Citizen has a new watch, but not the kind of watch you might be thinking about. The CZ Smart is a Wear 3 smartwatch, meaning it's running the latest wearable operating system from Google. You can see and respond to your notifications, control your smart home devices, and so on, but Citizen is trying to make its own mark in the smartwatch space with an app that aims to help you stay at your best the whole day. The YouQ app is based on research from Nasa and utilizes IBM's Watson machine intelligence platform to monitor your habits over a period of seven to 10 days. It uses the sensors on the watch to check your sleep and heart rate to establish some baseline measurements. After that, you'll be able to see the times of the day where you seem to be the most productive.

This is the web version of dot.LA's daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California's tech, startup and venture capital scene. Earlier this week, West Hollywood-based startup Pearl announced that its Second Opinion product had become the first AI-enabled device cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to read dental x-rays. Using the power of artificial intelligence, Second Opinion is meant to help dentists find maladies they'd otherwise miss through the eye test. Getting FDA clearance is not easy, especially because Pearl had to prove its device could detect a variety of dental conditions (most medical devices have to prove only one capability).

NHSX has laid out its vision, approach and areas of focus for developing a new National Strategy for AI in Health and Social Care. The NHS AI Lab is currently working on a plan that will outline its ambitions for the'development, implementation, scaling and monitoring of AI-driven technologies' in the UK. The organisation has created a draft strategy to support the ultimate goal of deploying AI at scale, in an'effective' and'ethical' way. According to NHSX, its research will consist of three phases: research to understand the current digital health landscape; discussions with those who will use or feel the impact of the new technologies; and looking into possible'futures' for AI. A team of stakeholders, a selection of people involved in the development and deployment of AI in health, as well as potential users of the technologies, have formed a working group to help guide the development of the strategy.

In the last year, technology has played a huge role in keeping society connected. It's enabled remote workforces to collaborate, allowed businesses to engage with customers in new ways, and keep families in touch. Its importance in helping to combat the pandemic can't be downplayed either. With in-person appointments needing to be canceled to limit the spread, telemedicine services and e-consultations filled the void; with healthcare having to be delivered from a distance, patient monitoring solutions that kept physicians updated in real-time became a vital tool; with nations across Europe trying to manage the spread of COVID-19, track and trace apps were quickly developed. Simply put, in what has been a year of uncertainty, technology has been a shining light.

In this episode of This Week in Health Tech, Vik and Jimmy discuss reasons why EHR must be extended. Vik comments on the benefits of extending EHR and take advantage of Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Mobile Apps for better patient outcomes. Jimmy and Vik also talk about options to extend EHR using Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. They also talk about the example of Apple Health Records and how it presents a great option to extend EHR. We start out slow, however, the episode really picks up after about 5 minutes.

While technologies that impede, rather than enhance care, have made the healthcare industry somewhat skeptical of innovation, a shift toward patient-centric care is changing the game. Healthtech innovations in 2019 are helping to transform the business of care, creating efficiencies, cutting costs, and providing better outcomes. How these new technologies mesh with the clinical skill set of a medical provider is still being determined. Providers who embrace tools now available will help to determine how healthcare delivery looks in 2020 and well beyond. Here's what you need to know: If you aren't offering your patients virtual visits, it's likely they'll find someone who is Virtual visits, often conducted via a smartphone or personal computer, offer convenient access to care, saving patients the time and expense of traveling to an appointment and providing care to those who have limited access to it.

Today on THCB Spotlights, Matthew speaks with Jeremy Orr, CEO of Medial EarlySign. Medial EarlySign does complex algorithmic detection of serious diseases, working on early detection of cancer and the progression of chronic disease such as diabetes. Tune in to hear more about this AI/ML company that has been working on their algorithms since before many had even heard about machine learning, what they've been doing with Kaiser Permanente and Geisinger, and where they are going next. Filmed at the HLTH Conference in Las Vegas, October 2019.

After watching his 13-year-old daughter go through a gruelling year of cancer treatment Dom Raban realised more could be done to help children feel at ease in hospital. Now his app, Xploro, has been trialled at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, with further plans to expand it across the NHS. The app provides an interactive experience for young patients receiving hospital treatment, allowing them to interact with a personally designed avatar that can explain treatments, machines that will be used and answer any questions they have about their hospital stay. With more than 10 years experience as the managing director of an interactive design company, Raban set about looking at digital solutions that would provide important information about care and treatment to young patients. His daughter, Issy, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma in 2011.

How can we prevent the dream of digitalisation for people's good from turning into a threat or pure unrealistic futurology? Can pervasive technology become invasive? Could AI turn against patients and health professionals? The more digital technologies accompany patients and physicians, the more opportunities for better outcomes, but also concerns, especially those related to data security. China's social credit system raises many ethical questions, some chatbots available online are misleading, data gathered in social media can be used to influence political decisions, fake news distributed on the internet threaten human's health and lives.

Researchers at a Japanese university have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) based test to help detect early signs of dementia in patients. It is hoped that the new clinical system will lead to better treatments of the disease earlier, as it doesn't involve invasive medical imaging. Currently, scans are used in conjunction with cognitive function tests, such as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) – a combination that can be expensive, time-consuming, and distressing for some patients. However, an ageing population means that more people are developing the disease, hence the need to pursue faster, smarter, and easier-to-use tests. Helping patients to identify problems sooner may also help them stave off the effects of some conditions, and manage them more effectively.