Ting's Profile

Hi Sina, thanks for this interesting post! For me, it is really exciting to learn some of the 3D printing applications in healthcare. I totally agree with you that the commercial dental labs should adapt to such change quickly and leverage this new technology to better serve the dentists. I learned that 3D printing also has strong potential in other medical devices like joint prosthesis. Similarly, this made me wondering whether 3D printing is an opportunity or a challenge for medical device companies, because hospitals themselves in the future can use 3D printing make many customized medical devices.

Haibo, thanks for sharing how WeChat have changed our daily life in China. I totally agree with you that WeChat should keep its messaging and social network function as key, as it paves a solid and unparalleled foundation for them to access a large amount of customer and later connect them with “everything”. As a customer, WeChat is my most frequent used App on mobile phone, and it really changes my behavior and makes my daily life easier. For example, customers in some cities now can use WeChat to make appointment with doctors and thus reduce waiting time. The potential of WeChat could even beyond imagination: as Tencent is investing in many different areas in China and overseas and is also collaborating with government, the functions of this single APP could have huge potential, making our daily life much easier and smarter.

Thanks for the article! I am a user of Coursera and completed two courses before. I really like the idea of MOOC since it makes learning more accessible and spontaneous. I enjoy my experience with Coursera but I think there are still several challenges for Coursera and other online education platforms. First, MOOCs are using freemium to increase its customer base, but how could this venture-fund company make profits? Although they charge fees if customers want to get verified certification, few people pay for it given the recognition towards such certification from employers is still low. Second, I think Coursera could better improve the interaction and course design, as many people registered lots of courses but few can really complete. I think it is because the courses don’t have hard deadlines and are free to access, so people put it as a less priority and procrastinate; some courses are just boring lecture recordings and don’t have interactive designs and thus reduce people’s interest to learn.

Hi Christian, thanks for the post about Apple’s digital initiative in the healthcare field. I do believe the mobile health will have great potential, as the digitalization can help healthcare improve its efficiency and reduce cost. I like Apple’s idea of Research Kit, since I believe the big data collected from users and collaboration with large hospitals will have a great potential to make a tangible impact for the research of certain diseases. However, I have a strong concern about wearable devices and Apple’s Health Kit, as I don’t believe the data measured by such device can be valuable to monitor and improve one’s health. I personally think this can only be a tool to track one’s daily life but can’t provide valuable clinical data to track one’s health situation. With the fast changing technology, I hope in the near future, a smartphone or wearable device can accurately capture data like ECG, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc.

Hi Eric, thanks for the interesting post! Actually, I just visited the newly opened Shanghai Disney Park this summer, and I used their “My Disney Experience” app when I was there. The function of the app is pretty similar with the MyMagic+, which I think is really cool. With the “My Disney Experience” app, I can see the map of the park and my location, estimated waiting time of each ride, dining and shopping information. It was really useful and helped me better plan my day in the park. I am wondering whether DISNEY is still using its MyMagic+ in some of their parks because it looks like most of the functions now can be realized through the APP on customer’s own device, which is a cheaper way for DISNEY to do that.

Hi Jess, this is an interesting post to show how insurance companies are related to climate change. I agree that insurance companies are on the front-lines of climate change risk, as the extreme weather and health threats are causing more and more losses for them. And I was shocked to learn that “payments made by insurance companies for destruction from climate change events increased by 15x over the past 30 years”! Thanks for helping me learn how AIG develop underwriting guidelines and help the society better understand drivers of and impacts from climate change.
On the other side, I personally think that climate change also brings some emerging business opportunities for insurance companies, as they can design and develop some creative product and service offerings that related to climate change.

This is a very interesting post, and I think Tokyo is really doing a great job to demonstrate how could a city address the climate change challenge. Besides the reason of Tsunami that you mentioned, I also think as global warming causes sea level to rise, Tokyo, a coastal city, will face more challenges and thus should have greater motivation to transform into a sustainable city. I really like their ideas of green building and cap-and-trade program, and looking forward to seeing their proved success in the future years. The 2020 Olympic will be a great opportunity for this city to show its efforts to the world and share their best practices to help more cities transform into sustainable cities.

We picked the same company! I really your idea of J&J is facing pressures of pricing its products fairly and ethically as well as manufacturing products in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way, and it should focus on Product life cycle CO2 impact. From my research, it seems that J&J is trying to apply green chemistry principles, improve sustainability of packaging, and reducing end-of-product-life impacts through recycling and reprocessing of used equipment.
Furthermore, I like your point of supplying medical supplies to natural disaster sites, as the climate change brings more natural disasters. I totally agree that J&J should do this, which is align with our Caring mission and Credo, and can also benefit the company’s public image. As far as I know, in China, J&J is very active in supplying medical supplies and donating to natural disaster sites in recent years.

Iryna, I really enjoy reading this post and learning the challenges and opportunities that Tesla is facing now. I think Tesla and fully electric car is a very interesting topic to talk about in terms of how to address climate change. Actually in my hometown (Taiyuan, a middle-sized city in northwestern China), the local government recently changed all of the taxis into electric cars (Chinese local brand: BYD, the car costs about $50k each and government subsidizes 1/3 of the total cost). Everyone agrees that electric car is very efficient to reduce carbon dioxide emission during driving, but some people still have concerns about whether it could really help reduce the impact on climate change.
1) The manufacturing of battery used in electric cars actually generated a lot of CO2 emission, thus when cars are manufactured, gas-powered vehicles are initially better for environment than electric cars.
2) EV’s emission rate also depends on what kind of energy source they are using to charge the battery. As you mentioned, in the countries where renewable power sources are more advanced, the emission rates of EV are even lower. However, in my hometown, we are still using coal-burning to generate electricity, and some people argue that it might be even better to drive a gas-powered hybrid.

It is very interesting to learn how could self-driving cars help address the challenge of climate change! I totally agree that self-driving car is efficient in reducing carbon emissions and leading to better use of the road. On the flip side, my concern is actually when self-driving cars make traveling so comfortable and easy, there would be more people willing to make more travels and thus we will have more people and cars on the road and longer miles traveled, which can also affect climate change negatively.
However, in general, I do agree that advantages of self-driving cars far outweigh its disadvantages.