, you won’t hand those reins to anybody. It’s not just high-security data, either. Who doesn’t know married couples who insist on separate Netflix accounts, so one person’s movie choices don’t mess up the other’s queue? But when it comes to our health information, it’s a different story. Why is it that with this data—the closest we are likely to come to having life-or-death information—we throw our hands in the air and hope medical professionals make the right choices? More
Pentagon to Destroy $1 Billion Worth of Ammunition Because Data Doesn’t Talk
While the Defense Department prepares to rid itself of roughly $1.2 billion worth of bullets and missiles, it has come to the attention of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and members of Congress that some of those munitions might actually still be usable by troops. The problem? According to a GAO report first discussed by USA Today, “the Defense Department’s inventory systems can’t share data effectively.” Not only is data not shared effectively, but simple communication between branches of the military is sometimes so discombobulated that near-Rube-Goldberg measures must sometimes be enacted: email requests from one branch that are emailed to another must sometimes be printed out and then re-entered manually before those requests can even be considered, let alone be implemented. More
In Future, Data May Help Predict Even Wars
Amazon predicts what you want to buy, political pundits predict who you'll vote for, search engines predict what you're looking for. And now researchers and social scientists are looking to similar techniques to predict mass violence and atrocities like war, civil unrest, and genocide. The "GDELT" Project (Global Database of Events, Language and Tone), created at Georgetown University, is updated every morning and catalogs more than a quarter billion event records from across the globe since 1979. The hope is that by mapping and tracking human societal-scale behaviors and beliefs we can learn from the past and better forecast the future. More
Nate Silver Is Not the Only Useful Pundit
Data is nothing new. We at Techonomy get excited because there is now more of it, in more massageable forms, which will likely assist society in adding efficiency to all sorts of processes and systems that have heretofore been sloppy or unfair. However, we don't worship at the foot of data, especially not at the cost of deprecating other forms of analysis and interpretation. Which is why we found this essay by the redoubtable Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic gratifying. We admire Nate Silver's election work as much as the next citizen, but I and we agree with Wieseltier that thinking and arguing based on experience and values can be equally, and sometimes more, valuable. More
Bio & Life Sciences Energy & Green Tech Techonomy Events
Fred Krupp on Using Data and Tech to Prevent Overfishing
In this 10-minute talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, discusses how new techonoloy is helping to monitor and protect fisheries from over fishing. Data collection using video cameras and powerful software is helping local fisheries in Canada sustain their fish populations by calculating yearly fishing limits for fishermen. More
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