Boston-headquartered Orbita, a healthcare innovation company offering conversational AI platform and virtual health assistant solutions, has released the OrbitaASSIST, a voice-powered, AI-driven bedside virtual assistant. Patients use a smart speaker to make requests, and the system intelligently triages and sends requests to various care team members.OrbitaASSIST can be used as a replacement f...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has been looking into Amazon's dominant position in the e-commerce market in recent months, has reportedly broadened its investigation of possible anti-competititve behavior to include Amazon Web Services, the company's highly successful cloud division. According to people familiar with the matter, the FTC is trying to figure out whether Amazon is discr...

Why are we all trapped in enterprise chat apps if we talk 6X faster than we type, and our brain processes visual info 60,000X faster than text? Thanks to Instagram, we’re not as camera-shy anymore. And everyone’s trying to remain in flow instead of being distracted by multi-tasking.That’s why now is the time for Loom. It’s an enterprise collaboration video messaging service that lets you se...

Danish architecture firm BIG has branched into smart home products with the Friday lock, which combines a minimal form and enhanced security features.Controlled via smartphone, the Friday Smart Lock can automatically unlock a door when it senses the resident approaching, lock it as they leave, or allow them to remotely control who has access to the property.The Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) designe...

Nielsen found they're looking for proven value.According to Nielsen, women consume dozens of hours of media a week. Within that consumption come ads, so the research firm also looked at how ads influence women to try new products in a disparate age of brand disloyalty. Data shows women are really looking for proven value, and are likely to be heavily influenced through recommendations of friend...

US patent application 20190369569 discloses an enhanced configuration method that includes receiving an indication that a wearable device has started a pairing process with an electronic device and obtaining images corresponding to the wearable device. The images are analyzed to determine aspects of the wearable device and configuring the wearable device, accordingly. The figure below depicts c...

Shared micromobility continues to develop. What’s changed, and what can we learn from one city’s first 100 days with e-scooters?Shared micromobility is going places: one electric bike or scooter at a time! In our last publication on the topic—“Micromobility’s 15,000-mile checkup”—we examined the industry’s investment landscape, its economics, and potential global and regional market siz...

Apostrophe, a new startup that makes it easier to get Rx acne medications and treatments, has today announced the close of a $6 million seed round led by SignalFire, with participation from FJ Labs.Ben Holber and Ryan Hambley grew up together. Hambley, the son of a dermatologist, always had clear skin. But Holber struggled with acne from the time he was a teenager. The two saw first-hand the di...

Influencers like Wang Xizi—shown livestreaming from a clothing company showroom—sold about $4 billion of product in China in 2018. A 21st-century version of the infomercial has become the hot, if occasionally risky, way to sell stuff in China’s vast market.Zhu Di didn’t realize he wanted a $164 soybean milk machine until Viya, an internet celebrity who promotes healthy living, told him on a...