The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter
Paul Sonnier
November 9, 2018—No. 111
Insights Into the Fourth Great Era of Human Progress
Greetings!
Privacy International (PI), a UK-based charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world and challenges overreaching state and corporate surveillance, has filed GDPR complaints against seven companies: Experian, Equifax, Oracle, Acxiom, Criteo, Quantcast, and Tapad, for "wide-scale and systematic infringements of data protection law." The complaints allege that the practices of these companies have breached GDPR principles of transparency, fairness, lawfulness, purpose limitation, data minimization, and accuracy, plus that they have no legal basis to use data in the way they do.

According to Privacy International's legal officer, Ailidh Callander: “The data broker and ad-tech industries are premised on exploiting people's data. Most people have likely never heard of these companies, and yet they are amassing as much data about us as they can and building intricate profiles about our lives. The GDPR sets clear limits on the abuse of personal data. PI's complaints set out why we consider these companies' practices are failing to meet the standard—yet we've only been able to scratch the surface with regard to their data exploitation practices. GDPR gives regulators teeth and now is the time to use them to hold these companies to account.”
Hims, a men’s telehealth direct-to-consumer (DTC) company—not to be confused with HIMSS, the non-profit digital health organization—has launched a new vertical for women called, naturally, “ Hers”. The site will sell prescription skin creams, birth control pills, and Addyi, a controversial libido-boosting medicine.
My book, The Fourth Wave: Digital Health, is available at Amazon.
FEATURED CONTENT
Nov 28-29, 2018 in London, UK
Jan 7-9, 2019 in San Francisco, CA
Join more than 65,000 global professionals in the Digital Health group on LinkedIn
LIVING & SOCIETY
According to a new report, kids' apps are crammed with ads. In a new study of the most downloaded apps for children ages 5 and younger, researchers found advertising in almost all of them.
The new Roomba robot vacuum by iRobot collects data on your home and also takes pictures of the inside. Moreover, it shares the collected data with Google.
Despite Facebook's assurances of privacy precautions being integrated within its new Portal+ in-home telecommunications camera and video screen, WSJ reporter Joanna Stern refused to actually use the system in her home and titled her review of it: Facebook Portal Non-Review: Why I Didn’t Put Facebook’s Camera in My Home.
FDA CLEARANCE
The FDA has cleared the first-ever direct to consumer (DTC) genetic test for how well medications may work. However, the agency states that the new test by 23andMe can't assess whether a drug is appropriate or be considered by users to be medical advice.
RESEARCH & DRUG DEVELOPMENt
In a Scientific American op-ed, Vijay Pande, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz leading the firm's investments in digital health companies, writes about how we can already engineer biology and should be doing more of it in drug development: "In biology, we’ve already surpassed Moore’s Law; the cost of genomics has come down over a million-fold in two decades. Why can’t we carry this process to other areas in bio as well? The question now isn’t whether this is possible in biology or not, as the Grove fallacy argued, but how to do it, given where we are in engineering biology today."
A wearable ultrasound patch developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is able to record central blood pressure in the carotid artery, internal jugular vein, and external jugular vein. The patch emits continuous ultrasound waves that monitor changes in the shape and size of pulsing blood vessels, an indication of rising and dropping blood pressure.
M&A
Doc.ai, a company that plans to pay cryptocurrency to people when they share their medical data with scientists, has acquired Crestle.ai, which has a platform that enables the quick deployment of AI systems.
DNA sequencing giant Illumina is acquiring Pacific Biosciences for $1.2 billion, or about half its IPO price. While Oxford Nanopore is the main competition to PacBio in the long-read market, according to Illumina CEO Francis Illumina: “The place where PacBio really differentiates itself is accuracy. Its accuracy profile is really better than anything else in the market.”

In response to this market consolidation, Yaniv Erlich, CSO at genealogy platform MyHeritage tweeted a thread with his comments on how the "ILMN purchase of PacBio is bad news for the genomics community."
KEYNOTE SPEAKING & OTHER SERVICES
I enjoy speaking to audiences of all types and am available to present my keynote address at global conferences and corporate events. My presentation provides a unique lens through which all audiences will better see, understand, and succeed in the Fourth Wave of human progress being created by Digital Health. My talk—which serves as the ideal overarching framework for your conference or event—is amplified with humor, powerful visuals, audio, and animation.

I also offer strategic consulting as well as event and entity promotions in my Digital Health LinkedIn group, Fourth Wave: Digital Health newsletter, and on my website and Twitter. Advertising with me puts your event, content, product, and/or service in front of tens of thousands of global readers each week.

Please contact me for my biography, media kit, speaking fee, travel, and other requirements as well as standard promotion plans and pricing, as applicable.
Copyright © 2018 Paul Sonnier, Story of Digital Health
   You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of every email