 Source: HBR.ORG The value that artificial intelligence technologies can bring to industries is undeniable, and its application in the health care industry holds some of the most promise. From 2011 to 2017, around $2.7 billion has been raised by 121 health focused machine learning and AI companies. It is estimated that 10 of the most promising AI applications could bring up to $150 billion in savings to the United States annually by 2026. The highest promise areas of the application of AI currently resides in the value it can bring to back-end processes and the productivity of front-line clinicians, which will enable health care providers and insurers to focus on providing even better care.
Here are the 10 of the most promising applications of AI for health care, based on the potential for annual savings and the likelihood of adoption:
Although the use of AI to improve clinical judgements is still in its infancy, artificial intelligence has already demonstrated its ability to conduct certain single tasks more efficiently and effectively than doctors. These improvements should be invested in by health care providers not only for the added benefits they directly provide but to also free up insurers and providers to focus on providing better care. Click here to read the full article.
0 Comments
 Market Capitalization - Source: FactSet Netflix closed the week with a market capitalization of $152.7 billion, passing for the first time Disney to become the most valuable media company in the world. Netflix passed Comcast's market capitalization on Wednesday, to become the second most valuable media company and went on to take the crown from Disney on Friday. Netflix's stock is up 83% for the year and demonstrates investors' continued faith in the growth prospect of firms they judge to be disruptive.
In regards to revenue, Netflix's $11.7 billion in 2017 is a far cry from Disney's $55.1 billion and Comcast's $84.5 billion and remains well below fellow 'FAANG' (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stocks. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google's revenue in 2017 was $538 billion, $925 billion, $778 billion and $750 billion respectively. Netflix's Q1 revenue was reportedly $3.7 billion and net income was $290 million, up 40% and 63% respectively from last year. The company will continue its bet on original content as it focuses 85% of new spending on original programming. Netflix is expected to spend more than $8 billion on content in 2018 and contain close to 1,000 original specials, movies, TV shows and other programming on its platform by the end of the year. Click here to read the full article  Source: TechCrunch Adobe will buy e-commerce services provider Magento for $1.68 billion, a purchase intended to supplement its current Experience Cloud. The purchase will help Adobe's Experience Cloud business compete with Salesforce, SAP and Oracle as it adds e-commerce to its current advertising, marketing and analytics services. Magento competes directly with Shopify Inc and lets users build websites with e-commerce along with other services such as social media advertising. Magento is the choice for many large companies such as Canon Inc and Coca-Cola and the e-commerce provider supports over $155 billion in gross merchandise volume. The purchase allows Adobe to completely cover the customer journey loop from marketing to sale.
Magento, founded in 2008, was purchased by eBay in deal reported to be around $180million in 2011. The company went on to become private again with the support of Permira Funds in 2015 for a reported $200 million. Adobe's purchase of Magento for $1.68 billion is the company's largest acquisition in nearly a decade. Adobe's last big ticket acquisition was in 2009, when Adobe acquired digital advertising player Omniture. The Magento acquisition is subject to regulatory approval, and is expected to close during Adobe's third quarter. Shopify Inc, Magento competitor, dropped by as much as 5.5 % following the announcement. Click here to read the full article.  Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Intel have developed a post production tool to improve photographs taken in low light scenarios. The researchers used deep-learning techniques to provide a neural network with a data set to enable it to learn the image processing pipeline for images taken in low light situations. The tool uses artificial intelligence to artificially boost the light of photos by an equivalent of up to 300 times the exposure without introducing the levels of discoloration or noise that other tools do. Although the system was trained using photographs taken from high-resolution digital cameras, the development team discovered that the algorithm was also able to improve photos taken from smartphone cameras.
The deep learning system was fed a data set composed of 5,094 short-exposure images that were too dark. The deep learning system was then provided with long-exposure photographs of the same scene, to let the system compare how the scene would look if it had been properly lighted. Click here to read the full article, and here to view a video demonstration of the tool.  Source: Google Google will split its current YouTube Red service into two new premium services called YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium. YouTube Premium will be available for $11.99 per month and will offer access to YouTube's Originals Library of video content. YouTube Music Premium will be available for free with ads or for $9.99 per month and will compete directly with Apple, Amazon, and Spotify's paid music streaming services. YouTube Music is expected to eventually replace Google Play Music, and will be released with a new desktop player and mobile app. Google has also promised to integrate its AI capabilities into their YouTube Music service, allowing users to find songs by entering lyrics or general descriptions of songs.
YouTube Music will launch on May 22nd (starting with South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, United States), and will look to enable Google to convert some of its more than billion YouTube viewers users into paid subscribers. YouTube Music will include features like dynamically personalizing the app home screen according to your YouTube history, activity and location as well as providing users with background listening and downloads for offline listening. The move follows the music industry's growing shift towards paid music streaming lead by Spotify and Apple Music. Paid music streaming has become the industry's biggest revenue source, surpassing digital downloads and CDs for the first time in 2017. Spotify is currently the most subscribed to paid music service with 75 million subscribers. Apple Music and Amazon Music come in 2nd and 3rd respectively with 40 million and 16 million subscribers (estimated by Reuters). Click here to read the full article.  Source: Observador MUDA - Movimento pela Utilização Digital Ativa - was introduced one year ago yesterday, when 26% of the Portuguese population had never used the internet. The number of Portuguese who have never used the internet is now under 20% for the first time, but Alexandre Nilo Fonseca, Director of the MUDA Project, reinforces that there is still a large challenge ahead. More than 40% of Portuguese still use the internet at a very basic level, and only 28% can be considered to have sophisticated competencies in utilizing the internet. MUDA over the next year will continue to push Portugal towards being a more advanced and inclusive country by focusing not only on decreasing the number of citizens who have never used the internet but also by betting on proximity to increase the competencies of Portuguese citizens.
Last year, MUDA enacted a number of initiatives to promote its mission of a more digital Portuguese citizenry and counted with more than 30 partners and a sponsorship from the Presidency of the Republic. One of these initiatives, a roadshow that traveled to more than 11 cities over 5 months, counted about 15 thousand visitors to its tent. In fact, combining the visits to the space and dissemination through social media and other networks, the MUDA Roadshow reached about one million citizens last year. For 2018, MUDA will execute another set of impactful initiatives such as execute another Roadshow among its, build a network of MUDA Volunteers, and roll out a daily program "MUDA Num Minuto" on RTP. The MUDA Volunteer Program will be begin in schools starting next year and already consists of 700 volunteers who endeavor to helping others, inside and outside the family, enter the digital world. "MUDA Num Minuto" will be a daily emission of internet tips in a minute, with a focus on day-to-day tasks. Another key objective for this year is to address the role of the state. Alexandre Nilo Fonseca stated yesterday that it is critical for Portugal to create a more appropriate "legislation 4.0," such as a common authentication system for business and government. The goal for this year is to continue to build on the success MUDA had last year and further improve the digital maturity of Portugal and its citizens. Click here to read the full article.  Source: TechCrunch Online Advertising last year increased 21% from 2016 to hit $88 million according to the latest report from the International Advertising Bureau (IAB). Mobile advertising continues to grow in importance, totaling $49.9 billion in 2017 and 57% of all digital advertising. Digital Video advertising grew 33% to $11.9 billion and social media advertising rose 36% to $22.2 billion. The total for online advertising is a new record high and represents the first time digital advertising exceeds advertising on cable TV and broadcast (which was $70.1 billion over the same period).
Advertising for TV, magazine, and newspaper declined by 3%, 1%, and 7% respectively. Digital advertising increases were as follows:
In most digital formats, mobile is accounting for an increasingly larger portion of spending. Here are the increases in percentages from 2016 to 2017:
Click here to read the full report.  Source: REUTERS / Brendan McDermid Walmart announced its largest deal ever on Wednesday as it acquires roughly 77 percent of Indian e-commerce company Flipkart. Walmart will pay $16 billion in the acquisition as it moves the fight against Amazon into an important growth market. Amazon's share in the Indian market was 27% in 2017 while Flipkart's was 35%, and the Indian e-commerce market as a whole is expected to be worth $200 billion a year within a decade.
Historically, Walmart has suffered internationally. Walmart's previous largest deal was $10.8 billion for Asda in Britain, which it has sold to J Sainsbury - indicating a retreat from the British market. It is expected that Walmart may also attempt to sell off its majority stake in its operations in Brazil. International business as a whole brought in less than a quarter of Walmart's total revenue of $500 billion in the fiscal year 2018. With this purchase, Walmart is declaring a renewed focus on key international markets. Flipkart had reported sales of $4.6 billion last year and sells consumer goods online. Walmart has stated that it expects Flipkart's payments, logistics and apparel business to provide them with new areas of growth. Click here to read the full article.  Source: Uber/ Handout via REUTERS Uber announced two major, separate, agreements with both the US Army and NASA to explore technologies and conduct research on aircraft technology. Uber will work with the US Army to further quiet rotor technology that could be utilized in the future within flying cars or military aircrafts. Their agreement with NASA will result in Uber sharing data it has accumulated in its flying taxis efforts with NASA to support NASA's urban mobility program. On Tuesday, Uber released a brand new flying car prototype at its second annual Elevate Conference. Uber is one of at least 19 companies (Airbus, Boeing, and Kitty Hawk etc..) that currently are developing flying cars plans.
Uber and the Army's Research, Development and Engineering command said in a statement that they will be building prototypes for a rotor system and testing them. The rotor system is expected to have two stacked rotors that use software to rotate in the same direction will be used in a vehicle that would take-off and land vertically. Uber and the Army have stated that this approach has not been used in a producing aircraft and they hope that it leads to a novel, quieter system. The costs for the development and testing of the prototype are expected to be around $1 million. Uber's partnership with NASA, the United States space agency, aims to develop software that will enable the management of a large number of aircrafts over cities. Uber will be sharing its data from its plans to develop flying taxis by 2020 with NASA, who will begin simulating whether a small passenger aircraft traveling over a cities airspace trigger traffic collision advisories. The simulation will occur over the DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) airport during peak scheduled air traffic. Uber also unveiled on Tuesday it's new flying car prototype, which has stacked co-roating rotors and is expected to fly at an elevation of 1,000 to 2,000 feet. This prototype, which Uber hopes to begin using in an aerial taxi service by 2023, will be powered by electricity. Click here to read the full article about Uber's alliance with the US Army, here for it's work with NASA, and here for news on their latest prototype.  Source: REUTERS/Thomas White Walt Disney Co announced that it will create entertainment, news, and live sports content and programming specifically for Twitter. Current programming plans from Walt Disney Co include specific content from Disney's ESPN network, ABC and the company's movie studio. The push in programming content to the online platform seeks to increase advertising revenue and online viewers through digital video and there is no doubt that Twitter's investments in growing its streaming efforts have been profitable - half of the advertising revenue for the last two quarters has been contributed by video.
The move follows companies such as Comcast Corp's Networks (MTV, NBC and MSNBC), BuzzFeed News, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer who will also begin to develop programming content specifically for the network. Disney plans to adapt a version of its "SportCenter TV" show for Twitter, who will also be streaming a podcast from ESPN called "Fantasy Focus Live." The deals were part of a series of announced deals from Twitter at the Digital Content Newfronts, where Twitter revealed more than 30 such deals for the creation of live and original programming. The push for online video content for Twitter will aim to help it compete with its bigger rivals who are making investments of their own into the space. Facebook made deals with both Major League Baseball and the National Football League this year to enable viewers to watch games live on the Facebook Watch platform. Click here to read the full article. |
