Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft has confirmed that its financial services-focused industry cloud will be officially available on November 1 2021.

The news comes eight months after the company revealed it was launching three new industry clouds this year — for manufacturing, not-for-profits, and financial services. Today’s announcement means the financial-focused cloud is the first of the three to receive an official launch date, though Microsoft has previously introduced an industry cloud for health care and its retail-focused incarnation currently sits in public preview.

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Driving this revolution has been a new breed and wave of founders and startups that merge the worlds of technology and bio — importantly, not just the old world of biotech (or a narrow definition of tech in bio as only “digital health”), but something much broader, bigger, and blending both worlds. In short, biology — enabled by technology — is eating the world. This has not only changed how we diagnose, treat, and manage disease, but has been changing the way we access, pay for, and deliver care in the healthcare system. It is now entering into manufacturing, food, and several other industries as well. Bio is becoming a part of everything.

This new era of industrialized bio — enabled by AI as well as an ongoing, foundational shift in biology from empirical science to more engineered approaches — will be the next industrial revolution in human history. And propelling it forward is an enormous new driving force, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, its ever-evolving strains, and the resulting COVID-19 disease pandemic and response — which I believe is analogous to our generation’s World War II (WW2). In other words: a massive global upheaval, but that later led to unprecedented innovation and significant new players.

Continue reading “The Coming Age for Tech x Bio: The ‘Industrial Bio Complex’” »

Sickle-cell disease is incurable and affects 15,000 people in the UK.

And the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said the hope of reducing health inequalities for black people, who are predominantly affected and often have poorer health to start with, made the drug worth recommending.

It called it “an innovative treatment”.

Continue reading “First new treatment for sickle cell in 20 years” »

Image-guided radiation therapy has evolved to include the ability to track tumors in real time during treatment. It’s improving cure rates and limiting side effects for a growing number of cancer patients.

Think of it like radio making way for television. For more than a century, radiation therapy has been effective in treating cancer. From the first X-rays, to today’s computed tomography (CT) scans, physicians have relied on various imaging techniques to locate tumors and guide their treatment. Enter real-time tumor tracking.

“Magnetic Resonance-guided therapy is really a new paradigm,” said Dr. Rodney Ellis, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He notes the leading-edge technology merges MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) with a linear accelerator, making it possible to reshape radiation dosage based on daily changes in a tumor’s shape, size and position and its surrounding healthy anatomy.

Efforts to study the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic have received help from a surprising source. A biologist in the United States has ‘excavated’ partial SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from the beginnings of the pandemic’s probable epicentre in Wuhan, China, that were deposited — but later removed — from a US government database.

The partial genome sequences address an evolutionary conundrum about the early genetic diversity of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, although scientists emphasize that they do not shed light on its origins. Nor is it fully clear why researchers at Wuhan University asked for the sequences to be removed from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA), a repository for raw sequencing data maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Partial SARS-CoV-2 sequences from early outbreaks in Wuhan were removed from a US government database by the scientists who deposited them.

Stimulating STEM Innovation & Securing U.S. High-Tech Economy — Kimberly A. Reed, Fmr President and Chairman Export-Import Bank of the United States.

Kimberly A. Reed just finished up a 2-year term as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM — https://www.exim.gov). She was the first woman to lead EXIM in the agency’s 87-year history, was the first recipient of EXIM’s highest honor, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Award, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2019 on a strong bi-partisan basis.

Continue reading “Kimberly A Reed — Fmr EXIM Chairman / President — Stimulating STEM & Securing U.S. High-Tech Economy” »

#Israel is on the verge of finalizing a #COVID19 vaccine whose creators believe could offer better protection against variants than its international counterparts such as #Pfizer. In an interview with ‘The Jerusalem Post’, the father of Israel’s BriLife coronavirus vaccine, Prof. Shmuel Shapira, predicted that when the country’s #vaccine is ready, “it will be better” than what its citizens have today.

HEALTH AFFAIRS: The father of the BriLife initiative explains Israel’s strategic imperative to have its own vaccine.

The timeframe for reinfection is fundamental to numerous aspects of public health decision making. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, reinfection is likely to become increasingly common. Maintaining public health measures that curb transmission—including among individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2—coupled with persistent efforts to accelerate vaccination worldwide is critical to the prevention of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.

US National Science Foundation.

By half, it would soon ask health officials around the world to authorise its use ⤵️.

If authorised for use, it would be the first pill shown to treat COVID and a major step in controlling the pandemic.