It seems like just yesterday when only the slickest kid on the block had a smartphone, but now, this revolutionary gadget is selling like hotcakes in the developing world. Earlier this year, the Chinese firm Huawei unveiled IDEOS through Kenya’s telecom titan, Safaricom. So far, this $80 smartphone has found its way into the hands of 350,000+ Kenyans, an impressive sales number in a country where 40% of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. The IDEOS’s success in this market firmly establishes the open source Android as the smartphone of the people and demonstrates how unrelenting upswings in price-performance can jumpstart the spread of liberating technologies. Thanks to low-cost Androids, the geographically-untethered smartphone is here to stay, and it simply cannot be stopped.

So how did Huawei ride the demand curve below the golden price point, bringing an Android phone within the financial reach of thousands of Kenyans? Alongside the falling cost of all microelectronics, it appears that Huawei was able to lower the price by using less powerful hardware.

Let’s compare the IDEOS to more familiar smartphones so you can fathom the $80 price tag. A cursory search of BestBuy.com reveals the gamut of devices from Apple, Motorola, and Blackberry. While IDEOS really doesn’t sport any deal-breaking technical disadvantages (see table), the RAM is half that of the big boys. Also, IDEOS users have been lamenting about the device’s fleeting battery life on tech forums. An incessant need for recharging could present problems for IDEOS users in remote areas, where hunts for a power outlet may yield disappointing results. In fact, to address this concern, Safaricom had to post a “how-to” on reducing power usage. Despite these hiccups, the functionality is still there, and at end of the day, it’s an Android phone with 300,000+ apps. Besides, what’s important isn’t the phone’s tech specs, it’s the affordability.

Now that hundreds of thousands of Kenyans have jumped on the Android bandwagon, it’s clear that affordability goes a long way. However, the IDEOS’s stellar sales performance in a developing nation hints at a larger phenomenon –  the international competitive edge of Android-capable, low-end smartphones. This is facilitated by two key advantages: diversity in phone manufacturers and region-specific applications, both catalyzed by Android’s open source philosophy. Unlike Apple and Blackberry, everyone and their grandmother can legitimately build and sell an Android phone, as long as they have the proper know-how and paperwork, of course. This widens the playing field, and manufacturers that target a wide range of consumers, from the Japanese businessman to the Ugandan farmer, can step up to the plate. This includes Huawei and other Chinese tech firms that have been targeting African markets.

In light of Android’s international success, I bet Apple is chomping at the bit. But could they ever realistically overcome Android in developing markets? While Apple is nudging into the low-cost realm with its own price accessible smartphone, it will likely cost around $350, a far cry from IDEOS. I’d like to see how Apple would react if a Chinese firm started selling their own inexpensive version of the iPhone. But what about the “little guys”? Although Windows and Nokia encourage the adoption of their operating systems, frankly, these OS’s have either fallen from grace or have failed to get off the ground. Among these players, it seems Android is best equipped for a global presence, whereas Apple and the others probably won’t fall far from the high-end tree unless they re-calibrate their strategies. There’s enormous potential for low-end phones in developing markets, and Android is taking charge.

So what does open source mean for developers? More flexibility. If app-gurus are free to program without rigid, Apple-like standardization, then they’re better able to tailor the Android to the needs of their communities. The Android app business is a tough one, but keeping in mind that the smartphone is Africa’s laptop killer, it’s also one of the most exciting platforms for the continent’s developers.

Case in point. An entrepreneurial conference in Nairobi called Pivot25 showcased some of the most innovative Android apps in East Africa. Among these include M-Farm, an app that allows farmers to broadcast product prices and locations to the world via SMS. Another agri-app developed by Makerere University helps diagnose and track the spread of crop diseases via crowdsourcing. In a nation where agriculture accounts for nearly a quarter of GDP, apps like these could prove invaluable in maximizing harvests and facilitating the spread of precision farming.

While agri-apps are well-suited for the developing economies, the winner of Pivot25 was Medkenya. It’s the functional equivalent to WebMD in that it puts a library of health information at the user’s fingertips and performs other helpful tasks like guiding the ill to hospitals. However,  I have a hunch that this is just the beginning of healthcare-related apps in Africa. We’ve seen smartphones adopt all kinds of medical technology, from digital stethoscopes to cancer diagnosis, and I’m hopeful that we’ll see similarly stunning med-tech reach even the remotest areas one day. An app that tracks mosquito outbreaks or a smartphone with an HIV-testing peripheral would work wonders to address persisting healthcare challenges of the developing world. Who knows? Maybe one day they’ll be able to carry a doctor around in their pocket.

From agriculture to healthcare, from disaster response to business, the smartphone is quickly morphing into an indispensable tool of the information age. They’re much more than neat gizmos that help American suburbanites pay for their coffee. This sentiment was best captured by Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s Minister of Information and Communication, after IDEOS’s debut.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the mobile telephone was the reserve of an elite few and the gadget’s sole purpose was to make phone calls and send text messages. Today, all this has changed and the mobile phone is no longer a luxury but a necessity. By morphing and adopting into various aspects of our lives, the mobile phone has gone beyond its original purpose of phone calls and text messages and it now serves as a bank, a computer a radio and a television set among other things. In a nutshell, it has penetrated every aspect of our lives.

The smartphone is the exemplar of a truly liberating device, and thanks to Android and Huawei, it has the potential to reach virtually untapped markets. Now that the same operating system enjoyed by the techies of wealthy countries is more accessible to citizens of developing nations, “the people’s smartphone” could uplift small businesses, farmers, and the sick in ways we can’t even imagine. I’m not saying low-end Androids will solve all the world’s problems, but I believe that technology, be it stem cells or mobile devices, has the inherent capacity to ease humanity’s burdens. As we ride the price-performance curve to the asymptotic minimum, I long for the day that anyone can access Android-like technology for pennies. That day may never arrive, but the $80 IDEOS shows that we’re moving in the right direction.

[Image Credits: 1. Phone – Flickr – John Karakatsanis, Girl – Wylio (modified); 2. Microsoft Research – Buxton Collection, Huawei (modified); 3. Wylio; 4. Shimba Technologies]

[Sources:  Technology Review, Huawei Press Release, Internet World Statistics, mobiThinking]

On June 5th, 1981, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report told the world about five rapidly deteriorating men who arrived at clinics in Los Angeles. They exhibited a disturbing array of symptoms – swollen lymph nodes, skin rashes, and failing immune systems. At the time of publication, two patients had already died. The scourge that we now know as AIDS had begun.

Three decades, volumes of research papers, and 30 million deaths later, we’ve learned much about this killer retrovirus, yet an actual cure remains an unrealized dream for the millions currently infected worldwide. In the ongoing conflict of host vs. pathogen, no adversary has proved more tenacious than HIV. Why?

For one, HIV has a high evolutionary potential – rapidly altering its gene sequences to build drug resistance and avoid detection from vaccines. In fact, there are at least 93 common mutations that make HIV drug-resistant. Once you nail down one subtype of HIV, another one invariably pops up. Also, HIV is a retrovirus than can integrate with the host’s genome. The virus is so inextricable because it literally becomes a part of the afflicted. Furthermore, it’s a master of hide-and-seek, evading the effects of drugs by hiding in lymph nodes during clinical latency. Lastly, the virus disarms the immune system so other opportunistic infections can overrun the defenseless body. Amid this diabolical synergy of viral advantages, this malicious microbe has been one-upping the world’s best scientists for thirty long years. And it’s a battle we’re currently losing. According to the latest UN reports, for every two patients who start taking anti-HIV drugs, there are five new infections.

Nonetheless, HIV’s days on the winning side could be numbered. Multiple paths toward a cure and eradication are sprouting, and the headlines seem to imply that we’re closing in on a solution. So, what are those paths, and how will they help us get there?

When it comes to vanquishing a disease, there are two ways to skin a cat – treating the illness post-infection or preventing transmission. In the case of HIV, early and aggressive treatment can also be a highly effective prophylactic measure. According to early results from a landmark study led by Myron Cohen at UNC-Chapel Hill, rapid deployment of antiretrovirals (ARVs) – drugs that suppress HIV infection and slow the progression to AIDS – caused a 96% reduction in transmission. It just goes to show that early detection and treatment are key, and  sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

As promising as this approach seems, there are some limitations to consider. To see a real impact of early ART on a global scale and consistently catch HIV in the early stages, testing needs to be cheap, fast, ubiquitous, de-stigmatized, and occur on a regular basis. Sobering impracticality currently makes this exceedingly difficult, and even post-industrial nations have issues getting their people tested. There’s also the financial burden of HIV treatment. While a cost drop followed the introduction of generic drugs, there’s still a dire need for more cost-effective ARV regimens. If people don’t have access to the drugs, early ART is dead in the water.

It won’t be able to eradicate HIV on its own, but perhaps fine-tuning ART regimens will help give HIV a major wallop, provided that costs of testing and drugs are sufficiently mitigated. With greater access to ARVs and the falling cost of bioassays, there’s plenty reason to be hopeful on this front.

Optimized ART and promising new vaccines bring us closer toward AIDS abolition on the population level, but they mean nil to the ones who’ve been HIV positive for years. For these individuals, the outlook is much better than it was in the 1980s, but the quality of life can still be grim. Enter the “Berlin patient,” a man functionally cured of HIV with stem cells from the bone marrow of an immune donor. It was an amazing proof-of-concept, but the operation was not without difficulties. Aside from genetic compatibility snags, harvesting can be painful, discouraging donating and constricting the marrow pool.

Fortunately, on the side of marrow harvesting, the future is already looking brighter. A few years ago, Daniel Kraft, a Stanford physician-scientist and Singularity University track chair, invented the cleverly-coined Marrow Miner. Not only can it gather up to six times more adult stem cells than traditional methods, it’s far less invasive and can be performed in an outpatient setting. It probably won’t make bone marrow donation as popular as blood drives, but it could make it a hell of a lot easier and donor-friendly than it used to be. With more stem cells to choose from and a greater chance of genetic compatibility, there could be more “Berlin patients” waiting in the wings.

But why even risk compatibility snags when you can use your own genetically enhanced stem cells? Way back in 2009, Singularity Hub reported on one gene therapy trial that boosted CD4+ counts by infusing HIV patients’ blood cells with virus-impeding genes. The results were nothing to sneeze at, but the technique only replaced a fraction of the cells, leaving the remainder vulnerable to a viral rebound. The trick is giving the immune system a complete genetic remodeling – a challenge elegantly reviewed in a recent issue of Human Molecular Genetics.

It’s very easy to be enthralled by stem cell and gene therapies for HIV, but as we’ve seen, there are still many barriers to overcome. To put things into perspective, the FDA has yet to approve a single gene therapy for any disease, HIV or otherwise. Gene therapy and stem cell research appear to be creeping forward phlegmatically,  but the mountaintop is within the sights of scientists. They might  just need a pair of binoculars at this point.

The 30 year struggle against AIDS has been a grueling one. Glimmers of hope from the research community have faded into unfulfilled promises, turning the barrage of “breakthrough!” headlines into some sort of a cruel joke. However, as futurephiles, we at the Hub recognize the paramount role that long-term trends play in the shaping of humanity’s destiny. And so far, the trend has been a good one. HIV was once an imminent death sentence, but can now be held at bay for decades. On the horizon, platform biotechnologies are paving the way to new treatments. Even so, we should not underestimate the existential risk posed by emergent viruses, both man-made and naturally occurring. Futurist Nick Bostrom posed the question in his seminal paper:  “What if AIDS was as contagious as the common cold?” While this may deviate from the pathogen’s optimal virulence, it is a prospect that sends chills down my spine. If we don’t keep these bugs in check, then these lofty notions of cybernetics, life-extension, and Singularity could become a fool’s dream, and the great achievements of humanity would blow away like dust in the wind. We can’t let that happen. We’ve come too far to let HIV or any other virus stand in our way. Microbes, you’ve been warned.

[Images Credits: 1. The New York Times 2.  Healthplanone.com (modified)3. UNC 4. TED 5. Wikimedia Commons, Microsoft Clip Art (modified) ]

[Sources: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,  AVERT, The Lancet, New Scientist, Human Molecular Genetics, Science Insider]

Our entertainment habits and the nature of our online life are shifting beneath our feet. According to Sandvine, a network analytics firm, Netflix is now the reigning champion of Internet traffic. Its video streaming service commands a whopping 29.7% of peak-hour activity among North Americans, dethroning the infamous BitTorrent. While this may seem like a sudden bombshell for some, the rise of Netflix has been brewing for quite some time. Spurred by an ever-expanding “Watch Instantly” library and the breakneck expansion of broadband infrastructure, Americans have emphatically responded to the on-demand-video-of-almost-anything entertainment model. But we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Singularity Hub has kept an unblinking eye on the looming home entertainment revolution (check out Aaron Saenz’s declaration: TV is a Dinosaur and the Internet is a Meteor), and Netflix is just another space rock in the cosmic avalanche of improved entertainment options.

It all started on January 14th, 2008, when the Watch Instantly feature made its stunning debut. With the flick of a switch, 6,000 films and TV shows were released from their industry-imposed cages to roam freely on the computer screens of Netflix subscribers everywhere. However, amid the fanfare, questions arose on the sustainability of the video-streaming model. Could a steady influx of new subscribers outpace hefty content licensing costs? There were also grumblings on limited catalogue. Despite the risks, the subscription-based, video-streaming experiment had begun.

And so far, the model looks promising – very promising. Netflix has significantly expanded its Watch Instantly library, collecting content licenses like beanie babies. You can watch everything from Jersey Shore, to Blue Velvet, to Barney’s Great Adventure. While it has cost them a pretty penny, new subscribers have been coming out in droves. According to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix posted an 86% surge in profits for Q1 2011, fueled by a 69% boost in users since last year. The latest Sandvine report is a direct outcome of the surge in subscribers, gobbling up traffic like data-hungry Pac-Men of the Internet.

Neflix’s recent success comes with a new set of challenges. Broadband providers have begun targeting Internet users who eat up too much of the data-pie with metered plans. Analogous to those mean, old energy conglomerates monitoring electricity usage, your data consumption will be under corporate eyes, too. According to the Washington Post, AT&T capped data usage at 150GB in May, tacking on an additional $10 per month if users surpass the limit. While 150GB is quite a chunk of data (about 32 two-hour DVD-quality movies), usage-based pricing will directly impact a subset of Netflix’s data-gorging customer base, and some subscribers might feel deterred from signing up. I can hear the choir of parents right now: “Turn off that Netflix! If I get an Internet bill like last month’s, it’s coming out of your allowance!”

There’s also the issue of acquiring and keeping new content licenses, the lifeblood of this semi-tested enterprise. Even while profits have been growing, Netflix will continue shelling out epic dough for the rights to video-stream, with one market analyst expecting costs to jump from $700 million to $1.6-2.2 billion this year (WSJ). Netflix is betting that its booming customer base will continue to outpace these mounting costs.

Another concern is content provider relations. Criterion Collection bailed on Netflix last February, taking their 150 titles with them. While this is only a drop in bucket of Netflix’s massive library, it might be an omen of an even larger media company jumping ship. Also, if relations turn too sour, lawsuits could be on the horizon. It’s not a perfect comparison, but Grooveshark (a music streaming service) knows how frightening those big-media-company lawsuits can be. If enough titles are withdrawn, the reliable stream of Netflix memberships could slow to a trickle, accompanied by a wave of unsubscribers.

Even with these hurdles and risks, there are plenty of reasons for both Netflix and consumers to keep the hope for home entertainment freedom alive. Rapidly developing high-speed Internet infrastructure, the force that made widespread video-streaming possible, isn’t going away. Network penetration has been spreading over the past decade, and President Obama recently detailed plans to extend wireless broadband to 98% of Americans over the next five years. However, given that one-third of Americans still don’t have high-speed Internet access, the U.S. still has a ways to go.

What about those pesky usage caps? Given Google’s planned Gigabit network in Kansas City (100 times faster than current broadband) and the potential of 10-Gigabit networks, I think metered broadband is a problem with an expiration date. Internet services are always getting faster and more cost-effective, and those benefits almost always find their way to the consumer. Remember the Dark Ages of the Internet (1990s), when AOL had per-minute billing for dial-up (shudders)? This trend works in Netflix’s favor, and I’m confident that Internet gluttons of the future will be able to eat up video-streaming data without worrying about additional fees.

So what does this all mean for the average-American-TV-addict? We can see the changes all around us. Friends are knocking out entire seasons of Dexter on their computers over the weekend and it appears that TV-set ownership, that old mainstay of the American living room, is on the decline (the Independent). Also, according to Nielsen data, DVRs have seeped into 39.7% of U.S. households, up from 13.5% just four years ago. While this reflects entertainment liberation, DVR users are still limited to aired content, whereas Netflix subscribers can peruse vast digital repositories. Furthermore, the digital media receivers from Apple and Google are finding their way into homes and serve as platforms for Netflix and Hulu. This allows users to enjoy libraries of movies and shows on a familiar format, their own TVs, providing a possible check against falling TV-set purchases. While the adoption of these Smart TVs has been moving at a snail’s pace, they could dissolve the needless membrane that separates TV and Internet entertainment.

Together, these trends signify an ongoing shift in home recreation. Gradually, we are untethering ourselves from rigid TV schedules and are moving toward a more viewer-centered home entertainment milieu. All the pieces are out there: subscription-based content providers (Netflix, Hulu), Smart TVs (Google, Apple), and the accelerating speed and availability of broadband Internet. These three factors are coalescing, giving birth to a new home entertainment paradigm. Imagine having all the world’s music, TV, and film at your fingertips for one flat rate a month. Over the course of a lazy Sunday, you could tap dance along to old Fred Astaire flicks, veg out to a few classic Simpsons episodes, and end with the day with a re-listening of Abbey Road.

Netflix’s considerable upswing in Internet traffic is a sign that we are getting ever nearer to the couch potato’s Promised Land.  Nonetheless, even while we move toward more individualized entertainment, we’ll still want to watch those live watershed moments in unison, such as the first human on Mars, the Kansas City GoogleBots playing in Robo-Bowl XIII, 3D Holograms vocally sparring on Android Idol, and the inauguration of the first AI president (just kidding?).  One thing is for certain:  TV as-we-know-it is marked for extinction. I hope the meteor shower brought on by ultra-high-speed Internet crashes into living rooms soon rather than later. Let it rain, let it rain.

I’ll leave you with one of the many possible benefits of the home entertainment revolution. Save your family from an unspeakable tragedy!

[Image 1:  Wikimedia Commons (modified), Netflix]

[Image 2:  Wikimedia Commons (modified), Netflix, Microsoft Clip Art]

[Sources: Sandvine, SF Gate, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CNN]

If Practice Fusion has their way, your doctor’s office is about to get an upgrade – big time. Like other electronic health records (EHR) systems, Practice Fusion empowers doctors with brand spanking new superpowers for the digital age. What’s makes it different than its 300+ competitors? For starters, it’s web-based, 100% ad-supported, and absolutely free. It’s the fastest growing EHR community by a long shot, reaching 80,000 offices and 10 million 11 million patients (yeah, that fast). For doctors, it has been a financial godsend, saving their practices around $60 million so far. What could it mean for you, the patient? Expect fewer medical errors, more personalized care, and the utmost privacy regarding your medical information. Bureaucrats and policymakers have been urging docs to switch to digital for over a decade, but they have little to show for it. However, after considering what Practice Fusion offers and pondering a few insights its CEO shared with Singularity Hub, I believe we have a real turnkey solution for America’s health IT woes on our hands. Au revoir to the towering mounds of hard copies that sway over antiquated clinics. With the help of Practice Fusion, the U.S. health sector is poised to join the 21st Century with the rest of us.

So what does your doctor actually get when they sign up for Practice Fusion? A fully functional EHR system with all the bells, whistles, and then some. Medical records software typically requires months to get rolling, but physicians can get Practice Fusion’s show on the road in five minutes. For docs who are tech-novices, Practice Fusion also boasts extensive customer support and training, all free and unlimited, so even the most computer illiterate in the healthcare workforce shouldn’t have trouble making the digital switch.

The coolest feature, hands-down, is Patient Fusion, where you, the patient, can access your personal health record (PHR) as easily as your Facebook page. We forget doctor’s appointments all too often, and obtaining your immunization records can feel like pulling teeth sometimes. For those that use Patient Fusion, those days are over. Just log-in to your account, and everything you want to know about your medical history is right there. Medicine just got a little more personal.

Concerned about privacy? Who wouldn’t be? Practice Fusion may assuage some fears with its bank-level, HIPAA-compliant encryption. However, on a long enough timescale, a hacker will get one step ahead and compromise patient privacy. In contrast to the recent security breach of the PlayStation Network, health data hacks could be more unsettling than credit card info breaches. But keep in mind that we’re already living in an era in which we give up a little security to make our lives better. Besides, paper records are prone to breaches, too. People trust their life savings with online banking, which has revolutionized personal finance. Why not trust your health info with online EHRs? In my eyes, it’s an acceptable risk.

So what do we get with that risk? Healthcare like you’ve never seen it before. For example, remember the good ol’ days of house calls for even the mildest of ailments? Me neither (I’ll ask my grand-dad). Well, it’s getting a makeover, because Practice Fusion is helping revive this relic of the past with modern technology. Raymond Zakhari, a nurse practitioner and founder of Metro Medical Direct, brings his entire patient database with him as he roams the streets of Manhattan. Also, NYC is home to many pharmacies offering home delivery, so his patients don’t even need to leave their residence to get treatment. Now that’s service!

Okay, Practice Fusion is an awesome tool for any practice that wants to streamline their record keeping, and it’s a great way for patients to reclaim their own health information. However, it’s bursting on the scene at a time when policymakers and and physicians are quibbling over EHR adoption rates. If EHRs were universally adopted, research indicates that the U.S. heathcare sector could save $81 billion annually and eliminate up to 200,000 drug errors. For policymakers, the switch is a no-brainer, so healthcare providers will face penalties if they haven’t adopted a certified electronic records system by 2015. But they’re also offering a pretty big carrot. Those who jump on the bandwagon could earn a $44,000+ grant to offset the cost of implementation.

Despite the incentives, doctors aren’t taking  those policies lying down. The American Medical Association has been lobbying heavily, and penny-wise physicians argue that EHRs will be a productivity killer as their staff adjust to digital record keeping.  Moreover, with some systems approaching the $90,000 range, the initial installation is out of reach for small practices. It’s not surprising that, according to a CDC study, only 6% of practices have comprehensive EHRs. In its core, this push-back reflects the “don’t tread on me” mentality that has entered our national politics. In my opinion, when the government and doctors fight, patients lose.

As a service with virtually zero capital costs, Practice Fusion is definitely a game changer, but how will it fit into the broader debate? In my brief interview with Ryan Howard, the CEO of Practice Fusion, we discussed the undue financial strain placed upon practices by early EHR vendors.

There is a perception, which was at one time accurate, that EHRs are egregiously expensive, require onerous training and costly support, come with a huge maintenance burden, and are quickly outdated. The average primary care doctor makes about $120,000 a year, but the total cost of a traditional EHR system for a small practice is $50,000. The numbers just don’t add up for most doctors and they simply stick to paper.

In other words, the widespread EHR ambivalence is understandable. Keep in mind that most doctors really have two jobs. While treating patients is #1, private practice doctors are also running small businesses. Like any business owner, if the balance sheets don’t leave room for a major investment like a new records system, then pursuing one is decidedly unwise. But that position is no longer tenable. Practice Fusion’s new model of service delivery is pulling out the barriers to EHR adoption at the root.

In Ryan Howard’s eyes, the gates are wide open, but the damage done by legacy EHR vendors has left a lingering stigma. Therefore, a mission of Practice Fusion is to undo those old misconceptions. In his words, “. . . this is an education campaign. Health providers simply don’t know that new delivery models, new technologies can make EHR adoption free, painless and fast.”

After de-stigmatizing, is the sky the limit for Practice Fusion? It seems that way to me, and it’s clear Mr. Howard and Practice Fusion have some big plans to back it up.

Long-term, we want to become the ubiquitous EHR system for family doctors and touch every patient in America.

Think that’s too bold of a statement?  Well, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and managing partner of Founders Fund, doesn’t think so. In fact, Founders Fund and a handful of other firms have just placed a big stack of venture capitalist chips on the table, $23 million of series B funding to be exact. He also had some pretty nice things to say about the EHR system:

Practice Fusion revolutionizes our interactions with the medical community, just as Facebook did for social networking. . . [It] represents the future of medicine: healthcare married to the efficiency of information technology.

Mr. Thiel foretold the dot-com bust, the housing market crash, and the rise of Facebook (he was an early investor), so when he makes a move, people take notice. Given his impressive track record and the financial backing he’s offered Practice Fusion, I wouldn’t be surprised if this revolutionary EHR arrives at your doctor’s office within the next year or two.

The Internet Age has changed our lives for the better, and we can barely fathom a world without e-mail, social networking, and Internet media. Honestly, I feel like a caveman chiseling stone every time I send snail mail. Also, doctors who have adopted EHR echo that sentiment, saying, “. . . there is no way I would go back to using paper.’’ Why, then, are so many doctors bound to the shortcomings of a fragile medium that is not easily shared with interested parties? Cost? That’s not an excuse anymore. As patients and consumers of healthcare services, we need to start urging our doctors to make the switch so that our care can become safer and more personal. Therefore, I’d like to close with an open letter to all the physicians who have yet to adopt an EHR system:

Dear Docs,

I know, change is a scary thing. Your entire career in private practice is chronicled in those massive piles of paper. Plus, who has the time to implement an entirely new system? However, given that startup is now free, technical support is ample, and you get to keep the $44,000+ grant from the government, you must learn to let go of that fear. If nationally adopted, EHRs could provide our faltering health sector some much needed breathing room, and most importantly, save lives through reduced medical errors. Inaction is no longer an option, and the time has never been better to jump on the EHR bandwagon.

Digitally Yours,

Jeremy

To see some software demos of Practice Fusion, click here. Also, check out Singularity Hub’s Q&A with Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard below.

Singularity Hub: Do you think we’ll be able to meet Obama’s 2014 goal for EHR adoption? What do you think is a reasonable deadline?

Ryan Howard: Opinions differ wildly about whether or not the 2014 goal is achievable. If you talk to one of our users – an early adopter – they’ll tell you the goal can be met and is critical to revolutionizing primary care. If you ask a non-adopter, they’ll insist the 2014 target is too aggressive and puts undue pressure on health providers to comply. As a company, we’re optimistic about the 2014 target and we’re doing everything we can to educate health workers about the incentive dollars available to them for making the switch, as well as the potential penalties they face if they delay their practice’s EHR adoption. From our perspective, this is an education campaign. Health providers simply don’t know that new delivery models, new technologies can make EHR adoption free, painless and fast. Ultimately, technology will decide if 2014 can be met.

SH: Could Practice Fusion be a catalyst for reaching that goal?

RH: Absolutely. If every small practice in the US decided to adopt Practice Fusion tomorrow, this challenge would be solved. Because our technology is delivered through an ad-supported Software as a Service model, there is no financial barrier to adoption and users can be up and running within 5 minutes. The challenge is in educating health providers about solutions like ours and breaking down the fears and negativity around EHR systems, which big legacy vendors are largely responsible for.

SH: What are the primary barriers of EHR adoption, in Practice Fusion’s experience?

RH: For those hesitant to digitize medical records, the main barrier for adoption of an EHR system is cost, although physicians tend to be misinformed about the actual costs and resources required to purchase and implement EHR systems. There is a perception, which was at one time accurate, that EHRs are egregiously expensive, require onerous training and costly support, come with a huge maintenance burden, and are quickly outdated. The average primary care doctor makes about $120,000 a year, but the total cost of a traditional EHR system for a small practice is $50,000. The numbers just don’t add up for most doctors and they simply stick to paper.

SH: What are the near and long-term goals of Practice Fusion?

RH: Our primary goal, of course, is empowering health professionals to deliver the highest standard of care to their patients with the least disruption to their workflow through the greatest ease of use within the product. Long-term, we want to become the ubiquitous EHR system for family doctors and touch every patient in America with both our EHR for doctors and our personal health record (PHR) for patients. We want to work closely with the wider medical community, helping researchers, policy-makers and other healthcare stakeholders to better understand America’s health in aggregate through our de-identified patient data, which comprises 10 million patients, and a community of 80,000 health workers. Near-term, our focus is squarely on product development, user-acquisition and support. We’re constantly adding new features to the product, driven by user requests and compliance requirements. We’re also seriously growing our team to meet the demands of our booming user base.

[Image 1:  http://medicalrecordsclerkjobdescription.com]

[Image 2: Facebook, Practice Fusion]

[Image 3:  Practice Fusion]

[Image 4: Simulated Surgical Systems, Center for Systems Biology, Flickr – sindesign]

[Sources: Practice Fusion, EMR and HIPAA, Health Affairs, InMed, CDC,  Boston Globe]

If you’re one of the millions affected by severe disabilities, you should pay close attention to three innovative, pure-hearted Aucklanders who are whipping up a fresh batch of hope. They call themselves Thought-Wired, and they’re building a brain-computer interface (BCI)-based system that bestows the handicapped the ability to control lights, make calls, manage A/C settings, and close curtains with their mind. By integrating the $300 Emotiv EPOC neuro-headset with smart-home appliances, the Thought-Wired team is summoning BCI technology from its ivory tower and helping democratize its applications.

In the proof-of-concept video below, the team unveiled their Neuro-Operated Utility System (NOUS) to the Cerebral Palsy (CP) Society of New Zealand. While donning EEG headsets to manipulate objects on a screen isn’t a new idea, seeing BCI technology that can improve quality of life is nothing short of inspiring. Despite some competition from other human computer interfaces, such as eye-tracking and speech commands, the NOUS has real potential to build or restore independent living skills for members of the disabled community without breaking the bank. After speaking with Dmitry Selitskiy, Thought-Wired’s team leader, I came to realize that their project was imbued with a human story and continues to be driven by unyielding willpower and a deep sense of compassion. If this isn’t an example of how technology can bring out the best in us, then I don’t know what is.

A Remarkable BCI Device for the Disabled

After viewing the demo above, I hope you can see the elegant simplicity and life-changing possibilities of Thought-Wired’s prototype. It kicks off with a short introduction of the BCI concept (0:31) as a team member telekinetically directs a virtual box. Then, Thought-Wired gets right into training with Ross Flood, a representative from the CP Society of New Zealand, who calibrates the virtual box dynamics with his brain waves (0:55). Once his EEG signals are trained, Mr. Flood makes a call for assistance with only his thoughts. Check out the Mr. Flood’s priceless expression as the phone starts ringing at 1:21. Pretty wild, ain’t it?

But what good is a smart-home equipped with BCI if you can only do one task? The NOUS has got you covered. By training additional thought commands, the user can toggle among several devices (1:25). In this example, Mr. Flood extends the reach of his mental manipulation powers to two lamps (1:45). Thought-Wired has also applied this BCI to rudimentary communication, using the lift and shift left thought commands for no and yes, respectively (2:01). In all of these cases, keep in mind that the virtual cube is not necessary to execute the command, and the thoughts correlated to the function are sufficient. With this device, the smart-home can become an extension of the mind.

This is an impressive prototype, but the pragmatically-minded may try to dampen our optimism by asserting that hands-free eye-tracking technology already allows the handicapped to interface with devices. Why bring the brain into it? There are several reasons. Firstly, eye-tracking is more expensive than you would expect, with the cheapest systems pushing past the $1000 mark. At $300, the Emotiv EPOC headset is the most costly component of the NOUS, so once it comes to market, I’d expect the price to be well below most eye-tracking devices. While the NOUS is in the early stages, eye-tracking has been around for years, and there are still some kinks to work out. Spontaneous saccades can disrupt eye-driven commands, and only recently have involuntary eye-blinking issues been resolved in research circles. Plus, who wants to turn the heater up to 90 degrees if they’re visually distracted? In my opinion, BCI trumps ocular tracking because it requires neither eye nor hand to execute commands.

So, for now, the NOUS has eye-tracking beat, but Thought-Wired isn’t out of the woods just yet. Its stiffest competition will come from speech command devices for smart homes, which mirror the NOUS’s basic utility (handless interfacing) with technology you can find in your Droid. Unlike eye-tracking, speech recognition is relatively inexpensive, and if the user can speak, there is no need for additional training. Furthermore, aside from the home automation appliances, the only hardware you need is a pair of functioning vocal cords. However, these technical advantages fly out the window if the disabled individual has significant speech impediments, as is often the case in cerebral  palsy. Therefore, I believe the subset of the disabled community that stands to benefit the most from the NOUS are those who have a coincident speech disorder or are entirely nonverbal.

Aside from other human computer interfaces, there are also the inherent limitations of EEG, the brain activity interpreted by the NOUS. Unlike implantable BCIs, the Emotiv EPOC relies on these inferred neural signals that are diluted by tissue and cranial bone. As a result, direct neural interfaces have higher spatial resolution, easily surpassing the binary “up/down” “on/off”, “left/right”, and “yes/no” commands of most EPOC-based devices. However, while EEG can only take BCI applications so far, direct neural interfaces are currently invasive and cost-prohibitive. Beyond the cost of the electrode arrays, there are also the operational costs of surgical implantation and maintenance. Until the financial burden is eased and long-term biocompatibility is verified on a large scale, EEG-based devices will have the greatest potential for widespread use in the near future. However, I’m sure Thought-Wired will have their eye on direct neural impants as the cost and safety concerns are sufficiently addressed by the BCI wizards. Furthermore, with programming ingenuity, long neuro-cognitive training sessions, and some true grit, the EPOC can still do some amazing things. For example, while it’s far from freeway ready, the EPOC-based BrainDriver provides a mind-guided semi-autonomous driving experience. As the NOUS moves from prototype to market-ready product, I expect Thought-Wired will accomplish equally amazing feats.

When the NOUS or a similar BCI device reaches the market, the potential benefits for the severely disabled, their families, and society-at-large cannot be overstated. Commonly, individuals with movement disorders and speech problems fully depend on family members or reside in state-funded facilities. For many, it could be the first time that these individuals can partially transcend their condition and claim a sense of freedom. Furthermore, without needing to assist the BCI user with certain household tasks, caregivers could focus on helping in other ways (i.e. academics, emotional counseling). Also, group homes and hospitals that care for the disabled could shift their treatment goals from day-to-day support to offering other services (i.e. physical therapy), leading to higher clinical efficiency. For primary, secondary, and tertiary stakeholders, the NOUS could be a win-win-win.

The Brains Behind the BCI:  The Story of Thought-Wired

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was the NOUS. Also akin to Roman history, Thought-Wired’s humble beginnings are just as remarkable as the final product. Like any ambitious project, it started with an idea. Well, maybe two ideas with their origins in a pair of TED Talks.

September 26th, 2010 started like any other for Dmitry Selitskiy, a University of Auckland post-graduate student. However, on this day, he was summoned to the TEDxAuckland conference. As Hub followers should know, TED Talk’s are generally thought-provoking and tend to jumpstart the imagination, but there was one speaker, Cindy Gallop, whose message resonated with Mr. Selitskiy. She revealed IfWeRanTheWorld, a project that aims to translate good intentions into action. During the talk, attendees were encouraged to submit their world changing ideas to the site. Dmitry’s idea came rather easily.

I wanted to (somehow) help kids with disabilities be equal with abled people. I have a personal connection to the issue of disability – my cousin has a severe case of CP which left him paralyzed from birth.

By either serendipity or mere happenstance, Dmitry stumbled upon another TED Talk online the following day. It was Tan Le’s spellbinding presentation of her Emotiv EPOC neuro-headset, and Dmitry was  immediately enthralled after watching the BCI in action. At the closing of the talk, Tan Le urged developers to adapt the platform device to new applications. This represented a TED-inspired call-to-arms for Dmitry. “That same day we put together a proposal for the Auckland University Imagine Cup competition. So that’s how we started.” If you had any doubt that TED Talks have ideas worth spreading, you may now stand corrected.

With his father (a veteran entrepreneur and B-school graduate student) and another University of Auckland student, Dmitry and Thought-Wired embarked on a mission to bring BCI to the disabled. Their proposal for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup fared well, placing second in the University competition and earning them $500NZ in prizes to support the project. They also posted their project on Uncle Percy, a New Zealand based savings website, so family and friends could track their fundraising progress. To their surprise, this led to a wave of donations, and they had accrued enough cash within a week to move forward. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t have to look too far to find good angel investors.

Things started rolling, but that’s not to say there weren’t a few hiccups along the way. One major issue was that the New Zealand home automation market was limited, so many of the electrical components had to be sourced overseas. However, this presented technical issues because of the disparate voltages and frequencies of U.S. and New Zealand alternating currents (110V/60Hz vs. 220V/50Hz). Despite this setback, the team pulled through and was able to acquire all the necessary parts for the NOUS prototype.

That wasn’t Thought-Wired’s only hurdle. The team was academically diverse, ranging from information management to chemical engineering, but no one had a background in cognitive neuroscience. Consequently, Thought-Wired had to conduct a self-taught crash course in BCI. In six months, the team “had to learn very many things, from basics of EEG to automation protocols that communicate over power lines through many things around programming.” Now that’s a bucketful of sweat equity.

Prior to developing the NOUS prototype, Dmitry had the opportunity to provide a BCI preview for his cousin living with cerebral palsy on a holiday trip. After a few training sessions with the virtual cube, the boy was able to reproduce the right, left, and lift mental commands. According to Dmitry, it was a pretty mind-blowing experience for the whole family.

For the first time the boy could control and move an object in his life. We could all see how excited he was (not to mention our excitement). Now when we speak or bring out the headset, his eyes [light] up . . .

After unveiling the prototype, the Thought-Wired team ultimately came up short at New Zealand’s Imagine Cup final, but their resolve remains stronger than ever. It’s also evident that Thought-Wired’s vision extends far beyond the NOUS. Dmitry sees a world where BCI is “just as common as traditional interfaces that we routinely use . . . BCI may end up playing a big part in areas that we don’t even think about at this stage just because this is the early days of this technology.” In short, we can expect that BCI devices will reach the ubiquity of  smart-phones and broaden the capabilities of both the handicapped and able-bodied. I have to agree with Dmitry on this point, for BCI is already invading our iPhones.

When I asked Dmitry how he will feel when his cousin uses the completed product, he replied, “That we made the first big step. Operating devices is only the basics, there is so much more that needs to be done: communication and mobility are the two big challenges after that.” That’s what I call intestinal fortitude. Godspeed, Thought-Wired. Godspeed.

If you’d like to follow Thought-Wired’s progress, you can Like their Facebook Page to get the latest updates. While you’re at it, go ahead and Like Singularity Hub if you haven’t already. Just saying.

You can find Singularity Hub’s full interview with Dmitry Selitskiy below:

Singularity Hub: What are the technical, educational, and/or professional backgrounds of the Thought-Wired team, and how did you guys meet?

Dmitry Selitskiy: We were (and some are) all students at the University of Auckland. Me and Mark took same classes as part of our BCom (Hons) in Information Systems. Konstantin is doing Masters of International Business here. Mark has completed his degree at the end of last year and is currently doing a grad program in New York. I previously graduated from the BBIM program at the University of Auckland in 2008. After that I worked for 2 years full time in a small IT company providing system integration and EDI solutions. Konstantin (who is my father I should have mentioned) is a qualified chemical engineer. He then went on to be an entrepreneur for more than 15 years. He relocated to New Zealand a year ago and decided to study International Business full time last June. So overall we are a very diverse team…

SH: That’s great. An academically and experientially diverse group of people. How did the idea of combining BCI and smart homes come about?

DS: Last year in September I attended a TEDx event here in Auckland. Cindy Gallop spoke at the event and presented her new project ifwerantheworld.com. As part of that attendees were encouraged to submit their world changing ideas to the site. My idea was to (somehow) help kids with disabilities to be equal with abled people. I have a personal connection to the issue of disability – my cousin has a severe case of CP which left him paralyzed from birth.

Anyway, the next day I randomly stumbled upon a TED talk by Tan Le, the CEO of Emotiv, the company that makes brain-computer interface headsets. She did a live demonstration as part of the presentation and it blew me away. If anyone could control an object on the screen with less than 10 minutes of training and without anything being implanted in the brain then that must be the solution to the problem that I raised previously.

That same day we put together a proposal for the Auckland University Imagine Cup competition (this proposal is available on our Scribd page by the way). So that’s how we started.

SH: That Tan Le talk was pretty spectacular, and the Emotiv EPOC has lots of potential. The last part of her talk was sort of a “call to arms” for developers out there like you. Besides seeing the TED talk, what were the main factors that led the team to decide on the Emotiv EPOC and not another EEG-based device, like Neurosky or a traditional EEG cap?

DS: A number of things… Neurosky while cheaper is a far less capable device. It has only one sensor and only one detection – concentration. This would be very limiting for building a comprehensive system. However, we are considering on working with Neurosky in the future. As for the traditional EEG devices, we did not go down that route because we lack neuroscience background required to interpret raw EEG data provided by medical EEG caps. Emotiv does the interpreting and gives us manageable commands. It has an SDK that allows us to easily tap into those detections. That being said, we also consider working with other EEG devices in the future when we have the necessary knowledge and skills.

SH: How involved is Emotiv with your project, and what assistance (if any) do they provide?

DS: Not very involved. Or maybe I should say not involved at all at this stage. We know they have seen our MS Imagine Cup proposal but that is as far as it goes. So far we have not asked for any assistance from them.

SH: Do you receive financial support from the Imagine Cup? How is the project supported financially?

DS: We came second in the University Imagine which gave us $500NZ cash prize and some gadgets that we also used to fund the project. We also raised the money for the headset using a New Zealand website www.unclepercy.co.nz. That was a big surprise since we did not plan on using it to raise money from people but rather just track our progress of getting the money together. Instead we ended up collecting the whole sum in about a week from our friends. That gave us a big confidence boost.

Now that we are in the NZ finals of the MS Imagine Cup we have a chance of winning bigger cash prizes. I think the winner receives $5000NZ. Otherwise, the Cup doesn’t really support us financially. Only through prizes.

SH: How did Thought-Wired translate the Emotiv hardware to this practical application? What contributions did the core TW team members make?

DS: Emotiv headset and the SDK is only a part of the system. The commands from the headset are then fed into our software which allows to perform actual tasks, for example operate an electric device. In this case, the software then talks to the devices. I can send you a diagram later to make it easier to understand where things fit in the system.

SH: Wow. So basically ready to go out of the box? Is it the same diagram from the Imagine Cup proposal?

DS: The idea is the same, yes. At the moment, it is just a proof of concept though and far from an actual product. But the intention is that yes, it will be a package that includes everything that you may need to operate many different devices through a common interface.

SH: What are the capabilities of the first prototype?

DS: Two main functions: device switch and a yes/no on-screen communication tool. It is capable of handling an unlimited number of devices which can be added or removed through application’s configuration.

Basically, the application allows you to operate (on/off) your configured devices. A video will help the explanation… We should have some kind of video in a week or two.

SH: That’s great, I look forward to it. It sounds like it has come pretty far along. Have there been any significant technical challenges or setbacks on this project? If so, could you describe them? How did the team overcome them?

DS: It’s a steep learning curve for sure. In the past 6 months we had to learn very many things, from basics of EEG to automation protocols that communicate over power lines through many things around programming.

It was a challenge to source the required electrical components since home automation market is tiny in New Zealand. Ebay helped a lot but also brought the challenges of fundamental differences between US and other countries in terms of power supply (110V/60Hz vs 220V/50Hz). The biggest challenge really is to learn a lot quickly without making too many mistakes especially those that cost money. But so far I think we’ve been doing well on this front besides an odd product return due to incompatibility…

Our main challenge at the moment is the final presentation for the MS Imagine Cup and especially the creative design aspect of things. But this is more competition related rather than the project overall.

SH: What setting is TW targeting first? It seems from the Imagine Cup proposal that you wanted to start in hospital settings and eventually move to group homes. Is that still the plan?

DS: Hospital and other managed care facilities seem like a good testing ground for us because of their existing infrastructure and skilled staff. However, now that we are comfortable with the home automation side of things we may reconsider this somewhat. This is actually something that we going to have a discussion on very shortly now that the technical side of the prototype is completed.

SH: Has the prototype been tested on any people with disabilities yet, or will that start once TW starts trying it out in hospitals?

DS: We have approached a number of organisations here in NZ to show the prototype and have it tested. Next Tuesday we are going to the Cerebral Palsy Society of NZ. So far they have been very enthusiastic about it. We all hope that tests with them will produce good results. We are definitely very confident with what we have at the moment.

SH: Beyond the Imagine Cup and the first hospital trials, what are some other short and long term goals of Thought-Wired?

DS: The shortest term goal is to do the best we can at the NZ Imagine Cup final to be able to compete in the world final in New York in July. Next we are planning in competing in Spark entrepreneur challenge (http://www.spark.auckland.ac.nz/) and thought that to put the focus back on the business side of things. The ultimate goal, of course, is to deliver a product to market.

SH: How do you think you will feel on the day that your cousin is able to use the final product of Thought-Wired?

DS: That we made the first big step. Operating devices is only the basics, there is so much more that needs to be done: communication and mobility are the two big challenges after that.

SH: That brings me to my next question. In general, where do you see BCI technology going in the next few decades?

DS: It’s the very early days. The only thing I can say for sure is that it may well become just as common as traditional interfaces that we routinely use. I definitely hope that it will make a big contribution in the disability field. However, there are a lot of other areas where it can produce great results: gaming (of course), art and performance and others. I also think that BCI may end up playing a big part in areas that we don’t even think about at this stage just because this is such early days of this technology.

<Images:  NOUS video (screen capture), Thought-Wired Imagine Cup Proposal, Thought-Wired>

<Video:  Thought-Wired>

<Sources: Thought-Wired, TED, Microsoft Imagine Cup>

For most, the eyes and face are windows to the soul, but for the bad guys at the 2014 World Cup, it could be a ticket to incarceration. Brazilian authorities are deploying the Ex-Eye, a state-of-the-art face recognition system that’s integrated with a sweet pair of Oakleys. The device, manufactured by the Israel-based company Ex-Sight, has received widespread coverage in the mainstream press, but we’ve come to find out many of the specs have been over-hyped. We’ll get to that later. For now, check out the video below from the Brazilian TV network, SBT. Pardon the Portuguese, but at least you can get a rough sense of the functionality.

After some gratuitous RoboCop footage, you can see a military police officer stoically surveying a crowd with cold intensity (0:12). Then, reporter Simone Quieroz shows off the Ex-Eye by pointing to the wearable components, eerily treating the expressionless officer as if he were the device in question (0:36). We get to see an “example” of Ex-Eye’s image analytics at 0:52, where the camera scans a crowd of cartoonish mugs and pinpoints a perp.

Like any techie out there, demos in Portuguese are not enough. We want to see some specifications! Well, for some misleading tech specs, look no further than this piece from the Telegraph. Along with some more played-out RoboCop references, there are some blatantly exaggerated claims. For example:

The camera will generally be used to scan faces in crowds up to 50 metres (164ft) away but can be adjusted, if searching for a specific target, to recognise faces as far as 12 miles away.

Picture this for a moment . . . a mini-camera mounted on glasses zooming on targets that are 192 soccer fields away, while maintaining a high enough resolution to accurately recognize a face. Does that jive with you? Me neither.

To sort this out, I got in touch with Arlin Gieschen, the President of Direct E-Secure, Ex-Eye’s U.S. distributor. To say the least, the Telegraph article certainly had a sensationalist slant. However, to my surprise, Mr. Gieschen revealed details that actually surpassed the orignally reported specs.

Let’s start by un-packaging the so-claimed 12 mile range. According to the source, the distance is fully dependent upon the camera that’s interfacing with Ex-Sight’s face recognition software. Indeed, there are some large military cameras that can zoom past the 12 mile mark. As long as the camera can capture a face with at least 40 pixels between the eyes, Ex-Sight’s algorithms can accurately identify faces using almost 50,000 distinct features. However, according to Direct E-Secure, there is no mobile mini-cam on the market today that can zoom 12 miles without losing this resolution. In the Telegraph excerpt above, the writer says the camera “can be adjusted” to attain this zoom power. Does this “adjustment” involve using a completely different, more powerful camera? Also, if you’ll refer back to the Brazilian video, you’ll see a stationary camera hanging over a van at 1:31. Why do you need that measly old camera if you’ve got a pair of super-cool RoboCop goggles? Because mini-cams don’t zoom 12 miles.

What about the Telegraph writer’s claim that the Ex-Eye can “capture 400 facial images per second”? Direct E-Secure’s President offered some clarification, suggesting that there are actually two steps in this process: face uploading and biometric analysis. Actually extracting a single face from a crowd requires 0.7 seconds, or about 1.4 faces per second. However, once the face is uploaded, the Ex-Sight algorithms can compare it to 100,000 faces per second.

In a sense, this is superior to the original reports because the Ex-Sight’s recognition system can search through large facial catalogues. To compare a captured face image to 13 million mugshots (the database limit mentioned in the Telegraph article), it would take just over 9 hours, more than enough time for any delinquent to escape the country (the system would arrive at the correct match sooner than this, but you get the picture). In fact, according to Mr. Gieschen, the 13 million mark is much lower than Ex-Sight’s software capabilities. He says the database size is practically unlimited, so users could literally compare any face to any mugshot on the planet.

Twelve miles? Four-hundred faces a second? These distorted specs spread like wildfire across the major sci-tech news outlets. Like dominos, Techland, Gizmodo, AOL News, and the Daily Mail fell for the “RoboCop Goggles” in quick succession. Don’t think this an isolated incident either. Last year, Singularity Hub critiqued another over-hyped story, the Guardian’s misleading article on “reversing aging” in mice. Why isn’t there more fact-checking and skepticism in the sci-tech media, and where does this misrepresentation leave the readers? Well, first we must understand the motivation. Titles containing terms like “RoboCop” or “Reverse Aging” are very clickable, drawing more eyeballs to the article and boosting potential ad revenues. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this, as long the article portrays scientific findings or technology with accuracy and a critical eye. However, if the sci-tech media  consistently exaggerates stories, the public could become de-sensitized to the real breakthroughs. Consequently, readers could have a skewed perspective of the current status of techno-scientific advances. While my educational background isn’t in journalism, this just doesn’t seem right to me.

But don’t let this journalistic over-hype curb your admiration for these hi-tech spectacles. The Ex-Eye is still pretty awesome. It bridges the gap between cutting edge surveillance and enforcement, allowing security personnel the opportunity to intervene at the moment of facial recognition. Paired with stationary cameras that can pick out targets at longer distances, Ex-Sight is definitely providing a comprehensive, state-of-the-art surveillance system to the Brazilian authorities. Frankly, I think RoboCop would be envious.

These gawker glasses may offer some assurance to anxious soccer fans at the most viewed sporting event in the world, but could they also be a potential tyrannical tool for state voyeurism? Don’t be so paranoid! Biometric analysis is not a sign of an imminent New World Order. As long as it’s not used to find political enemies or peer into private residences, I think this technology is ethically sound.  Besides, any tool can be misused if it falls into the wrong hands. This principle holds true for even the most mundane of human inventions. A shovel is made to dig dirt, but it can also be applied to more nefarious ends. Trust me, these new spyglasses aren’t nearly as evil as the cacophonous vuvuzela orchestras of 2010’s World Cup.

Still have privacy concerns? Well, just know that times are a-changin’. Whether we like it or not, privacy is the new celebrity. So, unless you want to walk around sporting a facepalm (see right) the rest of your life, try to learn to love these RoboCop glasses. But don’t worry, they aren’t as powerful as the spyglasses you’ve seen in the papers.

<Images:  Sistema Brasileiro de Televisao (SBT) (screen capture) (modified), Ex-Sight (screen capture), FIFA>

<Videos: SBT>

<Sources:  the Telegraph, SBT, Direct E-Secure>

And to think, it all started with a seemingly innocuous initiative called Skynet Research.

Okay, so sometimes I confuse movies with reality. But I had you going, right? No? Whatever.

Frivolities aside, the Terminator films have repeatedly foretold this apocalyptic scenario, and it has captured the imaginations of sci-fi enthusiasts for over a quarter century now. In fact, the exact date of “Judgment Day” has been rescheduled several times since the first film was released in 1984, another famous techno-dystopian year. Originally, Skynet became self-aware on August 4th, 1997, and Judgment Day ensued on August 29th. Then, there were a few rescheduled robotic Armageddons in the mid-2000s as Terminator progressed through a batch of sequels. Most recently, J-Day ended up getting pushed backed all the way to 2011, as revealed in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Pretend predictions of humanity’s dying hour persist in the science fiction world. Yet, we’re still here. There is no self-aware AI, and malicious doom-bots aren’t destroying our cities (yet). While some robots can “perceive” of self-image, truly self-aware AI are only theoretical, and some philosophically contend that conscious machines are a logical impossibility.

Despite undershooting the self-awareness forecast, James Cameron’s creation correctly foresaw the rise of automation and robotics in the military. For example, in 2010 alone, there were 118 drone strikes in Pakistan. Even though we were in the midst of Reagan’s  Star Wars Initiative when Terminator first hit the silver screen, I doubt most could have imagined drone strikes in the news on a regular basis.

Singularity Hub is no stranger to the meteoric rise of robots in the military. We witnessed the unmanned X-47B fighter jet spread its wings, the four-legged robotic Big Dog go for a walk, a robo-gun that can shoot the legs off a cockroach from 3 km away, and guard-bots protecting a cache of world-destroying nuclear weapons. Who knows what other fantastical creations are baking in DARPA’s R&D ovens? I know peace-lovers may wince when they see military inventions pop up in SciTech news, but they should know that military can seed some pretty cool technologies, like the Internet, for example.

Besides, what is there to worry about? A robo-pocalypse? Even if we’re due for one, Skynet has meddled in the timeline yet again, and Judgment Day has been pushed even further back. Ray Kurzweil thinks AI will pass the Turing Test by 2029, so that’s shaping up to be a good candidate year for the next Terminator film. Hopefully, Arnold will still be around to protect us.

<Images:  Terminator 2 (screen capture), Warner Bros. – Skynet Informational Video (screen capture), Boston Dynamics, Pundit Kitchen>

<Videos: Warner Bros.>

<Sources: Terminator Wiki>

Banner Image: L.C. Nøttaasen

Limitless is a film about Eddie Morra, a man who just wants to do his best. He’s ingesting a smart drug, or nootropic, named NZT-48 to take his cognitive abilities to the next level. His new powers propel him to soaring heights as he learns languages, discovers the grand formula of the stock market, and fights the bad guys with ease. Despite a handful of scientific inaccuracies, this action-packed techno-thriller is definitely fun to watch. However, long after the popcorn aroma has wafted away, curious filmgoers may continue to ponder if a nootropic of this magnitude is even possible. Could a single drug ever produce these kinds of results? Probably not. If such a drug existed, it would have to overcome the natural limits of the human brain. In our Body Version 1.0, drugs can only enhance cognition to a point, because they work within a preset biological framework. Right now, our gray matter is not so limitless, and cosmetic pharmacology – using drugs for the betterment of well people – can only take us as far as our brains will allow.

Is NZT For Real?

The trailer above is riveting, and the make-believe drug commercial makes for a good laugh. Nonetheless, nitpicking brain scientists could be mildly irked by the movie’s claims. Take NZT’s proposed mechanism: “You know how they say we can only access 20% of our brain? This lets you access all of it.” Either this claim is a clever marketing trick by the film’s underground pharmacist, or he simply doesn’t know that this is a well-known myth in that scientific community. The drug’s faux promotional website elaborates on the mechanism of action, suggesting that it works by increasing synaptic serotonin and norepinephrine. However, there are already drugs on the market that accomplish this, and none of the patients prescribed these medications for depression exhibit superhuman powers. The website also claims NZT increases inter-modular communication among the hippocampus, amygdala, and striatum. This would essentially increase activation of the limbic system and basal ganglia, systems primarily linked with emotionality/new memory coding and motor function, respectively. I highly doubt that a drug could cause the effects seen in this film without modulating the neocortex – the brain structure implicated in higher order thought processes. Promotional NZT was sent to a select group prior to the film’s release, so maybe they could prove me wrong.

Okay, we get it, Jeremy. NZT is make-believe. This is a movie, not a manuscript open to scientific peer-review. Alright, alright. But the more fundamental question still looms. Could any drug endow the user with near god-like mental capacities? Don’t get your hopes up, folks. To begin illustrating my point, check out a few deceptive shortcuts shown in the table below. In the film, Eddie Morra nearly dies from NZT withdrawal. As you can see, these nootropics also have a dark side. Warning : Singularity Hub in no way condones the use of these substances without the consent of a prescribing physician.

Receptor Promiscuity

Due to some dangerous side effects, it’s easy to “just say no” to the nootropics in the list above. This arises from the fact that pharmacological intervention is always “dirty” in a sense. To quote Dr. Henrik Dohlman, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UNC-Chapel Hill, “No drug is 100 percent effective, 100 percent free of side effects, and 100 percent safe.” For example, consider a compound that targets your run-of-the-mill serotonin receptor. After crossing the blood-brain barrier, it exerts non-specific effects by hitting multiple receptors and receptor subtypes in different regions of the brain. This reminds me of a variation of Abraham Maslow’s maxim, “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” In pharmacology, you have a hammer, but you don’t know if you’re hitting a nail, a screw, or Bigfoot (yet to be discovered drug targets). Even worse, it’s hard to determine what it means on a circuit or systems level if you hit all three.

Limitless appropriately highlights the inherent safety issues with drugs when Eddie Morra “skips frames” and cannot account for a whole day of his life after mixing alcohol and NZT. However, given the promiscuous nature of receptor binding, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to tease apart and enhance cognitive processes to the extent seen in this film with a single compound. In the history of psychopharmacology, boosting a distinct neural circuit or brain faculty with full efficacy, while leaving others untouched, has never been achieved.

Homeostasis and Neuroplasticity

Besides problems with receptor promiscuity, rebound effects present additional challenges in nootropic development. The body is inclined to homeostasis, fluctuating around a set-point to maintain biochemical balance. This principle is no less true in the brain. Ask any methamphetamine user about the drawbacks of tweaking, and they will invariably mention the ensuing “crash” – an anhedonic state characterized by dysphoria and soul-sucking ennui. In Limitless, NZT’s crash is potentially fatal. It appears that the farther you stretch the brain past its evolutionarily determined set-points, the harder it snaps back.

Some may object to my claims of a static set-point by calling attention to neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to restructure itself. In the film, Eddie Morra eventually weans himself off NZT, using the drug as a catalyst to induce long-lasting cogno-enhancement. Indeed, the brain can self-sculpt through neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, but there are upper bounds to this phenomenon in the adult brain. It’s highly unlikely that the cortex and language centers of the brain could rewire at a rate high enough to learn Mandarin, French, and Italian in a matter of days, as portrayed in the movie. Yes, the brain can change, but not that quickly. Furthermore, drugs that transiently enhance mood or cognition do change the brain, but not for the better, as in the case of cocaine addiction. Clearly, taking psychoactives to reboot your neural equilibrium is not a feasible path to god-like intelligence.

Future Neuro-Enhancement and Mind-Hacking

Due to the safety problems, rebound effects, and physical limitations, conventional nootropics are impractical as long-term, effective brain enhancers. So how can neuro-engineers circumvent these issues? The goals, of course, must be circuit specificity and the persistence of enhanced abilities over time. There has already been progress on the specificity front with deep-brain stimulation (DBS) and the TMS thinking cap. DBS is relatively high resolution, but this invasive technique is intended for Parkinson’s and severe depression patients, not for brain-boosting the well. TMS is less neuro-specific than DBS, but it’s practically risk-free. However, this technique is still in the tinkering stages.

For long-lasting enhancement, targeted gene therapy may provide solutions. For example, increasing NR2B expression in the hippocampus could improve learning, as it has in the genetically-modified doogie mouse. Of course, cosmetic gene therapy is years away, and we’ll have to change much more than one gene for the best results.

In addition to manipulating genes, future neuro-engineers may find that the physical and computational limits of neurons to be sub-optimal, and theycould seek to either supplement them with BCI or replace them with artificial neurons. These technologies, while promising, are still at the dawn of their development, and they are far from human cogno-enhancement applications. While these technologies are limited right now, it seems machine interfacing and bio-engineering could be the only means of making us truly limitless.

In mean time, as avid Hub followers should know, you can build your cognitive prowess without pharmacological or technological intervention. Firstly, start by getting plenty of sleep every night and exercising to increase hippocampal volume.  If you find the improvement negligible, try meditation, which has been shown to attenuate stress-induced cognitive deficits. You could also master the art of mnemonics to broaden your memory capacity several fold. Forward-thinking futurists may refer to this as “mind-hacking,” but these tricks are nearly as old as civilization itself.

To Enhance or Not to Enhance

Despite the potential of neuro-enhancement, bio-conservatives argue that we should stick with these “natural” means of improving cognition, leaving the smart drugs, genetic engineering, and BCI to science fiction. There are also those who compare smart drugs to steroids, claiming it’s unethical to use any substance as a performance enhancer. If taken to boost an SAT score, then I would agree. However, to both bio-conservatives and performance ethicists, I say there are scenarios where it’s morally imperative to utilize neuro-enhancement, especially when it could reduce suffering in the world.

How, you say? While athletic performance can uplift a nation (as seen in the film Invictus), cognitive performance can bring about novel insights about the world. As we’ve covered, brain-doping is already common in  scientific circles. There’s even speculation that Francis Crick envisioned the double-helix structure of DNA on LSD, and fellow Nobel Laureate, Kary Mullis, outright admitted that the drug influenced the development of PCR. Undoubtedly, the downstream fruits of these platform biotechnologies have the potential to reduce suffering on a global scale. If you “cheat” to hasten trailblazing discoveries, through drugs or other neuro-enhancements, should you be condemned and vilified? With any luck, we’ll reach consensus on this issue by the time safe, effective, and reliable cogno-enhancers enter the scene. Until then, feel free to call me a pharma-fuelled fraud for a stimulating nootropic – a double-shot dirty chai – expedited the writing of this article. Guilty as charged. Now pass the NZT!

<Images: Virgin Produced (modified), Wikimedia Commons>

<Videos: Virgin Produced>

<Sources: Virgin Produced, Erowid, Essential Psychopharmacology>

When Deb Roy’s son invites his girlfriend over for dinner with his family, there will be much more than photo albums to embarrass the teenager. His parents will have plenty of ammunition: 90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio. It’s the most comprehensive lifelogging event the world has ever seen, dwarfing a recent frame-by-frame photolog of an aging young girl. Moreover, the lifelog wasn’t compiled solely for family reminiscence, but for scientific reasons as well. As part of the Human Speechome Project, Deb Roy, an MIT cognitive scientist, is using this deluge of video footage to investigate early language acquisition. You can see his TED presentation on the subject, which includes some of the thousands of hours of footage, in the video below. From this pedagogical case study, his team also cleverly translated their budding ideas to human behavior in digital communities. With social networking and the growing prevalence of mobile devices with cameras, is this endeavor a precursor to even grander forms of lifelogging? If so, will scientists be equipped to make sense of world-logging – recording every moment on the planet – if it emerges? Only time will tell. For now, we all can marvel at Dr. Roy’s impressive feat of lifelog analytics.

Earlier this year, Deb Roy dazzled a TED audience with his presentation, “The Birth of a Word,” featured below. Because of the unprecedented nature of the project, the captivating visualizations, and the personal touch, the video garnered widespread attention. It even earned a tweet from Ashton Kutcher. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and allot 20 minutes of your time to watch the TED Talk in full. You won’t be disappointed.

Roy opens with a thought-provoking scenario:

Imagine you could record your life – everything you said, everything you did – available in a perfect memory store at your fingertips, so you could go back and find memorable moments and relive them . . . or sift through traces of time and discover patterns in your own life that had previously gone undiscovered.

Here, Deb Roy is talking about using lifelogging as a tool to answer challenging questions about human behavior and life in general. The question that he and his wife, a speech scientist, were trying to address has eluded child development experts for years: How does the infant’s tabula rasa acquire human language? It has been a subject of rigorous investigation since the titan of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget, offered his own theory of child language development. While Dr. Roy and his wife did not completely answer the question, their videos certainly shed valuable light on the matter.

There were some fascinating phenomena that emerged from Dr. Roy’s daunting dataset. He starts with some raw data at 4:59, where his son gradually improves his pronunciation of the word “water.” It’s actually quite beautiful to hear the word crystallize from its linguistic predecessor, “gaga.” In a recent CNN article, Dr. Roy eloquently referred to this verbal evolution as the “acoustic equivalent of a time-lapse video of a flower blossoming.” But what does it all mean? Well, the MIT team sorted through the hundreds of words in Roy Junior’s early vocabulary and found that he learned a word when the complexity of caregiver utterances reached a minimum (5:58). In other words, the parents and their nanny were subconsciously simplifying their speech to meet the nascent talker halfway. It seems to be related to “motherese” in which parents heighten the pitch of their voice in the presence of a newborn. This adjustment is thought to assist language acquisition. Here, the Roy family has revealed a previously hidden parent-child feedback loop in speech development by applying home video analytics. Jean Piaget and perhaps Bob Saget, another home video enthusiast, would be very proud.

Okay, so lifelogging can address problems of child linguistics. What about questions of a broader scope? Luckily, the MIT Media Lab had more tricks up their sleeves. By correlating “social hotspots” in the home with specific words that Roy Junior learned, the team built “wordscapes” (10:15), mountainous, data-rich structures describing utterance frequencies at particular locations. This spurred the imagination of Dr. Roy’s PhD student, Michael Fleischman, who envisaged translating this concept from the Roy household to the digitally-based community (11:19). In “virtual living rooms,” source content in mass media leads to commentary and discussion in social media. Previously, much like pinpointing how environment influences word births, it has been tricky to monitor how source content mediates responses in the digital world. However, by utilizing high-throughput media analytics, the MIT team was able to capture these media feedback loops. This is brilliantly depicted at 14:45 as a co-viewing clique, a fundamental unit of content-commentary interaction which includes the original source and the linked responses in social media. To see the President Obama’s State of the Union make a “nation explode in conversation,” check out 15:54. From ideas born from the unassuming archives of Roy Junior’s lifelog, the MIT lab has unearthed previously unknown dynamics of the mass media world.

As you could imagine, these media feedback loops might provide invaluable audience engagement information to advertisers, TV executives, and political campaigns. Using media-social media interactions as unsolicited crowdsourcing could literally transform Internet audiences into massive focus groups. To make this a reality, Dr. Roy and his former PhD student spearheaded Bluefin Labs, a company with the mission of helping organizations “link social media comments directly to their televised source—at scale, with precision and near real-time.” One of their tools, a social heatmap of television programming, is currently available on their website. At the moment, Bluefin is demonstrating their technology to Fortune 100 companies, and they expect a fully developed product by year’s end. I wonder if Roy Junior will get a cut? If the prospects of this technology tickle your fancy, check out the promotional video below to augment your excitement.

These are just the first steps of converting the vast stockpiles of videos, photos, and commentary into meaningful data. As social media is chronicling the lives of millions and cell phone cameras are approaching omnipresence, humanity at-large is building a worldlog of epic proportions. Almost certainly, there are valuable hidden insights within this treasure trove of human artifacts. Throw in unstructured data on science, politics, public health, and history, and the possibilities grow exponentially. We might be able to track how language is born not just in the individual, but civilization as a whole. Digging further, we might discover how cultural conditions can lead to scientific breakthroughs. The question is:   Who is up to the Herculean task of elucidating global behavior patterns from this ocean of world knowledge? IBM has shown interest in this effort on a small scale with social media analytics, so perhaps a more computationally powerful version of Watson will be up to the challenge.

Also, what if we expand measurable life beyond the limits of sound, images, and text? All recorded human behavior is really just the end product of neural activity, so knowledge derived from advanced neuroscience might produce more fundamental insights than lifelogging through video. For a moment, imagine recording and interpreting brain activity among multiple individuals simultaneously. Now, imagine a whole community . . . then the world. The gates of social neuroscience would be wide open, transitioning worldlog analytics from  behaviorism to biological understanding.

Alright, now I’m tiptoeing into science fiction, but in light of Deb Roy’s inspirational work, I can’t help but dream. His project foreshadows new tools that could change our world for the better. Through immediate and long range feedback loops observed in lifelogs and the hypothetical worldlog, we could improve our self-awareness, understanding, and behavior on both an individual and global scale. So, the next time you post a picture of your vacation on Flickr or upload your extreme sports exploits to Youtube, don’t think of it as an exercise in vanity. You are adding an infinitesimally small piece to an ever-growing library of human events that could answer our deepest questions. This echoes the bit of Socratic wisdom at the beginning of this article, a statement that really drives at the core of Deb Roy’s work and all the other lifelogging devotees out there. Socrates, if he were cryogenically unfrozen today, might amend his famous quotation: “An unexamined life is not worth living, and an unexamined world is not worth inhabiting. So take plenty of pictures! And don’t drink the hemlock.”

<Image Credits:  TED (modified), Bluefin Labs (modified)>

<Video Credits: TED, Bluefin Labs>

<Sources: TED, Bluefin Labs, CNN>

To appreciate the advances in NIPD, it’s necessary to understand the dire status of prenatal diagnosis. Before pregnancies undergo invasive testing, many mothers are screened using a non-invasive blood test that looks for biomarkers linked to certain congenital disorders. However, these tests are not very accurate, and invasive methods are still required if the results are positive. There are also other risk factors, such as age, that determine if the pregnancy qualifies for further testing. Unfortunately, these tests (amniocentesis or CVS) carry a troubling risk of miscarriage. The risks even apply to healthy fetuses who receive a false-positive on the blood screen. Therefore, many accidental miscarriages occur in which no disorder is detected. Using traditional methods, the prenatal diagnosis process is emotionally brutal for future parents. It’s clear that a safe and accurate test is needed.

New developments in sequencing technology show promise. Dennis Lo of the Chinese University of Hong Kong has spent years finding the billion little bits of fetal DNA in maternal blood and reconstructing them. Recent results demonstrated that the maternal and fetal genomes co-existed at a relative proportion to each other in the mother’s blood, allowing his lab to quantify imbalances. Therefore, an over-representation of  mutations in  maternal blood would indicate the presence of a genetic disorder in the fetus.

In a recent BMJ article, his team tested the feasibility of NIPD for Down syndrome on a large scale. After refining their sequencing protocol, they were able to detect trisomy-21 (Down Syndrome) with a predictive accuracy of 96.6%. Dr. Lo’s lab also applied the “genetic imbalance” approach to hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder. In results to be published in an upcoming issue of Blood, the team recruited seven pregnant women who were carriers of genes known to cause hemophilia. Using only 10 milliliter blood samples, they accurately detected hemophilia in four pregnancies due to an abnormally high presence of the mutant gene. It’s important to note that for both studies, the pregnancies were already considered “high-risk” because of age or genetic background of the parents, so the accuracy of this test in general population is yet to be determined. However, once NIPD reaches the doctor’s office, there will be several immediate benefits. Currently, few mothers-to-be opt for screening due to the hazards. Accurate NIPD will take that risk out of the equation, allowing accurate prenatal screening to become standard care. Moreover, it will inform the decisions of physicians, who could tweak their neonatal protocol if they know the child has hemophilia or disorders that complicate the birth process. Of course, the greatest benefit will be that no parent will have to endure an accidental miscarriage because of a test.

The Dawn of Prenatal Eugenics?

Now that we know the positives of accurate NIPD, it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room: the possibility of rising abortion rates. In a Nature op-ed, Henry T. Greely points out the shift of sex ratios in Asia after the introduction of accessible, inexpensive ultrasound. One study found a 759:1000 girl to boy ratio. After noting that these differences were not caused by still birth, they concluded that “selective abortion of female fetuses [was] the most plausible explanation.” Because of this disturbing phenomenon, Greely wonders if prenatal genotyping could also encourage prenatal selection. In the article, he makes a dire prediction:

Fears of eugenics will increase as such testing moves from fatal diseases to less serious medical conditions and then on to nonmedical characteristics — sex selection today; skin, hair and eye colour tomorrow; perhaps, eventually, traits such as some cognitive or physical abilities.

Is NIPD really a sign of  reproductive dystopia? For those worried about high abortion rates for birth defects,  you may be surprised that this is already a reality. The table below summarizes studies from Singapore to the U.S. that looked at abortions following the diagnosis of a variety of congenital disorders.

Evidently, most high-risk pregnancies in 1980s and 1990s studies ended with an abortion if serious congenital dysfunction was detected. If NIPD expands accurate testing to all pregnancies, will we see a rise in abortions? Provided that termination rates remain high for birth defects, then most likely, but the increase will be difficult to forecast. The current U.S. abortion rate is around 2 per 100 women of child-bearing age, and the prevalence of live-births with congenital disorders is about 1 out of 100 pregnancies. Assuming that all fetuses with congenital disorders are aborted (a highly improbable scenario), then the annual abortions would jump about 50%. However, any increase would face the overarching trend of  falling abortion rates. While preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) could be contributing to this decline, there were only 500 PGD babies born in the 1990s, a negligible proportion of all abortions given in that decade. Also, rates of termination after prenatal diagnosis have decreased to a greater extent in the American southeast, home of the Bible Belt. Although this is correlational, it suggests that cultural values could be a significant driver of parental decisions and technology is not the only determinant. These variables ensure that accurately predicting abortion trends will be difficult, if not impossible. Regardless of the final outcome, abortions will continue to be unacceptable under any circumstances for some. However, one should keep in mind that NIPD will save the pregnancies that would have been accidentally cut short by invasive methods. At least the greatly diminished threat of miscarriage will give more parents the opportunity to decide.

How about prenatal genotyping of nonmedical conditions? Will many parents intentionally terminate a pregnancy if they find the potential intelligence, strength, or eye color of the fetus to be undesirable? Not yet. Genes are the template, not the final product. It’s now known that epigenetic factors (modifications of DNA expression patterns) play a significant role in who we become. Also, the brain has proven repeatedly that it can adapt to even the most profound deficits. For example, who would have thought that a girl born with half a brain could sustain a reasonable quality of life? If complex genotyping is ever common, it will be important for genetic counselors to educate parents on how neuroplasticity and epigenetics can help children live beyond their genes. Nonetheless, even with a concerted effort from counselors, some parents would end a pregnancy over trivial characteristics.

Another factor to consider is that complex genetics is still in the early stages, and other technologies developing in the background could alter the eugenics fears. Why abort a pregnancy when you can use in utero gene therapy? Why even conceive of a child with a disorder if advanced pre-conception testing and karyomapping is available? These technologies come with their own ethical baggage, but that’s another fight for another day.

Few issues can  ignite dystopian discourse like reproductive science. However, I hope we can collectively revel in the progress made in NIPD. No more scary needles for amniocentesis. No more risks of losing a child over a test result. Ethical concerns will always be a part of science and medicine, and no one really knows if technology will take us to unprecedented heights or lead us to our downfall. However, I know that, for the foreseeable future, NIPD will be a damn good thing.

[Image Credits:  Wylio, Down Syndrome Research and Practice (modified), Blood, Prenatal Diagnosis]

[Sources: BMJ, Blood, Nature Publishing]