Author: Yashveer Ramparsad
Publish Date: 10/07/2022
Catching up on Events
Well its been a while hey, we certainly have been awefully busy these past many months. Time certainly does fly, the year is almost gone folks and I really hope that you have been knocking the socks off this year! At the beginning of the year, usually its resolutions time but as the days and months go by we got to keep executing on those resolutions. Harder than said really, fatigue, waning discipline, old habits and routines, I definitely know it can be a pain. But remember why you created those resolutions in the first place and you should pull through not matter what. Well lets dive into whats been happening shall we?
Giving the voiceless a Voice?
There have been quite a lot of projects that have come past these doors and every single one of them we were happy to grab on to. I remember mentioning in the past that health would feature a great deal on that path. One of the first projects we will be onto is utilising brain waves and machine learning to give those a voice that have none. Interesting right? I mean if you watched the latest Top Gun, where they used Machine Learning together with voice samples to provide Val Kilmer with a voice was incredible (some nostalgic feels there). Whilst this is similar in concept, utilising cloud computing power we also have use of another device.
Enter the EEG (Electroencelphalogram - yes big word !). Well the technology during the research phase involves using a head band of sorts or overhead multi sensor device that relays information to us. Through continuous sets of data analysis of the situations and subject, the algorithms are able to interpret brain waves to actually mean something. You do get a fair amount of these devices as consumer devices, for example the popular Muse device for example. The goal is to derive this into something that a person that struggles to communicate, can use daily and allow them the freedoms that perhaps were limited in the past. Still a long way to go, but the progress on such a project will be slow (long haul project with a need that is not so surprisingly large).
Physiotherapy, Just got an Upgrade!
It is widely known that I am an Apple fan (don't smirk 🙂 ), but it has to be said that they have challenged the landscape of the traditional smart watch. Other brands like Samsung, FitBit, Huawei all have raised their game. What does this mean for us? Well we have been working on this PhysioTherapy project, for those of you who watched WWDC 2021 and 2022, there were updates to HealthKit to better track physical movements. Likewise with the other devices as well they have updated their API's to allow reading of their very special sensors, what does this mean for you? Well in terms of personal health and physiotherapy a great deal in fact. Exercises can be now performed at home and tracked and sent to your health care provider, making sure you steadily progress toward a fitter self (winning!).
It needs mentioning though that it is a pain sometimes to deal with multiple manufacturers, which means multiple platform multi app (urrrrgh, if only these were integrated into Ionic/Capacitor already). Lead times are really slow here (no matter how hard I crack the Dev teams whip - please note No Developers Were Harmed in the making of these Apps in case you were wondering 😉 ). Release will be with Apple and the App Store First, so watch out for that Announcement!
Crypto Crash Again (Oh No!)
Well, no post is really over unless I talk about this right? Hahahaha :/ Anyway, this one was a hard one, like really hectic. Bitcoin maxis (people who are BTC all the way), really had a tough time of it trying to defend the crash and people calling it a hoax and failure of investment. This time though feels a lot different than the many times that it crashed before. A fair amount of people speculating whether this is the bottom or is there more to go (at this time there is a partial recovery). Algorithms advance, use cases expand and usefulness in my eyes at least has always been my end game (really trying to derive a use case for on chain health data here).
Needless to say there have been other Crypto that has come to the forefront namely Cardano or Polygon for example. It's a great sign that whilst in some cases things are bad, teams are still building and proving the worth of the algorithms themselves and their actual purposes being fulfilled. To this end they have largely been used in the NFT market (which also took a hit as people sought to get liquidity in this time). Projects opt to build on top of these over Ethereum for example with a variety of reasoning (quick read about this here).
What ever the case may be, teams are still building, advancing the trenches and are ready to take on anything (a fair amount of projects in the NFT space that I am involved in are quite open about this fact).
Conclusions
Things in the second half of the year are looking up! So keep that chin up and keep moving forward. Lots to do yet and lots to achieve, for myself and you hey. One day at a time I guess. This is me once again, signing off for now (hopefully I'll get a chance to write one of these again soon - need to really be more focused here).