International CES and the Storage Visions 2015

Christmas to most if not all Christians, symbolizes not just the birth of a Savior but also the beginning of Miraculous, Mysterious, Magical, and Mind-Boggling Matters. Jesus’ conception by the Blessed Virgin Mary is one such example.

As Jesus Christ went about His Mission on Earth, He performed Miracles that proved to be Magical, Mind-Boggling, and in fact, Mysterious.  Many people who became Saints were gifted to perform similar acts.

While we read about them and faithfully believed them, we were not lucky to be around and witness them.  We just believed that the Holy Spirit granted these mortal beings with knowledge and skills to produce exceptionally unique products.

On January 3, 2015, I will be in Las Vegas, Nevada – the Sin City. I will attend again as I have done for several years now, the International CES – the world’s largest show and gathering of individuals and companies involved in the consumer electronics industry.

The expectation is that there will be at least 20,000 new products and technologies that will be launched, demonstrated, and displayed. As a member of the Press, I write about many of these new technologies that I consider amazing and unique. I usually ask the CEO or the PR representative of the firm to answer this question:  “Do you consider your product as mind-boggling, magical, miraculous, or mysterious?”

Published by the Asian Journal USA (out of San Diego) offline, online and digital editions, my articles on these awesome technologies attracted wide readership and reactions as well as interest from PR firms representing technology and electronic companies.

As of today, I have received about 700 invitations from PR representatives to interview the CEOs, to attend Press Conferences, receptions, or to visit their booths.  I am sorting out the invites and respond based on my pre-determined priorities. Some have even sent sample products for review.

Ironically, in the Sin City, gathered together will be people who are gifted like Saints who apparently created mind-boggling, magical, miraculous, and even mysterious products that benefit mankind.

The conference and show exhibit physical devices that make life more comfortable and convenient at home, at the office, in the car, in schools and universities, in your body, and anywhere. Amidst all these, the event is also about contents – data, information, knowledge, intelligence, education, entertainment, texts, documents, music, audio, video, photos and many more.

This is why prior to the CES show on January 6-9, 2015, I am also attending as a Press member, the Storage Visions 2015 Conference being held at Riviera Hotel on January 4-5, 2015. The event is about digital storage both in digital devices and in the cloud.

Contents require that they be stored or even archived so that they could be retrieved anywhere and anytime and as fast when needed.

When we introduced the eBook technology in the Philippines, we used to say that one (1) megabyte (MB) of memory could store one (1) thousand pages of documents. So, one gigabyte (GB) could accommodate one (1) million pages.  Which means that if you have 128 gigabytes (GB), 128 million pages could be stored.

If the 128 GB is inside your iPhone, iPAD or Smartphone, you can virtually have the entire National Library of the Philippines in your pocket or in your hands.

Suppose you have one (1) Terabyte or 1000 Gigabytes? Or one (1) Petabyte, which is 1000 Terabytes? Or even one (1) Exabyte, which equals 1000 Petabytes?

Compute!

It is indeed mind-boggling to imagine how much contents could be stored and retrievable when needed.

And we are not even talking about the cloud! Amazon.com, which bought the eBook technology that we introduced in the Philippines, is offering UNLIMITED Storage for Photos for Prime members. That is just a start. 

UNLIMITED KNOWLEDGE here we come!

mHealth Summit 2014: An Ecosystem of Opportunity

I am currently attending the mHealth Summit 2014 being held at Gaylord Hotel Resort and Convention Center. I am amazed how a big conference like this has been well planned and organized as well as how efficiently and effectively is it being controlled and managed.

Last year’s attendees of the Summit come from more than 60 countries. Like before, it focuses in at least 18 areas namely: Aging in Place; Business; Disease Management; Disruptive Care Models; Finance and Investment; Games for Health; Global Health; M2M; Mobile Commerce; Personalized Medicine; Pharma / Biotech; Policy Issues; Privacy, Security & Identity; Reimbursement; Research; Startup / New to Market; Technology; and Wellness, Fitness and Prevention.

Belonging to at least seven (7) industry affiliations, the number of attendees is identified with the following: Technology/Mobile Operator/Carrier, 30%; Healthcare Organization/Insurance Company/Payer, 20%; Association/Non-Profit/NGO and CBO, 13%; Public Health/Medicine/Pharmaceutical Company, 5%; International Agency/International Corporation, 4%; Marketing/Media/Press, 4%; and Federal or State Government, 2%.

Ten (10) sectors are represented namely: Academic Researchers; Content and Application Developers; Device and Technology Vendors; Mobile Operators / Carriers; NGOs and International Organizations; Not-for-Profit Organizations; Payers; Policy and Regulatory Leaders (U.S. & Abroad); Private Sector; and Providers / Healthcare Systems;

When identified functionally, the attendees fulfill the following roles in the industry: (mHealth Summit website)

The mHealth Summit 2014 started last Sunday (December 7^th) and will end tomorrow (December 11^th). I have visited many of the booths at the Exhibit Floor and hope to see all of them before the end of the conference.

I have also attended some of the seminars. What attracted me the most was the session on the Apple HealthKit platform. As a user of Apple mobile products I got interested because the platform as described by Apple itself, offers the ability to track and share a vast range of health, fitness, and medical data points across multiple apps and devices. It can be used as a wellness and fitness tool – aggregating data about diet, activity, exercise, and sleep from multiple sources – as well as a serious medical tool for managing and monitoring chronic conditions.

According to Apple, as a medical tool, HealthKit offers tremendous value for a few different reasons. It can aggregate data from a range of apps or connected medical devices, like a glucose meter or blood pressure cuff, as well as consumer-oriented fitness devices. It also offers the ability to automate the recording of medical metrics. If you're using connected devices, this helps to ensure the accuracy of the data because it goes straight from the device to the associated app on your iPhone and then into HealthKit. If your doctor's office uses an electronic records system that supports HealthKit, that data can then be automatically entered into your medical record.

“For the most part, you don’t interact with HealthKit directly. The platform is really little more than a data store on your iPhone, and apps can write information into and pull information out of it. Some apps do both, though others may only input data or retrieve it. 

Most of the actual processing of HealthKit data—comparing the calories you've eaten with the number you've burned throughout the course of the day, getting data from a fitness tracker or other device, or compiling information and sending it to your doctor—is done in the third party apps that send information to and retrieve it from HealthKit.”