The Digital Health Newsletter by Paul Sonnier
June 20, 2017
Greetings!
The headlines stating or implying that robots (AI and automation) will take all of our jobs seem to be never ending. But a new report from International Data Corporation (IDC) released by Salesforce predicts that AI will actually produce a net of about 800,000, up to a potential 2 million jobs by 2021. According to the report, "The forecast embodies an assumption that AI will lead to net-positive financial benefits, which will drive job growth. Some roles may be eliminated, and others will be created or enhanced, not unlike the change in jobs in IT departments during the advent of the cloud.”
This is true of previous great waves of sociocultural evolution, where new technologies and commensurate economic disruptions also created more jobs on net. The below graphic is from my keynote presentation.
Most recently in the United States, per-worker  productivity has continued to improve with total employment keeping pace, that is at least until the most recent recession, which is explained by other factors.
This anomalous divergence of tracking trends (see graph at right) has spawned a canard that automation (also known as "productivity growth") led to the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent, recessionary years in the United States. In fact, it was actually largely due to trade, as economist Dean Baker points out: "We have been seeing gains in productivity in manufacturing ever since we started manufacturing things. The extraordinary plunge in manufacturing jobs in the years 2000 to 2007 was due to the explosion of the trade deficit, which peaked at just under 6% of GDP ($1.2T in today's economy) in 2005 and 2006. This was first and foremost due to the growth of imports from China during these years, although we ran large trade deficits with other countries as well."

When it comes to employment in the U.S. healthcare industry, there were one million vacancies as of April. However, only half a million people were hired in the month. This is the largest absolute gap of any sector in terms of vacancy-to-hire rate. While there are jobs to be filled, many are low-skilled and low-paying, e.g. home and personal health care aides, which explains the tepid interest on the part of workers to fill them. The Department of Labor estimates that these types of roles will represent 70% of healthcare jobs in existence in 2024.
Given that there is no skills gap and automation has not had a negative impact on the overall number of jobs, it's unlikely that healthcare will see resultant overall job losses from AI anytime soon. This supports  Vinod Khosla's statement that technology will disrupt and automate "physicians’ diagnostic, prescription and monitoring, which over time may approach 80% of total doctors’/internists’ time spent on medicine", but it won't necessarily create job losses or, as he puts it, it's "not to say 80% of physicians will be replaced, but rather 80% of what they currently do might be replaced so the roles doctors/internists play will likely be different and focused on the human aspects of medical practice such as empathy and ethical choices." 
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DEFINITION
"Digital health is the convergence of the digital and genomic revolutions with health, healthcare, living, and society." - Paul Sonnier
Dean Baker
Vinod Khosla
APPLE
Apple was recently granted a patent for a potential Apple Watch feature to measure respiration rate using multi-band plethysmography. The company's innovation seeks to overcome signal noise due to motion artifacts by receiving light information from two light sensors (one an emitter the other a sensor) that measure the perfusion of blood in the skin of a wearer.
Apple is also teaming with Health Gorilla to enable users to access their medical records on their iPhone. The records can also be shared with various healthcare providers as Health Gorilla states that it provides a "truly universal electronic medical record." It's presumed that this and other efforts will help to expand Apple's CareKit and HealthKit platforms.
VR & WEARABLE TECH
Xsens bodysuits—which are used primarily for game development and movies (including VR), but also in sports applications—are getting even better at motion capture. The sensors in the company's updated bodysuits no longer get thrown off by metallic objects, so they can now be used to track movement in more diverse settings, including driving a car or skydiving. The suits have a self-contained power system lasting 10-12 hours and can even detect when people lie.
AxonVR has raised $2M and been granted a patent for haptic tech that can simulate life-like touch in VR. Users moving through a virtual environment will be able to feel the size, shape, weight, texture, and even the temperature of virtual objects. CEO Jake Rubin stated that the patent “provides comprehensive protection for the novel microfluidic technology at the heart of AxonVR’s HaptX Platform.”
Varjo’s new VR headset technology promises to rival the visual fidelity of the human eye. Designed primarily to provide creative professionals with a premium VR experience, the headset is capable of enabling users to see the 20/20 line in a digitally-rendered VR eye chart. B y using a high-resolution OLED display and a lower-resolution panel, the headset can be used in applications like high-precision graphics work. 
The German football association (DFB) is partnering with STRIVR to explore ways in which VR can change how sport is consumed as well as how it might help improve athletic performance. The STRIVR VR training system is claimed to have helped improve recollection of key concepts (by professional athletes using it in the United States) by more than 30%.
PRIVACY
A company named Acurian is paying Walgreens for data so that it can then send Walgreens' pharmacy customers recruitment letters based on the medications they’re using. The company apparently may also be gathering or deducing people’s health information by paying another company. which reportedly is able to determine the identity of website visitors based on the information they are searching for related to a medical condition.
HEALTHCARE
Australia's New South Wales Government plans to reveal details of a $536M digital health infrastructure spending plan. According to Finance Minister Victor Dominello, health ICT investment is the most exciting part of the new budget due to the potential it has to deliver both better health outcomes and drive efficiencies across the economy. Dominello says that the money represents “a huge investment in digital infrastructure in health.”
FOOD SECURITY
A new partnership between Monsanto and Atomwise seeks to protect crops with AI. Monsanto will use Atomwise’s technology and expertise in an effort to speed the discovery of molecules. It's hoped that deep learning algorithms will cut the development time and cost  for bringing a new pest- and disease-resistant crop to market.
KEYNOTE SPEAKING & SERVICES

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Copyright © 2017 Paul Sonnier, Story of Digital Health
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