HealthOpX cofounders are 2nd generation americans who had to help their parents navigate the healthcare system

HealthOpX

healthopx

Life in 2100 According to the Most Powerful AI Model Today

"The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else." – Eric Ries 💯  Framework // Concept // Mental Model Launching a successful product is no easy feat. The odds are stacked against you. Over 90% of startups fail due to a lack of product-market fit, running out of cash, not having the right team, and more. 😨 In a talk on “How to Succeed with a Startup,” Sam Altman shared hard-earned wisdom on building startups based on his experience investing in and founding them. 📝 As a fellow product leader, I picked out the key lessons that I believe can help PMs be more successful - whether at a scrappy early-stage venture or scaling behemoth: 🚀 Here, I will dive deeper into each area with tactical advice for how product managers can evaluate and contribute to critical dimensions that influence startup outcomes. Craft Viral, Remarkable Products 🤩 The number one predictor of startup success is intense product-market fit that delights users enough to spark organic growth. Rather than flashy tech or temporary fads, these are durable, viral products addressing underserved jobs. Traits of Remarkable Products Obsessively solve frustrations for a target user base better than alternatives. Offer dramatic improvements on key experiences rather than iterative gains. Frame a compelling, intuitive value proposition addressing feelings potential users self-identify with Tactics to Embed Survey early adopters directly to assess product intensity based on metrics like: Frequency of use Retention over various periods Loyalty vs competitor solutions Satisfaction ratings Structure beta user panels representing various user archetypes to gather broad, honest feedback. Analyze usage data for signs of successfully forming user habits and rituals. Evaluate if the minimum viable product (MVP) solves a pressing “hair on fire” priority. Expand on bright spots with enthusiasm from early testing rather than responding to every feedback item Examples Instagram offered dramatic improvements in mobile photo sharing and filters before cluttering additional capabilities. Tesla initially built a viral base of EV enthusiasts by focusing wholly on an exceptional vehicle experience rather than trying to scale mainstream too quickly. Peloton successfully formed exercise habits and community loyalty better than alternatives. Target High-Potential Markets 📈 Rather than currently observable metrics, evaluate whether the target users and use cases can support exponential expansion in demand over time. This requires accurately assessing both adoption obstacles that need to be overcome before such inflections occur and platforms reach a scale that might bend adoption upward rapidly. Traits of High-Potential Markets Technological maturation unlocking new use cases. Regulatory changes expanding access. Business model evolution overcoming pricing obstacles. Tactics to Embed Talk to investors, founders, and experts in adjacent spaces to gather signals identifying emerging trends early based on peripheral activity. Use tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, SimilarWeb, Pitchbook data, etc. to quantify changes in interest, search patterns, and funding related to market spaces over time. Extrapolate S-curves and model user segments that expand as capabilities improve and costs lower. Identify platform shifts that can accelerate niche adoption once infrastructure scales. Apply adjacencies like mobile → powering app explosion. Examples Teladoc identifies telehealth adoption constraints that would ease over time with video improvements. Mobile gaming benefits from smartphone penetration expanding casual gaming TAM. Autonomous vehicle companies mapping regulatory hurdles and cost Declines unlocking logistics categories. Distinguish Real vs Fake Trends 💎 With so many startups touting world-changing potential but failing to drive repeat user engagement, it’s critical to audit actual intrinsic interest beyond initial curiosity. Analyze both breadth of appeal and depth of habit formation over time across user cohorts. Traits of Real Trends High retention and loyalty even with simple/unfinished early products. Power users exhibit unusually intense usage behavior. Mainstream initial interest matures to a more nuanced understanding of true appeal over time as hype fades. Tactics to Embed Carefully segment users by behavior rather than aggregate statistics. Identify differentiated use cases and niche communities forming around the product. Survey & interview both casual and loyal users on what drives ongoing value. Test viral coefficient with incentive experiments (e.g., refer-a-friend rewards). Monitor engagement and retention by cohort over long periods tracking stabilization. Examples Pokémon Go sustained a strong core user base years after the hype faded. Plant-based meat alternatives prove more appealing to specific consumer segments vs suggested mass-market potential. Wearable fitness trackers shifting from novelty gadgets to practical health tools for target demographics. Recruit Evangelical Founders 🫂 Leadership playing chief product advocate to passionately communicate the vision makes a huge difference in attracting the necessary attention and resources. This starts with the executive team setting the tone, urgency, and confidence to break through the noise. Traits of Strong Evangelists Exude confidence and conviction despite uncertainty. Tailor compelling narratives to various audiences. Inspire belief in lofty visions and rally support. Tactics to Embed Coach leadership on storytelling and presence. Help craft pitches resonating with key stakeholder groups. Fill gaps by communicating passionately if leadership lacks. Examples Steve Jobs captivated audiences with legendary keynotes. Elon Musk sustained ambitious visions on multi-year timelines. Bill Gates credibly explains the future of technology. Structure Bold Incentives 💰 The most in-demand, elite startup talent has countless options today given the abundant funding environment. Competing on compensation alone is insufficient. Attract and retain top talent by framing ambitious visions tied to long-term value creation rather than optimizing for near-term profits. Anchor missions to bold outcomes advancing humanity, not just building profitable apps. Traits of Bold Visions Address complex challenges requiring exceptional teams. Mission orientated around meaningful progress. Inspire talent with a purpose beyond their role. Tactics to Embed Spotlight inspiring PURPOSE rather than PRODUCT. Craft 10-year visions tied to economic, social, and technological progress. Structure incentive alignment and leadership communications to reinforce. Examples Tesla anchoring workforce to sustainable energy innovation. SpaceX attracting top engineers to space exploration missions. Longevity-focused biotech Startups Framing Healthspan impacts. Obsess Over Team Composition 👥 Studies show startup success strongly correlates with thoughtful, balanced team composition based on skillsets, experience, and temperament. Before scaling headcount, probe the leadership traits and interpersonal chemistry within founding teams by benchmarking against past archetypes. Recruiting should then fill gaps with appropriate aptitudes and resilience required for volatile environments. Balanced Startup Archetypes : Sells the vision Hustler : Builds the product Hacker : Obsesses over user experience Hipster Shared Mindsets Optimism - Belief can figure out hard problems Ownership - Fix things rather than pointing fingers Resilience - Persistence despite turbulent conditions Tactics to Embed Evaluate the team through founder archetype lenses first Assess collective persistence qualities beyond domain expertise Carefully select the first 10-15 hires based on cultural signals Test alignment on intrinsic – mission, norms, values Examples Airbnb’s cereal team bonding screening for collaboration Tesla’s relentless problem-solving perspective Stripe’s long-term thinking and execution balance Sustain Cadence Through Wins 🏆 Maintaining consistent tempo on product and go-to-market initiatives builds confidence in leadership, staff, and investors by repeatedly proving empirical success. Cultivating urgency and delivering tangible results prevents organizations and budgets from stagnating when running lean. Value progress velocity over distant milestones. Traits of Sustained Cadences Continuous action bias toward incremental progress Rapid experimentation velocity testing assumptions Avoid distraction by postponing non-critical efforts Tactics to Embed Structure sprints and OKRs to ship value faster Impose constraints like Innovation Lockdowns to focus on innovation Celebrate small milestones frequently Continuously realign on the most critical priority Examples Amazon’s “Working Backwards” product development rigor OODA loop continuous orientation, decisions, and actions “Innovation Theater” budgeting tactics to fund progress Develop Competitive Advantages 💪 Most startups pitch feature advantages, but sustainable moats stem from systems, network effects, and scaling over time rather than temporary differentiators. Analyze marketplace dynamics and system-level resources that could compound startup strengths apart from basic product features. Traits of Compounding Advantages Switching costs imposed through integrated workflows Data barriers that improve system performance Brand affinity and community create inertia Tactics to Embed Map core interaction loops and intermediaries Model how aggregating signals may improve utility Design rituals and cultural differentiators early Examples Amazon Prime ecosystem lock-in Facebook social graph and ad targeting Apple’s brand community and product launches Design Viable Monetization 💵 Consider business model viability early and have pricing and revenue experiments ready to run at key milestones rather than solely optimizing for traction goals trusting adoption subsidies everything. Draft early financial model blueprints depicting how the startup could eventually design profitable, scalable revenue streams across various functions. Traits of Good Models Identify monetizable user values Outline milestones to test experiments Analyze analogs demonstrating sustainability Tactics to Embed Map monetizable user actions and incentives Talk to ecosystem partners about potential affiliate rev shares Survey power users on willingness to pay Examples Amazon moving from books to → third-party marketplace Instagram establishing ads after growth footing Distribute Effectively 🚀 Rather than treating it as an afterthought, evaluate probable acquisition channels and optimize conversion funnels for growth built into products from the onset. Viral models bake in incentives and social sharing hooks driving referral looping. Direct sales compensates business development partners. Traits of Effective Distribution Achieve product-channel fit matching user search behavior Incentivize organic propagation through network effects Compensate ecosystem partners Tactics to Embed Analyze analog platforms to determine the most relevant touchpoints Survey early adopters on how they discovered niche offerings A/B test positioning and packaging conversion Examples Facebook’s early college ambassador programs Slack’s developer evangelism and freemium conversion Snapchat leveraging broadcast social sharing As a product manager, focus on evaluating and contributing to progress in these areas critical to startup greatness. 💫 👇 What resonated most with you? What success factors did I miss? Share your top lessons for fellow PMs below! 📚 Book - Offers unique insights into creating value in the startup world. Zero to One by Peter Thiel 🎧  Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lJKucu6HJc 😎  Meme Thanks for reading The Product Channel By Sid Saladi! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 🌟 Some of our popular newsletter editions ============================================ 🚀 Week 6 - Dynamic Ways ChatGPT Revolutionizes Product Management 🚀 and 50+ Product Management prompts 📚 Week 5 - 50+ Product Management Prompts for ChatGPT-4 👩‍💼 Week 22 - How to create a customer persona for your product 🧠 Week 24 - 14 Behavioral Psychology Concepts Product Managers Should Know 📊 Week 27 - 📈 How to Develop and Write KPIs: A Guide for Product Managers 📋 📚 Week 6 - PM 101 (Books, Articles, Podcasts and Newsletters) 💼 Week 20 - AI Tools 🤖 for Product Managers 💪 That Will Transform Your Workflow 🔄 and Boost Productivity 📈 ✍️ Week 29 - 💡 A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Killer 📝 Problem Statements 🔧 Week 33 - 🚀 The Ultimate Guide to Prototyping for Product Managers: Mastering the Art of Reducing Uncertainty in Product Development 🎯 🤯 Week 16 - 6 Most Effective Problem Prioritization Frameworks for Product Managers - Part 1 🤯 Week 17 - 6 Most Effective Problem Prioritization Frameworks for Product Managers - Part 2 Also published here

How to Succeed With Startups - A Guide for Product Leaders Inspired by Sam Altman

What is Decentralized Science (DeSci)?

বিকেন্দ্রীভূত বিজ্ঞান (DeSci) কি?

Was ist dezentrale Wissenschaft (DeSci)?

¿Qué es la Ciencia Descentralizada (DeSci)?

Qu'est-ce que la science décentralisée (DeSci) ?

विकेंद्रीकृत विज्ञान (DeSci) क्या है?

分散型科学 (DeSci) とは?

분산 과학(DeSci)이란 무엇입니까?

O que é Ciência Descentralizada (DeSci)?

Merkezi Olmayan Bilim (DeSci) Nedir?

Khoa học phi tập trung (DeSci) là gì?

什么是去中心化科学 (DeSci)？

Technology is making history more often than the healthcare industry. But if you consider that healthcare is saving human lives, they are equal. The greatest solution for humankind is when they work together to provide a better quality of life, making doctors’ lives easier or routine paperwork less boring. That sounds far too good, so let’s get to the practical side of it. Healthcare applications are becoming more popular with . That’s only mobile applications! To build the mHealth app, we need to choose the right tech stack. The following questions come up: 350 000 mHealth apps available in major app stores How do we set up medical features with backend technologies? How do top healthcare companies use AI in their work? What are successful tech stack examples in the industry? How to set up healthcare cybersecurity? We are simple software developers, so we are interested in technologies for health tech. It’s an interesting observation that health stacks are not entirely different from other industries' tech stacks. There are for sure more requirements for healthcare applications but the same languages, frameworks, and cloud technologies are used to build them. Let’s try to answer the questions we asked above and give tech stack examples. What Is Health Stack? Health stack is the backend and frontend technologies that healthcare companies use to manage their operations. So, except for clinical tasks, healthcare apps can do everything else. Non-clinical tasks include electronic health or medical records (EHR) systems, patient portals, telemedicine platforms, practice management software, billing and claims processing systems, analytics tools, etc. Health stack solutions have to help healthcare organizations improve their processes and improve patient care. But to choose the right tech stack for any app, we need to consider the following factors: Features and functionality of the product (in our case, medical features such as patient and doctor authorization, medical records database, etc.) Project requirements (user quantity, device support, performance time, etc.) The credibility of technologies’ open-source community Simple scalability Security considerations (in medical apps, also HIPAA compliance) Flexibility and the possibility to go beyond standard ways Size and type of your project. Every healthcare solution is unique, although the requirements for most apps will be similar. The reason is that a lot of technologies are added to the development process. Modern Healthcare Tech Stack Components It’s not a complete set of components a health app would need but those that are commonly used by digital health companies and healthcare providers. Java, Python, C#, C++, JavaScript, PHP, and HTML5. Programming Languages: The choice of specific language would depend on the functionality you need. If the app would store and analyze large amounts of data or somehow deal with artificial intelligence, it’s wise to choose Python + Java as backend technologies and Javascript as frontend technologies. Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile Apple iOS or Google Android. Operating Systems: Here we just need to choose a trustable provider with great support. In the development process, we choose the operating system that has security features and top performance. MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Memcached, and MongoDB. Databases: To choose the right database or mix a few, seek advice from a development team. They would want to know what type of data you have, the amounts, and how often it’ll be requested. Based on that, they’ll advise the capacity of the database and the provider. Apache server and NGINX. Servers: These two are the most popular ones, but what’s important for us is that they’re HIPAA compliant. Other : tools that often come in handy in the healthcare industry GitHub, Jenkins, Selenium, Rollbar, or Bitbucket DevOps tools: such as Slack, and G Suite - for communication and management Business tools such as Google Analytics, Stripe, or Elasticsearch - for search, analytics, and payments Utilities such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, or DigitalOcean Cloud storage and hosting providers Now that we have the general picture of the technology stack that might be used in healthcare apps, here are practical use cases. Tech Stack Examples To be more precise, let’s see the technology stack of some apps developed at Incora. The 1st example is the service we provided to the doctor’s appointment app. used frontend technologies such as JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Antdesign, Java for the backend, and database PostgreSQL. HealthApp, with such a tech stack, allows you to make an appointment online as well as get a consultation from a doctor, nurse, or psychologist online. HealthApp The second example is different as it involved backend technologies. For an where we set the backend and created structure and functionality, we used runtime environment Node.js, also Nest Js for backend, React.js for frontend, AWS services (AWS Lambda), and database PostgreSQL. injury management system With the help of these technologies, Incora developed the management system that provides scheduling of appointments, management of “play status” of players, statistics and reports of all injured players, and emails for different events. Last but not least, the development team set up a backend for It allows the viewing of data about insulin injections, sugar levels, etc., for patients that use specific devices that do injections. patient administration service. The service was designed for doctors to manage patients and adjust treatment. The health stack included Node.js, Express.js, MySQL, React, Redux, Saga, and AWS. Medical Standards in Different Regions This paragraph is to remind you that most industries have . No matter what app you want to develop, make sure the data there (especially patients’ data) is treated the right way. standards and policies when it comes to data protection One of the most common healthcare cybersecurity issues is personal data leakage. Here are : 4 main regulations you need to meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (USA). Any mobile health app that needs to comply with HIPAA. Only personal health apps are an exception. deals with protected health information (PHI) Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) (Canada). The act sets rules to regulate any personal data usage and sharing with third parties. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU). This regulation says ; any information that might identify a person, a name, email, an IP address, and so on. how businesses can and cannot use personal data Data Protection Act (DPA) (UK). It’s similar to GDPR in terms of rules on using and storing personal data. The technologies that we mentioned in the article are well-known and meet the above regulations. However, be sure to check it as the consequences are unpleasant, to say the least. Sum Up So, let’s rewind. We've defined what a health stack is, and what factors to consider when choosing one. Also, we made a list of commonly used technology stacks and tools in the healthcare industry. Furthermore, the tech stack examples were described to have a full picture of app functionality. And finally, we were reminded about healthcare app development standards that are a must nowadays. To save the world, save yourself from bureaucracy, and write us to handle both tech stack and standards.

What Tech Stack do Healthcare Companies Use?

A Step-By-Step Guide to Unit Testing for Express API

Python for Data Science: How to Scrape Website Data via the Internet's Top 300 APIs

Do’s and Don’t’s of Using Hashtags to Be the Real Game Changer of Social Media Marketing. Who doesn’t want hundreds of followers and thousands ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ on a social media post? With the advent of social media, the face of marketing is changing every day. People have to cope up with the new trends in order to be a part of this rat race. Did you notice that hashtags are taking over social media all over? The most unused and forgotten character on your keyboard has become the real game-changer in the world of ’ ‘social media marketing. Sites like , , , have made hashtag their best friend to organize content and make it more engaging for the people. According to research conducted by ‘BuddyMedia’ one single hashtag has the power to increase readers’ engagement by 100%. Unbelievable, Right? Instagram Twitter Facebook Tumblr However, there are still a lot of social media marketers who either do not know the new trend or have failed to nail it properly. Being unaware of the proper usage of this hack, they are unable to build up a good user base and engage them with their creative contents. While the power of the hashtag is undeniable, using it improperly is not going to help you in any way.Here are some essential Do’s and Don’ts of hashtag use in your social media marketing and bring potential customers. So are you ready to boost your business? Read on! The way to effective hashtags- Do’s of hashtag usage If you think that putting hashtags with every word of your post is the best way, you are utterly wrong. The primary purpose of this little character is to organize the content and help customers find it easily.Thus, the primary way to do it is to put a hashtag before the words that are directly connected to the search words. 1.      Know the perfect words: For example, if you have written content on simple beauty hacks, you need to put hashtags before the word that are directly connected to the content. Your customer might search like , , etc. Now, if you put a hashtag before words like , your content will not be relatable anymore. #beautyhacks #skinproblems #glowingskin #properdiet #healthyphysique Hashtags are much focused and to-the-point. Therefore, you have to hit the bull’s eye tactfully to get the desired result. . 2 Test your content Marketing is all about experiment and tests. Before putting hashtags in your social media contents and posts, you need to test the platform you intend to use. It is essential to understand what relates perfectly to your customers. You must do proper research before uploading a post. Look for the most useful words before you give the final call. After all, perfection matters! Targeting customers is the most challenging thing in marketing. You need to understand the vast market and target your customers in a specific market base. When you get to know the preferences of your customers, testing will become more comfortable for you. 3.      Be creative with your hashtags You should remember that using hashtags is the way to showcase your creative mind. It is not necessary to mention your brand name in your hashtags. You can include a lot of popular hashtags to highlight your content and increase the accessibility of it. For example, if you are an e-retailer for footwear, you can go with the popular hashtag This is indeed a smart move to draw the attention of all shoe aficionados instantly. #tuesdayshoesday. According to the experts of sitespower, the more creative you will be with your hashtags, the better engagement rates you can ensure. So, what are you waiting for? Put on your thinking cap and get ready to bring in more customers. 4.      Do make it simple At the end of the day, hashtags are promotion and aim to enhance the business. Hence, there is no point of making your hashtags difficult that users are unable to comprehend and have no clues about them. You can create and use hashtags which your readers can also use in their posts. A food chain business first started the hashtag or . Now, the hashtag has become so popular that people used these on their own posts. #foodporn #foosgasm Instagram So, simple keywords with an essence of creativity are the key to success. 5.      Streamline your hashtags for social media Finally, you need to use hashtags according to the need of the social media platform you use. Twitter requires a formal tone for the hashtags that carry a purposeful message. On the other hand, Instagram posts are full of unique and creative hashtags. You can break the mould and go for experimenting if you want. Make sure to transform your hashtag in a successful call to action. Encourage or even compel your customers to share the posts as much as possible. Drive your business to a new level of success by utilizing hashtags to its best. Get over the cringe-worthy way—Don’t of hashtags usage 1.      Don’t pack your posts with too many hashtags This is indeed surprising that posts with a lesser number of hashtags have more share and popularity than others. It is wise to use three hashtags per post. Over stuffing the post with lots of hashtags can ruin the post and cannot assure engagement of the customers. Enlisting your post under a lot of hashtags can make them all useless. Use trendy and worthy hashtags in your post is the cleverest way to keep your readers stick to your post. 2.      Don’t go for ALL CAPS hashtag Post with all CAPS hashtag can turn off the ‘interest point’ of your content. DM or emails with excessive capitals can instantly make you irritated. As you know, hashtags are the way to interact with the target audience. You would not want your readers to scroll down without even noticing your post. Thus, avoid using ALL CAPS unless you use acronyms like , , etc. #WHO #NASA, #LOL 3.      Don't make your hashtag way too long A lot of social media marketers make this mistake and fail to win the war. Faculties of marketing associated with suggest keeping your hashtags small and catchy. Every time you try to come up with new hashtags for promoting your business, keep in mind the character limitation of Twitter posts. It is best to chop off long sentences and use simple and short hashtags. Otherwise, your readers can get distracted. sitespower.com 4.      Do not ever punctuate your hashtag In the case of a hashtag, avoiding punctuation is the best. You can use an occasional underscore is alright; anything more than this can be hashtag heresy. Punctuation can break the hashtag and make it look incomplete. Wrapping it up If you are a budding social media marketer, these do’s and don’t’s suggestions can come real handy. Follow the rules discussed in this post and be the inspiration of other social media marketers. Promote your brand by using the best way of hashtags. If you find it too difficult to do it on your own, a proper course can help you learn the essential techniques of marketing. You can opt for a social media marketing course in to learn from the basic. Good luck for your brand promotion, . sitespower.com #morepowertoyou

Do’s and Don’ts of Using Hashtags to Be the Real Game Changer of Social Media Marketing

Deep Aging: Scientists Say AI Is Getting Better at Predicting Your True Age Researchers say AI is getting better at guessing a person’s most important age — their biological age. You’ve heard that saying, “age is just a number.” It turns out that there’s a lot of truth to it. And, as the saying suggests, that chronological number many of us try to avoid mentioning on our birthdays is really just a number — and far less relevant than we assume. The real age we should focus on is our biological age, which is influenced by factors as diverse as genes, lifestyle, behavior and environment. Scientists say that this age — not the number that gets you into bars at 21, or lets you apply for Social Security at 62 — more closely predicts our lifespan and healthspan and is, therefore, a more accurate reflection of our true age. But, so far, scientists have found determining a person’s biological age to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Now, a team of scientists report that the accurate prediction of biological age is becoming more feasible, thanks to artificial intelligence and new, vast publicly available datasets. The researchers summarized the current work on deep aging clocks in a recent issue of . Trends in Pharmacological Sciences According to Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D, founder and CEO of , people are good at using images, videos, voice and even smell to guess another person’s age. But, AI can guess ages even more accurately, he said in . Insilico Medicine a news release “Deep neural networks can do it better and we can now interpret what factors are most important,” said Zhavoronokov. “Very often when someone looks older than their chronological age, they are sick. A trained doctor can guess the health status of a patient just by looking at him or her. At Insilico we developed a broad range of deep biomarkers of aging that can be used by the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, as well as by the longevity biotechnology community. In this paper we describe the recent progress in this emerging field and outline a range of non-obvious applications.” The researchers suggest that there’s not just one indicator — or biomarker — that can tip off a person’s biological age, but a combination of these different predictors. AI is suited for this task because it is adept at sorting through all the available data and determining the right combination of factors. Accurately estimating biological ages won’t just be a cool trick for AI systems to perform at birthday parties, either. The researchers said that identifying the predictors of aging could help scientists better understand the aging process and reveal keys to healthy aging. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies, as well as medical and longevity industries, would all be keenly interested in that trend. “Deep biomarkers of aging developed utilizing a variety of data types of aging are rapidly advancing the longevity biotechnology industry. Using biomarkers of aging to improve human health, prevent age-associated diseases and extend healthy life span is now facilitated by the fast-growing capacity of data acquisition, and recent advances in AI. They hold a great potential for changing not only aging research, but healthcare in general,” said Polina Mamoshina, senior scientist at , in the news release. Insilico Medicine The researchers predict that AI and aging research will accelerate in the future and note that acceleration is being driven by the increasing number of people entering this field — from universities to corporations — as well as the number of funding sources adding money to those organizations.

Deep Aging: Scientists Say AI Is Getting Better at Predicting Your True Age

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How I set and execute 50-year goals

I’m 32 and spent $200k on biohacking. Became calmer, thinner, extroverted, healthier & happier.

Tengo 32 años y gasté $200k en biohacking. Se volvió más tranquilo, más delgado, extrovertido, más saludable y más feliz.

Few days ago, Apple had their fall special event at Steve Jobs Theater located inside Apple Park, unveiling the all screen iPhone X, and later pushing iOS 11 GM to beta testers, which is going out officially next week. I updated my phone as soon as I got the push of iOS 11 GM. Since WWDC in June, I’ve been a beta tester for iOS 11 which has been through an intensive summer of incremental updates. With my 4.7 inch iPhone 7 and iOS 11 GM at hand, there still exist quite a lot of unfinished feeling of Beta software. As a designer, I can’t help writing about my feelings. I’m writing this to help people with realizing many details requiring further polishes, who hopefully includes folks at Apple and can push forward with changes to improve those details. The unfinished feeling in iOS 11 mostly comes from UI and animation. UI elements in iOS are quite inconsistent, mixing a variety of UI elements, which might look quite similar but introduce a disconnected feeling for UX. The inconsistency of those elements majorly stems from those UI element updated in iOS 11, such as Large Title and new Search Bar. In my opinion, those newly introduced elements, which might be unfamiliar and new even to Apple engineers, have caused many inconsistent UI experience in iOS 11. Mail.app First let’s look at Mail.app in iOS 11. Like other native apps, Mail also introduces a new Navigation Bar with Large Title. However, Large Title in Mail, has extra left margin compared to the design guide example. Here we will use Search Bar as reference object. In design guide example, Large Title and Search Bar share same distance to the edge, but in Mail.app, Large Title clearly moves a bit right compared to Search Bar. Watch.app In Watch.app, Search Bar is not following the suggested style, standing out with its unfitted background. In native apps adopting iOS 11 styles, Search Bar should match Navigation bar naturally, unlike Watch.app. In the instruction video of published by Apple, they mentioned an exactly same case: Building Apps for iPhone X The WWDC.app on the left is counter-example which is not matching styles, and Contacts.app on the right is a best practice matching styles. The commenter in the video claims: That’s move on to the second issue that I found… if I bring out the search field, well that doesn’t look quite right. Let’s compare this to the Contacts app list. A couple of things look wrong here. The color of the search bar background isn’t quite right. And the sizing is a bit off. Therefore, iOS 11 is suggesting matched background between Search Bar and Navigation Bar. Yet Watch.app doesn’t follow it as a native app. What’s more, once clicked, Search Bar in Watch.app is almost kissing the Status bar, which shows more polish to do be done by Apple engineers. Files.app Search Bar in Files.app also has some issues. Seems Files.app engineers used a non-standard Search Bar. From the picture below, compared to standard Search Bar in Settings.app, Files.app has a slightly smaller Search bar, and lighter font color. Besides color/size difference, animation after clicking Search Bar is also different. The animation of standard Search Bar in Settings.app: <a href="https://medium.com/media/ada7f8f260786b8fc8897105f891ca6e/href">https://medium.com/media/ada7f8f260786b8fc8897105f891ca6e/href</a> Then Search Bar in Files.app: <a href="https://medium.com/media/7eb0846fee84795172f171d00c88c001/href">https://medium.com/media/7eb0846fee84795172f171d00c88c001/href</a> Comparatively, Search Bar in Files.app has faster animation but less natural animation logic and a bit unfinished feeling. App Store.app iOS 11’s App Store has gone through a redesign and introduced similar style like Apple Music. However, in App Store’s Today tab, compared to Apple Music’s For You, the fonts of date are different as App Store uses a bold one while Apple Music uses a light one. And in Apple Music, “Wednesday” is followed by a comma but in App Store the comma is missing. Also comparison between these two apps. In Search page, touching Trending item in App Store won’t trigger a hover effect as feedback for touch, while similar action in Apple Music search page will trigger a hover effect changing background/foreground color of the item. In my opinion, Apple Music does it better and native apps should be consistent upon decision of hover feedback, regardless of having it or not. Besides, there’re still some miscellaneous issues among details. In App Store, open any app with banner image, slightly swipe from left edge to right (but not full swipe that will dismiss the app page). The banner section will render strangely after page bounces back: You could check this bug with the video below. <a href="https://medium.com/media/bc4362e61dfccbdf073fb0d86e7e0940/href">https://medium.com/media/bc4362e61dfccbdf073fb0d86e7e0940/href</a> Also there’s a performance issue. In Updates tab, pull down to refresh the items and there’s a obvious frame drop if Large Title is pulled too much down. You can feel it yourself easily. Health.app In Health.app, between Today page and Health Data page, same data and same styles, but different width. This is an old issue from iOS 10 and still not fixed yet. Today Widget In iOS 11, there’re two ways to open Today Widget, either by swiping from left to right in Home Screen, or in Lock Screen, yet Search Bar in pages invoked in different way will have different behavior. When invoked from Home screen, pulling down Widget page will not show Search screen, and clicking Search Bar is missing animation of showing and dismissing frosted glass effect, and animation of widening search bar (though there’s animation of shortening it) after hitting cancel. The overall experience is quite awkward. <a href="https://medium.com/media/ef8e69ae6ac6b0ff48df843c0a9a078f/href">https://medium.com/media/ef8e69ae6ac6b0ff48df843c0a9a078f/href</a> When invoked from Lock Screen, there’re animations everywhere and pulling down Widget page will correctly show Search screen, very smooth and natural experience. <a href="https://medium.com/media/6383ee56a435823a524709fb0f899338/href">https://medium.com/media/6383ee56a435823a524709fb0f899338/href</a> This is causing quite disconnected feeling of Today Widget in two scenarios. Obviously, the one invoked from Home Screen is quite unfinished compared to the one invoked from Lock Screen. What’s weird is that Today Widget invoked from Home Screen in iOS 10 has all those animations and could show Search screen by pulling down. No idea why it goes backwards in iOS 11. Nevertheless, the Today Widget invoked from locked screen in iOS 11 is also going a bit backwards compared to iOS 10. In Today Widget page, when user pull up page, Search Bar will hover widget with frosted glass, preventing widget from stacking onto Search Bar. However, clicking Search bar will cause frosted glass to disappear immediately then slowly rendering a full screen frosted glass. Cancelling Search Bar will cause full screen frosted glass to disappear slowly, then immediately rendering the small section of frosted glass without animation, a bit unnatural. <a href="https://medium.com/media/301d51726d61d02209ca944bfafcf19a/href">https://medium.com/media/301d51726d61d02209ca944bfafcf19a/href</a> If video is too fast, you could check it out by frame. What we can see is that full screen frosted glass is not related to top section frosted glass in terms of smooth rendering, leading to a disconnected feeling. Besides missing animations, iOS 11 also brings redundant animation. In iOS 11, every time swiping from Today Widget back to locked screen, Player section will resize again and again, which is quite unnecessary. <a href="https://medium.com/media/ea63c1c378ef2b06eeb77ed79a6fe6a7/href">https://medium.com/media/ea63c1c378ef2b06eeb77ed79a6fe6a7/href</a> In Siri Search Suggestion page invoked after clicking Search Bar, there’re two issues. First, when touching suggestions, hover feedback is using a width less than screen width, causing hover feedback to become a weird rectangle. The appropriate hover feedback is already present in Apple Music, where hover effect takes full screen width. Second, and quite strange, if you look carefully into Siri Search Suggestions font, you’ll see that they’re jagged (especially Latin script) near edges, not smooth at all, even compare to input text on same screen. Photos.app Inappropriate margin, either too much or too little, appears in many places of iOS 11, causing greater feelings of unfinished/unpolished work. In Shared tab of Photos.app, the margin (as pointed below by arrow) is too narrow and inconsistent, compared to any other native apps with similar pages. Settings.app In Settings.app → Apple ID section, alignment of device list is completely off from ID section. This was correct in iOS 10 and broken in iOS 11. Music.app In Apple Music’s Connect section, some posts will have really small margin between picture and text. This shouldn’t be a design decision since margin in iTunes client on desktop macOS is appropriate. Though Connect is de facto a rarely used feature, Apple shouldn’t be making such basic mistake in UI design. Also in Apple Music, entering Album list through Library, then clicking initial letter list to go quickly to that section. You’ll see that section of initial letter on top is cutting album covers. Advertised as a feature in iOS 10 on WWDC, the player screen of Apple Music also becomes weird in iOS 11. Reopening the player screen will cause shadow under played album cover to disappear, and shrinked album cover during pausing will also enlarge back if reopening player screen. Video are listed below: Pause music, album cover zooms, close and reopen player screen, album cover zooms back: <a href="https://medium.com/media/042fe8a72fe67ede7bc5c06dbc9d255e/href">https://medium.com/media/042fe8a72fe67ede7bc5c06dbc9d255e/href</a> Music playing, shadow under album cover, close and reopen player screen, shadow gone: <a href="https://medium.com/media/c6a48f9be2f4b36d613e907257a063ad/href">https://medium.com/media/c6a48f9be2f4b36d613e907257a063ad/href</a> In iOS 10 with AirPods, when AirPlay device is connected, player screen will show device name near AirPlay icon. That’s gone in iOS 11. Some folks might think this is a design choice, yet it’s a bug actually. In the video below, when AirPlay device is connected, device name is indeed displayed correctly. However reopening the player screen will make it disappear. If it’s a design choice, the device name shouldn’t have shown initially. <a href="https://medium.com/media/18cd24da68b2adf374bfaf3e6fedfab5/href">https://medium.com/media/18cd24da68b2adf374bfaf3e6fedfab5/href</a> And in Podcasts.app which use same design style as Apple Music, AirPlay device name is always there. Another bug in Apple Music. As we know, there are two ways to go to slide to top in iOS, either by clicking Status Bar, or clicking icon on Tab Bar. In Apple Music, hitting Status Bar will correctly go back to Large Title navigation bar, while hitting Tab icon will return a small font navigation bar as shown below. Since in Podcasts.app and App Store.app, clicking either will both return Large Title navigation bar, this behavior in Apple Music is definitely a bug. Control Center In Control Center, AirPlay device section also has issues. Often during usage of AirPods, Control Center will show iPhone as the device, and when AirPods is shown as device, pausing the music will cause device to become iPhone (though AirPods is still playing). <a href="https://medium.com/media/82572349e9246dbe9537e084ef841866/href">https://medium.com/media/82572349e9246dbe9537e084ef841866/href</a> There’s also an inappropriate animation in Control Center, the 3D Touch animation in Screen Mirroring: <a href="https://medium.com/media/0a807f1932289cae814e61966cee9bb2/href">https://medium.com/media/0a807f1932289cae814e61966cee9bb2/href</a> Weather.app Weather.app in iOS 11 has also been updated using larger font and less margin. Yet I noticed that temperate text in iOS 11 is not center-aligned, while it was in iOS 10. This might be a iOS 11 design decision. However during actual usage, due to the non-alignment, for some digits, it’s very obvious for user that text is closer to left edge, which doesn’t show any pro compared to iOS 10. Faux bold issue for PingFang in Safari The last and most serious issue, in my opinion, is font. The issues above might not impact normal usage, but the issue below will actually impact everyone of us. That’s the faux bold font issue for PingFang (iOS’s default Chinese typeface) in iOS 11 Safari. I discovered this issue when I was testing personal websites on iOS 11. Below all comparisons are taken between iOS 11 and iOS 10. As shown above, PingFang is actually rendering as faux bold. Faux bold is basically not using the font weight provided by font itself, but to add font weight on some base font weight forcibly. Faux bold is generated by algorithm and often lacking quality, causing issue of stroke weights and letter tracking. In the screenshot, you could see that the faux bold PingFang in iOS 11 has larger spacing between texts. After some testing, I found that this would happen only when CSS font-family includes “-apple-system”, i.e. font-family using San Francisco font provided by system. Once we removed it, system will honor the font weight provided by font itself and faux bold is gone. This issue is not only in Safari, but to impact all app using webkit engine of iOS to render web page, such as WeChat’s internal browser and Douban.app. As you can see, Douban.app has been dominated by faux PingFang bold, looking quite bad. Randomly picking a movie review post, you’ll notice that title is in faux bold. Through comparison, you’ll also notice that font spacing in faux bold is problematic. Actually this is not just about bold font, but also about regular or any font weight, so that you’re seeing “faux regular” and so on. Faux regular is not easily identified from stroke weight, but from the comparison below you’ll notice that font spacing is different in iOS 11 so that each line of texts have different words, which proves “faux regular” presence. And check more pictures of faux bold in WeChat.app. This faux font issue from Safari has appeared in iOS 11 Beta 1 and I’ve submitted bug report through Feedback app earlier in August (the case number is ). Yet it’s still an issue as of today, and likely for iOS 11 or further. As a typography enthusiast, I’m quite disappointed by this thing. #3436665 In the end In recent years, there’s been discussion about degeneration of software quality of Apple. Apple has been stepping steadily in Bioinformatic, Machine Learning, AR and many other fields and growing its business, but slowly losing the detail-oriented focus on design and products like before. During the event of 12th, listening to The Beatles, and to Steve’s words of wisdom, I had a moment feeling that we’re still in the good old days. However Apple is different from those days. Honestly I have no intention of smearing Apple, as owner of many Apple products for many aspects of my life. Apple is still my only favorite and mostly respected company. I sincerely wish that, while stepping forward, Apple could still maintain those values they’ve cherished and built in the past. Special thanks to Ted Li for his excellent assistance in translation. Read the Chinese version in Zhihu: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/29313582

Dive into the details of iOS 11: Is Apple still detail-oriented?

For a long time we thought that our French system was the best in the world. And it was. But, it’s been years that we have observed an increase in costs in our healthcare system, for individuals, while the user experience has not really changed or improved ( worldwide, ranking us #11 in Europe). healthcare Bloomberg ranking France #8 Europe Health Consumer Index Figures are alarming: in France, (yet, it’s below the 18%-level in the US), €250bn every year, and it has been in constant augmentation for the last 50 years. This growth comes with an even larger for our beloved Sécurité Sociale. 11.6% of our GDP goes to healthcare budget deficit And while costs are increasing, satisfaction towards the system is decreasing for every stakeholder including doctors, hospitals, patients… Where does that come from and what can we do? Difference between user and patient First things first, we, the people, are not to be considered as patients anymore. We are users of our . Users when we are patients, users when we assess our risks, but also users when we are healthy. healthcare Semantically, patients are considered an object on which doctors identify symptoms that need to be treated. On the other hand, the user is an active player of his healthcare: he is increasingly the center of attention. The needle will move from physicians monitoring health indicators from time to time to ourselves collecting them in order to share the proper summaries to experts. Indeed, today we are only monitored when something goes wrong, a comparative should analyse “healthy vs. not healthy” and the continuity in-between. medicine Apple Watch Health (source: Hello Heart) We live a crucial moment for this user “empowerment”: (Apple is hiring tons of health experts), by Google, … We will be able to follow our biometrics and our health evolution. In parallel, patient communities are created ( , ) around their diseases. The p̷a̷t̷i̷e̷n̷t̷ user, is the new actor of his health. Apple Watch blood monitoring weight analysis SmartPatients PatientsLikeMe Medicine digitisation The excellent book from Robert Wachter: The Digital Doctor This new healthcare user needs tools to work with his ecosystem of doctors, hospitals, private clinics, insurances… Here comes medicine digitalisation, which has been a slow, painful trend over the last years. This digitising phase took place recently particularly in the US and the UK, with the introduction of the Electronic Health Record (EHR). All information about a patient is supposed to be gathered at one point. If today , hospitals still do not communicate with one another, , and user interfaces are still very poor. Few doctors consider this transition as a success. Mainly, because they have been designed for the ones paying: hospitals who want to optimize their billing and who have beenheavily incentivized by the government to invest in EHRs. more than 70% of American hospitals have an EHR doctors still do not agree on what level of information they should share with patients Dossier Médical Personnel In France, the “Dossier Médical Personnel”, our equivalent of EHR, has been promoted by the government with over . And we haven’t seen any proper private initiatives yet. €500m investment for less than 400.000 subscribers. It has turned into a fiasco What should we see in an EHR? On a user-based approach, I believe it should be the combination of our medical interactions with the healthcare system (doctors you’ve seen and when, which drugs have been prescribed, what have been the diagnoses, lab results, etc…) combined with standard information from wearables and sensors that monitor our health. Google ontact lens to measure glucose in tears. (Credit: New York Times, Google, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images) Connected devices (wearables, quantified self apps, sensors…) are huge collectors of health data and information. Google is right now working on several sensors to monitor pulse, , with its new brand (formerly Google Life Sciences)… A lot of start-ups such as with its HealthPatch, continuous blood pressure monitoring for , and are very active. Nevertheless, these data will be almost worthless for the end-user if we do not edit the right data-management to analyse information. , and the next big step is to switch from displaying data to generating valuable insight from data. sugar levels Verily Vital Connect Quanttus clinical trials some others Quantified-self does not mean qualified-self Alphabet introducing Verily their new branding for Google Life Sciences We have to move forward a complete EHR system step by step. It does not have to be fully complete and universal from scratch. It is a matter of daily implementation. Doctors tasks will be replaced or completed With this huge amount of information coming from everywhere, the development of new technologies, doctors’ job is to evolve along with the interaction with users. And we hope for the best. I really believe that doctors will remain at the center of our healthcare system for a long time. It is their scope and the way they will be assisted that will change. Da Vinci robotic surgery in action Robotics has started to enter in healthcare mainly with system developed by Intuitive Surgical, that has performed more than 3 million surgeries worldwide. It is still expensive as an investment, every operation requires the purchase of another specific pack, but there is a trend towards more and more robotisation and tools to assist surgeries. Here in France, we have which has not reached the same market penetration yet.New generation of surgery robots is under development with the objective to be autonomous, and to conduct routine surgeries in less time, with less human errors, and ultimately cheaper than standard ones. Will surgery become a commodity accessible to everybody? The question is still open and requires a lot of development. Da Vinci robotic Robot Rosa from Medtech If we can help the hand, we can also help the brain. I spoke in a about Artificial Intelligence (and the difficulty to define it), but we see a trend in machine-learning / artificial intelligence to help doctors take better decisions. is somehow trying to lead the way with the Watson tools. The aim is to distribute them to every single hospital. They have signed deals with (work on rare pediatric diseases), (prediction of health deterioration), Medtronic, or (understanding scientific papers and create a health coach), (providing access to data from apps) in order to support doctors in their decisions on diagnoses and treatments. Deep learning has also proven very useful in image recognition, with companies such as which raised another . previous article IBM Watson Boston Children’s Hospital CVS Health Johnson & Johnson Apple Enlitic $10m for radiology image recognition I believe that AI will enable better diagnosis and personalized medical recommendations, help to scale information and distribute it. It will be the support tool for the new doctors to access, manage and treat data. It follows the same trend that consumer knowledge which has switched from memory to Google. Personalised medicine & prevention This evolution and the huge amont of data we are able to analyse are to be completed by new data-streams and more focus on prevention and healthcare personalisation. Among this, DNA sequencing and analysis is a fascinating topic. The history of genome sequencing is fantastic, beginning with a between public and private initiatives (aka ) to sequence in 2001 the first complete human genome. And since then, cost and speed have improved three times faster than Moore’s law. $100m in 2001 to c.$1,000 today. Not so bad. race Craig Venter Evolution of DNA sequencing costs from $100m to less than $1,000 in 15 years (source: National Human Genome Research Institute) Several initiatives are around to understand better our genome. Not in France of course. National initiatives: UK project with the NHS support, whole country sequencing in , the US and Obama pushing for a with the “Precision Medicine Initiative”, . But also private initiatives such as (Craig Venter again), which mission is to accumulate the largest genomics data set ever with 1 million full human genomes, microbiomes, … 100,000 genomes Iceland $215m sequencing project China announcing even larger numbers Human Longevity Inc. Ling Min Jian; lab technician at the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), the world’s largest genome sequencing center. Collecting enormous amount of data is a great challenge that we are addressing now worldwide. But understanding or generating insight from it is even harder. It is like trying to find a bug in a program by looking at the 0s and 1s. You have to get really good eyes and computer power. That’s also why it’s one of the big topic of interest for the GAFA. The excellent of , founder of health website Doctissimo and DNA sequencing DNAVision, are a great read on the topic. articles Laurent Alexandre Illumina’s gene sequencer (Credit: Illumina) Nevertheless, sequencing is changing specific parts of personalised medicine. The one I want to focus on is cancer sequencing. By sequencing blood samples, we detect cancer earlier, we can select and test treatments based on your cancer genetics, and thus we can dramatically reduce costs and risks. Two companies recently raised $100m each in the field: and through Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and . Of course, we are still at the beginning and industrial scaling will raise new questions, but it’s out there. Guardant Health GRAIL initiative Illumina Once we can analyse your genome, microbiome, environmental interaction we could be able to target treatments, anticipate diseases… We already see that machine-learning analysis of demographics and somehow epigenetics data (in the broad sense) gives us great assessment of individual risks in order to be guided in the healthcare system. I see two steps in the progress: first a better understanding of our risks to develop diseases based on an overall appreciation of who we are and that will leads us to meet the right doctors at the right time. My hope is that soon enough these doctors will have the best tools to personalise the way they help us to be healthy. All these technologies, for what? Towards new players to serve users As I said before, we are now to be considered as users. And as users, we take informed decisions on what we should buy. One of the central players in the healthcare system is health insurance and sadly, health insurance is one of the last industries which has done nothing to make things accessible: we don’t know what we pay for, what the level of service is, if there is any service at all... In the US, statistics say that . This market status in the US is well documented in this . Metrics seems to be similar in France even if less documented. only one out of seven Americans understands the basic components of a health-insurance plan (Journal of Health Economics) great series of articles The complexity arises from several factors: a multi-stakeholder market (I am not the one choosing how I treat my symptoms, it is the doctor who makes the choice), a complex billing process (shared between doctor, Sécurité Sociale, Complémentaire Santé, reste à charge, ticket modérateur…), no user-centric focus. Indeed, even if you wanted to interact more with your health insurance, the user experience would be really poor today. We don’t understand benefits, websites are far away from what we see in other fields, and it looks like an insurer’s objective to make his customer service difficult to reach. It obviously creates strange dynamics and misalignment of interests. The interactions with your insurance are just about transaction, confrontation . “how can I get paid back as fast as possible?” Nevertheless, I believe that we are today at the edge of a new beginning where product design and technologies can help us to create a user-centric insurance where everything is about giving the best experience. In the US, some start-ups with very interesting metrics of adoption have paved the way: in New York, or . Oscar Collective Health Clover Health In France, we can improve the understanding of what we pay for, how we can navigate in this complex and sometime unfriendly healthcare system. It means building trust between players (the patient, the doctor, the insurer) and going towards more active and personalized prevention. A great health insurance should help us do that. It should be the platform to reach all the technologies and services we have started to analyse in this article, always thinking of what is best for its users. It is a dramatic switch from what exists today, but it can be done with the right focus and technologies.

Boosting French Healthcare

If you’ve ever applied for a foreign visa, you know that proof of vaccination is already a norm. Many nations around the world already require vaccination records to allow entry. To curb the spread of COVID-19, authorities all over the world initiated economic lockdowns and travel bans. These measures effectively brought the global economy screeching to a halt in 2020. More than a year later, we’re still just seeing some semblance of a road back to normalcy. Sure, tests have already been developed and we’re fortunate to have companies develop and deliver vaccines at record time. However, there’s one pervasive problem that has plagued the pharmaceutical industry that’s also making a huge dent in the otherwise impressive global pandemic response effort – . Counterfeiting The Rise of Counterfeit COVID-19 Credentials At the very beginning of the crisis, counterfeiting was already a specter hovering over the pandemic. Fake medical equipment such as PPEs, face masks, and even alcohol solutions sowed chaos in the market. And as the world moved forward with the pandemic response, fraudsters moved along with it. The selling of fake certificates showing negative results for COVID-19 has become an industry of its own in a lot of countries. As the vaccine starts its distribution phase, it's not difficult to imagine that counterfeiters will also find a way to fake vaccine certificates as they also become requirements for travel. Easier to Get and Cheaper Than Vaccination or Testing These days, aside from a passport, authorities look for COVID-19 credentials such as a negative result on a PCR test done within a specified period. However, some travelers choose to bypass this requirement with a counterfeit test result certificate. Part of the reason for its pervasiveness is because it’s less expensive to get a forged certificate than to actually get tested. The reports that whereas real COVID-19 tests would cost them £140. The huge difference is enticing especially for people who need to travel during this time. Daily Telegraph people can get fake certificates for £35 There are others, however, who would rather pay more for a forged test result certificate than to get tested. One possible reason is for fear of testing positive. Another one could be the inconvenience of having to go to testing sites and waiting for a couple of hours or maybe even days for the result. The ease of making a fake certificate also doesn't help curb the proliferation of counterfeiting. One woman, who has admitted to about her use of a fake certificate to go to Ghana for work said: BBC “I just asked people I knew, 'who does photoshop?' I asked my friends to see their Covid tests just to get a structure of what the certificate looks like and then had someone make one for me.” Difficult to Detect The success rate of counterfeit credentials is also astonishingly high. The same informant who confessed to having used fake credentials to BBC reveals: "He literally read through it for no more than 10 to 20 seconds, and then he smiled and asked me where I was going and said, 'have a safe flight.'" Organized criminal counterfeit organizations can make even more convincing certificates complete with stamps and other security measures. They take advantage of the limited physical inspection or eye test in which inspectors such as immigration agents and airline employees check the document’s veracity on their own. Who’s Affected? Without a doubt, criminals are the biggest winners of the whole counterfeiting epidemic. The more fake credentials they sell, the more profit they get. At first glance, it may look like buyers also benefit because they get to travel without the hassle of actually getting tested for the disease. However, this might not be the case at all. There are some risks. The success of fake credentials means that flights are not at all pathogen-free. This heightens the possibility of contracting the virus for everyone onboard. Trust, therefore, would be difficult to come by for the travel industry and the economy at large if counterfeit health credentials continue to proliferate. The Rise of Digital Health Passports In the information age, the tech community has been quick to answer the call of the times. That’s no different this time in combating fake health certificates and vaccination records. Digital health passports seem to be the most promising developments. IATA’s Travel Pass and The Common Project’s are probably the biggest ones to try their hand at developing solutions for the travel industry currently being tested in Europe and North America. IBM, on the other hand, is creating one for their back-to-work initiative for 2021. CommonPass The goals of these technologies are generally the same – to or COVID-19 test results so people can safely go back to work or travel. Where they differ is in the approach. While some lock in on document security, others hone in on the ease of integration. manage and verify vaccination status From Blockchain to A.I. and machine learning, developers are using the most cutting-edge technology and in this critical anti-counterfeiting effort. That’s only rightly so as no one wants another bout with a pandemic. IT security solutions The promise of digital health passports is to streamline workflows and eliminate paper-based documents. This lightens the load of personnel in government, healthcare, and human resources which are already burdened with the pandemic response. Blockchain in Covid-19 Vaccine Passports or Test Certificates Today, individuals may need to present their health status to return to the workplace, enter sports arenas, or travel. Hence, organizations are looking for ways to create verifiable health credentials that preserve privacy. You don't want to have a central database that captures all the immunization records of every single person vaccinated since it becomes a big target for hackers. With blockchain, the same outcome can be delivered without the risk of centralizing data to a single place. Using blockchain, a decentralized identity architecture allows individuals to have more control over their data and how it will be used — thereby becoming an active participant. This is different from traditional data exchange where the individual provides consent but is then excluded from the data exchange. The Individual, Issuer, and Verifier are all connected together via the blockchain, securely connecting the dots. Personal information is not stored centrally on one app or available to just anyone to view. Personal information is held by the Issuers since they are the ones providing the healthcare but protected from outright exposure by the blockchain which is designed for encryption and security. The person's credentials must then match the requirements of the Verifier (e.g. vaccinated or have had a negative COVID-19 test in the last 2 days) . The Verifier is only seeing someone presenting them with a QR code. No personal data is being returned to the Verifier. Blockchain-secured digital health passports could simply show nothing more than a red or green alert to verify a COVID-19 status request. For example, I go to a pharmacy to get vaccinated. The pharmacy has the record of it and creates a code / QR code (so-called "hash" of data) representing this information which is posted on blockchain. At this point, my medical data is with the pharmacy and with me—and nowhere else. Now venues seeking verification (Verifier) can just compare that QR code to what is stored on blockchain. Are There Any Issues or Downsides? There are still some . From the need for offline verification to hacks from bad actors, there are vulnerabilities that might compromise the crucial verification system. reservations about fully digital solutions A more well-rounded approach allows for online and offline verification while also being able to incorporate COVID-19 test result data should be given priority in order to foster better and safer economic reopening. The major challenge is to create an official global, connected network of blockchain users, including pharmacies, airlines, and offices, which has yet to happen on a grand scale. Other challenges include a lack of universally defined standards and the presence of unknowns as the technology keeps evolving. Blockchain is a difficult to implement technology that is not widely recognized by many governments as a suitable and trusted solution. It doesn't mean that it’s not, but that is has just not yet been recognized universally as the proper means of moving information around. There are also all sorts of other issues: What will happen to those who choose not to get vaccinated - will their freedom be curtailed? How confident will users be that their data will not be used by the government or by a third-party? Despite all these challenges, vaccine passports or health passports are closer to becoming reality, with some countries already implementing them. With blockchain, governments can slow down and thwart the spread of counterfeit health documents. Now, they can focus on what matters – getting the virus under control.

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