23andMe

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Apple Announces Advancements to ResearchKit

Press Release | Apple | March 21, 2016

Apple today announced advancements to the open source ResearchKit framework that bring genetic data and a series of medical tests typically conducted in an exam room to iPhone apps. Medical researchers are adopting these new features to design targeted studies for diseases and conditions that affect billions of people around the world and to gather more specific types of data from participants. “The response to ResearchKit has been fantastic. Virtually overnight, many ResearchKit studies became the largest in history and researchers are gaining insights and making discoveries that weren’t possible before,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer...

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Apple Watch Leaves Patients Connected with Nowhere To Go

The highly anticipated unveiling of the Apple Watch Series 4 caused a news and social media sensation. Apple coined the iconic timepiece as the "guardian of your health", with health tracking functionalities such as the ability to detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) by a self-performed electrocardiogram (ECG). But from patients' and carepartners' perspectives, there is a long road to a universally accessible, seamlessly implemented, mass-adoption, and meaningful use for this wearable technology...Unfortunately, the vast majority of concerns in the public domain haven't emphasized the risks to health due to poor implementation, integration, and adoption strategies of digital tools and wearables.

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Apple’s CareKit Is the Best Argument Yet for Strong Encryption

Brian Barrett | Wired | March 21, 2016

On the eve of his company’s court date with the FBI, where it will defend its right to not weaken the security of its own devices, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a small theater in Cupertino to introduce a few new devices. The message of the event’s opening, though? Encryption matters. And soon, on iOS, it will matter even more. While Cook’s remarks were brief, they were determined. “We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data, and over our privacy,” Cook said before a mixed crowd of journalists and Apple employees.

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Eaten Alive: A Patients’ Perspective on De-Identification of Personal Health Information

In 2018, the majority of people do not know that their PHI, like their EHR data, prescription data, insurance claims, and genetic data via direct-to-consumer (DTC) tests, are de-identified and sold for research and commercial purposes at massive profits. Medical health data trading is a multi-billion dollar industry. The process of de-identification supplies data that may be aggregated for a variety of analyses, such as basic scientific discoveries, policy & legal reviews, process refinement, pharmaceutical marketing, and other efforts. Data de-identification isn’t new but it is rampant. I’m gravely concerned about the free-for-all that is de-identification. You should be too.

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FDA Tells Google-Backed 23andMe to Halt DNA Test Service

Anna Edney | Bloomberg News | November 25, 2013

23andMe Inc., the Google Inc.-backed DNA analysis company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, was told by U.S. regulators to halt sales of its main product because it’s being sold without “marketing clearance or approval.” Read More »

Share Your Genetic Story with openSNP

With personal genomics services like 23andMe and deCODEme, we can ship away a cotton swab with some spit on it, and explore our genetic connections even more closely. If we open up and share that genetic data with one another, there's a lot we could discover about human phenotypes: how our height, eye color, and preferences for certain foods connect us and shape our lives and health. Read More »

Silicon Valley Was Going to Disrupt Capitalism. Now It’s Just Enhancing It

Evgeny Morozov | The Guardian | August 6, 2016

The tech giants thought they would beat old businesses but the health and finance industries are using data troves to become more, not less, resilient. The chances that, in a few years’ time, people will be able to receive basic healthcare without interacting with a technology company became considerably smaller after recent announcements of two intriguing but not entirely unpredictable partnerships. One is between Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline...

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The Blockchain Interview with Jason Goldwater

Mr HIStalk | HIStalk | April 3, 2017

There are three, initially, that it has the potential to solve. First is access to data. The way that systems have been set up in hospitals or large integrated physician networks is that the data will either reside in a centralized server or now the trend is to reside it in a cloud. That’s fine and that certainly has been effective, but you’re talking about a large consolidation of data in a centralized location. Blockchain is very different because it is what is known as distributed ledger technology...

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The Growing Trend Of Clinical Research Crowdsourcing

The trend of open collaboration has led to innovation across multiple industries. For decades, big pharma has been known as conservative and slow to change. Today however, there is a growing movement toward open access and crowdsourcing scientific information to accelerate research and development. Open-source platforms have let developers create multiple crowdsourcing applications, that are further enabling the crowdsourcing trend in the life sciences industry, as well.

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Top 10 eClinical Trends

The drug development industry is facing a revolution in the way clinical trials are being planned and conducted. It’s an industry that experiences rapid changes in technology adoption and business models, from new ways of capturing clinical data to new outsourcing strategies. This paper focuses on ten essential eClinical trends in order to help you understand which direction the biotech industry is prone to take in the next few years. As both the means, and the ultimate motivation of clinical development, patients are the most fundamental assets during the clinical trial process. We have summed up five trends that are destined to give them a more important role in the conduct of clinical studies: Boosting Patient Engagement, Integrated ePRO (electronic Patient Reported Outcomes) Systems, Mobile Clinical Studies, Personalized medicine, and Risk-based monitoring. Read More »