Today we heard Elizabeth Holmes speak in court — through recordings made for a Fortune article by Roger Parloff. In those recordings, Holmes claims that Theranos worked with the military, was currently working with pharmaceutical companies, that the company could do more than a thousand tests on its proprietary machines, and that the results were “at the highest level of quality.” None of this was true. Parloff has about 10 hours of taped conversations with Holmes Lying to reporters is not illegal, but it’s generally a bad idea since we tend to record our conversations. We’ve heard a lot about…
Author: Mike Harrison
In order to use the EKG feature on the newly available Withings ScanWatch, people have to first get the tool unlocked through a prescription from a healthcare provider — a first for EKG-enabled smartwatches on the market. Other smartwatches like the Apple Watch let people start using the feature right out of the box. The requirement was part of Withings’ Food and Drug Administration authorization, which says that the device can track heart rhythms and detect atrial fibrillation “when the monitor is prescribed or used under the care of a physician.” The extra step of obtaining a prescription came out…
Doctors aren’t usually in the business of publishing photography guides. But Jenna Lester, a dermatologist at the University of California San Francisco, was growing frustrated with the poor quality images she’d receive of her dark-skinned patients. It wasn’t just a cosmetic issue — the bad photos meant darker-skinned people weren’t getting the same quality of care. So in January, Lester co-authored a paper in the British Journal of Dermatology that gives a step-by-step guide to photographing skin of color accurately in clinical settings. Lester, who herself is Black, said, “I feel like these issues and my life is constantly me…
1Password comes with a revamped design and features following AgileBits’ announcement about its upgraded version. According to the company, the popular password manager will now boast improved security and privacy capabilities on top of its 14-day free trial. Here’s why you should opt for a powerful security tool for Microsoft Windows. New 1Password 8 For Windows (Photo : Leon Neal/Getty Images)LONDON, ENGLAND – AUGUST 09: In this photo illustration, A woman is silhouetted against a projection of a password log-in dialog box on August 09, 2017 in London, England. With so many areas of modern life requiring identity verification, online…
Brian Grossman had 20 years of experience in the healthcare space — but his firm, PFM Health Sciences, invested $96 million in Theranos anyway. On the stand, he explained that his firm had relied on Elizabeth Holmes’ information about Theranos, as well as financial models provided by the company, to make the call. Taken as a whole, Grossman’s testimony in US v Elizabeth Holmes was damning. Unlike the investors from family offices, he’d visited Theranos’ facilities, had his blood drawn, and sent emails with extensive due diligence questions. He had experience in healthcare. He’d checked out Walgreens’ public statements about…
The Food and Drug Administration authorized a virtual reality system as a prescription treatment for chronic back pain, the agency announced today. The therapy, called EaseVRx, joins the short list of digital therapeutics cleared by the agency over the past few years. EaseVRx includes a VR headset and a device that amplifies the sound of the user’s breath to assist in breathing exercises. It uses principles from cognitive behavior therapy, which aims to help people recognize and understand various thought patterns and emotions. The program addresses pain through relaxation, distraction, and improved awareness of internal signals, the FDA said in…
Digital tools like motivational text messages that try to nudge people to do more physical activity aren’t effective for poor people, according to a new meta-analysis. In one of the most comprehensive efforts to tease apart the impact of behavioral change programs on people with different income levels, the study authors showed that apps and wearables only helped bump physical activity levels for people with high socioeconomic status. The finding bolsters arguments that digital health interventions can end up widening health gaps between groups and that they’re designed for people with more money and more education. The new analysis looked…
Lately I have been reflecting on Alan Eisenman, Theranos investor and human cowboy boot. He’s wealthy, the kind of character Matthew McConaughey will play in about 15 years; on the stand, his hair was almost as white as his shirt, which was unbuttoned at the top. (No tie, of course.) He seemed like someone that would be fun to drink a whiskey with, as long as he got to do all the talking. In court, his sense of grievance was palpable: this man feels he has been done wrong. “I think there was business fraud,” Eisenman said. “I think I…
As power outages worsen across the country, experts are sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic impacts on human health. Last week, the Energy Information Administration reported that the average person in the US spent over eight hours without power in 2020 — the worst year for outages in records going back to 2013. Some of those outages were deadly: dozens of people died in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which knocked out power just before a heat wave, while hundreds of people were killed in Texas during a blackout triggered by a deep freeze. But there are…
A new Gmail security threat is currently targeting email users. Experts claimed that the new malicious campaign also affects other popular email services, such as Outlook. (Photo : Photo by LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images)Illustration picture shows a mobile phone and a laptop with the Google website, Monday 14 December 2020. Google is experiencing major technical difficulties in their services worldwide, resulting in problems with for example their e-mail service GMail and video channel website You Tube. BELGA PHOTO LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ Related Article: BREAKING: iPhone Thieves Discover New Way to Steal Apple ID | Beware of This New Text Message…