# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While the T1 had a removable back cover for customization and for accessing the SIM tray, the slimmer and lighter T2 doesn't. But rather than tainting the T2's clean bezel, Smartisan has taken a page out of Motorola's book and turned the volume keys on the right as part of the new Nano SIM tray. Simply poke a pin into the nearby hole and the whole piece pops out. The other set of volume keys on the left remain unchanged, and as before, you can assign screen brightness to one side and volume to the other in system settings, depending on your hand preference.

As for the missing power button at the top, well, you'll now have to rely on the home key, which is one of the three customizable physical buttons as featured on the T1. If anything, the new 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 panel (same on the back side) complements well with these buttons.

Spec-wise the T2 isn't all that exciting; it's more of a sensible combination rather than something mind-blowing. Beneath that 5-inch 1080p LCD you'll find a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 chipset (2x Cortex-A57 at 1.82 GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 at 1.44 GHz) which isn't as powerful as the octa-core 810 (two more A57 cores, and possibly clocked at higher speeds), but given the 2,670 mAh battery, this was no doubt intentional. On a more positive note, this Qualcomm chip also offers a generous range of bands for both LTE and 3G UMTS (both are US-friendly), along with VoLTE support on all three major carriers in China.

Other hidden components include a choice of either 16GB of 32GB of internal storage, 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC and a pair of Texas Instrument OPA1612 chips for audio amplification. For photography, the 13-megapixel f/2.0 main camera has been upgraded with optical image stabilization and new video recording options: 4K at 30fps and 720p at 120fps. Alas, no dual-tone LED flash here. On the other side, not much has changed with the 5-megapixel selfie camera. To be picky, we would have liked to see either microSD expansion or at least a 64GB option at launch, and USB Type-C connection would have been a nice talking point.

On the software side, the T2 runs on the new Smartisan OS 2.5 based on Android 5.1, which is also made available to the U1 variants today and then the T1 on January 6th. You'll find the same big-tile launcher with slick animations, with the main update here being the frosted tile option, which finally lets users set a photo as the wallpaper without making a visual mess, plus you can take a peek at the original picture underneath when you drag a tile around. Better yet, you can even give this new launcher a spin on your very own Android device; just grab the APK from Smartisan's website and install it.

The new OS also offers some new handy tools. The Smartisan Drive app features a very simple interface -- just ginormous buttons for car navigation, music and phone -- for minimal distraction. We're also liking the seemingly foolproof remote assistance app co-developed by fellow Chinese company Cutecomm, which is good news for users who have to occasionally help their less tech-savvy elders; and it's smart enough to show a warning prompt when the remote user attempts to access payment apps on the host device. Last but not least, the T2 comes with built-in global data roaming service which not only supports 48 countries and regions, but also charges cheaply -- just 25 yuan or about $4 per day when roaming in the US or the UK, for example. But obviously, this service is only available to users based in China.

As with its previous flagship model, Smartisan has no intention to join the Chinese price war with the T2, but it's still relatively affordable for what it is: 2,499 yuan or about $385 for the 16GB version, and 2,599 yuan or about $400 for 32GB. The first lot has quickly sold out in China shortly after the launch event, so you'll just have to keep an eye on your favorite importers until more stock arrives. And who knows, this phone may eventually launch in the US, as Smartisan does plan on expanding beyond its home country later this year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Smartisan's T2 phone is all about metal and minimalism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While the T1 had a removable back cover for customization and for accessing the SIM tray, the slimmer and lighter T2 doesn't. But rather than tainting the T2's clean bezel, Smartisan has taken a page out of Motorola's book and turned the volume keys on the right as part of the new Nano SIM tray.

# data[].attributes.headline
Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now

# data[].attributes.subject
Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 Future Technology That's Here Right Now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A robot barely larger than a coffee mug and powered by two AA batteries has set two world records for climbing the Grand Canyon and cycling around the 24 hours of Le Mans racing circuit.

Electronic company Panasonic's Mr EVOLTA robot managed to cycle nonstop for 24 hours in early August, covering more than five laps, 24 kilometres, of the French racing track. The feat set a Guinness world record for the longest distance covered by a battery-operated remote-controlled model car.

The 17-centimetre-tall robot rode a tricyle along the racing track guided by an infrared beam coming from a camera car.

This was not the first time Panasonic used Mr EVOLTA to show the long-lasting power of its EVOLTA AA alkaline batteries.

In 2008, the robot climbed a 530 metre rope to the top of a Grand Canyon cliff in 2008. It took 6 hours 46 minutes to complete the challenge and gave Panasonic a Guinness world record for the longest lasting AA alkaline battery.

Mr EVOLTA was developed by robot-creator Tomotaka Takahashi.

Images from http://mainichi.jp and http://evolta.jp/lemans/index.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Robot powered by two AA batteries sets two world records

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A robot barely larger than a coffee mug and powered by two AA batteries has set two world records for climbing the Grand Canyon and cycling around the 24 hours of Le Mans racing circuit.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Advanced Technology / Advanced Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As technology continues to dramatically shift and change the way we communicate and learn, Pemberton Township Schools remains in the forefront of using technology in the teaching and learning process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Innovations, New Inventions, Future Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editors of Popular Science have sought out new innovations, products, and technologies posted to change our world. These are the Best of What's New.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Future Inventions Latest Technology -  2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
future inventions videos future technology future inventions future tech future of technology technology in the future the future of technology technology of the future future gadgets latest technology 2017 upcoming technology 2017 latest technology inventions future invention ideas latest technology 2017 upcoming gadgets technology future future technology 2050 inventions for

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CLOSE

LOS ANGELES - There was lots of talk about virtual reality in 2016, but most of it was looking forward to trends that might come true in a few years. The real action, however, was in another form of reality, the augmented kind.

AR, or augmented reality, tops our annual list of tech innovations for 2016, highlighted, of course, by the app, and all those crazy filters we added to our Snapchat photos.

Snapchat, the app originally beloved for sending photos that could disappear within 10 seconds, has expanded into a service some 150 million visit daily, fueled by the selfie lens, where you can add cat ears and rainbow tongues to your photos and videos. In November, it went one step further with the introduction of "World Lenses," which put smiles onto ordinary clouds in the background of your photo, or add falling rain or snow to an image.

The red-hot Spectacles video glasses, released at the end of the year, don't have AR-you shoot regular 10-second video clips that can be viewed on Snapchat. But it's not hard to imagine what the product could morph into eventually with AR.

This, for all its silliness, is augmented reality, a far cry from costly, immersive virtual-reality headsets produced by Facebook's Oculus, Samsung, HTC and Google. While these all won praise for their quality, they've lacked the "killer app" that's made everyone - from nephews to grandmothers - want to try it.

Not so with augmented reality, as the raging popularity of Pokémon Go attested.

1. This summer, the Pokémon Go phenomenon hit seemingly overnight. Millions of people ditched work and other commitments to pour into the streets in search of characters to catch via their smartphone app.

The game, which boasts more than 500 million downloads, was real, while the simulated characters were super-imposed into real-life situations on our smartphone cameras like theme parks, carnivals and ocean-front boardwalks.

The fun was short-lived, though. The app currently isn't even in the top 50 on Apple's app chart, and clocks in at no. 40 on Google's Play chart.

But do we expect big things in AR for 2017? Absolutely.

2. SMARTPHONE STEADICAM. I fell hard this year for the Osmo Mobile Gimbal, the drone-camera-technology on a stick from DJI, the market leader in drone sales. Long seen in movies, with crane shots that appear to be flying, you can now achieve similar results for just a few hundred dollars.

In 2015, DJI introduced the Osmo as a unit with a dedicated camera for $550; this year it went mass market with the Mobile, which uses your smartphone camera to record the fluid, smooth images, using the motors of the gimbal, a feature on many drones, to steady your shots.

Use it, and your fans might think you hired a helicopter to come along with you for the shoot.

If you're reading this over the weekend, DJI has a Black Friday deal with a free extra battery (worth $35), which you will need. The original battery lasts only about 30-45 minutes.

Runner-up goes to the GoPro Karma Grip, a similar steadicam on a stick for your GoPro, which initially was included with the price of the $1,100 Karma drone. But then the drone started falling from the skies, and GoPro recalled the product. The action-cam maker has yet to put the Grip for sale as an accessory, but says it's coming soon. I tested it and loved the super-wide shots you could get on the GoPro camera, now steady for the first time.

3. NEW WAY TO SCAN: Last year, Google gave us Google Photos, an app that organized your massive, growing photo collection with facial recognition, and no storage limits. Now the same division just unleashed ScanPhoto as an alternative to all of us who take photos of old photos with our smartphone. The images are decent, but sometimes there's glare, and the orientation is a little off.

The app's genius is that it takes four photos of each image, and uses software to eliminate glare - very well, as it has tools to adjust the crop, and then inserts them directly into Google Photos, so you can find them.

Your alternative is using a paid service like Scanmyphotos.com or iMemories, where the quality will be better, and it will be less taxing than having you do a shoebox's worth of photos one by one.

But as a free addition to the app portfolio that's always by our side, it can't be beat.

4. BLUETOOTH LIFESAVER: In my house, we can't live without Tile, the little bluetooth gizmo that attaches to key ring chains and the inside of my wallet to help me find lost stuff. Can't find something? Just open the Tile app, and wait for the ring tone to locate the missing item. New for 2016 was the Tile Slim, a $30 thinner version (as thin as two credit cards, the company says). The Slim is made to more easily live in tight spaces, like a passport or bottom of a camera, which means we can use it in more places.

5. BETTER HOME WI-FI. Finally, consistent Internet throughout the house with the Eero, a gadget that works alongside your router to stream your signal through walls, doors and other former obstacles in the home. The founder of the company, Nick Weaver, told USA TODAY earlier this year how his parents' Wi-Fi woes inspired him to start Eero. "Our networks run our homes," he said. "Without the Internet, it's hard to get any work done, hard to relax. I really wanted to fix this problem." He put enterprise style networking tech into small white boxes. "You think you can just have a router run our expanding collections of devices, but that's not so." Instead, you place Eero units throughout the home to spread the Internet signal. Pricey- a three-pack starts at $499, but Eero is offering Black Friday pricing at $100 off. (Google has a similar product, Google Wifi, that's expected to be released by December for $129.)

6. ACOUSTICS THAT SOUND ELECTRIC. I love playing acoustic guitars because I can grab them, and start playing immediately, without having to plug in. I love the sound of acoustic, but electric doesn't sound too shabby, either. So call me a huge fan of Yamaha's innovation here - Yamaha TransAcoustic guitar, whichcan sound electrified through technology.

Yamaha pulls this off by installing what's called an "actuator" into the inner surface of the Transacoustic guitar back (street price, around $1,000), which vibrates in "response to the vibrations of the strings," according to the company. Turn it on, and you get "Reverb" and "Chorus" sounds, which add presence to your music. Many guitar players crank up the reverb on their amps or pedals. I just adjust the volume on the TransAcoustic, and do it naturally, without any cords.

7. THE DRONE THAT FITS IN A (LARGE) POCKET. Finally, how about a small, light drone that can slip into a really tight space? In the DJI Mavic Pro drone, DJI brought down the size of the flying machine into one that could easily join you for hikes, cycling expeditions and the like. For a $999 drone that was so popular, production is backed up at least two months, according to the website.

(Rival GoPro had a similar idea with the Karma drone, priced at $1099 and said to be small and portable - but in truth, it was rather large and heavy, and had this little problem of falling from the skies during flight. The unit has since been recalled; it did produce beautiful images, though.)
And that's my list of the 7 tech innovations of 2016. Agree? Disagree? Let's chat about it on Twitter, where I'm @jeffersongraham.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2gvpDp3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CLOSE LOS ANGELES - There was lots of talk about virtual reality in 2016, but most of it was looking forward to trends that might come true in a few years. The real action, however, was in another form of reality, the augmented kind.

# data[].attributes.headline
10 New Innovations That Could Change the World

# data[].attributes.subject
10 New Innovations That Could Change the World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New TechTank Blog Posts Are Available Here

Since 2001, the MIT Technology Review has released their list of the 10 most important technological innovations that emerged each year. The editors selected each item based on its potential to change the world. Previous years lists included epigenetics, wireless sensor networks, grid computing, additive manufacturing, smart watches, and mobile 3-D. The 2014 list is just as exciting.

Agricultural Drones

Farmers have begun to use agricultural drones adorned with cameras to improve the treatment of their crops. The drones allow farmers a unique perspective that previously-used satellite imagery could not provide. They help to expose issues with irrigation treatment, soil variation, and distressed plants at a much lower cost than methods like crop imaging with a manned aircraft. The success of the drones is made possible by technological advances in GPS modules, digital radios, and small MEMS sensors. Together, these advances allow farmers to bring greater precision to their craft in order to reap greater rewards.

Ultraprivate Smartphones

As concerns over personal privacy grow, particularly in terms of new technology, a Maryland-based company seeks to provide an alternative. Silent Circle, encrypts clients' voice calls, text messages, and file attachments. Encryption prevents potential eavesdroppers from listening in on phone calls and protects metadata. Silent Circle has big plans for the future including a secure smartphone called Blackphone. Blackphone will utilize encryption tools currently used by Silent Circle, as well as other software that will help secure data.

Brain Mapping

Neuroscientists have worked for decades to better understand how the brain functions. Recent advances in brain mapping technology have made that ambitious task easier. An international team of researchers at the Human Brain Project have created a three dimensional atlas of the brain. The maps resolution is fifty times better than previous efforts. The atlas creators digitally stitched together thousands of brain cross-sections. The map shows details up to 20 micrometers in size-the estimated size of many human cells. While this is a huge advancement, scientists still aim to create a map that shows details at 1 or 2 micrometers, rather than 20.

Neuromorphic Chips

Many companies around the globe are working towards blurring the lines between biological systems and man-made creations. Qualcomm is making significant steps in developing artificial intelligence system with the use of Neuromorphic Chips. These chips blend neurology into traditional technologies like smartphone chips. Qualcomm is already testing chips in small robots that allow the machines to perform tasks that typically require a custom computer. The chips can process sensory data through sight and sound in order to respond in ways that are not explicitly programmed. For example, the chips could anticipate user needs.

Genome Editing

Researchers in China created a pair of monkeys with specific genetic mutations. The scientists used a new method of DNA engineering known as CRISPR. CRISPR allows scientists to modify fertilized eggs. This innovation has great implications for the field of biomedicine. The ability to alter DNA at specific locations on chromosomes makes it easier to study diseases. Researchers at MIT have expressed interest in studying brain disorders like autism and Alzheimer's disease. CRISPR has the potential to aid researchers studying such ailments, allowing them to identify what genetic mutations actually cause the disorders.

Microscale 3-D Printing

The potential of 3-D printing technology has many people excited about new applications. But current printers have important limitations. Up until recently, most 3-D printers can only use plastic. A group of researchers at Harvard University, led by Jennifer Lewis, have started to develop new 3-D printer inks. Her team prints intricate objects using materials that are chosen based on their mechanical properties, electrical conductivity, or optical traits. Eventually new inks will enable a wider variety of functions, including artificial organ creation.

Mobile Collaboration

The current infrastructure for collaborating in a professional environment can be counterproductive to getting work done. This problem is one that new apps like Quip aim to solve. The intent is to develop a system where every step of the collaboration process happens in the same digital space. It aims to create a more intimate experience by implementing chat features and a Facebook-style news feed, in turn creating a more collaborative experience. These new platforms aim to improve the efficiency and productivity of current workflows.

Oculus Rift

This spring, Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion, and for a good reason. The company was born out of the mind of Palmer Luckey, a kid with no engineering education who built the first prototype for the Rift when he was 16. Now 21, Luckey has created a product that makes immersive video game play a reality. The Rift is designed to make users feel as though they are actually inside the world of the game by following your movements in real time. While video games are the target market for the Rift, the technology also has implications for architecture design, emergency response training, phobia therapy, and much more.

Agile Robots

Taking a single step requires balance, coordination, force, and direction. Each of these factors has presented unique challenges for engineers designing robots that can walk. Enter Boston Dynamics who have experimented with the "dynamic balance"-a feature that allows robots to maintain balance while walking. Recently, they successfully created a robot that can walk across uneven and unsteady terrain. This new innovation opens doors for the greater use of robots in emergency operations or helping elderly and disabled individuals with chores and daily tasks. While the technology is still in the developmental stage, Boston Dynamics knows that the robots need to walk, before they can run.

Smart Wind and Solar Power

One barrier to mainstream use of renewables is integrating sustainable energy sources into the current power grid. Big data and artificial intelligence have made it easier to predict how much power wind turbines will produce. Anticipating power fluctuations is key to developing technologies for integrating wind and solar into the power grid.

Aaron Locke contributed to this post.
New TechTank Blog Posts Are Available Here

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 New Innovations That Could Change the World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since 2001, the MIT Technology Review has released their list of the 10 most important technological innovations that emerged each year. The Editors selected each item based on its potential to change the world. Previous years lists included epigenetics, wireless sensor networks, grid computing, additive manufacturing, smart watches, and mobile 3-D.

# data[].attributes.headline
New tool that will totally change med schools

# data[].attributes.subject
New tool that will totally change med schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This augmented reality tool could totally change med school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Most Important Technology Milestones for 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology news is full of incremental developments. These are the breakthroughs that matter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Affordable Care Act's new payment models have hospital leaders searching for effective ways to reduce costs, while increasing care quality. As the 2016 technology market will be inundated with innovations, ECRI Institute has released its annual list of the top technologies, many pointing the way toward value-based care.

"Hospital leaders have to deal with a lot of new technology issues - and demands from different departments in their facilities," said Robert P. Maliff, director of ECRI's applied solutions group, in a press statement. The list is meant to assist leaders attempting to update and implement new technology.

ECRI takes an "evidence-based" approach in their assessments of healthcare innovations over the course of the year, officials say.

"We present hospital leaders with unbiased guidance to support informed decision making and help them understand how new innovations will affect care delivery," said Diane C. Robertson, ECRI's director of health technology assessment, in a statement. The topics and trends it expects will most affect healthcare over the next year:

1. Mobile stroke units. MSUs use specially-outfitted ambulances and staff members, in conjunction with telemedicine to perform blood tests, CT scans and TPA tests before the patient arrives at the hospital.

2. Medical device cybersecurity. Most healthcare IT leaders integrate stringent security features for network infrastructures and EHRs - but not for their mobile devices. As many devices are attached to patients' EHRs, C-suite members must perform threat assessments and know the devices and software connected to crucial patient data.

3. Wireless wearable sensors. As an increasing number of consumers turn to wellness apps, devices and wearable sensors, healthcare officials must learn how to utilize this data to reduce hospital stays and readmissions for those with serious and chronic conditions.

4. Miniature leadless pacemakers. Next-generation pacemakers are 10 percent of the size of conventional pacemakers and are designed for only one heart chamber. It's more effective than traditional models, but only ideal for 15 percent pacemaker patients.

5. Blue-violet LED light fixtures. These lights provide continuous environmental disinfection technology to kill harmful healthcare-related bacteria - a major cause of morbidity, mortality and increased healthcare costs in the U.S.

6. New high-cost cardiovascular drugs. Three newly-approved homecare cardiovascular drugs are expensive compared to standard-of-care medications, but short-term data has lauded efficacy.

7. Changing landscape of robotic surgery. The robotic surgery landscape is rapidly changing; vendor competition is set to explode in early 2016 with a switch from mainframe to tablet-type programs.

8. Spectral computed tomography. Spectral computed tomography will reenter the health tech conversation due to new tools and increased marketing. The tool builds on traditional CT scans by adding depth to the physiologic function of soft tissue with a dual-layer detector.

9. Injected bioabsorbable hydrogel (SpaceOAR). Approved for prostate cancer patients, SpaceOAR is designed to protect tissue and healthy organs from radiation treatment. Currently there is limited reimbursement for this product's use, but studies have shown the barrier to be highly effective.

10. Warm donor organ perfusion systems. New technology provides warm perfusion of lungs and hearts to eliminate the issue that two-thirds of organs are never used by hospitals, as viability deteriorates harvesting, preserving and transporting.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 top healthcare technology advances for 2016, according to ECRI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Affordable Care Act's new payment models have hospital leaders searching for effective ways to reduce costs, while increasing care quality. As the 2016 technology market will be inundated with innovations, ECRI Institute has released its annual list of the top technologies, many pointing the way toward value-based care.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get the latest technology news, articles and op-eds. A look at the innovations and technologies that are shaping the future and changing the world.

# data[].attributes.headline
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.subject
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Share to email

Share to facebook

Share to twitter

Share to linkedin

Share to google

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

With so many remarkable things happening in the science and tech worlds, it's hard to choose which to talk about. Here are a few ongoing developments worth keeping your eyes on.
Medicine
Stem Cell Heart Generation- For the first time, a human heart has been created using stem cells, a major step forward in organ generation. A couple years ago scientists rebuilt the heart of a rat using stem cells; the same team is behind the latest breakthrough. If all goes as planned, the heart will continue to grow and eventually begin beating automatically. The implications of this development are huge, including overcoming the problems of transplanting donated hearts. More info

Hybrid MRI / PET Imaging - Simultaneous positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could provide the broadest spectrum of diagnostics possible, at least by current-tech standards. MRI is especially useful for examining soft tissues in the body, and when combined with PET (which is better at structural evaluation) it can provide extremely detailed imaging of organ tissue. The duo would work especially well in evaluating the true extent of liver damage, as one example, without exposure to high levels of radiation. The problem is that these technologies don't play well together, so integrating them is no small challenge. More info
Applied Sciences & Engineering
Mimicking Porosity in Nature - "Graduated porosity" in beehives, trees, seashells, bones and many other marvels of nature allows these materials to endure incredible stress without compromising the integrity of the entire structure. Bones, for example, can fracture in one place without affecting the rest of the bone. The problem is that these structures have evolved for specific purposes, and it's not easy to synthesize eons of complexity. We are, however, getting closer to figuring out what clams and bees already know. More info

Nano Batteries- Scientists have created the equivalent of a rechargeable lithium-ion battery the size of a nanowire, thousands of times smaller than a human hair. But unlike previous nanobatteries, this one is actually built right into a nanowire. This infinitesimal power source could provide nanomachines with the continuous power needed to accomplish whatever uses they're designed for, such as exploring the cardiovascular system of a heart disease patient. More info

Transparent Batteries - While we're talking about batteries, it's worth noting the first completely transparent battery was created this year. Developing a transparent power source was the last obstacle to creating transparent digital gadgets. More info

Page 1 / 2 Continue

Share to email

Share to facebook

Share to twitter

Share to linkedin

Share to google

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Big Science and Technology Advances to Watch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
So many remarkable things are happening in the science and tech worlds, it's hard to choose which to talk about. Here are a few ongoing developments worth keeping your eye on. Medicine Stem Cell Heart Generation- For the first time, a human heart has been created using stem cells, a major step forward [...]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We say it every year, but technology moves forward at a breakneck pace. Whether it's being applied to consumer-facing products today or research that'll take hold in the years to come, 2016 had its fair share of industry-shaking technology advances.

Interestingly, a bunch of the crazy forward-thinking tech that has been announced in the past couple of years actually came to life this year, which is sometimes even more exciting than whatever eccentric new idea Elon Musk has. Either way, this has once again been a big year for technology.

From batteries to space rockets, here are the 10 best technology advances of 2016:

10. The first 1TB SD card

I still remember when the first 1TB USB flash drives were coming out-it wasn't so many years ago. The fact that we can now stuff that same storage capacity in a tiny SD card is truly mind-boggling. We don't quite know the price yet, but it won't be cheap.

The SanDisk 512MB SD card currently goes for $345, so expect it to be significantly more than that. Storage capacity is one of those categories that is just constantly innovating and pushing forward with more and more storage in smaller packages for cheaper prices.

9. First Amazon package delivered by drone

Here's the first on the list of previously announced tech that is actually coming to life for the first time. Amazon first introduced the idea of completely autonomous drone delivery back in 2013 with a cutesy video that seemed straight out of a science fiction novel.

But now, Amazon has announced that it's actually completed its first delivery through its Prime Air service. From "click to delivery" it was a total of 13 minutes, which is crazy fast. You can check the video out above yourself, but the fast delivery speed was made possible thanks to Amazon's autonomous drones and a nearby warehouse just outside of town.

8. A breakthrough in lithium-metal batteries could double efficiency

Based out of MIT, a SolidEnergy Systems has developed a "anode-free" lithium metal battery that could change the game in terms of battery efficiency. Researchers have known that these kinds of batteries are more efficient, but their tendency to explode kept them at bay. These new batteries are twice as energy dense, meaning you get the same amount of juice from a battery that's half the size-and SolidEnergy even figured out that exploding problem.

The immediate implications for devices like smartphones and smartwatches are a no-brainer. SolidEnergy demonstrated this last year with its working prototype in an iPhone 6 that was half the size as the standard lithium-ion battery, but provided even more power. The company is now using them in drones, which will be the precursor to its move into smartphones and eventually electric cars.

7. Hyperloop one begins actual high speed test

Hyperloop is Elon Musk's dream to see high-speed transportation transformed in America. The idea, originally published Musk's white paper, is for a mag-lev train going from Los Angeles to San Francisco that could take you there in just 35 minutes.

Up until this Spring, the company had laid some tracks, but never actually done something in real life with the technology. While this test they did was nowhere near 750mph, it did demonstrate some of the capabilities of the open-air propulsion system, sending a test sled 100 yards down a track at 2.5Gs of acceleration. The company wants it to be passenger-ready by 2021, which still feels incredibly ambitious less than five years from today.

6. Carbon nanotube transistors outperform silicon for the first time

The tech industry runs on silicon semiconductors. They call it Silicon Valley for a reason. While carbon nanotube transistors have always been seen as the next major step in computational technology, until now it has always significantly underperformed compared to its silicon semiconductor competitors.

These tiny, single atom cylinders of carbon have the potential to power electronics with longer battery life and faster processing speeds-and now that's finally being realized. Engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have successfully achieved currents that are 1.9 times faster than silicon semiconductors. Scientists are calling it the fulfillment of a nanotechnology dream twenty years in the making.

5. Dust-sized sensors that can be implanted within the body

This might sound really creepy at first, but the technology made possible through it is endless. Engineers from Berkeley have created these sensors, which they call "neural dust." Both commercial and medical implications of such a small sensor are exciting.

Essentially, these micro-sized sensors require no power and can be implanted directly onto a nerve or muscle fiber. The technology could power the health-monitoring Fitbits of the future, or even help treat diseases such as epilepsy and internal inflammation by "stimulating" nerves and muscles.

4. SolarCity opens Buffalo facility, Tesla opens Gigafactory 1

Elon Musk is a man with a plan. No really-he calls it the "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan," which just happens to include saving us from our dependence on "mine and burn" energy. He's the man behind both SolarCity and Tesla (which have now officially come together under the Telsa roof as of August) and is now opening two major production facilities under the banner of each company.

First is the Buffalo SolarCity facility, which will become the biggest producer of solar panels in this hemisphere and completed construction this year. Second is the Gigafactory 1 opening up in Nevada, which is responsible for producing lithium-ion batteries, as well as Telsa motors. The significant thing is that Musk practices what the preaches: both facilities are powered by renewable energy sources with the goal of achieving net-zero energy. These facilities will not only power the all-important companies that they serve, but could also be the future of what American production looks like.

3. Eternal nano-structured data recording

This one is going to require some imagination, but try to wrap your mind around the technology that is being advanced here. Using nano-structured glass, scientists have developed a way to both record and retrieve digital data in 5D. The idea here is that long after humanity is gone, this data could potentially be stored and retrieved.

So far, they've gone as far as writing documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton's Opticks, Magna Carta, and Kings James Bible. How is it eternal though? Well-here are the specs of this eternal data: 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000 degrees Celsius and an almost unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190 degrees Celsius). It's been called the "Superman memory crystal," which isn't far off.

2. SpaceX landed a rocket vertically in the ocean

Though it's now the second time SpaceX has landed one of its rockets, Musk's commercial space company successfully landed the Falcon 9 in the ocean. After four failed attempts throughout the year where the rocket exploded upon its landing, it was beginning to look like SpaceX had finally reached a serious hurdle.

These ocean landings are harder than a normal ground landing, mostly because it's a small target, but are much more efficient fuel and cost-wise. In the end, efficiency is really what all these landings are about, since most rockets are either destroyed or lost post-launch as of now. These reusable rockets could end up being the factor that paves the way to affordable commercial space flight.

1. Google's Tensor Processing Unit Pushes Machine Learning, Beats Go Champion

Artificial intelligence has another notch on its belt against humans. First it was chess, now it's Go. But the real story here isn't just a computer that can beat the world champion in humanity's most strategic game-it's the tensor processing unit (TPU) and Machine Learning. The TPU is an application-specific chip that Google has created for the specific purpose of accelerating machine learning.

The company has proven once again that it's all-in on artificial intelligence and developing machine learning that keeps getting better. The particular computer that beat the Go champion was developed by DeepMind, an AI company Google acquired back in 2014. But the TPU is only a tool for Google's big picture strategy.

At the press event in which the Google Pixel smartphone was announced, CEO Sundar Pichai spent nearly half the event talking about the Google Assistant, a conversational, machine learning-powered assistant. What we're talking about here is computers that can do things beyond what they were explicitly programmed to do. There are plenty of reasons to be afraid of that, but also plenty of reasons to be excited about the possibilities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We say it every year, but technology moves forward at a breakneck pace. Whether it's being applied to consumer-facing products today or research that'll take hold in the years to come, 2016 had its fair share of industry-shaking technology advances.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Education technology is making significant strides forward. Learn which tools and trends will have the greatest impact this year.

Technology has long been disrupting and modifying the education space. But what kinds of tools are most likely to make an impact on us this year?

The technological advances that change the way we learn do so through a variety of methods. They may improve our understanding of the learning process, facilitate our access to content, increase the retention of learners by improving the educational experience, or address systemic inequalities by making learning affordable.

Here are some technological trends that will do this, and more, in 2015:

Big Data

The advent of big data enables us to track student behavior and gather other relevant information that will enhance our understanding of how people learn, what keeps them engaged, what helps them retain information, and how we can improve outcomes.

In the best case scenario, these tools will be applied to improving the teaching and learning experience. There are, of course, privacy and security concerns relating to the capture, aggregation, and potential misuse of data. The industry will need to address the "Big Brother" aspect of Big Data head-on, and act transparently with respect to the use of the information and judiciously with respect to its security.
Since its start, Noodle has been a leader in evaluating the role big data can play in education, attending the White House's Education Datapalooza 2012.
Cloud Computing

Cloud-based learning platforms represent a significant advance in technology's potential to improve access to content, instruction, and collaboration. They provide users with the ability to access material easily and foster connections between and among students, teachers, and institutions. These platforms also have the power to create truly global education communities and facilitate groundbreaking research.
Many new learning management systems (LMS) used by teachers now use cloud computing. Follow this link for the full list of the top 25 LMS of 2014.
Mobile Learning

Mobile learning provides "anytime, anywhere" access to content and community,as well as allows for contextual and supplemental learning at given locations (e.g., downloading a museum's app). It literally meets students wherever their phones go. Students of all generations will be able to fit their education to their lifestyle, and the convenience and affordability of mobile devices will facilitate access for all. Ironically, a person's physical location may become a significant part of the enhanced mobile learning experience. For example, a student could participate in an art history class on her phone while visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
See Noodle's collection of reviews of educational apps for effective mobile learning on variety of subjects.
Gamification

The emergence of gamified learning and the application of gaming technologies, such as virtual reality for educational content, will have a significant impact on how people learn. Studies have shown that education is most effective, with respect to understanding and retention, when the learner is engaged in doing, applying what she has learned, and having fun, as is the case with simulations.

Universities are increasingly adopting virtual reality technologies in a variety of ways, from creating school tours for international students to offering difficult-to-deliver lab instruction, like human dissections, in medical schools. Who knew that a generation of young gamers could become the guardians of our future?
Check out our infographic about educational video games to understand better their use and effectivness.
Personalization

This is the holy grail of online education, in which technology and design (information architecture, user interface, and so on) combine to create a learning experience tailored to the individual needs of a student. It promises to make education more engaging, improve outcomes, and create efficiencies in educational ecosystems.

Personalized learning that allows for differentiated instruction will have a significant impact in learning environments where there are students with varying degrees of knowledge or skills, such as public school classrooms. Personalized learning can serve as a powerful tool for teachers and students faced with overcrowding, and in so doing, begin to address inequalities between poorer and more affluent school districts.
Learn more about how flipped classrooms incorporate personalized learning into everyday education.
Deconstruction or Unbundling of Content

The delivery of nano-degrees based on specific work skills or the chunking of master's programs are examples of this technological advance. Deconstruction will change the economics of education and the way we think about learning by allowing students to access the information they need to progress or to find employment without having to consume content that is not immediately relevant to them. It presupposes a more practical approach to higher education, in response to the needs of the largest population of students saddled with debt.

This deconstructive approach, however, raises concerns for many who believe in the value of a well-rounded, traditional liberal arts education, with its exposure to a broad range of subjects and grounding in the development of "higher level" skills, such as critical thinking and independent analyses. That said, unbundling of content has the potential to challenge the culture of established educational institutions as the sole providers of valuable and legitimate education and as the gatekeepers to rewarding employment.
Wondering if your school is adopting these trends in a smart way? Read about effective ways to incorporate technology in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Most Significant Technological Advances in Education for 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Education technology is making significant strides forward. Learn which tools and trends will have the greatest impact this year. Technology has long been disrupting and modifying the education space. But what kinds of tools are most likely to make an impact on us this year?

# data[].attributes.headline
17 Amazing Healthcare Technology Advances of 2017

# data[].attributes.subject
17 Amazing Healthcare Technology Advances of 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WANT THE NEWEST UPDATE? Read the 2018 version:
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018
The future of healthcare is changing dramatically with medical and dental technology advances starting to accelerate and larger health systems taking notice.

Will health systems accelerate the adoption of amazing technologies from the digital health startup community?

Will we see new drugs that cure major diseases?

Will regulatory changes from the new help or hurt?

, reaching $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for
U.S. healthcare spending grew 5.8 percent in 2015 17.8 percent. So what does this mean to all of our colleagues, friends, and families? It's time to evaluate how we live to take care of each other, or we could be in serious pain in the near future.

The referralMD healthcare technology review will showcase some amazing advances that could change the fabric of healthcare for the better and reduce the risk we would otherwise face.
Let's get started
1. Healthcare Education: Augmented Reality
Education needs a revamp, and even more so healthcare education. Doctors are put through a gauntlet of requirements before they even see the light of day (AKA a paycheck) and this leads to supply issues. Currently, it is estimated that the United States needs just to meet the current needs.

So how does it get better?

Through robust 3D training tools offered by companies like which helps doctors learn about Anatomy without having to cut open a cadaver.

Another interesting tool used by UCSF is called Echopixel.

It takes data from CT and MRI scans and transforms it into 3-D holographic images so she can view and interact with patient tissues and organs as if they were real physical objects. Medical 3-D imaging is not new, but the way organs appear to pop out of the screen and the ease at which the anatomy can be manipulated has never been seen before in medicine.

Believe it or not, healthcare still communicates with paper. Less than of hospitals say they've been able to trade records entirely through their digital systems. Shocking right?

Patient access has always been a problem, of all faxed patient referrals result in scheduled appointments due to the complexities of communication between health systems, or the lack thereof.

Ability to get a patient to an appointment is critical. Not only for a patient's health, but for the viability of a health system from a revenue standpoint, its reputation, the insurance company, and even medical device and pharma companies. It is a tight-knit ecosystem where if one chain in the communication link breaks down then all heck breaks loose and everyone suffers.

The great thing is there are finally platforms on the market that helps providers and staff route patients to the most appropriate high-quality clinician in a community using SmartMATCH Technology from ReferralMD. Best of all it can integrate into the any EMR systems on the market like Epic, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, and Allscripts while reducing referral leakage saving health systems 100's of millions.

ReferralMD Analytics Dashboard showing real-time leakage numbers

3. Human Head Transplants

Sergio Canavero , an Italian neurosurgeon, intends to attempt the first human head transplant by 2017, though no successful animal transplants with long-term survival have yet been made. Because of the difficulty of connecting the spinal cord, Canavero has suggested improvements in the process using a special blade and polyethylene glycol, a polymer used in medicine as well as in everything from skin cream to the conservation of the Mary Rose, can help start growth in spinal cord nerves.

Being able to surgically remove the head in an orderly fashion should allow surgeons to then reattach all the nerves and blood vessels to the new body, once that pesky donor head is removed. A special bio-compatible glue will hold the spinal cord together so it can fuse with the donor body. The patient will then be put in a drug-induced coma for four weeks while the connection between the head and body heals. It's the reattachment process that's the most unlikely part of all this. There's never been a successful procedure that reattached a fully severed primate spinal cord.

Canavero says all the technology he needs is available and estimates the procedure will take about 36 hours and require the services of 150 medical professionals. He expects a 90% chance of success, as in a 90% chance the patient is up and walking around a few months after the surgery. This all still sounds like science fiction, and medical professionals are mostly skeptical of Canavero's plan. He seems set to try, though. And who knows? Maybe it'll work. A few years ago face transplants seemed like science fiction. Even if this does work, the process will be obscenely expensive. Plus, it will give an entire body full of transplantable organs to a single person. It's unclear if this would be considered ethical when there are so many people waiting for transplants.

Valery Spiridonov, a man who has volunteered to be the first person to undergo a head transplant, attends a news conference in Vladimir, Russia, June 25, 2015. The 30-year-old Russian, who has a degenerative muscle condition known as Werdnig-Hoffman, wants to become the first person ever to undergo a human head transplant. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTR4YX94

4. Qualcomm Tricorder 2017 Update
Diagnosing patients has always been challenging without in-depth testing, one day soon we may have devices that can help determine aliments in seconds versus hours or days. The future is coming and Star Trek fans like me are hoping it's sooner than later.

Last year we reported on the Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize. The finalists have been chosen and narrowed down to 2 teams. Dynamical Biomarkers Group and Final Frontier Devices. Congrats everyone you earned it!

5. Heart in a Box: Warm Blood Perfusion System
Cardiac transplantation, also called heart transplantation, has evolved into the treatment of choice for many people with severe heart failure who have severe symptoms despite maximum medical therapy. Survival among cardiac transplant recipients has improved as a result of improvements in treatments that suppress the immune system and prevent infection.

Unfortunately, the number of heart donors has reached a plateau despite an increasing number of potential recipients. More than 5000 cardiac transplants occur each year around the world, although it is estimated that up to 50,000 people are candidates for transplantation . This critical organ shortage means that healthcare providers must strictly evaluate who should receive a heart transplant.

For many years, surgeons in the United States have preserved organs in a cold solution and transported in coolers to the receiving patient in need. But this process can cause damage to the heart and in some cases render it unusable.

So what is different?
A new process, called warm perfusion, can keep hearts beating and lungs "breathing" while allowing doctors to assess and treat organs to make them last longer, studies suggest.

Pacemakers have come along way since the 60s, where investor Dr. Wilson Greatbatch accidentally invented it. The story goes that Greatbatch, working for a doctor at the Chronic Disease Research Institute, was designing a circuit to help record fast heart sounds. By mistake, he grabbed the wrong resistor from a box and plugged it into the circuit he was making. The circuit pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds and then stopped for 1 second and then repeated. Greatbatch recognized the lub-dub rhythm.

"I stared at the thing in disbelief," he said. This was exactly what was needed to drive a sick human heart! For the next five years, most of the world's pacemakers used that simple blocking oscillator design - just because of Greatbatch's accident.

Fast-forward to today. Companies like Medtronic and St. Jude Medical have created versions called Micra (Medtronic) and Nanostim (St. Jude) that reduce potential risks of transvenous pacemakers such as serious infection.

7. Advanced Immunotherapies to Treat
According to the American Cancer Society, over 1.5M new cases of cancer occurred in 2016. But new treatment options could help dramatically in the near future.

Scientists at Juno Therapeutics reported at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting that, in an ongoing Phase 1 trial, its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, JCAR015, put 24 of 27 adults with refractive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) into remission, with six patients remaining disease free for more than a year (ASH 2014, Abstract 382, 2014).

This disease is extremely hard to treat and progresses rapidly when it becomes refractory; most patients die within a few months. "This response rate is unprecedented for patients who had stopped responding to all other treatments," says Michel Sadelain, a founding director of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Center for Cell Engineering and a co-founder of Juno.

How does it work?

The use of human T cells as therapeutics to re-engage the immune system has the potential to revolutionize the way cancer is treated. Juno's technologies genetically engineer a patient's own T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. These cellular therapies have the potential to be effective regardless of the type of previous treatments patients have experienced and may avoid the long-term side effects associated with current treatments. We use two different technologies to target cancer cells and activate T cells, CARs and TCRs.

8. In Silico Clinical Trials (Organs on a chip)

Clinical trials in their current form take many years to complete and testing a single compound can cost more than $2B due the complexities of our FDA.

The process is long and tedious prior to approval of any new drug by regulatory agencies. Idea is to ensure that drug should show it's effectiveness in a convincing manner and its effects should weigh over its side effects before it reaches the market.

A process of drug development involves various stages:
* in Vitro/Cell-based studies
* in Vivo/Animal Model studies
* Phase 1 trials
* Phase 2 trials
* Phase 3 trials
* Approval
* Phase 4 trials

Each of these steps requires the company to:

pay to write the clinical trial protocol,

pay to get the IRB approval,

pay doctors to treat patients with your experimental formulation,

pay to have statisticians set up randomization and blinding,

pay to recruit patients to the trial,

pay clinical trial coordinators at each clinical site to counsel the patients, monitor the treatment, record results,

pay any toxicity and imaging work (i.e., x-rays) related to the trial,

pay the patients to come back at each follow-up date,

pay the regulatory folks to audit clinical trial sites,

pay for statistical analysis and regulatory submission, etc.

Researchers are now starting to experiment with new technologies that will help reduce the time and cost of such trials that kill millions of animals every year.

Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called 'organs-on-chips', offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each individual organ-on-chip is composed of a clear flexible polymer about the size of a computer memory stick that contains hollow microfluidic channels lined by living human cells interfaced with a human endothelial cell-lined artificial vasculature, and mechanical forces can be applied to mimic the physical microenvironment of living organs, including breathing motions in lung and peristalsis-like deformations in the intestine. Because the microdevices are translucent, they provide a window into the inner workings of human organs.

Short video explaining the technology.

3D printing has been around for many years; predominantly been used in manufacturing. This type of printing, also called stereolithography, can create almost any object by fusing different materials, layer by layer, to form a physical version of a digital 3D image. Over the past 15 years, 3D printing has expanded into the healthcare industry, where it's used to create custom prosthetics and dental implants. Now, there may be an opportunity to use it for personalized healthcare as well.

Here are three other ways 3D printing could change the pharmaceutical world forever.

1. Personalized drug dosing

3D printing could add a whole new dimension of possibilities to personalized medicine. In its most simplistic form, the idea of experts and researchers is to produce personalized 3D printed oral tablets. Medical writer C. Lee Ventola has conducted extensive research on this for her publication, " Medical Applications for 3D Printing: Current and Projected Uses." She writes that personalized, 3D-printed medications may serve particularly well for patients who respond to the same drugs in different ways.

Below is the first 3D drug printed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals

Additionally, a doctor or a pharmacist would be able to use each patient's individual information - such as age, race, and gender - to produce their optimal medication dose, rather than relying on a standard set of dosages. 3D printing may also allow pills to be printed in a complex construct of layers, using a combination of drugs to treat multiple ailments at once. The idea is to give patients one single pill that offers treatment for everything they need.

2. Unique dosage forms

3D printing could also be used to create unique dosage forms in the pharmaceutical production process. In the process, the idea would be to use inkjet-based 3D printing technology to create limitless dosage forms. According to experts, it is likely that this could challenge conventional drug fabrication. The process to create novel dosage forms has already been tested for many drugs, and we will only witness more innovation as time moves on.

3. More complex drug release profiles

Drug release profiles explain how a drug is broken down when taken by the patient. Designing and printing drugs firsthand make it much easier to understand their release profiles. 3D printing makes it possible to print personalized drugs that facilitate targeted and controlled drug release by printing a binder onto a matrix powder bed in layers. This creates a barrier between the active ingredients, allowing researchers to study the variations of the release more closely. As drug manufacturers start to understand the full set of opportunities allowing them to make more effective drugs, there will likely be more research and investment into this area in the coming years.

Heart disease still reigns as the leading cause of death in America, surpassing cancer by a small margin.

Heart disease: 614,348
* Cancer: 591,699
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
* Alzheimer's disease: 93,541
* Diabetes: 76,488
* Influenza and pneumonia: 55,227
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,146
* Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773

Around 1 in 4 people who are hospitalized for heart failure don't last much longer than a year.

But a new drug called Serelaxin has upped the odds of survival by as much as 37 percent, according to a University of California, San Francisco study. It's a synthetic version of the hormone relaxin, which is produced by pregnant women to help with the increased stress carrying a fetus places on the heart.

Although Novartis, the maker of Serelaxin, coined RLX030 and by the trade name Reasanz, failed FDA approval, it will still remain in development pending modifications requested by the FDA.

1. One was Novartis' reliance on one clinical trial to assess serelaxin's effect on dyspnea rather than at least two, or one trial with data for multiple studies.
2. Another concern raised by Blank and McDowell was the single trial's focus on serelaxin's beneficial effect on dyspnea, dismissed by FDA as an exploratory finding that did not address the AHF indication of the experimental drug
3. The FDA staffers also questioned whether the trial's primary endpoint would have been achieved if it hadn't assigned the worst reported score to patients who died or had worsening heart failure during the first five days.

11. Young Blood Antiaging - Fountain of Youth?

Is the fountain of youth becoming a reality? A new treatment option may be in our future in which blood of younger people under 25 could be used to reverse the effects of aging.

Companies like Alkahest are developing trials to identify the key proteins in plasma that rejuvenate or age human tissues and then manufacture a product that uses them - could take 10 to 15 years. In the near term, the company has another strategy. Earlier this year, the Spanish blood products firm, Grifols, pledged $37.5m for a 45% stake in Alkahest. With another $12.5m, the company will bankroll more research in exchange for rights to Alkahest's first products. Over the next two years, Alkahest will take human plasma and divide it into fractions that are rich in different proteins. Each fraction will then be tested in mice to see if they boost brain function. Any that do will be swiftly introduced into human trials and developed into the first generation of products.

12. Internet of Things for Healthcare (IOT)
The Internet of Things is a hot topic nowadays, or IoT which is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as "connected devices" and "smart devices"), buildings, and other items-embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

Senior healthcare solutions director at Stanley Healthcare, Joel Cook, described the ways in which many of Stanley's customers use IoT in healthcare. For example, hospitals take advantage of the technology for real-time location services with badges that can track patients, staff and medical devices. "Many of our customers are using this equipment for asset management," Cook said. Such assets include infusion pumps, wheelchairs, defibrillators, scales and other items that employees tend to tuck into out-of-sight corners yet are needed frequently for treating patients.

With Internet of Things devices, clinicians "in the PACU ... can see what's going on in the ORs, where they are in the case, and can, therefore, interpret when people are going to arrive in PACU," Cook explained. "And likewise, people up on the med-surg floor can see what's going on in PACU" and prepare for new patient arrivals.

In addition to real-time location services, Stanley's IoT devices also help with environmental monitoring - for example, checking the temperatures of refrigerators or IT closets - and hand hygiene compliance.

Companies like the KAA project have created an open-source IOT platform which allows OEMs and healthcare system integrators to establish cross-device connectivity and implement smart features into medical devices and related software systems.

Healthcare companies can integrate Kaa's functionality into their products were able to achieve IoT goals faster and at little expense.

Consumerism has been making inroads into the healthcare industry for at least a decade, with patients increasingly acting like consumers who have a choice in their healthcare options, trying to make the best decisions for quality and cost just as they do with any other commodity. The trend has been accelerated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which left many consumers with large deductibles that put more pressure on them to find the most cost-effective care for the dollars coming out of their own pockets.

A recent study by McKinsey&Company sited more than half the participants cited great customer service as important for non-healthcare and healthcare companies alike. Other qualities that the participants identified as important for both sets of companies were delivering on expectations, making life easier, and offering great value.

Consumerism appears to have more impact on outpatient services than inpatient care, says Mark Bogen, senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer at South Nassau Communities Hospital, a 400-staffed-bed acute care facility in Oceanside, New York. Patients still rely on their physicians to refer them to the appropriate hospital and generally don't question that choice unless the facility is out of network. It's only at that point that most patients will speak up and ask about an in-network alternative, he says.

South Nassau's Bogen expects to see the consumerism movement grow in the outpatient sector but says he hopes it doesn't achieve any more presence in inpatient care than it already has.

"I still believe it's crass to call them consumers," he says. "On the outpatient side, it's more fitting that people will shop for price, and you could argue that much of the outpatient services are commodities, but I don't believe that to be true from an inpatient perspective, and I would hate to have people make what ultimately could be a life-and-death decision on the basis of cost."

Still, Herzog says he sees consumerism as a tide that won't be turned back, so he advises healthcare organizations to accept the change and respond accordingly.

Companies like referralMD, Healthgrades, and Vitals offer patients and providers tools to gauge which providers are both cost-effective and high quality. Only time will tell as more data is available to showcase to consumers which providers are "Best" within a marketplace.

Imagine having the equivalents of a gatekeeper, a multilingual translator, an air traffic controller, and a bouncer in your nervous system. Now imagine that this team can modulate and redirect signals from the brain and the rest of your nervous system to other systems and organs in your body. Any signals heading the wrong way or behaving erratically could be course-corrected along the way. That's a rough translation of the concept of bioelectronics.

GSK's Bioelectronics R&D unit is pursuing a relatively new scientific field that could one day result in a new class of medicines that would not be pills or injections but miniaturized, implantable devices. GSK believes that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, including irregular or altered impulses that can occur in association with a broad range of diseases. The hope is that through these devices, disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes could be treated.

If Dr Daniel Chew's work goes to plan, diabetics and sufferers from a host of other diseases may one day no longer need to inject themselves or take pills. He's working to develop a tiny implant that could read and alter electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body and help control illness.

"Our work has huge potential to treat a vast array of different diseases," says Chew. "Five years ago, bioelectronic medicine was barely even a concept." Before he joined GSK, Chew spent a decade in research, which included investigating the use of electronic implants to treat patients with spinal cord injuries and help restore bladder and bowel control. "My work was pre-clinical in the lab but I also worked closely with vets to apply these electronic implants to treat pet dogs that had suffered similar trauma," he explains.

The amount of work we are tasked with performing is ever increasing, yet we are asked to do it with fewer resources than ever before. In the future, as costs come down more health systems will be able to leverage advanced computer systems to help provide clinical support for their patients.

Currently, the volume of healthcare data recently reached 150 exabytes. At projected growth rates, the volume of healthcare data will soon be zettabyte and yottabyte scale. That's enough data to fill a stack of DVDs that would stretch from Earth to Mars.

Here is a chart that explains what those numbers mean:

Gigabyte (1 000 000 000 Bytes)

Terabyte (1 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

Petabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

1 Petabyte: 5 years of EOS data (at 46 mbps)

2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries

20 Petabytes: Production of hard-disk drives in 1995

200 Petabytes: All printed material ORProduction of digital magnetic tape in 1995

Exabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.

From wikipedia:

The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), roughly 4 CD-ROM per person of 1993, 12 CD-ROM per person in the year 2000, and almost 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007. Piling up the imagined 404 billion CD-ROM from 2007 would create a stack from the earth to the moon and a quarter of this distance beyond (with 1.2 mm thickness per CD).

The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1,200 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 1,900 in 2007.

According to the CSIRO, in the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 petabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The array is thus expected to generate approximately one exabyte every four days of operation. According to IBM, the new SKA telescope initiative will generate over an exabyte of data every day. IBM is designing hardware to process this information.

Zettabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

From wikipedia:

The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 0.432 zettabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 0.715 in 1993, 1.2 in 2000, and 1.9 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2007 (this is the informational equivalent to every person on earth receiving 174 newspapers per day).

According to International Data Corporation, the total amount of global data is expected to grow to 2.7 zettabytes during 2012. This is 48% up from 2011.

Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio. This was done in response to a popular expression that states "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data (see exabyte for details). Liberman did "freely confess that maybe the authors were thinking about text."

Research from the University of Southern California reports that in 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS.

Research from the University of California, San Diego reports that in 2008, Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information.

Internet Traffic to Reach 1.3 Zettabytes by 2016

Yottabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

These computers, like IBM Watson can process 500 gigabytes/second, the equivalent of a million books, of structured and unstructured data.

Over time, we will start to see more companies leveraging these cogitative computers and licensing them to all of us, the healthcare professional at hospitals around the country.
How can it help?
1. enable information gathering and expertise sharing, which can help teams collaborate and design programs that support patient care and program success.
2. ability to see and analyze once-invisible data and evaluate it based on the leading medical literature, the most current medical information, and evidence-based guidelines. The insights will help as you plan to care for each patient's specific health needs.
3. insurers can proactively manage preventive care for large numbers of people with the goal of avoiding unnecessary utilization
4. able to sift through available clinical trials and ensure that more patients are accurately and consistently matched to the right trials
5. see more data and deliver more insights so you can create a more informed program that keeps your patients moving toward their goals to better health.

Genome editing is a way of making specific changes to the DNA of a cell or organism. An enzyme cuts the DNA at a specific sequence, and when this is repaired by the cell a change or 'edit' is made to the sequence.

Intellia is a leading genome editing company, focused on the development of proprietary, potentially curative therapeutics using a recently developed biological tool known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Intellia believes the CRISPR/Cas9 technology has the potential to transform medicine by permanently editing disease-associated genes in the human body with a single treatment course.

Every year, 600,000 people have metal coronary stents put into their chests to treat coronary artery blockage. Most of the time, that stent stays there forever, long after its mission is complete. The stents may inhibit natural blood flow and cause other complications, like blood clots.

What if they could just disappear? That is a long-sought goal researcher have finally met. This past July, the first bioabsorbable stent was approved in the United States. Made of a naturally dissolving polymer, the stent widens the clogged artery for two years before it is absorbed into the body in a manner similar to dissolvable sutures.

The disappearing stent leaves behind a healthy natural artery. The patient is free to go off blood clotting medication and qualifies for a broader range of medical treatments. What's more, recovery time has been reduced from three to four weeks for metal stents to just a few days.

Only one version of an absorbable stent has been FDA approved but more are coming. Experts believe the market potential will approach $2 billion in six years. While the full impact of vanishing stents is yet to be seen, 2017 is the year the technology becomes a game changer.

Did we miss anything?
If you have an idea of a technology you would like featured in our top ranking review, please submit it below in the comments.

Interested in creating valuable content and sharing it with millions of our readers? Join our Authorship Cohort and submit an application.

The following two tabs change content below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
17 Amazing Healthcare Technology Advances of 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018 Will health systems accelerate the adoption of amazing technologies from the digital health startup community? Will we see new drugs that cure major diseases? Will regulatory changes from the new help or hurt? , reaching $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018
The ReferralMD Annual Healthcare Technology Report of 2016.

2016 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years for healthcare technology ever, with innovations in medical devices, software, and changes in how healthcare is administered, both from a care and financial perspective. With the North American health IT market is expected to reach $104 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 13.5% during the forecast period of 2015 to 2020, according to a recent report by A majority of this growth is attributed to the growing adoption of various MarketsandMarkets. healthcare IT solutions by healthcare providers in order to meet the heightened regulatory requirements for patient care and safety, increasing need to curtail the soaring healthcare costs, and growing need to improve the quality of healthcare while maintaining the operational efficiency of healthcare organizations.

Update: Read the latest technology review for 2017
Top 17 Healthcare Technology Advances of 2017

Link to Techcrunch Article:

So what does that mean to you? The healthcare professional: Doctor, Dentist, Referral Coordinator, Nurse, PA, Front/Back office, Billing, Scheduling, Risk Manager, Marketing, and (...). It means, (/crosses fingers) that your lives, and your patients will be getting better over the course of the next few years with some amazing technology. With healthcare accounting for almost 1/5th of our GDP, we need to start making serious investments to improvements that can help all of our country and the world's people together.

Here are some of the top healthcare technologies of 2016 and beyond...

1. The Star Trek Style Tricorder

To start off, Yes I am a Star Trek Nerd, loved almost every series, especially TNG (The Next Generation) and no not because I shave my head like Patrick Stewart.

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Star Trek has always inspired millions of people, including myself to reach beyond what we thought was possible and achieve the impossible. And futuristic medical devices are no different. Qualcomm has a contest, called , that was just extended till 2017 for 7 final teams developing the almighty Tricorder featured in the picture below from the popular Star Trek series. The winner receives $10 million to bring the device to reality.

In the fictional universe, a tricorder is a multifunction hand-held device used for sensor scanning, data analysis and recording data. Three primary variants of the tricorder appear in Star Trek, issued by the fictional organization Starfleet. The standard tricorder is a general-purpose device used primarily to scout unfamiliar areas, make detailed examination of living things, and record and review technical data. The medical tricorder is used by doctors to help diagnose diseases and collect bodily information about a patient.

2. Interoperability between Health Systems

Interoperability solutions for exchanging patient information across care settings is one particular technological development that will shape the future of healthcare organizations. Value-based care and health information exchanges are an increasingly important part of the overall healthcare landscape, and the ability for all providers - from general practitioners and specialists to post-acute care organizations, etc. - will only grow as a critical component of care delivery in the future. These types of solutions have only started being developed in the past few years by companies such as referralMD , that are changing how healthcare companies communicate by including post-acute care providers in critical interoperability workflows, as these providers are expected to be a big part of health care cost containment. By including post-acute care in interoperability strategies, healthcare organizations can ensure that critical patient information across all care settings will be connected, providing a more detailed patient picture for more specific treatment plans and improved patient care. The statistics are damning, hospitals lose $75+ million per year per 100 affiliated physicians due to referral leakage, a burden that can be reduced by proper referral network management that companies such as referralMD can help monitor. Hospitals are just starting to get make changes in their budgets to include programs that can truly help patients receive better care, and save their staff's time in the process. Not only are hospitals affected but so are small-to-mid sized practices, with many having to juggle 100's of specialty offices with different workflow requirements, without an electronic way to exchange information, the process breaks down, information is not accurate, and time is wasted.

3. Robotic Nurse Assistant

I have many of friends that are nurses that are injured every year from having to move or lift patients in bed or after an emergency from a fall. The problem is very common and many of times there is not someone around that is strong enough to lift a patient immediately after one of these occurrences. There are many variations from a full robot such as RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance) developed by RIKEN and Tokai Rubber Industries and assisted hardware such as HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) robot suits delivered by Cyberdyne.

RIBA is the first robot that can lift up or set down a real human from or to a bed or wheelchair. RIBA does this using its very strong human-like arms and by novel tactile guidance methods using high-accuracy tactile sensors. RIBA was developed by integrating RIKEN's control, sensor, and information processing and TRI's material and structural design technologies.

A company by the name of HAL is a robotics device that allows a care worker to life a patient with more stability and strength and helps prevent injuries to our nurses.

4. Artificial Retinas

The United States typically defines someone as legally blind when the person's central vision has degraded to 20/200, or the person has lost peripheral vision so that he sees less than 20 degrees outside of central vision. Normal vision is 20/20, and people can usually see up to 90 degrees with their peripheral vision. An estimated 1.1 million people in the United States are considered legally blind. This has led to companies like Nano-Retina to develop a sophisticated and elegant solution intended to restore the sight of people who lost their vision due to retinal degenerative diseases. The miniature Nano Retina device, the NR600 Implant, replaces the functionality of the damaged photoreceptor cells and creates the electrical stimulation required to activate the remaining healthy retinal cells. NR600 consists of two components; a miniature implantable chip and a set of eyeglasses worn by the patient.

Very interesting technology for those that are always sitting in front of the computer like myself, hopefully it will not be needed by me, but it's great that companies are advancing for those that suffer this debilitating illness.

5. Advances in Prosthetics

War is in our DNA, and with conflict, there is injuries to our Military including loss of limbs and traumatic brain injury. DARPA is looking to change that by enabling wounded service members with amputations to neurally control state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs. The goal is to assist them in returning to active duty and to improve their quality of life. Program developments may impact the broad community of patients with medical amputations, spinal cord injuries and neurological diseases. The challenges lie with creating an interface that is directly compatible with our own nervous system and making the connection fast enough to interpret our movement intent without latency. I have been following Les's story (an amputee) for a while and featured it in last years 2015 version of this article, see video below and wanted to showcase it again as organizations such as Johns Hopkins are making great strides in the movement to help the world live and easier life.

5. Remote Patient Monitoring

Monitoring programs can collect a wide range of health data from the point of care, such as vital signs, weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen levels, heart rate, and electrocardiograms. This data is then transmitted to health professionals in facilities such as monitoring centers in primary care settings, hospitals and intensive care units, skilled nursing facilities, and centralized off-site case management programs. Health professionals monitor these patients remotely and act on the information received as part of the treatment plan. Monitoring programs are tools to help achieve the "triple aim" of health care, by improving patient outcomes and access to care, and to make health care systems more cost effective. For example:

In this 2014 study, a six-month feasibility study was conducted on eight patients with a history of Acute Exacerbation of CODP (AECOPD). Each patient was given a mobile phone to record major symptoms, such as dyspnoea, sputum color and sputum volume; minor symptoms such as cough and wheezing; and vital signs. During the trial, the rate of hospital admissions were significantly lower and there were fewer ED presentations and GP visits compared to a six-month matched period in the preceding year. Such results showed "the potential of home monitoring for analyzing respiratory symptoms for early intervention AECOPD."

Similar to our previous Star Trek device, a company in Israel, Tyto Care, has developed a portal device that helps monitor all sorts of health parameters to let doctors diagnose patients remotely. Allowing your doctor to perform their job with accurate metrics about you or your child's illness without having to resort to a in person visit. The Tyto device is currently going through the FDA clearance process, hopefully one day offering people the option of staying at home rather than visiting the clinic in most simple health situation.

"We are coming together at a pivotal time in the mobile healthcare industry. As health reform demands more focus on delivering quality outcomes and reducing costs, providers are turning to technology like remote monitoring to diagnose and treat more patients in ways that use time, money and human resources efficiently and effectively. Our shared vision is to become a worldwide leading remote monitoring company," said Jon Otterstatter, President and Chief Global Strategy Officer of Preventice Inc.

6. Anti-Aging Drugs

The dream, or the nightmare, depending on how you take it, is living forever, or at least in the foreseeable future to 120+ years old. 2016 will be the year of a new anti-aging drug test that will enter trials which could see diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's consigned to distant memory.

Scientists now believe that it is possible to actually stop people growing old as quickly and help them live in good health well into their 110s and 120s.

Although it might seem like science fiction, researchers have already proven that the diabetes drug metformin extends the life of animals, and the Food and Drug Administration in the US has now given the go ahead for a trial to see if the same effects can be replicated in humans.

"This would be the most important medical intervention in the modern era, an ability to slow ageing"

Dr Jay Olshansky, University of Illinois Chicago

If successful it will mean that a person in their 70s would be as biologically healthy as a 50-year-old. It could usher in a new era of 'geroscience' where doctors would no longer fight individual conditions like cancer, diabetes and dementia, but instead treat the underlying mechanism - ageing.

The new clinical trial called Targeting Aging with Metformin, or TAME, is scheduled to begin in the US next winter. Scientists from a range of institutions are currently raising funds and recruiting 3,000 70 to 80 year olds who have, or are risk of, cancer, heart disease and dementia. They are hoping to show that drug slows the ageing process and stops disease.

Outlining the new study on the National Geographic documentary Breakthrough: The Age of Ageing, Dr Jay Olshansky, of the University of Illinois Chicago, said: "If we can slow ageing in humans, even by just a little bit it would be monumental. People could be older, and feel young.

"Enough advancements in ageing science have been made to lead us to believe it's plausible, it's possible, it's been done for other species and there is every reason to believe it could be done in us.

"This would be the most important medical intervention in the modern era, an ability to slow ageing."

7. Tooth Regeneration

Hey Kids, here is some candy! All kidding aside, this could be an amazing advancement if the technology holds true in the coming years.

Colorful fish found in Africa may hold the secret to growing lost teeth. In a collaborative study between the Georgia Institute of Technology and King's College London, researchers looked at the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi in Africa, who lose teeth just to have a new one slide into place. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies the genes responsible for growing new teeth and may lead to the secret to "tooth regeneration" in humans.

"The exciting aspect of this research for understanding human tooth development and regeneration is being able to identify genes and genetic pathways that naturally direct continuous tooth and taste bud development in fish, and study these in mammals," said the study's co-author Paul Sharpe, a research professor from King's College, in a press release. "The more we understand the basic biology of natural processes, the more we can utilize this for developing the next generation of clinical therapeutics: in this case how to generate biological replacement teeth."

Another study from a Harvard team successfully used low-powered lasers to activate stem cells and stimulate the growth of teeth in rats and human dental tissue in a lab. The results were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Stem cells are no ordinary cells. They have the extraordinary ability to multiply and transform into many different types of cells in the body. They repair tissues by dividing continually either as a new stem cell or as a cell with a more specialized job, such as a red blood cell, a skin cell, or a muscle cell.

Dentures and dental implants may soon become a thing of the past. Stem cell research is making it possible to regrow your missing teeth!
This is a much-needed medical advancement, especially considering that by age 74-26% of adults have lost all of their permanent teeth.

8. Lightbulbs that Disinfect and Kill Bacteria

Hospitals are known to be potentially dangerous place with lot's of people with different elements and diseases. One company, Indigo-Clean has developed a technology using visible light that continuously disinfect the environment and bolsters your current infection prevention efforts.

How it works

1. The 405nm emitted from Indigo-Clean reflects off of walls and surfaces, penetrating harmful micro-organisms

2. The light targets naturally occurring molecules called porphyrins that exist inside bacteria. The light is absorbed and the excited molecules produce Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) inside the cell

3. 405nm creates a chemical reaction inside the cell, similar to the effects of bleach

4. The Reactive Oxygen Species inactivates the bacteria, preventing it from re-populating the space

9. Electronic Underwear Preventing Bed Sores

Having elderly grandparents that have died from complications due to bedsores is extremely unfortunate, as much of these issues could be prevented. When patients stay motionless for days, weeks, or months they develop painful open wounds due to lack of circulation and compressed skin.

And believe it or not, bedsores can be deadly. Roughly 60,000 people die from bed sores and resulting infections every year, draining $12 billion from the U.S. medical industry.

Developed by Canadian researcher Sean Dukelow of Project SMART, the electric underpants-deliver a small electrical charge every ten minutes. The effect is the same as if the patient was moving on their own-it activates muscles and increases circulation in that area, and effectively eliminates bed sores, thereby saving lives.

10. Long Lasting Batteries for Medical Devices and Wearables

The need for power is evident in today's world, for our houses, cars, and medical devices such as pacemaker batteries that typically need to be replaced with an expensive surgery. With the need for power-hungry devices comes innovation in the form of new technologies that will help provide the world with longer lasting, faster charging batteries.

Aluminum-Ion Batteries: Chemistry Professor Hongjie Dai from Stanford University and his team say their aluminum-ion battery prototype can fully charge a phone in one minute and maintain its strength through thousands of recharge cycles - over seven times as many cycles as current phone batteries. But fast charging times aren't the only advantage this new prototype has over the standard lithium-ion battery found in most of our devices. Perhaps the battery's most impressive quality is its flexibility, meaning it could work with any future devices that are curved or use bendable screens.

Micro Supercapacitors: Rice University researchers who pioneered the development of laser-induced graphene have configured their discovery into flexible, solid-state micro super capacitors that rival the best available for energy storage and delivery. Rice's micro super capacitors charge 50 times faster than batteries, discharge more slowly than traditional capacitors and match commercial super capacitors for both the amount of energy stored and power delivered.

Foam Batteries: The future of batteries is 3D. Prieto is the first company to crack this with its battery that uses a copper foam substrate. This means these batteries will not only be safer, thanks to no flammable electrolyte, but they will also offer longer life, faster charging, five times higher density, be cheaper to make and be smaller than current offerings.

Skin Power: Researches from the National University of Singapore have created a replacement for batteries all together would be an electrode used to harvest the current caused by friction on the skin and clothes. The result is enough power, from a finger tap on skin, to power 12 LED bulbs. The future could mean there are no need for batteries in wearables or smart clothes. So how does it work? An electrode is used to harvest the current, so a 50nm-thick gold film is used. The gold film sits below a silicone rubber layer composed of thousands of tiny pillars that help create more surface area for skin contact, which creates more friction. Since the skin is a one of the triboelectric layers it means the device can be small. Scientists have already shown off a wearable powered by the device. Next gadgets to use it? Hopefully everything.

11. Health Informatics

More than half of US hospitals use some type of electronic records system, but only 6% meet all the federal mandates, according to a recent study out of the University of Michigan. According to researchers at the University of Chicago, 50% of health care dollars are wasted on inefficient record keeping processes. Electronic records have been shown to save large hospitals anywhere between $37 and $59 million. It streamlines the medical care process and lowers malpractice claims, and increases coordination between providers. Improvements still need to be made communicating patients between facilities as noted from referralMD, (Provider-to-provider communication software) where roughly 50% of all patients do not attend appointments, driving costs upwards, and lowering patient outcomes dramatically.

Practitioners and medical researchers can look forward to technologies that enable them to apply data analysis to develop new insights into finding cures for difficult diseases. Healthcare CIOs and other IT leaders can expect to be called upon to manage all the new data and devices that will be transforming healthcare as we know it.

According to Sam Volchenboum, director of the Center for Research Informatics at the University of Chicago,

"2016 will be the year of liberated health data." In his upbeat estimation, the coming year will bring patients more-informed treatments, faster rates of innovation, and new ways of "mashing up" healthcare data, leading to greater insights into hard-to-crack diseases like cancer.

We have already heard news that Meaningful Use may not even survive past 2017 according to Andy Slavitt, acting CMS Administrator. Specifically, according to a Family Practice News report, Slavitt said,

"The meaningful use program as it has existed will now be effectively over and replaced with something better." He continued, per the report, "We have to get the hearts and minds of physicians back. I think we've lost them." Slavitt noted that the focus will move away from rewarding providers for the use of technology and towards the outcomes they achieve with their patients.

What does this mean to everyone? Your guess is as good as mine, but my opinion is that the current systems are not working, and do not model after today's workflow requirements for physicians and their staff to work efficiently. Most EMR systems were haphazardly put together to capitalize on the gold rush of free money offered by the government and scaled prematurely. No normal startup receives that much free cash that quickly, usually the market squashes companies that put out a bad product, but not the case with today's environment.

12 - 15

Watch a short video that shows some amazing technologies:

12. Plug a Gun Shot with Tiny Sponge

13. See veins under the skin in real-time

14. Gel that stops bleeding in seconds

15. Cholesterol removing machine

Conclusion: Movement to Embrace Technology by Health Systems

The movement has begun with most health systems such as Ascension Health, Dignity Health, Stanford and others investing into startups, albeit very slowly. Many health systems are just now beginning to build their own innovation centers, but have not yet built the framework on how to judge their performance and key metrics.

With the advent of Hackathons and schools such as Hack Reactor and General Assembly, we are seeing many more people join the digital revolution. The future is bright, start investing in startups, you will be rewarded with amazing technology and possibly financial success.

Here's to a great year!

The following two tabs change content below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
15 Amazing Healthcare Technology Innovations in 2016 | referralMD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018 2016 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years for healthcare technology ever, with innovations in medical devices, software, and changes in how healthcare is administered, both from a care and financial perspective.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It is love at first sight for all who meet Robi, the interactive robotic companion. Robi was created by Professor Tomotaka Takahashi, a leading robotics scientist, and exclusively for DeAgostini. It is a fusion of sophisticated design and advanced Japanese technology that was designed to provide interactive companionship with the entire family.

Incorporating cutting-edge robotics technology from Japan, it can communicate with you and even expressing emotion through the colour of his eyes. He can talk, sing, dance and control selected household appliances. He has an extensive vocabulary of more than 250 phrases, providing a deep level of interaction between humans and robots. The specially designed Singapore version of Robi has also been programmed to speak some Singlish phrases, as well as English and Chinese.

But here's the catch. You cannot buy it off the store shelves. You will have to build it yourself through a Robi building kit subscription. The weekly kit will provide an in-depth understanding of how it works, an educational magazine along with instructions and model parts, are delivered over the course of 70 issues.

Robi retails at S$28.90 per issue and available at selected supermarkets, convenience stores, bookstores and newsstandsThe first issue will be available at the promotional price of just S$9.90. Subsequent issues will be released weekly.

If you subscribe online, you will also have an additional discount and freebies. More details can be found on the online store,

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Robi - Build Your Own Singlish Speaking Robotic Companion

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It is love at first sight for all who meet Robi, the interactive robotic companion. Robi was created by Professor Tomotaka Takahashi, a leading robotics scientist, and exclusively for DeAgostini. It is a fusion of sophisticated design and advanced Japanese technology that was designed to provide interactive companionship with the entire family.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than 1,700 healthcare stakeholders gathered in Cleveland, October 24-26, 2016, to discuss the latest medical breakthroughs and make new connections to spark future awe-inspiring innovations.

Now in its 14 th year, Cleveland Clinic's Medical Innovation Summit is the oldest and largest meeting of its kind in healthcare. The perennial highlight? The unveiling of the top 10 medical advancements for the coming year - those that Cleveland Clinic experts predict will change patient care forever.

Here are their picks for 2017, in order of anticipated importance:

Microbes in our bodies - and the chemicals they emit - interfere with the way food is digested, medicine is deployed and even how a disease progresses.

Biotech companies once focused on the genomic market are pivoting to the potential of the microbiome to develop new diagnostics, new therapies and "probiotic" products to prevent dangerous microbe imbalances.

With the National Microbiome Initiative's accelerating research and development, experts believe 2017 is the year the microbiome becomes the healthcare industry's most promising and lucrative frontier.

Half of patients with Type 2 diabetes will die from complications of cardiovascular disease. On their 65 th birthdays, the odds go up to 70 percent.

In 2016, two new medications began reducing the mortality rates considerably. Empagliflozin modifies the progression of heart disease by working with the kidney while liraglutide has a comprehensive effect on many organs.

Given these positive results, experts predict 2017 will mark a complete shift in the lineup of medicines prescribed for diabetes patients - as well as a wave of research into new avenues targeting Type 2 diabetes and its comorbidities.

One of the first cellular immunotherapies for leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphomas is about to hit the market. Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies are a type of immunotherapy where a patient's immune system T-cells are removed and genetically reprogrammed to seek and destroy tumor cells.

Results have been impressive. Some studies focusing on acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have reported a remission rate of 90 percent.

This groundbreaking treatment is expected to be presented to the FDA in 2017 for treatment of ALL. That could trigger a wave of approvals for other blood cancers and lymphomas as well. Cellular immunotherapy could one day replace chemotherapy and its lifetime of side effects.

Tests known as "liquid biopsies" uncover signs of actual DNA, or cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), which is shed from a tumor into the bloodstream. This ctDNA is more than 100 times more abundant in the blood than tumor cells.

While studies are still underway, annual sales of this revolutionary cancer test are forecast to be $10 billion. Several companies are developing testing kits to hit the market this year.

Liquid biopsy is being hailed as a flagship technology of the federal government's Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Experts believe it's only a matter of time before catching and treating cancer is as routine as an annual checkup.

With more than 38,000 fatal car crashes in the U.S. in 2015, automobile accidents remain a leading cause of death and disability - not to mention a major expense. Annual medical costs are nearly $23 billion.

New automatic safety features promise to make a dent in dangerous car accidents. These range from collision warning systems to drowsiness alerts to adaptive cruise control. More are coming. Safety technology is expected to surge in 2017, a year before the U.S. Department of Transportation mandates backup cameras in all cars.

Meanwhile, there is a grander notion to remove all human error from vehicle transportation. The nation's biggest software, private transportation and auto manufacturing companies are making huge investments in driverless cars. Safety and legal questions remain, but 2017 is expected to be the year that driverless cars enter the mainstream.

It has become increasingly difficult to safely and efficiently share patient data between healthcare providers. In-house information technology (IT) systems have become so diverse, that it's hard for them to communicate with each other.

FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), a new tool developed according to Health Level Seven (HL7) standards, will act as an interpreter between two healthcare systems or offices. The first release will focus on clinical data, like images and medications, while the second will focus on administrative data, like billing and demographics.

FHIR blazes the way for a surge of life-saving health information technology.

For one-third of U.S. patients with depression, standard medications aren't enough. With nearly 43,000 suicides a year, the need for effective treatment looms large.

In 2013, ketamine, a drug commonly used for anesthesia, was studied for its ability to target and inhibit the action of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors of nerve cells. The results were overwhelmingly favorable. Studies indicated that 70 percent of patients with treatment-resistant depression saw an improvement in symptoms within 24 hours of receiving ketamine. For the first time, there was a fast treatment for the severely depressed.

The studies prompted the FDA to grant fast-track status for the development of new NMDA-receptor-targeting medications. Some, like esketamine, have received breakthrough designation from the FDA, making it more likely that they will become available to patients in 2017.

Surgeons rely on microscope oculars or other camera systems to operate. However, they typically depend on their own eyes and interpretations to execute the most precise tasks - with their heads down, peripheral vision limited, and back and neck muscles strained.

This past year, two of the most intricate surgical fields, neurosurgery and retinal microsurgery, began experimenting with technology that keeps surgeons' heads up while immersing them in a high-resolution, 3-D visual representation of their subject. These stereoscopic systems also use data to generate visual templates for surgeons to execute certain tasks.

Those who have piloted the technology say the added comfort and visual information will allow surgeons to operate more efficiently and effectively. Several hospitals will be adopting these virtual reality tools in 2017.

Most sexually active women contract human papillomavirus (HPV). Certain strains of HPV are responsible for 99 percent of cases of cervical cancer.

Despite great strides in HPV prevention and treatment, the benefits are restricted to a small population - women with access to HPV tests and vaccines.

To expand access, scientists have developed self-administered HPV test kits that include a test tube, a swab and a mail-in box. Women can administer their own test, mail a sample back to a lab and be alerted to dangerous strains of HPV.

Experts believe 2017 will be the year these tests are deployed on a large scale, representing the biggest prevention effort for cervical cancer to date.

Every year, 600,000 people have metal coronary stents put into their chests to treat coronary artery blockage. Most of the time, that stent stays there forever, long after its mission is complete. The stents can make some scans and future surgeries difficult and may cause other complications, like blood clots.

But what if they could just disappear?

This past July, the first bioabsorbable stent was approved in the United States. Made of a naturally dissolving polymer, the stent widens the clogged artery for two years before it is absorbed into the body in a manner similar to dissolvable sutures.

Experts believe the market potential of bioabsorbable stents will approach $2 billion within six years.
For more about the top 10 innovations for 2017, see Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2017 Revealed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 1,700 healthcare stakeholders gathered in Cleveland, October 24-26, 2016, to discuss the latest medical breakthroughs and make new connections to spark future awe-inspiring innovations. Now in its 14 th year, Cleveland Clinic's Medical Innovation Summit is the oldest and largest meeting of its kind in healthcare. The perennial highlight?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
ART - Advanced Residential Technology provides custom home electronics and whole-home automation suited to your decor, your lifestyle, your needs.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Amazing Inventions You Won't Believe Exist 

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Amazing Inventions You Won't Believe Exist 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Amazing Inventions You Won't Believe Exist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
5 Amazing Inventions You Won't Believe Exist Product Links: 5. Pup : https://igg.me/at/pupscan/x 4. Vixole : https://igg.me/at/sQlGpgMAaeg/x 3. ORBI Prime : https://igg.me/at/orbiprime/x 2. Gest : gest.co 1. Betterspot : https://igg.me/at/betterspot/x Follow me : Twitter : http://goo.gl/SWEQek Facebook : http://goo.gl/XyifAW Google+ : http://goo.gl/j4Vu2P Top Awesome Inventions you would love to have .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Most Important Technology Milestones for 2014

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology news is full of incremental developments. These are the breakthroughs that matter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Each year, technology brings a wealth of advancement that could alter the future. Many of them are a long way from being viable, and some may never come to fruition, but the mere fact that each day is another chance for the world to solve the fossil fuel crisis, or cure cancer, is inspiring.

This year brought numerous, huge advancements across multiple fields. From holographic computers to a new blood test that could help aid the early detection of cancer. Everywhere you look, technology has a hand in pushing society forward, and closer to solving our biggest issues. It's impossible to know which of these will go on to actually impact our daily lives but, at their earliest stages, the potential is enough.

It's incredibly hard to make a list of the best advancements in science and technology for a year. Each one feels just as vital as the next, all in different ways and for different reasons. At the end of it, a few stood taller than most. These are the 10 best technology advances of 2015.

Portable computers are nothing new. Every year, laptops, tablets, even smartphones get more powerful and more capable of handling most users daily computing needs. Still, two intriguing pieces of hardware released in 2015 took the entire hardware of a computer and squeezed it into a device slightly larger than a tube of lipstick, and for a fraction of a fraction of the price. Intel's Compute Stick and the Asus Chromebit both turn any HDMI enabled screen into a computer. Neither device will blow you away with specs, but they open a wealth of possibilities for small businesses, education and more.

Our relationship with mobile carriers has grown more terse in recent years, and the tech industry has taken note. T-Mobile is attempting to shove the idea of being an "uncarrier" down our throats, while still retaining many of the debilitating secrecies that has defined the cellular service business, but other, genuinely interesting, ideas have be born from all the tension. One of them is Google's Project Fi, which not only offers aggressive pricing and refreshing simplicity, but is built on cool tech as well. Unlike most SIM cards, which connect to a single service provider, the Fi SIM allows a user's phone to dance between Wi-Fi, T-Mobile or Sprint, and does so automatically, depending on what signal is strongest. It's a powerful idea, to have optimum connectivity with little hand-wringing, but unfortunately for early-adopters and big dreamers, Google's Project Fi still has goliath companies standing in its way. Nonetheless, the concept is game-changing.

Apple has taken flak the last several years for not providing any truly groundbreaking tech. The company has been viewed for its entire history as a barometer for the future of consumer technology. This year, Cupertino unveiled a piece of technology that is arguably the biggest innovation it's had in years. The sensors it embedded in the new iPhone's screen allows the device to recognize force along with the usual multitouch gestures. Apple calls it 3D Touch, which is a silly name for an important idea. The new interactions Peek and Pop are just the beginning of a slew of new ways to interact with a smartphone, and it's hard to imagine the rest of the industry not working tirelessly to include a similar feature in their next flagship.

The future of computing has been touted as virtual or augmented reality for several years now. Microsoft took that concept a step further when it announced HoloLens, the first untethered, holographic computer. The concept completely changes how users interact with their computers, placing holograms that can be controlled by gestures in front of their eyes with navigation done with through the flick of the eye or voice command. It's the realization of sci-fi dreams, but also a fascinating real-world development for our computing future.

6. Artificial Intelligence Fools Humans

Artificial intelligence has, despite the numerous warning signs from films and television, continued to get smarter. Last year, the Eugene Goostman program became the first artificial intelligence to pass the Turing test. This year, a machine learning program deciphered numerous alphabets and even created some of its own with few examples from which to learn. Computers are getting smarter and more lifelike every year, growing at a pace that is almost impossible to keep up with. It's both exciting and terrifying. For more on the incredible machine learning program, check out the video above with from Popular Mechanics.

Drones have proven to be a useful tool in recent years, and the next step is for the unmanned aircrafts to become autonomous. That possibility became a reality this year. In June, DJI released the first consumer drone with the technology on board and then, in September, NASA announced it completed a test of a prototype system that allows drones to detect and avoid other aircrafts. The technology is the first step in integrating drones into everyday life. With the ability to avoid objects, drones could move about cities freely, check powerlines, deliver medical supplies or, even, that new pair of boots you ordered from Amazon.

The dream of a hydrogen-fueled car has been in stasis for a veritable eternity. The technology has finally advanced far enough that car companies are now formulating plans to release them to consumers. Prices will be exorbitant at first and the new fuel cell vehicles will face a similar uphill battle to create a solid infrastructure that current electric cars face, but the prospect of sustainable personal transportation is enthralling.

Much of the discussion about the intersection of cars and technology has, rightfully so, centered on self-driving cars. In 2015, though, we saw the emergence of car-to-car communication, technology that allows vehicles to broadcast speed, position, steering-wheel position, brake status and more to other cars. This lets the vehicles illustrate what's happening around them, meaning they could potentially alert drivers to an impending collision.

An important advancement in the medical field, 2015 introduced the world to a new way of growing human brain cells that could help uncover the mysteries of dementia, mental illness and other neurological disorders. While not exactly human brains in a dish, the cerebral organoids that can now be grown in labs possess features of a human brain in the first trimester of development. They could unlock new understanding to how neurons grow and function, leading to groundbreaking answers about brain activity, but also schizophrenia and other diseases.

Early detection is the biggest asset for doctors when it comes to treating cancer. Thanks to a new test developed by Dennis Lo, a doctor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the possibility of early detection became simpler in 2015. His test draws blood from a patient and then searches for viral DNA that dying cancer cells release into a person's plasma. The idea stemmed from Lo's discovery that fetuses shed bits of their DNA into the bloodstream of their mothers. At this point, like with the the fetal testing that resulted from Lo's discovery, the new cancer test is far too expensive for mainstream use, but Lo is confident the price will lower in the coming years. If it does, it could spark a revolution for cancer detection and treatment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, technology brings a wealth of advancement that could alter the future. Many of them are a long way from being viable, and some may never come to fruition, but the mere fact that each day is another chance for the world to solve the fossil fuel crisis, or cure cancer, is inspiring.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our personal life is highly dependent on the technology that people have developed. Technology has advanced with years and it has changed the way we purchase products , the way we live , the way we communicate , the way we travel , the way we learn and so many changes have been brought about by these continuous technological advancements. As people's demands and life style change, the demand for advancing the type of technology we use is high. Almost every thing we use has been innovated to better standards, a good example is the "Mobile Phone ", the type of mobile phones we had in 1995 are no longer on demand in this century, the demands of mobile phone users have changed greatly, and this has resulted in the advancement of mobile phone technologies.

Users of mobile phones demand simplicity and more functionality, which has forced mobile phone manufactures to develop computer minded smart phones, which are so easy to use, but also they come with more functionality compared to the type of mobile phones we used to have in the past.

Technological advancements have helped businesses and organizations save time and cost of production, which has been an advantage to all business, they manage these advancements to gain competitive advantage. A good a example is the 3G / 4G broadband, small businesses have taken advantage of this super fast internet to reach target markets with less costs of operation.

In the past, only big successful companies would dominate the market because they could afford the expensive adverting Medias, like Television, to reach any target market. Small businesses typically don't have fat budgets and find it hard to compete in any given profitable market. Now with advanced internet technologies, a small business can use most advanced internet marketing tools with a small budget which can range from $100 - $5000 to reach over 100,000 target customers.

The effects of technological advancement are both positive and negative. Positively, technology advancement has simplified the way we do things, it saves time, it increases on production, it simplifies communication, it has improved health care and it has also improved our educational environment. Negatively , technology advancement has made humans so lazy , technology users are so dependent on new advance tech tools , this laziness has resulted into less innovation , it has increased on health risks because technology users exercise less , it has affected the environment because of the increase pollution which has affected the Ozone layers which has resulted into global warming. When it comes to education, students are more dependent on Calculators and computers to solve simple equations; in this case they can not train their brains to solve a simple task which makes them lame in class. Below I have listed a few technological advancements which have changed our lives:

Technology Advancement in Medicine and Health care: Technology has helped in saving many innocent lives. Human medicine and health sciences have improved. Doctors and medical students have embarked on medical technological tools to carry out extensive research on human health problems and challenges. This extensive research has resulted into the development of new drugs, and treatments which have helped in curing most challenging human diseases and this has helped in saving so many lives and it has also prolonged the human lifespan. Let's look at some cool medical technological advancements and how they help us.

Fig 1: Smart phone Ultrasound: Using a $100,000 which was provided by , experts at the Washington University in St.Losuis managed to integrate a USB-based ultrasound probe with a Smart phone. The main goal was to create an simple hand sized "Ultrasound device " that can enable doctors in remote areas to image a patients kidney , liver , bladder , eyes , veins and arteries so that they can easily detect any infections. This type of device can be of a good use in many developing countries and it can help in saving lives. Doctors without boundaries can use this mobile ultra sound to help out many patients in remote areas.

Other health care technologies include; Nanocomposite Contact Lenses used to treat diabetes , Robotic Surgeons , Neuroprosthetic Chips which prevents seizures and control artificial limbs with mind , Multimodality Hybrid Imaging Technology which detects prostate cancer and Artificial Wombs which are used to grow an embryo outside of the body of a woman's body. Learn more about these medical technologies here

Technological advancements in communication: Communication is a major factor in both human lives and business. Communication technology has changed with years and it has even become better, I can tell what the future holds in this field of communication. In (fig 1) you can see a lady using a fixed land line to communicate, by then, this was the best way to communicate with your family, friends or business partners and suppliers. The only challenge it had was that it was fixed, so if you where not in the office or at home, people could not communicate with you. With years this technology has evolved and we have witnessed new mobile phones which made communication easier. In (fig 2) you can see two adults enjoy advanced communication technology (ipad) , this is a new technology , which can do more than just making calls. With its technology, you can even do a live video call and see the people you're communicating with, similar to Smart phones like iphone or Samsung galaxy which can have related functions.

Technological Advancements in Agriculture: Agricultural technological advancement has played a big role in changing the face of agriculture. This has resulted into increased production and abundant food supply. In (fig 2) you can see farmers in a developing world using poor methods or irrigating their plants. During droughts, crops will run out of water, so farmers have to irrigate their crops for a better yield, but with the type of irrigation method in fig 1, the crops will not yield well so the farmer will make a big loss. In fig 2, advanced sprinklers are used to irrigate a big farm and this saves the farmer time. A farmer who used this advanced technology will have a large output as well as produce high quality products. This is an automated water sprinkler, which can be set basing on the time of the day and movement of the sun, so the crops will always get sufficient water. Learn more on the use of technology in agriculture here >>>>

Other technological advances in agriculture include ; Agricultural Machinery , Agriculture Biotechnology , GM Food , Cloned Sheep , Organic fruits , Artificial Fruits , Livestock farming , Cattle Breeding , Cattle Slaughter Read more >>>

Technological Advancements In Education: Technology advancement has greatly changed the education sector. We now days learn through mobile gadgets and tablets. Technology has simplified the way teachers reach their students and it has also helped students learn from anywhere as well as enable them access academic information at any time from anywhere. Information is power, so both students and teachers can use advanced technologies for education to make research on subjects of interest. Some of the most popular technology advances which have changed the face of education include: Use of smart phones in classroom , use of tablets and mobile computers in education and classroom , use of smart whiteboards for visual illustration in the classroom, use of internet for long distance learning , Use of social ,media to connect students with teachers for example Piazza.com. Lets' look at the example in the images below. In (fig 1) , the teacher is using a black board and chalk to explain mathematical equations, this is the type of education most of us had, but some students could fail to learn because of its lack of real time visual illustration. In (fig2), the teacher is using a smart whiteboard which gives students visual illustrations on each subject; you can see that all students in the classroom are well engaged compared to a classroom with a black board. You can learn more about use of technology in the classroom here>>>>

Serious research has been undertaken to publish this content, so you're in the right place. I love technology, I believe embracing its potential for personal, business or educational advancement will pave the way forward for us all. We've all heard "knowledge is power", with this website I hope, to some degree, to empower you!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Technological Advancements and Their Effects on Humanity - Use of Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our personal life is highly dependent on the technology that people have developed. Technology has advanced with years and it has changed the way we purchase products , the way we live , the way we communicate , the way we travel , the way we learn and so many changes have been brought about ...

# data[].attributes.headline
The Most Exciting Medical Technologies of 2017

# data[].attributes.subject
The Most Exciting Medical Technologies of 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD 14 min | 15 December 2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Most Exciting Medical Technologies of 2017 - The Medical Futurist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At this time of every year, I publish my predictions for the coming months. So, here are my thoughts about the top medical technologies of 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
See all the wonderful things Jacky He has made

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EYEBALL RECONSTRUCTION -- Mind Blow #110

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Curiosity Box: https://www.curiositybox.com Mind Blow features the latest news in science, technology and amazing!

# data[].attributes.headline
THE EVOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

# data[].attributes.subject
THE EVOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Download To Your Brain? -- Mind Blow #109

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Curiosity Box: https://www.curiositybox.com/ LÜT On DONG: https://youtu.be/JXu4fAtvwPY Mind Blow features the latest news in science, technology and amazing! *** LINKS TO EVERYTHING *** IceMan Clothing (0:00) http://www.nature.com/articles/srep31279 http://www.eurac.edu/en/research/health/iceman/Pages/newsdetails.aspx?entryid=119553 © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/A.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Gest is a wearable that brings interaction to a whole new level.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The DJI Mavic Pro is a small yet powerful drone that turns the sky into your creative canvas easily and without worry, helping you make every moment an aerial moment.

# data[].attributes.headline
Top 5 New AMAZING Future TECH INVENTIONS 2016 - 2017

# data[].attributes.subject
Top 5 New AMAZING Future TECH INVENTIONS 2016 - 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 5 New AMAZING Future TECH INVENTIONS 2016 - 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this video, we have listed some of the best kickstarter projects along with best upcoming tech inventions of 2016 - 2017. Make sure you check them all and share your thoughts in comments below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Greatest Technology Advances to Watch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From the newest technology from Google Maps, to Supercharged Photosynthesis, here are 10 of the greatest technology advances to keep an eye on. Subscribe for weekly wacky videos and learn interesting facts about the world with awesome top 10 lists and other amazing videos.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
No new consoles debuted at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). But we saw plenty of new technology that reminds us that the hardware that hosts games could, until recently, be described as a supercomputer. For sure, we always get excited about games, but it's a sure bet that your favorite title has some really cool tech behind it. And some new technologies may even enable a whole new generation of games.

E3 did have some no-shows. Valve's Steam OS and the Steam Machines from its partners were missing in action because of delays that pushed the products into 2015.

Here's GamesBeat's perspective on the best new technology demos that we saw at E3 2014. For the sake of comparison, here's our list from last year.

1. Square Enix Project Flare. Any description of Project Flare has to start with "If it works...." That's because the "cloud-gaming 2.0" technology, first described in November, is still in the tech demo stage. But Square Enix chairman Yoichi Wada has a team of 20 working on enabling a gaming revolution, putting a web-connected supercomputer at the hands of gamers. It could make possible virtual game worlds that have 17 times the playable area of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the 2012 award-winning fantasy title. By using a more efficient blend of web-connected data centers and software designed for the cloud, Square Enix believes it can replace consoles with virtual supercomputers. You can log into huge game worlds, play both single-player and multiplayer experiences in the same space, and see huge numbers of game characters all governed by individual artificial intelligence.

A single game map could cover an area of 32 kilometers by 32 kilometers, with dozens of players hosted on a single graphics processing unit (GPU) in the cloud. And the cloud could support vast numbers of players because it can have vast numbers of GPUs in a server farm. Square Enix says the worlds can be massive and would require no loading times. Everything in the world will be calculated, rendered, and deformable. But a single player will receive a stream of video that shows only what the player's camera view can see. Networking, patching, hacking, and pirating will be gone. You'll be able to fly like Superman through a world filled with huge numbers of objects such as trees, mountains, and rivers. It sounds too good to be true. But if it works .... - Dean Takahashi.

showed some real games in development from its partners. The company has shown off a lot of progress since it first debuted at E3 two years ago. Now the company has a lot more credibility, as it is about to be acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. Last year, the company showed off its 1080p Oculus Rift virtual reality headset development kit. In January, it took the wraps off version two of that development kit. That version went a long way toward eliminating motion sickness, as it had positional tracking and it deleted the blurry frames that made us nauseous. This time, Oculus VR showed off demos such as Playful Corp.'s Lucky's Tale, a platform game in three dimensions; Alien: Isolation, a virtual reality version of Sega's upcoming console game based on the Alien franchise; and a demo dubbed Superhot by the Superhot Team where you could freeze the action in a 3D game in order to dodge bullets.

Brendan Iribe, chief executive of Oculus VR, acknowledged in an interview that Oculus needs to deliver on its roadmap and get a real product out the door. He also said the company is working on new input systems that work well with the visuals as well as sound. Overall, Oculus wants to ship a full platform for virtual reality, rather than just a headset. It's a long way before that happens, but based on the progress that we've seen, we're excited that it will . The next version of Oculus Rift should get rid of the "screen door" graphics, where a grid appears across all of the imagery, Iribe said. And with the full backing of Facebook to take care of the bills, we can expect that it will happen on a large scale for the mainstream consumer market. It's another "if it works" situation, but we're reasonably confident based on the track record that Oculus is serious. - Dean Takahashi

3. Sony's Project Morpheus. Sony's virtual reality headset is running a little behind of Oculus Rift, in terms of the quality of its demos. But Sony executives say they've been working on the tech for the new medium of virtual reality for four years. With their current development kit, they can show off virtual reality demos with a 1080p high-definition display and a 90-degree field of view.

Sony unveiled Project Morpheus at the Game Developers Conference in March with a couple of demos that included a shark attack scene, where you stand inside a steel cage and get lowered into an ocean and surrounded by water. Then a Great White shark swims around and shows its teeth at you.

Sony showed a couple of more demos at E3. I got to try out a Luge demonstration, where I lay comfortably on a bean bag. I put the Morpheus headset over my glasses and strapped it tight. Then I looked at my legs and feet, which seemed like they were extending into the screen. The luge started moving down the hill on a curvy mountain highway. I passed cars and had to dodge them by maneuvering the luge back and forth with my head. If I moved to the right, the luge moved with me. It was a little mis-calibrated, but it worked reasonably well. I smashed into an occasional car coming in the other direction. With demos like these, Sony has the right idea. As they are experiences that you can't get on a traditional console. - Dean Takahashi

4. Alienware Alpha. The gaming division of Dell, Alienware, was all set to take E3 by storm with a Steam Machine dubbed the Alienware Alpha. But when Valve delayed the launch of the Steam OS and the Steam Controller until 2015, Alienware pivoted to adopt the Windows operating system with an Xbox 360 wireless controller. The result is a sleek and menacing looking gamer PC for the living room. The box is small and light, with a slightly higher price tag than it would have if it were a Steam Machine (since Microsoft charges more for the OS). It will cost $549 when it debuts this fall.

Players will still be able to use the Big Picture mode of Valve's Steam software to run PC games on a television. Big Picture works with 240 such titles already. The only drawback now is that you won't be able to play those games with a Steam Controller. There are also 450 titles with partial gamepad support. The machine will have a Intel Core i3 "Haswell"-based processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a custom-built Nvidia "Maxwell" GPU with 2GB of dedicated video memory.

Alienware will outfit the box with its own graphical user interface (GUI) that turns a PC menu into something that can be navigated from 10 feet away. And Alienware still says it will launch a Steam version of the box by next year. - Dean Takahashi

5. Just Dance Now. Ubisoft's new version of its Just Dance franchise is the first one designed for mobile users. One of its coolest features is that you can pack as many as 20,000 dancers into a single dance match. Through a combination of mobile tech and cloud gaming, Just Dance Now can get a bunch of people playing at the same time, in real-time, all scoring together in a giant competition. The game is run on web-connected servers in a data center and the video is streamed to a screen such as your television or laptop. You use your smartphone, with sensors such as accelerometers and gyros for detecting motion, to capture your moves. Those are the same motion sensors that are used in Nintendo's Wii video game console that debuted in 2006. Since that time, Just Dance has sold more than 50 million units.

Ubisoft's Massive division worked on the technology, dubbed Blue Star, so that it consumes very little actual mobile bandwidth. It works across multiple devices and is latency free, according to Jason Altman, executive producer at Ubisoft. Two years in the making, Just Dance Now will be available later this year on both Android and iOS smartphones, as well as other platforms. Ubisoft is also working on Just Dance 2015 for the consoles, but Just Dance Now is a way for the company to attack the growing market of mobile users who probably wouldn't pay $60 for a game. Altman said Ubisoft hasn't decided upon an exact business model yet, but you can bet it will be inexpensive. With the virtually unlimited number of users per session, Altman said you can expect event-based competitions, such as getting everybody at a concert to dance in the same Just Dance Now game. That would be something to see. - Dean Takahashi.

6. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. If you watch the video for this game, you'll see that about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into it, it switches over from a pre-canned computer-animated movie to live gameplay. You'll see flickering flames, dust motes, smoke, cracked building floors, and lots of things moving on the screen at the same time. When the player emerges from the building to see the full destruction of the city around him, it's an impressive site, and it all remains inside the game engine. The movement between cinematics and gameplay is seamless. While players have become accustomed to this level of visual quality in console games, the Call of Duty demo shows you what it really looks like on a next-generation video game console.

Microsoft showed off the game running at a full 60 frames per second on the Xbox One, but the game will also come out this fall on the Sony PlayStation 4 and the PC. Perhaps the most impressive scene in the demo is when the drone swarm arrives. This sea of drones all fly together like a bunch of flying sardines swimming in a school. It takes a lot of horsepower to show off something like this, and the next-gen consoles are clearly capable of some pretty impressive stuff. Sledgehammer Games, the developer of the title, has been working on it for almost three years. Now we can see how Call of Duty, the familiar first-person shooter that comes every year in the modern combat genre, is ready to raise the bar again. On top of that, the demo scene is really quite dramatic and emotional. And the sound is really good too. Kudos to Activision for recognizing that cool visual technologies are really at their best when they come with a gripping story and sound effects too. - Dean Takahashi

7. SteelSeries Sentry Eye Tracker. Game peripheral maker SteelSeries teamed up with eye-tracking technology firm Tobii to create the Sentry Eye Tracker, which lets a player control a computer game with their eye movements. If you glance at a target, a game's crosshairs will move to that target and you'll be able to destroy that target much more quickly, at least theoretically, than a player with a game controller. The system takes your reaction time of thinking of something in your brain and sending signals down to your fingers to move a reticle toward a target. It could result in an unfair advantage for people who are in competitive game matches.

The system has already caught the eye of professional gamers. Sony is also working on eye-tracking technology in its Magic Lab research and development laboratory, and it recently showed off a demo that showed how you could quickly target enemies in the Infamous: Second Son game. Both technologies rely upon infrared cameras that track your eye and measure when it moves. SteelSeries is the first to test the waters on this front, but we're looking forward to whether this can enhance the controller or mouse input systems that have been with us forever. - Dean Takahashi

8. No Man's Sky. Hello Games showed off a new demo of its infinitely replayable, procedurally generated galaxy exploration game. This sci-fi game is about exploration and survival in a universe that has no end. Every atom, leaf, fish, plant, shark, and everything else you see in the video is generated by the developers' algorithms.

Procedural technology has been used before, but certainly not on this scale. It's pretty mind-boggling, and reminds me of Electronic Arts' Spore game. But it is safe to say there isn't much competition for No Man's Sky. You could spend all of your time in this game scanning and uploading creatures, plants, and other things that you discover. There is a real game in here, but we haven't heard all that much about it yet. It doesn't have a lot of narrative, but there's a lore and a purpose to the game.

The demo got a lot of air time at Sony's E3 press conference, and it raised a lot of eyebrows. It is particularly impressive because the game is being made by an indie team with just four people. Their previous game was Joe Danger, and it's safe to say this is something completely different. The release date hasn't been determined, but you can expect it on Sony's platform. - Dean Takahashi

9. Control VR. This virtual-reality tech fills in a crucial blank in the VR gaming experience: full upper-body motion tracking. It accomplishes this by placing 19 half-inch rotational sensors (similar to the ones in our smartphones) across our fingers, hands, forearms, and chest. The result? Games and other applications using Control VR can now track precise movements that aren't possible with just a VR headset, like making hand gestures or high-fiving another player. I tried on the prototype with an Oculus Rift in a small but busy E3 booth. Though crude and simple, the demo - two players were astronauts exploring the moon - was effective: I opened and closed my hands many times without the system losing track of them, I waved at the other player before pushing him aside, and I poked at little buttons on my in-game wristband to shoot ping-pong balls. I can't wait to see what game developers do with this. - Giancarlo Valdes

10. Tom Clancy's The Division. Ubisoft's The Division arrives next year on next-generation consoles and the PC as yet another post-apocalyptic world. But this one looks really beautiful, if that is the right word for a landscape with fires, smoke, debris, and dead bodies.

The game won't run on older generation consoles because it takes advantage of the Snowdrop game engine, which Ubisoft's Massive game studio has developed over the years to bring to life a full virtual world.

You can pull out to view a whole map of New York City and then drill down on particular sections where you want to concentrate your squad. In a demo of the the game, Ubisoft's developers showed that you can approach a tactical battle in multiple ways. You can, for instance, go directly after another squad. But you'll find that there's another enemy squad nearby that can help it out and pin you down. You can take out that first squad at the outset, and then turn to the second one. But the response will never be exactly the same. So the Snowdrop engine enables fluid tactical situations that will change, depending on the choices the player makes. All the while, everything looks, uh, beautiful. - Dean Takahashi.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 10 coolest technologies for gamers at this year's E3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
No new consoles debuted at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). But we saw plenty of new technology that reminds us that the hardware that hosts games could, until recently, be described as a supercomputer. For sure, we always get excited about games, but it's a sure bet that your favorite title has some really cool tech behind it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the industry continues to shift into the value-based care model, healthcare organizations are looking for the right tools to support the move. This tech will support the improvement of patient care and, in some instances, cut operations' costs.

"Navigating new technologies is one of the biggest challenges we hear about from hospital leaders," Robert Maliff, director of Applied Solutions for ECRI Institute, said in a statement. "They simply can't afford to miss the mark on which clinical advancements to bring in to improve patient care."

ECRI's researchers, engineers, specialists, planners and consultants craft its annual "Top Ten Hospital C-Suite Watch List," by evaluating the safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the year's health technology.

The topics and tech ECRI found will be most influential this year:

1. Liquid biopsies. Liquid biopsies are a genetic testing mechanism that uses a patient's blood, plasma, serum or urine, instead of biopsied tissue. These are easier to obtain and are less risky for the patient. Over 40 companies are currently developing and marketing liquid biopsies in the U.S., and the FDA approved the first liquid biopsy for cancer in June 2016.

2. Genetic testing and biosensors for opioid addiction. Researchers are using genetic tests to identify individuals at the greatest risk for opioid addiction. Current tests aren't ready for wide use, but are in the pipeline. Further, biosensors - worn like wristwatches - can detect relapse episodes for opioid addicts using skin temperature, electrodermal activity and movement.

3. Abdominal surgery initiative. Initiatives that include a web-based, risk-assessment algorithm and patient coaching can combat poor outcomes and reduce costs of patients facing major abdominal surgery.

4. Horizon scanners. Organizations should designate a leader to conduct tests and future planning on technology developments and care processes, as a way to better make decisions on infrastructure, equipment purchases and predict inpatient cases.

5. Ultraviolet-C LEDs for disinfection. This latest LED option comes in strips and emits UV-C light with the greatest germicidal effect. It reduces power usage, stabilizes power output, extends lifespan and can disinfect hard to reach areas. Developers are also working on sanitizing wands and UV disinfecting cabinets for mobile devices.

6. AI. The humanoid robot Pepper can interpret human body language and read emotion to respond accordingly to the user, evolving as it learns the person. It can also be programmed to fit an environment.

7. Robotic surgery. The latest surgical robot model is designed for complex surgeries. It boasts four robotic arms attached overhead that can be repositioned without the need to undock the robot. It communicates with a new type of OR table, which allows for automatic repositioning.

8. Florescent endoscopic imaging. Indocyanine green imaging highlights malignant tissue during an endoscopy that is normally undetectable under regular light; it lets physicians easily distinguish malignant tumors from healthy tissue.

9. Immunotherapy and stem cell therapy for Crohn's disease. Ovasave, a new, personalized T-cell immunotherapy, uses antigen-specific regulatory T-cells generated by in vitro exposure to ovalbumin to treat patients with refractory Crohn's. There are also two mesenchymal stem cell treatments in development: one uses umbilical cord blood and the other uses stems cells cultured outside of the body.

10. Type 1 diabetes vaccines. There are two types of these vaccines: a therapeutic vaccine to slow or stop the autoimmune attack on insulin-producing islet cells for patients with some residual islet function, and a preventative vaccine to create immune tolerance of islet cells in children with an increased genetic risk of developing the disease.
Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer:jessica.davis@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 healthcare technology advances for 2017, according to ECRI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the industry continues to shift into the value-based care model, healthcare organizations are looking for the right tools to support the move. This tech will support the improvement of patient care and, in some instances, cut operations' costs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Look ahead to the personal tech advances that will change your life in 2017, from AI and augmented reality, to face computers and videogame consoles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
FUTUROLOGY | 5 New Advances in Technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A lot of you guys really liked the "SHORT DOCUMENTARY | 2 Things That Can Wipeout Humanity" and asked me to make more futuristic videos so here's another one :) Enjoy!

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Technologies That Will Change Classroom Education

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Technologies That Will Change Classroom Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Technologies That Will Change Classroom Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are now official. The tech giant's range-topping Android smartphones will become available for pre-order tomorrow, on March 30. Retail sales will kick off on April 21.

The new smartphones feature new design language, headed by a large curved display with no side bezels and lack of front buttons. Their lengthy spec sheets also include a new intelligent interface called Bixby. The phones will be available in three colors - Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, and Arctic Silver.
All-New Infinity Display
The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ pack all-new curved Super AMOLED screen panels by Samsung - a 5.8-inch unit for the former and a 6.2-inch one for the latter. Dubbed Infinity Display, the screens have an 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2,960 by 1,440 pixels.

With no side bezels, the curved Infinity Display dominates entirely the front of both devices, leaving you with the feeling that you are holding nothing but a screen. It also makes the phones feel a lot smaller than their display sizes suggest.
Cutting-Edge Processor
The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are the first Android smartphones to hit the shelves with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 835 chipset. Developed with a cutting-edge 10-nanometer manufacturing process, the SoC delivers improved performance compared to its predecessor, coupled with better energy efficiency. It also supports ultra fast Cat. 16 LTE network connectivity.

Samsung has equipped every Galaxy S8 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of ultra fast UFS 2.1 internal storage. A microSD card slot for easy expansion is also on board.
Bixby
The latest Galaxy smartphones are the first Samsung products to feature Bixby - an intelligent user interface that will allow users to complete almost every task on their device with voice commands. The new feature has a dedicated button on the side of both devices.

Bixby will be aware of the content on the device's display every time you open it. The assistant has been designed to work in tandem with touch controls

The new interface will launch with a handful of supported commands that work with pre-installed apps on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Its functionality will expand further going forward.
Sleek New User Interface, SmartThings Integration
Both phones run Android Nougat out of the box. Google's OS has been dressed in Samsung's sleek new user interface with colorful, yet minimalist icons and a host of customization features.

The latest user interface has Samsung SmartThings integration. This means that you will be able to control supported appliances, including lights and robot vacuums from your phone.
A Multitude of Biometric Scanners
In addition to a fingerprint scanner placed alongside the camera on the back, both phones also feature an iris scanner. There's also the option to log into each device via facial recognition.

Of course, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ also have a heart rate sensor. It utilizes the LED flash on the back of each device.
Improved Front and Rear Cameras
The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ feature a 12MP main camera with dual-pixel autofocus, bright f/1.7 lens, and improved image processing compared to the one found in their predecessors. Of course, the camera is capable of capturing 4K video.

A new 8MP image sensor is in charge of capturing selfies. Just like the main camera, it's sitting behind a fast f/1.7 lens.
All the Galaxy Essentials
As expected from high-end Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. This means that each device can spend up to an hour under 5 feet of water.

Wireless charging is also on present on both devices, as is support for fast battery top-ups via a USB-C cable. The Galaxy S8 has a 3,000 mAh battery, while the bigger model packs a 3,500 mAh one.

Samsung has kept the standard audio jack intact in the Galaxy S8 family. Every phone will come bundled with a pair of high-end earbuds by AKG.
A Desktop Dock
In addition to the usual bevy of protective cases, Samsung also introduce a desktop dock for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. The accessory features a duo of full USB inputs, an HDMI and Ethernet connector, as well as one USB-C ports.

Samsung has designed a custom desktop interface that turns on once you plug the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ into the dock. The tech giant has partnered with Microsoft, so Microsoft Office apps for Android appear with desktop interface. You can also run virtual Windows on both phones thanks to their powerful hardware.
Even More Immersive Gear VR Headset
Samsung unveiled a new Gear VR headset alongside the new phones. The accessory comes bundled with a wireless controller, which makes all virtual reality experiences more interactive.

The Gear VR controller comes with touchpad, as well as a trigger button. It also has a built-in accelerometer.
New Samsung Gear 360
Samsung unveiled a new Gear 360 camera with water resistant body and improved ergonomics. The gadget can capture immersive 4K videos, as well as immersive 360-degree photos.

The camera will be compatible will all high-end Samsung phones, going back to the Galaxy S6. It will also be compatible with iPhone.
Our Initial Impressions
We left our initial encounter with the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ truly impressed. Both devices are a leap forward from the Galaxy S7 family, offering an even sleeker design, better hardware and ergonomics, as well as an improved user interface.

Combined, the phones' new features and available accessories are all but certain to appeal to the Galaxy faithful. They are also more than likely to entice new users to hop on the Samsung bandwagon.
Photos by Stefan Vazharov More from Best Products: Android Tablets We Like The Best Smartphones You Can Buy Our Favorite Lightweight Laptops

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+: A Beautiful Body (With a Headphone Jack!)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are now official. The tech giant's range-topping Android smartphones will become available for pre-order tomorrow, on March 30. Retail sales will kick off on April 21. The new smartphones feature new design language, headed by a large curved display with no side bezels and lack of front buttons.

# data[].attributes.headline
12 Easy Ways to Use Technology in the Classroom, Even for Technophobic Teachers

# data[].attributes.subject
12 Easy Ways to Use Technology in the Classroom, Even for Technophobic Teachers

# data[].attributes.headline
10 Futuristic Technology That May Come True Very Soon

# data[].attributes.subject
10 Futuristic Technology That May Come True Very Soon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Technology never stands still: it's always changing, adapting and progressing, and oftentimes things that seemed improbable (or even impossible) one year can quickly start becoming possible only a few short years afterwards.

Wearable computers seemed like a fanciful idea only recently, but now they're pretty much the next big thing to go mainstream. The emergence of the Oculus Rift could probaby catapult virtual and augmented reality into literal reality.

With this in mind, here's a list of 10 interesting futuristic technologies that we'll most probably be seeing in the near future. Although these are mostly still in the very early stages, they're at something of a middle ground. While you won't see these readily available everywhere yet, but at least we now know that in due time, they will become actual products we can see, touch and utilize. Without further ado, here's the list.

Recommended Reading: 10 Upcoming Technology That May Change The World

1. Jet Pack International H202

Jet Pack International are making great strides in jetpack technology H202 and H202-Z jetpacks. As the name suggests, both the H202 and H202-Z are hydrogen peroxide-fueled jetpacks that will allow uers to fly at up to 77 miles per hour at a maximum height of 250 feet.

So far thought, the higher-capacity H202-Z is only capable of a maximum flight length of 33 seconds and a maximum travel distance of 3,300 feet.

But you have to admit, it's a start. The Jet Pack International units have great potential, and the lacking travel time and distance is outweighed by how mobile and controllable the flight is, not to mention how compact the units actually are.

The Jet Pack International H202 and H202-Z are actually currently available, albeit not commercially: you can assemble the jetpack yourself, if you have $100,000 lying around.

2. Aerofex Aero-X

If you're a Star Wars fan, the Aerofex Aero-X, a real-life equivalent of the Star Wars speeder bike, is definitely something you'll want to keep your eyes on. The Aero-X is the result of more than 15 years of research and development.

Powered by a water-cooled 240 horsepower engine and two large rotors, the Aero-Xcan hover at an altitude of 12 feet and at speeds of up to 45 miles per hour power. It can also carry up to 310 pounds. Think of the potential.

Also, as a result of this extended research and development period, Aerofex claims to have overcome the dangerous coupling effect that can arise due to using two rotors, ensuring that the Aero-X will be safe and easy to control.

The Aero-X is currently available for preorder for a refundable $5000 deposit. The final unit is scheduled to be available in 2017 at the price of $85,000.

3. Prosthetics With A Sense Of Touch

In March 2013, Denis Aabo Sorensen had the privilege of testing a new type of prosthetic hand, created by a group of European engineers and scientists. Unlike conventional prosthetics, the new prosthetic hand connects directly to the remaining nerves in Denis' upper arm. This means that the "hand" has a sense of touch and is actually controllable.

Blindfolded tests showed that Denis was indeed able to differentiate between different items such as a bottle, a baseball and a mandarin orange. It also could exert different levels of pressure, allowing Denis to touch, hold or grab something.

While this prosthetic hand is indeed a great leap forward, it's still far from ready for widespread use: the arm required electrodes to be implanted directly into Sorensen, and tests still need to be carried out to determine the durability of these electrodes.

In addition, the hand required a lot of processing power, and was hooked up to a laptop; researchers are working on making the processing computer small enough to be integrated within the implant itself.

4. TALOS "Iron Man suit"

TALOS stands for Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, a combat suit that the US Army hopes will become a reality within the next four years. The TALOS provides ballistic, shock and fire protection for Special Operations soldiers.

The aim is to provide these soldiers with better, more mobile and more versatile protection than what currently exists. The development of the TALOS suit will be a collaborative effort between universities, government agencies and corporations.

While there is yet to be a working prototype, development is proceeding at a rapid pace. The head of the US Special Operations Command, Admiral William McRaven is confident that unpowered prototypes will be ready in June. There is also the goal of testing a complete working prototype in August 2018.

Don't expect to be able to buy this, of course, although there's every chance that some of the tech here could eventually trickle down to civilian uses.

5. Titan Arm

The Titan Arm is the work of a team from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a strength-enhancing upper-body exoskeleton that will help you lift an extra 40 pounds. Granted, it's a far cry from the Powerloader we see - and love - in the Alien films but the Titan Arm was designed with a more humble goal in mind.

The Titan Arm is built to help rehabilitate people who've suffered serious arm injuries or strokes as well as provide some extra strength and protection for anyone who lifts heavy objects for a living.

To keep costs low, the Titan Arm uses 3D printing techniques allowing the prototype development costing to be reduced to £1200. This, and the fact that the developers gained extra funding by winning the 2013 James Dyson Award, means that the Titan Arm may just become a commonplace sight in the near future.

6. Super Maglev Train

Chinese researchers have recently been looking into the next phase of train transportation, beyond even Maglev technology. China and Japan already have very fast Maglev trains that are capable of reaching over 260 miles per hour, but the new next-generation Maglev technology, dubbed super Maglev, will apparently be even faster.

Super Maglev is built on the same Maglev technology, but it encapsulates the train in a vacuum tube, further reducing air resistance, allowing for higher, mind-boggling speeds. Researchers claim that such enclosed-tube Maglev systems could see trains reaching speeds of up to 1800 miles per hour.

Of course, there are doubts about the feasability of constructing long vacuum tubes and keeping them pressurised, but if scientists and engineers can figure that out, we may one day be able to cross large distances quicker and more safer than we've ever imagined possible.

7. Cave2

Cave2 is a hybrid reality environment that lets artists, scientists and engineers become fully immersed in their research. The Cave2 is a 360° wraparound structure consisting of 72 LCD panels, a 20-speaker surround sound system and a 10-camera optical motion tracking system.

With 3D glasses, scientists and engineers will actually be able to virtually experience and move through anything of their choosing, whether it's the human body or planets in the solar system. The Cave2 holds an immense amount of potential, especially for situations involving large amounts of data requiring visualization.

In fact, a recent project fed crime data from the city of Chicago into Cave2, allowing policymakers and investigators to virtually fly through Chicago, accompanied by real-time crime data and information.

8. 3D Printed Food

3D printing has taken the world by storm, and slowly but surely people are being won over by the idea that it's for more than just gadgets. Food is also something that can be feasily 3D printed.

German company, Biozoon, is harnessing the power of 3D printing to create seneoPro, a range of 3D-printable powder mixtures that solidifies when printed but also very quickly melts when eaten. The main target for this new 3D-printable food are elderly patients who suffer from dysphagia, or the inability to swallow.

Such a technology would definitely reduce the risk of choking, and the 3D-printed nature of seneoPro means that caregivers and family members can very easily mix and match the powders to create all types of dishes. And you can also add coloring agents and texturizers to make the food even more appealing.

9. High Power Wireless Charging

Wireless charging, up until now, usually means charging via a pad, rather than via wires and cables. But if you ask the team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology wireless charging can also be done a distance away.

The team recently demonstrated a prototype of a new Dipole Coil Resonant System (DCRS) that can wirelessly power devices up to 15 feet away. The DCRS system achieves this using a magnetic field, and is apparently powerful enough to charge up to 40 mobile phones, and can even power larger devices, like a TV.

There's no word yet on how soon we'll be seeing this technology in the real world, but in the mean time you can check out Cota, a somewhat similar wireless charging technology that's coming soon.

10. StoreDot Fast Charging Battery

StoreDot, a ground-breaking nanotechnology company, recently unveiled a prototype for a next-generation battery that harnesses all their knowledge of nanotechnology and energy storage technologies. StoreDot uses bio-organic "nanodots" that have increased electrode capacitance and electrolyte performance.

The science is a bit complex, but the outcome is simple: as a result of these nanodots, the battery can be fully charged in only 30 seconds.

The best thing is that, since StoreDot's nanodots are bio-organic, they're a lot more environmentally friendly, not to mention power-efficient, than a lot of other competing nanodot technologies which often use dangerous metals and chemicals. They're also apparently cheap to manufacture, so who knows, we may be seeing super-fast batteries in our smartphones before too long.

Bonus: "Back To The Future" Hoverboard

Yeah, we know, it was a hoax, but for a brief, glorious moment, it seemed like all our Back to the Future-fueled dreams were coming true: an actual working hoverboard that wasn't just a scientific experiment constrained to a laboratory. The promo video, from a company named HUVr and featuring famous faces like Tony Hawk and Dr. Emmet Brown himself doing everything from just riding around to catching footballs and even controlling the hoverboard with an iPhone.

As it turned out only a day later, the video and the entire hoverboard was a hoax by Funny or Die, but the fact that it captured the imagination of so many people shows that, yes, people really do want hoverboards. It's safe to say that if reserachers ever do figure it out, it'll be an achievement that nobody will ever forget.

Further Reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Futuristic Technology That May Come True Very Soon - Hongkiat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology never stands still: it's always changing, adapting and progressing, and oftentimes things that seemed improbable (or even impossible) one year can quickly start becoming possible only a few short years afterwards. Wearable computers seemed like a fanciful idea only recently, but now they're pretty much the

# data[].attributes.headline
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.subject
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 New Tech Inventions 2017 You Must See

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Scientists have solved fundamental problems that were holding back cures for rare hereditary disorders. Next we'll see if the same approach can take on cancer, heart disease, and other common illnesses.

Availability: Now

W hen Kala Looks gave birth to fraternal twin boys in January 2015, she and her husband, Philip, had no idea that one of them was harboring a deadly mutation in his genes.

At three months old, their son Levi was diagnosed with severe combined immune deficiency, or SCID, which renders the body defenseless against infections. Levi's blood had only a few immune cells essential to fighting disease. Soon he would lose them and have no immune system at all.

Kala and Philip frantically began sanitizing their home to keep Levi alive. They got rid of the family cat, sprayed every surface with Lysol, and boiled the twins' toys in hot water. Philip would strap on a surgical mask when he came home from work.

See the rest of the issue
Subscribe

At first, Kala and Philip thought their only option was to get Levi a bone marrow transplant, but they couldn't find a match for him. Then they learned about an experimental gene therapy at Boston Children's Hospital. It was attempting to treat children like Levi by replacing the gene responsible for destroying his immune system.

"I thought, this isn't real," Kala says. "There's no way this could work."

Nonetheless, the Lookses flew from their home in Michigan to Boston in May 2015. Days later, Levi got an infusion of the therapy into his veins. He has been a normal boy ever since-and he has even grown larger than his twin brother. Babies born with SCID typically didn't survive past two years old. Now, a one-time treatment offers a cure for patients like Levi Looks.

Gene Therapy 2.0

Breakthrough First gene therapies on track for approval in the U.S. More are on the way.

Why It Matters Thousands of diseases stem from an error in a single gene. New treatments could cure them.

Key Players - Spark Therapeutics
- BioMarin
- BlueBird Bio
- GenSight Biologics
- UniQure

Researchers have been chasing the dream of gene therapy for decades. The idea is elegant: use an engineered virus to deliver healthy copies of a gene into patients with defective versions. But until recently it had produced more disappointments than successes. The entire field was slowed in 1999 when an 18-year-old patient with a liver disease, Jesse Gelsinger, died in a gene-therapy experiment.
Gene-Therapy Time Line
But now, crucial puzzles have been solved and gene therapies are on the verge of curing devastating genetic disorders. Two gene therapies for inherited diseases-Strimvelis for a form of SCID and Glybera for a disorder that makes fat build up in the bloodstream-have won regulatory approval in Europe. In the United States, Spark Therapeutics could be the first to market; it has a treatment for a progressive form of blindness. Other gene therapies in development point to a cure for hemophilia and relief from an incapacitating skin disorder called epidermolysis bullosa.

Fixing rare diseases, impressive in its own right, could be just the start. Researchers are studying gene therapy in clinical trials for about 40 to 50 different diseases, says Maria-Grazia Roncarolo, a pediatrician and scientist at Stanford University who led early gene-therapy experiments in Italy that laid the foundation for Strimvelis. That's up from just a few conditions 10 years ago. And in addition to treating disorders caused by malfunctions in single genes, researchers are looking to engineer these therapies for more common diseases, like Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart failure, and cancer. Harvard geneticist George Church has said that someday, everyone may be able to take gene therapy to combat the effects of aging.

Early gene therapies failed in part because of the delivery mechanism. In 1990, a four-year-old girl with a form of SCID was treated by scientists at the National Institutes of Health, who extracted white blood cells from her, inserted normal copies of her faulty gene into them, then injected her with the corrected cells. But patients later treated for a different type of SCID went on to develop leukemia. The new genetic material and the virus used to carry it into cells were delivered to the wrong part of the genome, which switched on cancer-causing genes in some patients. In Gelsinger's case, the virus used to transport functioning genes into his cells made his immune system go into overdrive, leading to multiple organ failure and brain death.

Gene-therapy researchers have surmounted many of those early problems by using viruses that are more efficient at transporting new genetic material into cells.

Slideshow: 1990 A four-year-old girl (pictured at lower right in 1992) is treated for SCID, a genetic disease that would have left her defenseless against infections. But other children with the disease will later develop leukemia from a different gene therapy.

Slideshow: 1999 Jesse Gelsinger, 18, becomes the first patient to die in a clinical trial for gene therapy.

Slideshow: May 2016 European regulators approve Strimvelis, the second gene therapy for an inherited disease, to treat a type of SCID.

But several challenges remain. While gene therapies have been developed for several relatively rare diseases, creating such treatments for more common diseases that have complex genetic causes will be far more difficult. In diseases like SCID and hemophilia, scientists know the precise genetic mutation that is to blame. But diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, and heart failure involve multiple genes-and the same ones aren't all involved in all people with those conditions.

Nonetheless, for Kala and Philip Looks, the success of gene therapy is already real. A treatment they had never heard of rid their child of a horrific disease.

Credit

Illustration by Armando Veve; Photos and images by Chris Ware | Getty; Fox Photos | Getty; courtesy of the Immune Deficiency Foundation; Courtesy of the Gelsinger Family and courtesy of Mikael Häggström; courtesy of uniQure; By Mystère Martin | Wikimedia; Eric Piermont | Getty

Emily Mullin Associate Editor, Biomedicine

I am ... are affecting real people. Previously, I was a contributor at MIT Technology Review's associate editor for biomedicine. I report from Washington, D.C., where I look for stories about how new technology is making us healthier and our medicine better. I am particularly interested in how these advances More Forbes, and before that, an associate editor at FierceBiotech. Get in touch at emily.mullin@technologyreview.com.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How did gene therapy go from experimental disasters to wondrous cures?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Availability: Now W hen Kala Looks gave birth to fraternal twin boys in January 2015, she and her husband, Philip, had no idea that one of them was harboring a deadly mutation in his genes. At three months old, their son Levi was diagnosed with severe combined immune deficiency, or SCID, which renders the body defenseless against infections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Technology is always moving-and it touches every part of our lives. Each year, we see more and more of the reality that only existed in science fiction come to life. In 2014, we saw our fair share of consumer, mass market mobile technological advancement, most notably in the launching of the new smartwatch platform and the continued saturation of the smartphone market.

However, we also saw a big move in technology other sectors as well, including transportation, healthcare, and space exploration. So here are the 10 best technology advances of 2014-the ones that truly had us excited for the future:

10. Virtual Reality Goes Mainstream

Oculus Rift has been the talk of the town for a couple of years now, but after being purchased by Facebook this year, we've been seeing the devices pop up in more and more places. At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, Facebook teamed up with Hollywood to create two unique virtual reality experiences: one for X-Men and one for Pacific Rim. Both of the experiences were made uniquely for the platform and immersed viewers directly into the action. Expect to see a lot more of this in the future as virtual reality technology advances and more of the public gets to try it for the first time.

9. Google's Contact Lenses Monitors Blood Sugar Levels

Google are taking their wearable technology ambitions even further with a smart contact lens-but it might not be quite what you think. It's not Google Glass plastered onto your eye. Instead of sending you Google+ notifications, its transmitters are used for an entirely different end goal: monitoring diabetics' tears for glucose. Google lens are being developed by Google X, the offshoot of the tech giant that handles their most ambitious and risky projects such as Glass and self-driving cars. These lenses see Google moving further into wearable technologies and crossing over into healthcare tech.-Jonathan Keane

8. Ultra Short Throw 4K Projector is the Future of the Television

The Ultra Short Throw 4K Projector was immediately one of the coolest things to come from CES at the beginning of this year. We still view projectors as clunky, old technology, but Sony is looking to change that with its newest possible addition to your living room. It'll take an entire wall of your living room, but with its beautiful, unobtrusive design, it fits in with the modern home pretty well. Say hello to the future of living room screens.

7. HP Sprout Touch Mat Reinvents the Workstation

The real technological wonder of HP's Spout Touch Mat isn't in the development of brand new technologies, but instead in how the device uses pre-existing technologies together to do something entirely new. The idea behind Sprout is to reinvent the digital workspace, using a an overhead projection camera that can detect finger/hand gestures, track objects, and even interact with them in unique augmented reality use cases. Most importantly, it has an interesting take on how the world of touch screens and traditional desktop computers might interact and function in a universal, digital workstation.

6. Ind.ie Takes the Internet off the Grid

Every few weeks it seems that companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are in the spotlight for issues around security and privacy. Each time the public is able to catch some small glimpse behind the curtain of what these companies are doing with all of the personal information they control, there is inevitably a backlash, followed by some sort of apology or explanation from the company.

If thinking about that is a little too bleak for you, fear not, for Aral Balkan and his team have been hard at work for much of the last year on developing alternatives to the "Spyware 2.0" (Balkan's own terminology) technologies like Dropbox, Facebook, Google, and even your smartphone. The idea of an independent, private Internet feels like something of an oasis in the post-Snowden era.-Michael Sarason

5. Hoverboards Are For Real

We've been waiting our whole lives for a real hoverboard and we were all successfully faked out earlier this year by Funny or Die's video stunt involving Tony Hawk and Christopher Lloyd and a fake company called HUVr. The whole thing came out as a hoax though shortly after, to the disappoint of people all across the Internet.

Fortunately, we also got an actual working Hoverboard this year: the Hendo Hoverboard. Tony Hawk redeemed himself by being in that video as well, but this time it would be for the real thing. The project was successfully funded for over $500,000 on Kickstarter, so get ready to start seeing these things out in public in the next year or so.

4. Computer Chips are Becoming More like Human Brains

The idea behind the development of neuromorphic chips is to make them a bit more like us-and in turn, make computers better at navigating and modeling human behavior. These neuromorphic chips, being developed by companies such as Qualcomm, are designed to perceive beyond just their programming, such as being able to process sensory data and react accordingly. It'll have a huge effect on robotics in the next few years and continue reshape the way we think of computers and our relationship with them.

3. Orion Test Flight Leads the Way for Human Mars Landing

The recent NASA Orion test flight has finally gotten Americans excited about the future of space travel. The test has set the groundwork for future Orion launches, which includes planned manned deep-space trips to an asteroid and Mars. Those might not happen right away, but now that the first test flight has happened we couldn't be more excited about what it could mean for the future.

2. Self-Driving Cars Will Be Everywhere

When we talk about self-driving cars these days, we're not just talking about the one made by Google without a steering wheel. Everyone from Tesla to Audi are testing and implementing self-driving technologies to put in their high-end vehicles. While none of them are doing anything as extreme as Google, clearly the influence is being seen across the industry as the desire for self-driving features grows.

1. Google's Cancer-Detecting Pill

Google pushed strongly in the world of healthcare this year with its glucose-detecting contact lenses, the Google Genomics cloud storage project, and most notably, its new cancer-detecting pill. The pill contains magnetic nanoparticles that attach themselves to cancerous molecules that may or may not be flowing through your bloodstream. The pill would then actually be able to notify you on your wearable device whenever it has accomplished its cancer purging. Even though it's still years from hitting the market, it's one of those game-changing technologies that only Google has the money, intuition, and ambition to create.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology is always moving-and it touches every part of our lives. Each year, we see more and more of the reality that only existed in science fiction come to life. In 2014, we saw our fair share of consumer, mass market mobile technological advancement, most notably in the launching of the new smartwatch platform and the continued saturation of the smartphone market.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the first installment of Blue Screen of Jeff, the titular Jeff explains how the 3DS works. Thanks to IGN for the last clip. Thanks to Sony for the explanation of the shutter display.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A new approach to 3-D holographic displays greatly improves the image quality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The potential applications of three-dimensional (3D) digital holograms are enormous. In addition to arts and entertainment, various fields including biomedical imaging, scientific visualization, engineering design, and displays ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
4K Resolution, Cameras, TVs and Displays Explained! Thumbs up!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 9 New Technology Future Inventions Gadgets Coming in 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WANT THE NEWEST UPDATE? Read the 2018 version:
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018
The future of healthcare is changing dramatically with medical and dental technology advances starting to accelerate and larger health systems taking notice.

Will health systems accelerate the adoption of amazing technologies from the digital health startup community?

Will we see new drugs that cure major diseases?

Will regulatory changes from the new help or hurt?

, reaching $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for
U.S. healthcare spending grew 5.8 percent in 2015 17.8 percent. So what does this mean to all of our colleagues, friends, and families? It's time to evaluate how we live to take care of each other, or we could be in serious pain in the near future.

The referralMD healthcare technology review will showcase some amazing advances that could change the fabric of healthcare for the better and reduce the risk we would otherwise face.
Let's get started
1. Healthcare Education: Augmented Reality
Education needs a revamp, and even more so healthcare education. Doctors are put through a gauntlet of requirements before they even see the light of day (AKA a paycheck) and this leads to supply issues. Currently, it is estimated that the United States needs just to meet the current needs.

So how does it get better?

Through robust 3D training tools offered by companies like which helps doctors learn about Anatomy without having to cut open a cadaver.

Another interesting tool used by UCSF is called Echopixel.

It takes data from CT and MRI scans and transforms it into 3-D holographic images so she can view and interact with patient tissues and organs as if they were real physical objects. Medical 3-D imaging is not new, but the way organs appear to pop out of the screen and the ease at which the anatomy can be manipulated has never been seen before in medicine.

Believe it or not, healthcare still communicates with paper. Less than of hospitals say they've been able to trade records entirely through their digital systems. Shocking right?

Patient access has always been a problem, of all faxed patient referrals result in scheduled appointments due to the complexities of communication between health systems, or the lack thereof.

Ability to get a patient to an appointment is critical. Not only for a patient's health, but for the viability of a health system from a revenue standpoint, its reputation, the insurance company, and even medical device and pharma companies. It is a tight-knit ecosystem where if one chain in the communication link breaks down then all heck breaks loose and everyone suffers.

The great thing is there are finally platforms on the market that helps providers and staff route patients to the most appropriate high-quality clinician in a community using SmartMATCH Technology from ReferralMD. Best of all it can integrate into the any EMR systems on the market like Epic, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, and Allscripts while reducing referral leakage saving health systems 100's of millions.

ReferralMD Analytics Dashboard showing real-time leakage numbers

3. Human Head Transplants

Sergio Canavero , an Italian neurosurgeon, intends to attempt the first human head transplant by 2017, though no successful animal transplants with long-term survival have yet been made. Because of the difficulty of connecting the spinal cord, Canavero has suggested improvements in the process using a special blade and polyethylene glycol, a polymer used in medicine as well as in everything from skin cream to the conservation of the Mary Rose, can help start growth in spinal cord nerves.

Being able to surgically remove the head in an orderly fashion should allow surgeons to then reattach all the nerves and blood vessels to the new body, once that pesky donor head is removed. A special bio-compatible glue will hold the spinal cord together so it can fuse with the donor body. The patient will then be put in a drug-induced coma for four weeks while the connection between the head and body heals. It's the reattachment process that's the most unlikely part of all this. There's never been a successful procedure that reattached a fully severed primate spinal cord.

Canavero says all the technology he needs is available and estimates the procedure will take about 36 hours and require the services of 150 medical professionals. He expects a 90% chance of success, as in a 90% chance the patient is up and walking around a few months after the surgery. This all still sounds like science fiction, and medical professionals are mostly skeptical of Canavero's plan. He seems set to try, though. And who knows? Maybe it'll work. A few years ago face transplants seemed like science fiction. Even if this does work, the process will be obscenely expensive. Plus, it will give an entire body full of transplantable organs to a single person. It's unclear if this would be considered ethical when there are so many people waiting for transplants.

Valery Spiridonov, a man who has volunteered to be the first person to undergo a head transplant, attends a news conference in Vladimir, Russia, June 25, 2015. The 30-year-old Russian, who has a degenerative muscle condition known as Werdnig-Hoffman, wants to become the first person ever to undergo a human head transplant. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTR4YX94

4. Qualcomm Tricorder 2017 Update
Diagnosing patients has always been challenging without in-depth testing, one day soon we may have devices that can help determine aliments in seconds versus hours or days. The future is coming and Star Trek fans like me are hoping it's sooner than later.

Last year we reported on the Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize. The finalists have been chosen and narrowed down to 2 teams. Dynamical Biomarkers Group and Final Frontier Devices. Congrats everyone you earned it!

5. Heart in a Box: Warm Blood Perfusion System
Cardiac transplantation, also called heart transplantation, has evolved into the treatment of choice for many people with severe heart failure who have severe symptoms despite maximum medical therapy. Survival among cardiac transplant recipients has improved as a result of improvements in treatments that suppress the immune system and prevent infection.

Unfortunately, the number of heart donors has reached a plateau despite an increasing number of potential recipients. More than 5000 cardiac transplants occur each year around the world, although it is estimated that up to 50,000 people are candidates for transplantation . This critical organ shortage means that healthcare providers must strictly evaluate who should receive a heart transplant.

For many years, surgeons in the United States have preserved organs in a cold solution and transported in coolers to the receiving patient in need. But this process can cause damage to the heart and in some cases render it unusable.

So what is different?
A new process, called warm perfusion, can keep hearts beating and lungs "breathing" while allowing doctors to assess and treat organs to make them last longer, studies suggest.

Pacemakers have come along way since the 60s, where investor Dr. Wilson Greatbatch accidentally invented it. The story goes that Greatbatch, working for a doctor at the Chronic Disease Research Institute, was designing a circuit to help record fast heart sounds. By mistake, he grabbed the wrong resistor from a box and plugged it into the circuit he was making. The circuit pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds and then stopped for 1 second and then repeated. Greatbatch recognized the lub-dub rhythm.

"I stared at the thing in disbelief," he said. This was exactly what was needed to drive a sick human heart! For the next five years, most of the world's pacemakers used that simple blocking oscillator design - just because of Greatbatch's accident.

Fast-forward to today. Companies like Medtronic and St. Jude Medical have created versions called Micra (Medtronic) and Nanostim (St. Jude) that reduce potential risks of transvenous pacemakers such as serious infection.

7. Advanced Immunotherapies to Treat
According to the American Cancer Society, over 1.5M new cases of cancer occurred in 2016. But new treatment options could help dramatically in the near future.

Scientists at Juno Therapeutics reported at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting that, in an ongoing Phase 1 trial, its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, JCAR015, put 24 of 27 adults with refractive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) into remission, with six patients remaining disease free for more than a year (ASH 2014, Abstract 382, 2014).

This disease is extremely hard to treat and progresses rapidly when it becomes refractory; most patients die within a few months. "This response rate is unprecedented for patients who had stopped responding to all other treatments," says Michel Sadelain, a founding director of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Center for Cell Engineering and a co-founder of Juno.

How does it work?

The use of human T cells as therapeutics to re-engage the immune system has the potential to revolutionize the way cancer is treated. Juno's technologies genetically engineer a patient's own T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. These cellular therapies have the potential to be effective regardless of the type of previous treatments patients have experienced and may avoid the long-term side effects associated with current treatments. We use two different technologies to target cancer cells and activate T cells, CARs and TCRs.

8. In Silico Clinical Trials (Organs on a chip)

Clinical trials in their current form take many years to complete and testing a single compound can cost more than $2B due the complexities of our FDA.

The process is long and tedious prior to approval of any new drug by regulatory agencies. Idea is to ensure that drug should show it's effectiveness in a convincing manner and its effects should weigh over its side effects before it reaches the market.

A process of drug development involves various stages:
* in Vitro/Cell-based studies
* in Vivo/Animal Model studies
* Phase 1 trials
* Phase 2 trials
* Phase 3 trials
* Approval
* Phase 4 trials

Each of these steps requires the company to:

pay to write the clinical trial protocol,

pay to get the IRB approval,

pay doctors to treat patients with your experimental formulation,

pay to have statisticians set up randomization and blinding,

pay to recruit patients to the trial,

pay clinical trial coordinators at each clinical site to counsel the patients, monitor the treatment, record results,

pay any toxicity and imaging work (i.e., x-rays) related to the trial,

pay the patients to come back at each follow-up date,

pay the regulatory folks to audit clinical trial sites,

pay for statistical analysis and regulatory submission, etc.

Researchers are now starting to experiment with new technologies that will help reduce the time and cost of such trials that kill millions of animals every year.

Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called 'organs-on-chips', offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each individual organ-on-chip is composed of a clear flexible polymer about the size of a computer memory stick that contains hollow microfluidic channels lined by living human cells interfaced with a human endothelial cell-lined artificial vasculature, and mechanical forces can be applied to mimic the physical microenvironment of living organs, including breathing motions in lung and peristalsis-like deformations in the intestine. Because the microdevices are translucent, they provide a window into the inner workings of human organs.

Short video explaining the technology.

3D printing has been around for many years; predominantly been used in manufacturing. This type of printing, also called stereolithography, can create almost any object by fusing different materials, layer by layer, to form a physical version of a digital 3D image. Over the past 15 years, 3D printing has expanded into the healthcare industry, where it's used to create custom prosthetics and dental implants. Now, there may be an opportunity to use it for personalized healthcare as well.

Here are three other ways 3D printing could change the pharmaceutical world forever.

1. Personalized drug dosing

3D printing could add a whole new dimension of possibilities to personalized medicine. In its most simplistic form, the idea of experts and researchers is to produce personalized 3D printed oral tablets. Medical writer C. Lee Ventola has conducted extensive research on this for her publication, " Medical Applications for 3D Printing: Current and Projected Uses." She writes that personalized, 3D-printed medications may serve particularly well for patients who respond to the same drugs in different ways.

Below is the first 3D drug printed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals

Additionally, a doctor or a pharmacist would be able to use each patient's individual information - such as age, race, and gender - to produce their optimal medication dose, rather than relying on a standard set of dosages. 3D printing may also allow pills to be printed in a complex construct of layers, using a combination of drugs to treat multiple ailments at once. The idea is to give patients one single pill that offers treatment for everything they need.

2. Unique dosage forms

3D printing could also be used to create unique dosage forms in the pharmaceutical production process. In the process, the idea would be to use inkjet-based 3D printing technology to create limitless dosage forms. According to experts, it is likely that this could challenge conventional drug fabrication. The process to create novel dosage forms has already been tested for many drugs, and we will only witness more innovation as time moves on.

3. More complex drug release profiles

Drug release profiles explain how a drug is broken down when taken by the patient. Designing and printing drugs firsthand make it much easier to understand their release profiles. 3D printing makes it possible to print personalized drugs that facilitate targeted and controlled drug release by printing a binder onto a matrix powder bed in layers. This creates a barrier between the active ingredients, allowing researchers to study the variations of the release more closely. As drug manufacturers start to understand the full set of opportunities allowing them to make more effective drugs, there will likely be more research and investment into this area in the coming years.

Heart disease still reigns as the leading cause of death in America, surpassing cancer by a small margin.

Heart disease: 614,348
* Cancer: 591,699
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
* Alzheimer's disease: 93,541
* Diabetes: 76,488
* Influenza and pneumonia: 55,227
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,146
* Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773

Around 1 in 4 people who are hospitalized for heart failure don't last much longer than a year.

But a new drug called Serelaxin has upped the odds of survival by as much as 37 percent, according to a University of California, San Francisco study. It's a synthetic version of the hormone relaxin, which is produced by pregnant women to help with the increased stress carrying a fetus places on the heart.

Although Novartis, the maker of Serelaxin, coined RLX030 and by the trade name Reasanz, failed FDA approval, it will still remain in development pending modifications requested by the FDA.

1. One was Novartis' reliance on one clinical trial to assess serelaxin's effect on dyspnea rather than at least two, or one trial with data for multiple studies.
2. Another concern raised by Blank and McDowell was the single trial's focus on serelaxin's beneficial effect on dyspnea, dismissed by FDA as an exploratory finding that did not address the AHF indication of the experimental drug
3. The FDA staffers also questioned whether the trial's primary endpoint would have been achieved if it hadn't assigned the worst reported score to patients who died or had worsening heart failure during the first five days.

11. Young Blood Antiaging - Fountain of Youth?

Is the fountain of youth becoming a reality? A new treatment option may be in our future in which blood of younger people under 25 could be used to reverse the effects of aging.

Companies like Alkahest are developing trials to identify the key proteins in plasma that rejuvenate or age human tissues and then manufacture a product that uses them - could take 10 to 15 years. In the near term, the company has another strategy. Earlier this year, the Spanish blood products firm, Grifols, pledged $37.5m for a 45% stake in Alkahest. With another $12.5m, the company will bankroll more research in exchange for rights to Alkahest's first products. Over the next two years, Alkahest will take human plasma and divide it into fractions that are rich in different proteins. Each fraction will then be tested in mice to see if they boost brain function. Any that do will be swiftly introduced into human trials and developed into the first generation of products.

12. Internet of Things for Healthcare (IOT)
The Internet of Things is a hot topic nowadays, or IoT which is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles (also referred to as "connected devices" and "smart devices"), buildings, and other items-embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.

Senior healthcare solutions director at Stanley Healthcare, Joel Cook, described the ways in which many of Stanley's customers use IoT in healthcare. For example, hospitals take advantage of the technology for real-time location services with badges that can track patients, staff and medical devices. "Many of our customers are using this equipment for asset management," Cook said. Such assets include infusion pumps, wheelchairs, defibrillators, scales and other items that employees tend to tuck into out-of-sight corners yet are needed frequently for treating patients.

With Internet of Things devices, clinicians "in the PACU ... can see what's going on in the ORs, where they are in the case, and can, therefore, interpret when people are going to arrive in PACU," Cook explained. "And likewise, people up on the med-surg floor can see what's going on in PACU" and prepare for new patient arrivals.

In addition to real-time location services, Stanley's IoT devices also help with environmental monitoring - for example, checking the temperatures of refrigerators or IT closets - and hand hygiene compliance.

Companies like the KAA project have created an open-source IOT platform which allows OEMs and healthcare system integrators to establish cross-device connectivity and implement smart features into medical devices and related software systems.

Healthcare companies can integrate Kaa's functionality into their products were able to achieve IoT goals faster and at little expense.

Consumerism has been making inroads into the healthcare industry for at least a decade, with patients increasingly acting like consumers who have a choice in their healthcare options, trying to make the best decisions for quality and cost just as they do with any other commodity. The trend has been accelerated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which left many consumers with large deductibles that put more pressure on them to find the most cost-effective care for the dollars coming out of their own pockets.

A recent study by McKinsey&Company sited more than half the participants cited great customer service as important for non-healthcare and healthcare companies alike. Other qualities that the participants identified as important for both sets of companies were delivering on expectations, making life easier, and offering great value.

Consumerism appears to have more impact on outpatient services than inpatient care, says Mark Bogen, senior vice president of finance and chief financial officer at South Nassau Communities Hospital, a 400-staffed-bed acute care facility in Oceanside, New York. Patients still rely on their physicians to refer them to the appropriate hospital and generally don't question that choice unless the facility is out of network. It's only at that point that most patients will speak up and ask about an in-network alternative, he says.

South Nassau's Bogen expects to see the consumerism movement grow in the outpatient sector but says he hopes it doesn't achieve any more presence in inpatient care than it already has.

"I still believe it's crass to call them consumers," he says. "On the outpatient side, it's more fitting that people will shop for price, and you could argue that much of the outpatient services are commodities, but I don't believe that to be true from an inpatient perspective, and I would hate to have people make what ultimately could be a life-and-death decision on the basis of cost."

Still, Herzog says he sees consumerism as a tide that won't be turned back, so he advises healthcare organizations to accept the change and respond accordingly.

Companies like referralMD, Healthgrades, and Vitals offer patients and providers tools to gauge which providers are both cost-effective and high quality. Only time will tell as more data is available to showcase to consumers which providers are "Best" within a marketplace.

Imagine having the equivalents of a gatekeeper, a multilingual translator, an air traffic controller, and a bouncer in your nervous system. Now imagine that this team can modulate and redirect signals from the brain and the rest of your nervous system to other systems and organs in your body. Any signals heading the wrong way or behaving erratically could be course-corrected along the way. That's a rough translation of the concept of bioelectronics.

GSK's Bioelectronics R&D unit is pursuing a relatively new scientific field that could one day result in a new class of medicines that would not be pills or injections but miniaturized, implantable devices. GSK believes that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, including irregular or altered impulses that can occur in association with a broad range of diseases. The hope is that through these devices, disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension, and diabetes could be treated.

If Dr Daniel Chew's work goes to plan, diabetics and sufferers from a host of other diseases may one day no longer need to inject themselves or take pills. He's working to develop a tiny implant that could read and alter electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body and help control illness.

"Our work has huge potential to treat a vast array of different diseases," says Chew. "Five years ago, bioelectronic medicine was barely even a concept." Before he joined GSK, Chew spent a decade in research, which included investigating the use of electronic implants to treat patients with spinal cord injuries and help restore bladder and bowel control. "My work was pre-clinical in the lab but I also worked closely with vets to apply these electronic implants to treat pet dogs that had suffered similar trauma," he explains.

The amount of work we are tasked with performing is ever increasing, yet we are asked to do it with fewer resources than ever before. In the future, as costs come down more health systems will be able to leverage advanced computer systems to help provide clinical support for their patients.

Currently, the volume of healthcare data recently reached 150 exabytes. At projected growth rates, the volume of healthcare data will soon be zettabyte and yottabyte scale. That's enough data to fill a stack of DVDs that would stretch from Earth to Mars.

Here is a chart that explains what those numbers mean:

Gigabyte (1 000 000 000 Bytes)

Terabyte (1 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

Petabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

1 Petabyte: 5 years of EOS data (at 46 mbps)

2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries

20 Petabytes: Production of hard-disk drives in 1995

200 Petabytes: All printed material ORProduction of digital magnetic tape in 1995

Exabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.

From wikipedia:

The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), roughly 4 CD-ROM per person of 1993, 12 CD-ROM per person in the year 2000, and almost 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007. Piling up the imagined 404 billion CD-ROM from 2007 would create a stack from the earth to the moon and a quarter of this distance beyond (with 1.2 mm thickness per CD).

The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993, 1,200 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 1,900 in 2007.

According to the CSIRO, in the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 petabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The array is thus expected to generate approximately one exabyte every four days of operation. According to IBM, the new SKA telescope initiative will generate over an exabyte of data every day. IBM is designing hardware to process this information.

Zettabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

From wikipedia:

The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 0.432 zettabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 0.715 in 1993, 1.2 in 2000, and 1.9 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2007 (this is the informational equivalent to every person on earth receiving 174 newspapers per day).

According to International Data Corporation, the total amount of global data is expected to grow to 2.7 zettabytes during 2012. This is 48% up from 2011.

Mark Liberman calculated the storage requirements for all human speech ever spoken at 42 zettabytes if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio. This was done in response to a popular expression that states "all words ever spoken by human beings" could be stored in approximately 5 exabytes of data (see exabyte for details). Liberman did "freely confess that maybe the authors were thinking about text."

Research from the University of Southern California reports that in 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS.

Research from the University of California, San Diego reports that in 2008, Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information.

Internet Traffic to Reach 1.3 Zettabytes by 2016

Yottabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Bytes)

These computers, like IBM Watson can process 500 gigabytes/second, the equivalent of a million books, of structured and unstructured data.

Over time, we will start to see more companies leveraging these cogitative computers and licensing them to all of us, the healthcare professional at hospitals around the country.
How can it help?
1. enable information gathering and expertise sharing, which can help teams collaborate and design programs that support patient care and program success.
2. ability to see and analyze once-invisible data and evaluate it based on the leading medical literature, the most current medical information, and evidence-based guidelines. The insights will help as you plan to care for each patient's specific health needs.
3. insurers can proactively manage preventive care for large numbers of people with the goal of avoiding unnecessary utilization
4. able to sift through available clinical trials and ensure that more patients are accurately and consistently matched to the right trials
5. see more data and deliver more insights so you can create a more informed program that keeps your patients moving toward their goals to better health.

Genome editing is a way of making specific changes to the DNA of a cell or organism. An enzyme cuts the DNA at a specific sequence, and when this is repaired by the cell a change or 'edit' is made to the sequence.

Intellia is a leading genome editing company, focused on the development of proprietary, potentially curative therapeutics using a recently developed biological tool known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Intellia believes the CRISPR/Cas9 technology has the potential to transform medicine by permanently editing disease-associated genes in the human body with a single treatment course.

Every year, 600,000 people have metal coronary stents put into their chests to treat coronary artery blockage. Most of the time, that stent stays there forever, long after its mission is complete. The stents may inhibit natural blood flow and cause other complications, like blood clots.

What if they could just disappear? That is a long-sought goal researcher have finally met. This past July, the first bioabsorbable stent was approved in the United States. Made of a naturally dissolving polymer, the stent widens the clogged artery for two years before it is absorbed into the body in a manner similar to dissolvable sutures.

The disappearing stent leaves behind a healthy natural artery. The patient is free to go off blood clotting medication and qualifies for a broader range of medical treatments. What's more, recovery time has been reduced from three to four weeks for metal stents to just a few days.

Only one version of an absorbable stent has been FDA approved but more are coming. Experts believe the market potential will approach $2 billion in six years. While the full impact of vanishing stents is yet to be seen, 2017 is the year the technology becomes a game changer.

Did we miss anything?
If you have an idea of a technology you would like featured in our top ranking review, please submit it below in the comments.

Interested in creating valuable content and sharing it with millions of our readers? Join our Authorship Cohort and submit an application.

The following two tabs change content below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
17 Amazing Healthcare Technology Advances of 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
13 Futuristic Healthcare Technology Advances of 2018 Will health systems accelerate the adoption of amazing technologies from the digital health startup community? Will we see new drugs that cure major diseases? Will regulatory changes from the new help or hurt? , reaching $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The education of a chemical technician does not stop when entering the chemical industry. Continuing one's professional development is important because of the additional responsibilities technicians have today. As a result of the hands-on knowledge they have accumulated, many technicians decide to continue their formal education to obtain higher degrees and do so with support from their employers.

Some companies have well-defined career ladders for technicians, but, dedication and hard work are generally the main criteria for advancement. Other abilities such as adaptability, organizational skills, personal motivation, customer focus, and teamwork are also considered when looking at advancement potential. Skills are often transferable, and technicians today are more able to move between companies than they have been in the past.

Industrial sector employers include:
ExxonMobil, Biosciences, Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, LabCorp, Rich Products Corporation, and Chevron Phillips

Academia sectors include:
Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, Harper College, University of Virginia, and San Diego State University.

Government sector employers include:
Sandia National Laboratories, Department of the Air Force, Department of the Interior, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories.

Non-profit sector employers include:
American Red Cross, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Haereticus Environmental Laboratory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Chemical Technology - American Chemical Society

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The education of a chemical technician does not stop when entering the chemical industry. Continuing one's professional development is important because of the additional responsibilities technicians have today. As a result of the hands-on knowledge they have accumulated, many technicians decide to continue their formal education to obtain higher degrees and do so with support from their employers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Benefits of Technology in the Classroom - TeachHUB

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Technology has become an everyday part of our lives, and that’s true for schools, too. Learn more about the benefits of technology in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop. But you should know about all of them right now.