Technology That Rocks

Highly recommended read on the application of deep learning to the dermatology arena, that a research team at Google has pursued. This is what I believe to be the promise next generation of health tech start-ups and emerging companies - where curation can be sourced globally.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/09/using-deep-learning-to-inform.html

The interesting bit is that a new Netflix original series, “Diagnosis” has come out about the same time (this month, Sept 2019) and covers specific stories where crowdsourcing has led to positive next steps for patients and their families.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80201543

An area worth exploring further.

Following up on my prior post re: hard / tough tech, I wanted to highlight one emerging biotech (true bioengineering really) player that I’m cheering for, based on its potential to provide never-before available options for societal wellbeing and healthcare - for all the future generations to come.

It’s inspiring to follow the news about and evolution of this team, as they appear:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2019/05/15/microbe-hacker-ginkgo-bioworks-pushes-further-into-medicine-with-acquisition-of-genome-mining-platform-warp-drive-bio-revolution-medicines-and-antibiotics-discovery-deal-with-roche/#34d2b08d2879

Some tech companies claim they are “disruptive” or “innovative”, but it is really the ones that make it an absolute no brainer for us to adopt their technology to better our every day. These proliferate rather quickly and in just a few years, make it seem to all of us that it would be really silly to go back to the way we used to run our days or operate our teams.

Starry is one of them.

Their founder, Chet Kanojia, has a great insight about “hard tech”, that is also a thought that all software engineers working on non-critical consumer and enterprise apps should keep in mind.

“I have a new respect for Tesla and those companies who do really hard shit,” Kanojia said. “It’s not like building an app that you can just stick on an AWS server.”"

http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2019/04/13/starry-new-york

The good news for companies like Starry, is that, by solving the tough problems - they also build a great moat to defend their business.