Period tracking app Flo launched its beforehand introduced anonymous mode, which the corporate stated will permit customers to entry the app with out associating their identify, e-mail handle and technical identifiers with their health information.
Flo partnered with safety agency Cloudflare to construct the brand new characteristic and released a white paper detailing its technical specs. Anonymous mode has been localized into 20 languages, and it is at present out there for iOS customers. Flo stated Android assist shall be added in October.
“Women’s health information shouldn’t be a liability,” Cath Everett, VP of product and content material at Flo, stated in an announcement. “Every day, our users turn to Flo to gain personal insights about their bodies. Now, more than ever, women deserve to access, track and gain insight into their personal health information without fearing government prosecution. We hope this milestone will set an example for the industry and inspire companies to raise the bar when it comes to privacy and security principles.”
Flo first introduced plans so as to add an anonymous mode shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs choice that overturned Roe v. Wade. Privacy specialists raised concernsthat the information contained in girls’s health apps might be used to construct a case towards customers in states the place abortion is now unlawful. Others have argued different types of data are more more likely to level to unlawful abortions.
Still, studies and research have famous many common interval tracking apps have poor privateness and information sharing requirements. The UK-based Organization for the Review of Care and Health Apps discovered hottest apps sharedata with third events, and many embeduser consent data throughout the phrases and situations.
Brentwood, Tennessee-based LifePoint Health introduced a partnership with Google Cloud to make use of its Healthcare Data Engine to combination and analyze affected person data.
Google Cloud’s HDE pulls and organizes information from medical information, scientific trials and analysis information. The health system stated utilizing the device will give suppliers a more holistic view of sufferers’ health information, together with providing analytics and synthetic intelligence capabilities. LifePoint may also use HDE to construct new digital health packages and care fashions in addition to combine third-party instruments.
“LifePoint Health is fundamentally changing how healthcare is delivered at the community level,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, stated in an announcement. “Bringing data together from hundreds of sources, and applying AI and machine learning to it will unlock the power of data to make real-time decisions whether it is around resource utilization, identifying high-risk patients, reducing physician burnout, or other critical needs .”
The National Institutes of Health introduced this week it is going to make investments $130 million over 4 years, so long as the funds can be found, to broaden the usage of synthetic intelligence in biomedical and behavioral analysis.
The NIH Common Funds Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program goals to construct “flagship” datasets which can be ethically sourced and reliable in addition to decide greatest practices for the rising know-how. It may also produce information varieties that researchers can use of their work, like voice and different markers that might sign potential health issues.
Although AI use has been increasing within the life science and healthcare areas, the NIH stated its adoption has been slowed as a result of biomedical and behavioral datasets are sometimes incomplete and do not comprise details about information kind or assortment situations. The company notes this could result in bias, which specialists say can compound present health inequities.
“Generating high-quality ethically sourced datasets is crucial for enabling the use of next-generation AI technologies that transform how we do research,” Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, who’s at present performing the duties of the director of NIH, stated in an announcement. “The solutions to long-standing challenges in human health are at our fingertips, and now is the time to connect researchers and AI technologies to tackle our most difficult research questions and ultimately help improve human health.”
