Anton's Profile

Really interesting company. I agree with your point on partnerships being the best option for accessing vast amounts of data, but it should be simpler pretty soon. Health Information Networks are being build around the country, which will all be consolidated at a national level, and API access will exist to allow companies such at HLI to access de-identified data.

The machines are indeed coming. I get that it is difficult for people to imagine how machines could produce things that are so dependent on nuanced semantic understandings, but they are. Recently, there was the first ever AI-produced music video… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=023PJjBIbkM Admittedly, it was terrible, but it exemplifies where we are going.

It is entirely reasonable to imagine that the vast majority of content creation will come from machines in the future. With satellite and drone technology already able to give use on-demand access that any corner of the earth, why cant machines take the data generated by this technology, apply voiceovers based on how the machine interprets what is going on, add filters etc. and release the content as CNN would do?

I worked with Epic quite a bit in the past. Whilst I think they make incredible products, they have also garnered a lot of power in the industry and have used that power to further their own interests. Most of the time, people are okay with that, but when you are talking about things like healthcare, it invokes different emotions, rightly or wrongly.

It is possible to connect existing (seemingly incompatible) systems to share data, but requires interface engines in between to translate into the proprietary data schemas. These engines are processing-intensive though and it makes much more sense to focus on future data and ensuring it meets HL7 standards to ensure the easy transfer of data.

To the security points above, the concerns are very real, but they are also real for finance, education, government etc. States take different tacts for permission and this is one of the biggest bottlenecks to moving towards interoperability.

Watson undoubtedly has huge potential to create meaningful value with health data; thanks for sharing your insights. The biggest issue right now is that Watson is before its time, specifically in the healthcare space. All of its ability is reliant on a wealth of data. Large hospitals may already be able to use Watson for a number of things, but the real value will be when it has access to much larger datasets.

Also, I do question how relevant Watson will be to health data whenever we have a fully function system of interoperability based on HL7 standards, in which case, a lot of Watson’s capability to tie together disparate pieces of data becomes redundant. That said, Watson’s capabilities extend far beyond this; I am intrigued to see how it will work in practice. My old company had a Watson machine at our annual conference a few years back, the excitement it is generating in the industry is incredible.

Hi Phil,

Thought-provoking analysis from start to finish. It makes me wonder how Shell have remained profitable for so long without the use of data analytics to drive decision-making. Perhaps they are anticipating the threats from renewable energy sources and are attempting to squeeze more out of their existing assets. Do you think the operational savings that Shell make, along with other major Oil & Gas companies, will see their way down to the consumer? Obviously oil prices do not effect upper-middle class areas such as Greenwich, Connecticut, but in less prosperous areas, these savings could be of major benefit to the general public.

Congratulations again on a succinct and informative blog post.

Firstly, excellent puns throughout. Secondly, in relative terms, ski resorts putting in place reducing their carbon footprint will have negligible effects on our global climate due to their lack of size and resource. However, they are so fundamentally dependent on the current (or previous) climatic conditions. Should they put in place these costly measures, when reducing your climate footprint is so costly, instead of delaying it until it becomes more cost-effective? And if so, are they doing this purely for perception?

This comes back to the discussion of who should lead the way in reducing our global carbon footprint. Should all nations, regardless of wealth and GDP, and all companies, regardless of relative size of footprint, contribute equally?

I used to design solutions with Huawei components incorporated (although we were primarily a Cisco-shop) and I was unaware of the company’s lofty environmental impact. The yellow fumes outside their HQ are particularly ominous. There is clearly a need for new operational and manufacturing practices.

I would expect as software-defined networking becomes more prevalent, some of Huawei’s energy impact could mitigated. However, one thing worries me above others; the Internet of Things. The IoT revolution is likely to demand much greater bandwidth usage in the home, with an anticipated 50+ connected devices in every household by 2020. This will place significant strain of routing and switching devices, which in turn will emit considerable amounts of energy.

Therefore, I agree entirely that Huawei’s sustainability priorities should not focus only on manufacturing, but on the energy consumption of their products, because it is those that will likely have a much larger impact on our global climate.

Really cool company and a superbly written blog post, Marcheta. The fourth iteration of the Wheely seems to be very elaborate; I especially like the WiFi router that is pretty imperative to modern coffee enthusiasts. But can this company really compete with Starbucks with this model? It seems built exclusively for ‘coffee-on-the-go’ types, which may make the router essentially redundant. Where do people sit? Is there limits to the range of coffees that they can offer given the limit workspace? And can this work in colder places or times of year where people do not want to be outside?

That all said, I genuinely find this a really appealing and environmentally-friendly concept. I assume this is a franchising model, which should allow them to scale at an accelerated rate. I’ll be on the lookout for one of these contraptions on my meandering travels.

Wonderful stuff Lee; I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It seems the issue lies with the cost of manufacturing these vehicles. Tesla appear to be hamstrung in their ability to offer cheaper alternatives to the ’90’ without compromising on design and performance with an electric engine. Would it make more sense to offer R&D subsidies or patents similar to those of the pharmaceutical industry? If affordable, high-quality alternatives exist, then we may see many more electric/hybrid vehicles on the road in the future.

Really informative blog post. This is not an area I am particularly au fait with and the details here have contributed a great deal in my wrapping my head around the sheer scale of environmental impact of switching the renewable energy. One thing I have heard quite a bit about is the need for energy storage to capture the constant fluctuations in energy generation with solar and wind solutions. Is DE exploring storage?