COLLABORATE - Circulation and Lyft Serveup Non-Emergency Medical Transportation

The Patient Journey Starts with a Ride

Circulation, a ride exchange service announced in December they were adding Lyft to the providers they support with their service. Circulation claims this partnership will expand non-emergency Transportation options for Circulation’s clients nationwide, which in December number more than 1,000 healthcare facilities. Circulation users can schedule Lyft rides directly through Circulation’s on-demand patient-centric digital transportation platform. 

According to the December Newsrelease by Circulation, the company offers a HIPAA-compliant, digital platform to coordinate convenient and reliable non-emergency transportation for all areas of healthcare. The Circulation platform is designed to seamlessly integrate all transportation capabilities (e.g. outsourced  transportation, owned fleets, and other medical logistics services) and places a new focus on patient convenience and satisfaction. Circulation becomes a single access point for scheduling and monitoring transportation by simplifying ordering, improving reliability and efficiency, and reducing transportation spend. 

The Circulation team is made up of healthcare experts and the Company is
supported by healthcare leaders like Humana, LabCorp, Boston Children’s Hospital, Intermountain Healthcare and BCBS North Carolina and Cambia. Circulation is passionate about improving health outcomes and believes that better transportation is a key factor to shifting how consumers consume healthcare.
With the Allscripts/Lyft announcement today, it is clear that non-emergency medical transportation is a sector where Lyft and Uber will compete for millions of rides. The disruption to existing non-emergency transportation services will need to be examined closely. However, it would seem the development of competition between Uber and Lyft will be of benefit to consumers as well as the healthcare system. 

DIGITAL - "Cloudbleed" Leak Puts Internet Users' Information at Risk

Tavis Ormandy from Google’s Project Zero discovered a security problem with Cloudflare’s servers - a leak which has been dubbed Cloudbleed.

Cloudflare provides essential internet infrastructure and security to millions of websites.

This bug puts users information such as private messages, authentication tokens, passwords and other sensitive data at risk.

The greatest concern is that search engines were caching that leaked information and data has been vulnerable since.

As soon as Cloudflare was notified on February 17th, they disabled the features that were causing the problem and started to delete all the caches of data that may have possibly exposed personal information.

The removal has not yet been completed.

While some are comparing this leak to the devastating Heartbleed bug in 2014, the breach is not the same scale. At least not yet.

Heartbleed affected half a million websites, where as this bug has hit approximately 3,400.

It remains to be seen if more websites will be impacted but Cloudflare’s response to the breach was quick.

According to a blog post by the company:

“The industry standard time allowed to deploy a fix for a bug like this is usually three months; we were completely finished globally in under 7 hours with an initial mitigation in 47 minutes.

The bug was serious because the leaked memory could contain private information and because it had been cached by search engines. We have also not discovered any evidence of malicious exploits of the bug or other reports of its existence.” 

Officials from companies whose websites have been exposed, such as OkCupid and Uber, have reported minimal impact from the bug.

What should you do?

Keep in mind that nothing you do now will change what has already happened, but you can see if your information is at risk - check to see if sites you use are impacted.

Take this internet security scare as a reminder to change all your passwords whether you use impacted websites or not, and do this on a regular basis.

Ensure you use strong passwords and different ones for different sites.

If websites or services offer two-step verification, use it.

Cybersecurity is of vital importance, especially as digital use and mobile commerce continues to grow.

Not only are corporations responsible for taking steps to protect the personal information of their clients, users also have to remain vigilant.

INNOVATE - Olli Automated Buses to Launch in 2017

Tiny (they only seat 12), talking, electric, driverless buses – they’re approachable, environmentally responsible by multiple metrics, app-summonable, and they aim to bridge the gap between people and robots.

There’s a lot to get excited about with Olli, the automated buses that Local Motors will be launching in Las Vegas and Miami in 2017.

For one thing, they represent a leap forward in fully automated, driverless vehicles – potentially years ahead of fully autonomous passenger vehicles.

Although most predictions agree that the technology is years away from full automation, many companies are vying for dominance in the growing field.

Delphi and Mobileye are making waves with their hopes to release a version of a self-driving car kit in 2017, and given some of their industry advantages, they have the potential to jump ahead of their competitors.

According to the Society of Automotive Engineers outline, Olli buses would be Level 4 on the automated driving system scale, which is beyond any self-driving passenger cars currently available.

Unlike the Uber self-driving car launch in Pittsburgh this year, the Olli buses will be supervised remotely but do not appear to have a back-up driver riding along. That driver, who takes over when things get tricky, keeps the Uber fleet at a Level 3.

(Copyright 2014 SAE International J3016)

Olli buses aim to do more than advance self-driving car technology.

CEO Jay Rogers told CNN that he imagines a near future where Olli can “deliver medicine, provide advertising on demand, or roll up en masse in an area where there is an active shooter and block people so they can get out of harm's way."

The buses will use IBM’s Watson, cutting edge “cognitive technology” that hopes to provide an engaging, responsive, conversational interaction for passengers.

IBM and Local Motors want to foster a friendly relationship between customers and the robot. Watson may also connect to users’ social media, for more personalization.

Watson is also an Internet of Things platform, and the connectivity of the buses to a wide range of other connected devices such as apps, maps, sensors, and monitors both on the vehicle and beyond is a critical part of what will make the buses safe and effective.

The buses use haptic sensors to ensure that they stop when they contact anything, and uses lidar to see the surroundings.

Olli’s production model also hopes to address some of the environmental impact of vehicle production.

Not only is Olli entirely electric, with wireless recharging, the production includes 3-D printing for parts of the vehicle. These materials generate fewer carbon emissions, and they can be broken down and reused.

Although Olli hasn’t debuted yet, and will have a limited first release on campuses and airports, chances are you will see on-demand, driverless, highly interactive buses in a city centre near you within a few years.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.

BUSINESS - Uber Takes Another Innovative Leap

Uber has already changed the way people get around urban areas, and the company has jumped with both feet into technological and economic shifts. Uber is at the forefront of the sharing economy, and uses leading edge software and technology as part of their business model.

The sharing economy is controversial, and with for-profit companies shifting the focus of the model towards an exchange of money for services it’s questionable whether the term “sharing” even applies.

Alternative phrasing includes “on-demand economy” or “gig economy” and for Uber drivers, Air BnB owners, or Fiverr service providers, these terms make more sense than “sharing,” which comes out of initiatives like Wikipedia, where knowledge is shared freely, and Freecycle, where goods are also shared freely.

Whether it’s called the sharing economy, the gig economy, or the on-demand economy, the fact is that this economic model is challenging existing businesses like taxis and hotels, and it taps into the Internet of Things in a big way.

By relying on connected devices to allow peer-to-peer communication and app-based transactions, this new economic model makes accessing services easier and quicker than before.

Uber uses a network of smart devices, including GPS tracking, to connect drivers and passengers as efficiently as possible.

Youngme Moon, a researcher at Harvard Business School suggests that Uber’s point-to-point transportation system and sophisticated software represent a “disruptive innovation” that already has, and will continue to, change the way people move around urban areas.

The next Uber innovation is self-driving cars. The company has announced the launch of their first fleet of 100 self-driving modified Volvo XC90s in Pittsburgh.

Customers can summon a car as usual, and it might show up without a driver. If it does, the ride will be free.

Each of the self-driving cars will be staffed by two trained engineers who can take over if required, and the trunk will be full of monitoring equipment to report back about how the cars are performing.

The complex interaction between devices, collecting and sharing data, is the Internet of Things in action, and Uber is fully engaged.

Uber has been ahead of regulatory bodies since its inception, leaving cities scrambling to figure out how to regulate the business, and this move is another instance of Uber pushing the economy in directions that regulators aren’t prepared for.

Tesla has already highlighted this regulatory grey area with their “autopilot” feature, available on some Model S cars. The move towards self-driving cars will present significant challenges for regulators, insurers, and other industries.

This is also a significant change to Uber’s business model, and shifts them away from the low overhead and minimal infrastructure of driver-owned vehicles to something that is much more infrastructure-heavy. However, CEO Travis Kalanick places a premium on being at the forefront of industry evolutions.

As smart cities move more and more into automation, Uber wants to be at the edge of that change.

They’ve already outpaced Google’s self-driving car efforts, and with their purchase of the startup Otto, have the potential to move into long-distance trucking as another income stream, or simply adapt the technology to their fleet of cars.

By Tiffany Sostar

Tiffany is a writer, editor, academic, and animal lover who came late to her appreciation of pets. At 18, a rescue pup named Tasha saved her from a depression and she hasn't looked back. She has worked as the canine behaviour program coordinator for the Calgary Humane Society, and was a dog trainer specializing in working with fearful and reactive dogs for many years. She doesn't have any pets right now, but makes up for it by giving her petsitting clients (and any dogs she comes across on her frequent coffee shop adventures) extra snuggles.