The future of healthcare is bright. Daily articles and news reports herald the arrival of digital technologies and artificial intelligence right into the heart of our homes and healthcare institutions. Indeed, technology is not so much an add-on but seen to be essential to the NHS as we look to future proof our precious health service. The recent Topol Review explored how to prepare the workforce for a digital future, and the release of the "Code of Conduct for Artificial Intelligence Systems used by the NHS" amongst others are both statements of intent in order to deliver this ambitious digital agenda. In addition, Matt Hancock, secretary of state for health and social care, has also identified technology as the answer to some of the challenges faced by the NHS and this demonstrates the weight of commitment to artificial intelligence and digital health.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has launched a new contest it hopes will speed the development of new artificial intelligence technologies that can better predict health outcomes and boost quality of care. WHY IT MATTERS CMS says the Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge – announced by the agency on Wednesday, in partnership with American Academy of Family Physicians and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation – seeks to uncover and "unleash" new and innovative tools to help with the push toward value-based care. To do that, CMS is calling on developers from all industries to create new predictive AI applications to help providers participating in CMS Innovation Center models to deliver better care and make quality measures more impactful. "The Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge is a three stage competition that will begin with the Launch Stage, in which participants will submit an application at ai.cms.gov," "Up to 20 participants will be selected to participate in Stage 1 of the Challenge. We anticipate that more information about Stage 1 and Stage 2 will be announced later this year."

The importance of having highly trained people in the trenches should not be underestimated. Unlike AI solutions whose outcomes are based on (admittedly huge) rule sets, people are capable of abstract thought. This is crucial when it comes to tackling cyber-attacks. Every attack currently has a human point of origination after all, and even the most sophisticated AI and machine learning algorithms can't truly understand – or hope to mimic – the chaotic and diverse nature of the human mind. Years in cyber skills training has taught me that the best talent is not necessarily that which has been classically trained.

Evolving cybersecurity threats are a persistent challenge for systemadministrators and security experts as new malwares are continu-ally released. Attackers may look for vulnerabilities in commercialproducts or execute sophisticated reconnaissance campaigns tounderstand a targets network and gather information on securityproducts like firewalls and intrusion detection / prevention systems(network or host-based). Many new attacks tend to be modificationsof existing ones. In such a scenario, rule-based systems fail to detectthe attack, even though there are minor differences in conditions /attributes between rules to identify the new and existing attack. Todetect these differences the IDS must be able to isolate the subset ofconditions that are true and predict the likely conditions (differentfrom the original) that must be observed. In this paper, we proposeaprobabilistic abductive reasoningapproach that augments an exist-ing rule-based IDS (snort [29]) to detect these evolved attacks by (a)Predicting rule conditions that are likely to occur (based on existingrules) and (b) able to generate new snort rules when provided withseed rule (i.e. a starting rule) to reduce the burden on experts toconstantly update them. We demonstrate the effectiveness of theapproach by generating new rules from the snort 2012 rules set andtesting it on the MACCDC 2012 dataset [6].

Elizabeth Keatinge tells us about Elon Musk's DNA Friend makes fun of the at-home DNA testing craze. The government's contempt of court case against Tesla CEO Elon Musk is moving forward. Federal Judge Alison Nathan has set a court date of April 4 to hold oral arguments. The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking Nathan to find Musk in contempt for allegedly violating terms of an October court-approved securities fraud settlement with a Feb. 19 tweet. In the tweet, Musk wrote: "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019."

Estonia is building an artificial intelligence powered robo-judge that will rule over a backlog of small court cases. It will be fed legal documents and analyse them before coming to a decision based on its pre-programmed algorithms and training. The'robot judge' would preside over disputes of less than €7,000 (£6,000/$8,000) and free up more time for humans to work on bigger cases. Any ruling would be legally binding but could be appealed to a human judge. The project and technology is still in its infancy and no set date has been announced for its roll-out, but the larger AI project it is part of will announce its results in May.

UPS will leverage drones to deliver medical samples in the first FAA-backed and continuous commercial deployment of drone technology in America. According to UPS, an autonomous drone -- Matternet's M2 quadcopter -- will travel between locations at WakeMed's campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, flying distances of up to 12.8 miles along a fixed, pre-determined route. Currently, the samples are delivered on the ground via courier cars, says UPS, making the shipments susceptible to road traffic. The use of drones will both increase efficiency and lower costs, the company says. Samples are loaded onto the drone which then flies a predetermined route to a landing pad located within the hospital.

The laws will apply only in the EU for now, but it's possible these global companies will apply these laws elsewhere (Microsoft has already applied some EU regulations in other places.) Venezuela used to have an anti-government newspaper, but that was until the government made it impossible for them to get enough paper to print. So Venezuelans have turned to the voice-chat app Zello to spread news, get basic needs, and coordinate aid amid the country's political and economic crisis. Vice President Mike Pence said the US will be sending astronauts to the moon's south pole. Because there's tons of ice Pence says can be turned into life support and even rocket fuel.

Autonomous delivery drone networks are coming to the US in earnest. UPS and Matternet are launching a drone "airline" that will use the robotic aircraft to carry medical samples between WakeMed's health care facilities in Raleigh, North Carolina. The drone of choice (an M2 quadcopter) can only carry up to 5lbs at distances as long as 12.5 miles, but it should still be faster, cheaper and more consistent than the current system of driving samples across town using cars. They won't have to deal with traffic snarls, after all. This isn't the flexible drone delivery service you might have imagined.

The US military is testing delivery drones that can transport supplies over long distances and be thrown away after each use. Made of cheap plywood, the bigger version of the two gliders being tested can carry over 700 kilograms, or roughly 1800 pounds. As reported in IEE Spectrum, the scientists at Logistic Gliders, Inc. revealed that their gliders just successfully completed a series of tests with US Marines. If cleared for mass production, the LG-1K and its bigger counterpart, the LG-2K, could cost as little as a few hundred dollars each. Using unmanned aircraft for delivery is an idea both the military and private sector have explored for years. Traditional aircraft guzzle fuel, cost money to purchase and maintain and require a human pilot.