White House launching new health data sharing initiative
Leaders from tech companies including Google, Amazon and OpenAI, along with providers and health systems including Cleveland Clinic and UnitedHealth Group, will meet with health officials at the White House later on Wednesday to 'begin laying the foundation for a next-generation digital health ecosystem,' the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a statement.
The initiative builds on a May effort by CMS to solicit suggestions on ways to modernize the nation's digital health ecosystem, and the barriers to sharing patient information across different platforms.
The idea is for a patient to upload data in the health app of their choice, where it can be easily managed and shared with their doctor.
According to CMS, the initiative will focus on diabetes and obesity management, the use of conversational AI assistants to help patients, and digital tools like QR codes to 'kill the clipboard' and replace paper intake forms at check-in.
Companies will commit to a voluntary framework around interoperability, which is how different health technology systems connect to one another and share data. CMS said the framework will allow medical information to be easily shared between patients and providers.
'We have the tools and information available now to empower patients to improve their outcomes and their healthcare experience,' CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said in a statement.
CMS said it also plans to add an app library to Medicare.gov to help patients with chronic disease management and to more easily navigate cost-effective providers and insurance plans.
The administration is seeking voluntary commitments from industry, including on security and privacy protections, rather than engage in rulemaking. It's a tactic HHS has touted with the food industry and insurers to secure wins as part of its 'Make America Healthy Again' agenda.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
22 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Amazon cuts 110 jobs in reorganization of Wondery audio division
Amazon on Monday said it is cutting 110 roles from its audio division Wondery as part of a restructuring effort. The cuts reflect an industry shift toward producing more podcasts with video, a format that has become more popular with consumers who listen to their favorite hosts on platforms including YouTube and Spotify. The layoffs also mark the latest sign of contraction in the once burgeoning podcast industry. In June, Spotify laid of 5% of staff in its podcast division and Philadelphia-based Audacy shut down New York-based Pineapple Street Studios. 'As video podcasting has grown in popularity, we have learned that creator-led, video-integrated shows have different audience needs and require distinct discovery, growth and monetization strategies compared to audio-first, narrative series,' Steve Boom, vice president of audio, Twitch and games at Amazon, wrote in a memo to staff. Under the changes, Amazon will combine Wondery's narrative podcast studio with audio books and podcast division, Audible. Wondery staffers in its creator-led podcast studio will be part of a new organization called creator services with Amazon's talent services group. Amazon acquired Wondery in 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The Culver City-based company is known for producing podcast series including 'Dr. Death' 'American Scandal' and 'The Shrink Next Door.' Amazon said the restructuring will help it better support creators across different channels to monetize their content and simplify the process for advertisers, while also 'making the content more accessible to audiences wherever they prefer to consume it.' Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, Amazon said. Ray Wang, principal analyst of Constellation Research, said the reorganization will help the company grow its ad business. 'This makes a lot of sense given how advertisers view both formats,' Wang said.
Chicago Tribune
22 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Gainfront replaces guesswork with data-driven supplier discovery for risk-averse corporations
Global procurement executives must lie awake at night contemplating this troubling business scenario: Their companies spend billions on sophisticated enterprise systems that track every dollar once it's committed yet rely on what amounts to educated guesswork when selecting the suppliers who receive those dollars. The most critical decision in the procurement life cycle — which vendors to trust with components, materials and services essential to operations — remains startlingly primitive at most Fortune 1000 companies. However, this scenario is starting to be a tale of the past with the rise of the AI/ML supplier life cycle management platform Gainfront. Here's how Gainfront's proprietary EfficiencyAI tool changes the game in supplier selection and identification. This scenario plays out daily across corporate America: Procurement teams tasked with finding and vetting new suppliers rely on a mix of Google searches, LinkedIn browsing, industry directories and word-of-mouth recommendations. It's a surprisingly analog approach in a world where artificial intelligence has transformed nearly every other aspect of business operations. The cost of getting it wrong can be daunting. A supplier that fails to deliver, violates compliance requirements or faces financial instability can trigger a cascade of disruptions that ripple through global supply chains. In the most severe cases, these disruptions can halt production lines, compromise product quality, damage brand reputation and even lead to regulatory penalties. 'There's literally nothing more important in a CEO's mind right now than managing their supplier life cycles and supply chain and making sure that they are positioned well, to kind of compete in a market that is fluctuating very, very rapidly,' explains Srikant Sharma from Gainfront. The traditional approach to supplier discovery isn't just inefficient — it's fundamentally broken. Legacy systems, which dominate the procurement software market, were designed for a different era. They excel at transactional processes but offer limited capabilities for the complex task of identifying and evaluating new suppliers. 'They are built on an existing solution structure that is platform-based,' Sharma argues. 'That structure is very inflexible and requires massive amounts of services, professional services and contractor work to configure it.' What makes Gainfront's approach a game changer is the recognition that supplier discovery isn't just a search problem, it's an intelligence problem. The company's proprietary EfficiencyAI suite leverages domain-trained large language models to transform how corporations identify potential suppliers. Rather than simply matching keywords, its sophisticated AI systems analyze supplier information the way an experienced procurement professional would. They evaluate websites, marketing materials and other documents across multiple languages, extracting meaningful insights from unstructured data that would take human analysts weeks to process. Gainfront can identify 'hidden gem' suppliers who might be overlooked due to language barriers or formatting limitations. Through its AI-powered supplier discovery database, businesses have access to new, qualified suppliers across 16,000-plus categories. This capability is particularly valuable for global corporations changing their business model or expanding into new markets. Gainfront's use of AI addresses a fundamental challenge in supplier discovery: the information asymmetry between buyers and potential vendors. In Gainfront, suppliers present themselves in the best possible light, with profile visibility by 95%, highlighting strengths while obscuring weaknesses. Without this ability to verify claims and identify risks, procurement teams are left making decisions based on incomplete or misleading information. Sharma explains, 'The system doesn't just find suppliers — it evaluates them, flagging potential risks related to financial stability, compliance history and operational capabilities. This innovative technology and data-driven insights ensure you can trust your choices.' For business operations that heavily rely on dependable supply chain management, Gainfront's approach can compress what traditionally takes months into minutes. Instead of assigning junior staff to compile lists of potential suppliers through manual searches, the AI-powered platform can scan millions of supplier profiles, evaluating them against specific criteria and generating concise reports for decision-makers. The company maintains a massive database of global suppliers — both diverse and nondiverse, traditional and green — that procurement teams can tap into immediately. This database isn't static; it's continuously updated and enhanced with new information, ensuring that recommendations reflect current market realities. 'It's really important to build something that's modular, that is an end-to-end solution in something that is super critical, which is managing the supply chain and managing supplier life cycles across the operations,' Sharma explains. The modular nature of Gainfront's platform allows companies to implement just the supplier discovery component if that's their most pressing need or deploy it as part of a comprehensive supplier lifecycle management solution. This flexibility has proven attractive to Fortune 1000 companies looking to modernize their procurement operations without disrupting existing systems. Data-driven supplier discovery may be just a small portion of the whole business operation, but its impact extends beyond efficiency gains. By applying AI to the evaluation process, companies can identify suppliers that not only meet basic requirements but also align with broader strategic objectives. For organizations with diversity spending targets, the platform can highlight qualified minority-owned or women-owned businesses. For those focusing on sustainability, it can identify suppliers with strong environmental credentials. And for companies concerned about geopolitical risks, it can flag potential vulnerabilities in global supply networks. For instance, one manufacturing company discovered that 43% of their tier-two suppliers — the suppliers to their direct suppliers — were concentrated in a single region with escalating political tensions. This hidden risk exposure might have gone undetected without AI-powered analysis of supplier networks. Hetal Mehta, CEO of Gainfront, shares, 'In today's complex global market, business leaders can no longer afford the luxury of uncertainty. The stakes are simply too high to make critical supplier decisions based on incomplete information or intuition alone. At Gainfront, we're committed to transforming procurement from a guesswork into a science of data-driven certainty, providing our partners with the intelligence they need to navigate increasingly unpredictable business scenarios.'
Android Authority
22 minutes ago
- Android Authority
Gemini on Android is getting ready to listen to your audio files (APK teardown)
Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR In the latest beta of the Gemini Android app, we spotted an option to attach audio files, such as MP3s, to chats. A 'Talk live about this' prompt also appears, but the audio isn't accurately processed yet. While the feature might not be fully operational, we know that Gemini can comprehend audio. Ever wished you could just throw an MP3 at Gemini and have it explain what it's about? That might be coming soon, as we've spotted early signs of audio file support in the Gemini app for Android. ⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release. In version of the Google app beta, we managed to activate a new file attachment feature when chatting with Gemini. You can now attach audio files like MP3s, and when you do, Gemini shows a new suggestion: 'Talk live about this.' That sounds promising, but it doesn't actually work yet. After uploading an audio file, you can either type a regular question or choose to 'talk live' about it. In both cases, Gemini doesn't seem to understand or respond to the file in any meaningful way. Sometimes it ignores the audio entirely. Other times, it confidently makes things up, as seen in the third screenshot below, but chatbot hallucinations aren't exclusive to audio files or Gemini. Still, it's not hard to see where this is going. On the developer side, Gemini already supports audio input through the API. You can feed it audio and ask it to describe what it hears, summarize it, or transcribe what's being said. It even handles timestamp requests like 'from 2:30 to 3:29,' and works with formats like MP3, WAV, and FLAC. That's likely what Google is building toward on the Android app — we're just not there yet. For now, it's more like a placeholder than a finished feature, and there's also no guarantee when or if it will launch. However, with image uploads now widely available in the Gemini app, audio support seems like a logical next step. Follow
