Israeli firm Sight Diagnostics has been developing computer imaging coupled with machine learning technology in order to accelerate blood testing. In July 2018 the company announced it is to launch a point-of-care blood diagnostics system. The company also offers Parasight, a malaria detection device that identifies, enumerates, and speciates malaria. The new compact, desktop-sized machine termed OLO is capable of analyzing blood drops, against 19 measures, captured in single-use cartridges. The cartridges are manually loaded into the device, where the blood count is measured and digitally captured.

Israeli firm Sight Diagnostics has been developing computer imaging coupled with machine learning technology in order to accelerate blood testing. In July 2018 the company announced it is to launch a point-of-care blood diagnostics system. The company also offers Parasight, a malaria detection device that identifies, enumerates, and speciates malaria. The new compact, desktop-sized machine termed OLO is capable of analyzing blood drops, against 19 measures, captured in single-use cartridges. The cartridges are manually loaded into the device, where the blood count is measured and digitally captured.

Digital Surgery, a health tech startup based in London, today launched what it's calling the world's first dynamic artificial intelligence (AI) system designed for the operating room. The reference tool helps support surgical teams through complex medical procedures -- cofounder and former plastic surgeon Jean Nehme described it as a "Google Maps" for surgery. "What we've done is applied artificial intelligence … to procedures … created with surgeons globally," he told VentureBeat in a phone interview. "We're leveraging data with machine learning to build a [predictive] system." Well-funded hospital systems have shown an interest in automation.

The wire, which is threaded into a vein, attracts special magnetic nanoparticles engineered to glom onto tumor cells that may be roaming the bloodstream if you have a tumor somewhere in your body. With these tumor cells essentially magnetized, the wire can lure the cells out of the free-flowing bloodstream using the same force that holds family photos to your refrigerator. The technique, which has only been used in pigs so far, attracts from 10-80 times more tumor cells than current blood-based cancer-detection methods, making it a potent tool to catch the disease earlier. The technique could even help doctors evaluate a patient's response to particular cancer treatments: If the therapy is working, tumor-cell levels in the blood should rise as the cells die and break away from the tumor, and then fall as the tumor shrinks. For now, Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology and director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, is focused on the wire as a cancer-detection method, but its reach could be much broader.

This is the tech news you need to know this Thursday. News of this deal comes just four months after President Trump blocked Broadcom from acquiring chipmaker Qualcomm in a $103 billion hostile takeover on national security grounds. The new terms give Facebook explicit permission to audit developers' use of data, in what looks an effort to prevent a second Cambridge Analytica-style scandal. Musk was responding to a Twitter user who said he had been told Musk wouldn't be able to help bring clean water to Flint. According to an excerpt of the account in Vanity Fair, employees feared Brin's behaviour would lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Elon Musk has been goaded into using his vast amount of wealth to fix Flint's water problems. The SpaceX and Tesla boss has been criticised in recent days for the nature of his attempts to help with the rescue of the Thai boys from a cave, during which he built a submarine that was rejected by the leaders of the rescue operation. Many people that argued that the billionaire could use his huge wealth more effectively, by paying for civil or charitable projects. And one of those people has now successfully called out Mr Musk and made him commit to helping out with problems at home. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

The idea that "uncertainty" has returned to the stock market in 2018 is perhaps the understatement of the year. Protectionist trade policies are whipsawing the S&P 500 SPX, 0.35% based on the news cycle, and headlines can cause individual segments of the market to move even more dramatically. Just look at the slump for Harley-Davidson Inc. HOG, 0.69% in late June, and how automakers responded to discussions of targeted tariffs last week. There are plenty of investors who are a bit testy about this, since one tweet by Donald Trump or the latest tit-for-tat in tariffs can undercut their strategy. But there are still stocks that are very much on the upswing regardless of trade escalations.

The drug development lifecycle is long and fraught with heavy risk -- it takes a staggering 10 – 15 years on average, with ultimately only 12 percent of drugs in clinical trials gaining approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [1]. To put this in perspective, 22.7 percent of all global research and development spending in 2017 was in the healthcare industry, second only to 23.1 percent spent in the computing and electronics industry, yet the product lifecycle and cost are much higher [2]. For example, the original iPhone took two and a half years to develop from concept to launch, and an estimated $150 million spent in research and development [3]. In contrast, the average cost of new drug and biologics is $2.87 billion when factoring in the post-approval research and development costs, according to figures released in May 2016 by The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug development (CSDD) [4]. For pharmaceutical companies that have launched more than four drugs, the median cost is closer to a staggering $5.3 billion according to analysis by industry expert Matthew Herper of Forbes [5].

Scholar argues that FDA should reform its regulation of algorithm-based medicine. In emergency situations, doctors have little time to save the lives of trauma patients. Gunshot wounds, car crashes, and other life-threatening harms often cause severe blood loss, which is the leading cause of preventable death when trauma puts patients' lives on the line. To manage the demands of these emergency cases, physicians today complement their medical skill-set with a new tool: algorithms. But in a recent paper, a legal scholar argues that federal regulatory reforms must occur to unleash the full lifesaving potential of algorithms in health care.

Engineers recently laid off from IBM Watson Health, the division rooted in artificial intelligence, say the company's mission to make AI profitable is failing, according to IEEE Spectrum. IBM cut dozens of Watson Health employees--primarily from its three acquired companies Phytel, Explorys and Truven--at the end of May. The company is severely disorganized, which led to redundancies and internal competition, the former employees said. Now they are speaking out about IBM's issues with its AI. They allege the problems at Phytel stem from IBM's inability to make Watson profitable.