Wearables aren't just for tracking steps anymore, as a new tool is helping doctors transcribe right from their smartwatch. This morning, voice-powered healthcare company Notable unveiled its latest technology, a voice-powered artificial intelligence wearable for doctors. "The current physician workflow is rife with administrative burdens and complexity. With growing documentation requirements, studies have shown that physicians spend more than half of their day in EHRs and a third of their day with patients," Pranay Kapadia, Notable CEO, said in an email to MobiHealthNews. "With Notable, physicians free up their day to offer better patient care. During appointments, they can be better listeners and more effective educators by maintaining eye contact with patients. Since Notable is passively capturing and charting for them in the background, there's no need to type or take notes during patient time. Between appointments, their charting workflow is dramatically simplified and sped up. After a brief dictation, they just need to review programmatically generated notes, codes, and orders -- then can move on to the next patient."

There has been tremendous buzz around Artificial Intelligence in the past year, and I expect it only to increase in 2018. From self-driving cars to computers that create their own languages (and so had to be shut down) - we've heard and read about it all. Some of these stories depict AI accurately but many of them are plain hyperbole. There hasn't been another technological advance in the past that has the power to change our lives so profoundly and is yet so misunderstood. Computer Vision, the branch of AI that deals with making computers process and recognize images better has probably benefited the most from the recent developments in Deep Learning technology.

The most advanced automotive tech available ahead of the arrival of fully self-driving vehicles should, ideally, be incredibly sophisticated, and completely invisible to users. So far, of all the major tech companies, Amazon is the closest to striking that balance. Computers are complicated, and one thing drivers don't need in cars is complication. The safe operation of big, heavy, motor-powered vehicles that can travel as high speed relies heavily on an attentive driver paying attention to the control systems they use to make the car go, as well as to the world around them. Computers, whatever other advantages they have, require attention and focus to operate; figuring out how to make a computer do what you want, especially for any kind of advanced operationn, was always (and remains for many) a learning experience nearly on par with mastering a new language.