Topics in This Focus Channel

• Bleeding-Edge Medicine: Today’s Discoveries, Tomorrow’s Practice

  September 30, 2016

  With Oren Gilad, CEO, Atrin Pharmaceuticals; Don Straus, Founder and CEO, First Light Biosciences; Shawn Iadonato, Co-Founder and CEO, Kineta; and Caitlin Cameron, Chair and CEO, OtoNexus; hosted by Ed Butler, Presenter and Senior Broadcast Journalist, BBC

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• The UnDx (Undiagnosed) Global Initiative

  September 29, 2016

  With Katia Moritz, Director, Undiagnosed (the documentary); Ryan Taft, Senior Director, Scientific Research, Illumina Inc.; John Ryals, CEO, Metabolon; and Robin Y. Smith, CEO, ORIG3N; hosted by Doug Jamison, CEO, Harris & Harris Group

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• Treat the Patient, Not the Disease

  September 29, 2016

  With Glenn Snyder, Medical Technology Segment Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Michael E. Raynor, Director, Monitor Deloitte; hosted by Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2 (a UC San Diego / UC Irvine partnership), and SNS Ambassador for Pure Science

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• SNS: Special Letter: Undiagnosed: Why is the Future of Medicine Being Ignored?

  August 18, 2015

  Volume 18, Issue 31
  Week of August 18, 2015
  
  In This Issue
  Feature: Special Letter: Undiagnosed: Why Is The Future Of Medicine Being Ignored?
  

  • My Diagnostic Odyssey
  • Defining "Undiagnosed"
  • The Future of Medicine: Can Technology Save Us?
  • Medical Refugees
  • Hazards of an "It's All in Your Head" Diagnosis
  • How I Accidentally Became a Filmmaker
  • The CLARITY Undiagnosed Challenge

  ----
  
  Publisher's Note: This week's discussion combines the most advanced areas of medical discovery with the personal challenges that come with living just beyond the edge of today's medical knowledge.When I first met Dr. Katia Moritz, and heard about her search for a diagnosis, I considered "The Undiagnosed" to be a small, unfortunate group of people who had somehow fallen through the cracks of modern medical practice. Now, I know better.Despite the money and time that has gone into today's medical toolbox, there are an unbelievably large number of people who are either un- or mis-diagnosed. A recent randomized study of those who die in US hospitals, conducted by the University of Michigan, found that about one-half die of diseases for which they had not been diagnosed or treated.As I learned more from Katia, I came to realize that "Undiagnosed" is a synonym for all that doctors today do not know. And unfortunately, there is a very great deal that fits this description. All of our members interested in the edge of medical knowledge will find Katia's tale fascinating, and not just a little frightening. - mra.

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• SNS: The Perfect Union: Biology And Computing

  June 25, 2015

  Volume 18, Issue 24
  Week of June 22, 2015
  
  In This Issue
  Feature: The Perfect Union: Biology And Computing
  

  • The Perfect Venn Intersection
  • What Is Biology?
  • What Is Evolution?
  • Computers Applied to Biology
  • Making Biology with Computers
  • Using Biology to Make Computers

  
  Quotes Of The Week
  Takeout Window
  

  • 3D Printing Human Skin
  • You Have It Backwards, Ginny: Chinese Firms Need You
  • MSFT Brings 1st Chinese University into the US; Target: University of Washington
  • Neural Lace: No Longer Just Science Fiction

  
  Upgrades And Numbers
  

  • Grexit
  • The Pope Effect
  • The OPM Hack
  • China Whistles, US Tech Firms Fetch

  
  Ethermail
  ----
  
  I was talking with my friend and colleague Larry Smarr the other day, and we found ourselves discussing the ways in which biology is today informing computer design. We started listing all the ways in which biology does things better than the old von Neumann computer structures of today, and the more we talked, the more absurdly huge these differences loomed. After a while, we just couldn't stop laughing ---There is no comparison; biology is infinitely better at what computers do than today's computers.In this week's discussion, we're going to look at how biology will inform computer design - and how compute systems will change biology.

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• SNS: Special Letter: The Maker Movement +

  April 16, 2015

  Volume 18, Issue 14
  Week of April 13, 2015
  
  In This Issue
  Feature: Special Letter: The Maker Movement [+]
  

  • The Maker Movement Commit, Then Figure It Out
  • Making Everything Not Impossible
  • The Simple Humble Thought
  • The Robot Walker
  • The Make-Your-Own Braille Printer
  • Tapping the Power of One
  • About Mick Ebeling

  
  
  ----
  
  Publisher's Note: Too often, we leaders in the technology world become obsessed with what might someday be done on the bleeding edge of our engineering abilities, rather than focusing on what can be done tonight with the technology at hand. Mick Ebeling has made a life out of doing the opposite: taking existing tech and enriching lives around the world, always at an amazingly lower cost.It is hard to overestimate the effect of not just the Maker movement, but of Mick himself. While the rest of us make our living selling products, he has - to spotight just one example - enabled residents of a remote area of Sudan who have lost their limbs in civil war to make their own replacement limbs through localized 3D printing.Mick's views, and his work, give us all hope, and open many doors of a new possible worldview of success, enabled by technology, and driven by the human spirit at its best. - mra.

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• SNS: Special Letter: An Innovator’s Handbook: Dealing with the FDA

  March 4, 2015

  Volume 18, Issue 9
  Week of March 2, 2015
  
  In This Issue
  SNS: Special Letter: An Innovator's Handbook: Dealing with the FDA
  

  • Step 1: Concept Definition
  • Step 2: Product Risk
  • Step 3: Dialog with the FDA
  • Step 4: The Paperwork
  • Step 5: Getting to Market
  • Conclusion
  • About Corinna E. Lathan

  
  -----
  
  Publisher's Note: We have been delving into the future of biology, genetics, healthcare, evolutionary theory, biofeedback systems, neurophysiology, brain-inspired computing, the Quantified Self, and medical software and devices for at least a decade. But nowhere during this thread have we touched on what is often the life-or-death issue for entrepreneurs in these arenas: dealing with US regulatory agencies.In this discussion, for the first time in our history, we're providing a deep dive into the do's and don'ts of this process, in perhaps the toughest product approval agency: the Food and Drug Administration. As many SNS members are aware, the challenges behind gaining entry to the US markets where this agency has sway are so daunting that many companies, both large and small, have turned to other international markets (Germany perhaps being first) as a quicker, cheaper way to early markets.What do entrepreneurs - and F500 CEOs - need to know about getting this done right? Read on. - mra.

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• SNS: Digital Wellness And The Transformation Of Healthcare

  November 12, 2014

  Volume 17, Issue 42
  Week of November 10, 2014
  In This Issue
  Feature: Digital Wellness And The Transformation Of Healthcare:A Conversation With Leroy Hood
  

  • About Leroy Hood
  • About Larry Smarr

  
  ---
  
  Publisher's Note: As most SNS members, and all FiRe attendees, are aware, we have been working over the last five years or so to help Leroy Hood and Larry Smarr redefine the practice of modern medicine. Larry has brought the science of the Quantified Self into the mainstream, with his extraordinary dedication to recording the many parameters of his blood, stool, weight, exercise, and other measurements, over a 10-year period. During this time, Lee Hood has established the most exciting new medical program on the planet, taking similar but more detailed measurements from the "100 Pioneers" in a new program aimed at establishing baseline figures for health and preventive medicine. That figure has already swelled past 1,000 and is soon planned to go to 100k.In this transcript of their conversation at this year's FiRe Conference, SNS members who could not attend will have a chance to fully grasp what a real revolution in modern medicine will look like. - mra. 

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• Digital Wellness and the Transformation of Healthcare

  May 21, 2014

  FiRe 2014: "Digital Wellness and the Transformation of Healthcare": Leroy Hood; hosted by Larry Smarr

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• SNS: Special Letter: Decoding DNA: The Other 97%, in Real Time

  May 15, 2014

  Volume 17, Issue 19
  Week of May 12, 2014
  In This Issue
  Feature: Special Letter: Decoding DNA: The Other 97%, In Real Time
  

  • The Historic Standard
  • The Four Bases of DNA
  • "Transcription" and "Translation": Reading DNA and RNA
  • Epigenetics
  • Genomics, Non-Coding Portions, and Cancer
  • The Influence, and Limitations, of Sanger Sequencing
  • Current Limits
  • A Bacteria-Derived Polymerase: "A Puzzle in Which All Pieces Are Square"
  • The Importance of the Non-Coding Protein Region
  • Enter Exonucleases
  • Adaptation to Direct Sequencing of RNA
  • Looking Beyond the Exome
  • About Edward Arvisais

  
  ---
  
  Publisher's Note: This week's issue is an absolute Must Read for anyone interested in the future of genetics, healthcare, biomedicine, and related issues. If you need to understand how DNA works, and - more important from a pragmatic perspective - how our current techniques fail to reveal real DNA sequences, and how to fix the problem, read on. SNS members are aware that we long ago warned about the use of the term "junk" DNA: nature, in its evolutionary cloak, abhors not only a vacuum, but also any waste in energy or structure. This week's issue will help members understand why all base pairs should be considered to have been conserved for a purpose, and how important it is to read them - and How to read them.We are now leaving the first- and second- generation worlds of genetic decoding, when we all picked the low-hanging fruit and just ignored the rest. Thanks to companies like NorthShore Bio, a company we are proud to have as a FiReStarter Company this year, we are now going to go back, go deeper, and get the real story, the whole story, the complete read of our genetic codes. - mra.

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• SNS: Special Letter: Breakthroughs in Preventing Stroke and Heart Attack

  October 15, 2013

  Volume 16, Issue 37
  Week of October 14, 2013
  In This Issue
  Feature: Special Letter: Breakthroughs In Preventing Stroke And Heart Attack
  

  • Impacts of Atrial Fibrillation
  • Reproducability Across the World - The Clinical Study
  • Prevention
  • About Nassir Marrouche

  
  ---
  
  Publisher's Note: Normally when we publish a Special Letter, we have selected it because we think our members will find it useful in their corporate or investment planning. This week, given our membership demographic, it may also save lives. When I am asked about the difference between FiRe and TED, I often say, "TED is where you should go if you want to know what it's like to have a stroke. FiRe is where you should go to learn how to prevent a stroke." This is because one of TED's most famous presentations was on experiencing a stroke, and one of FiRe's award-winning presentations was on a ground-breaking new prevention measure. Those who attended FiRe 2013 are already familiar with Dr. Nassir Marrouche, who spoke there with his brother and fellow entrepreneur, Karim, on the topic of a new smartphone app for recording and transmitting remote electrocardiograms. While Karim's handset kit is really amazing technology, perhaps the most amazing part of all is the science and technology that Nassir has developed over the last few years, revolutionizing our understanding of heart attack and stroke indicators and causes.In this issue, Nassir explains his discoveries, conducted at the University of Utah with our new alliance partners at the Scientific Computing Institute (SCI). His work is not only inspiring, it also helps illustrate the value of reaching out to neighboring technological silos in order to create an integrated whole which even those doing the work considered impossible. I think all our members will find Nassir's amazing account of making critical new discoveries to be worth reading. Now, all he has to do is scale it. - mra.

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• A New Handheld Device to Save Your Life

  May 24, 2013

  "Curing Heart Disease with Big Data": A conversation with Nassir Marrouche, Executive Director, CARMA, University of Utah; Followed by "A New Handheld Device to Save Your Life": A conversation with Karim Marrouche, Co-Founder and President, Cardiac Designs

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• “Caregiving at the Crossroads”

  June 27, 2012

  An SNS Special Letter, written by guest author Kian Saneii

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• CTO Design Challenge: “Creating the New Field of ‘Nutritional Microanalysis’: Inputs for the Quantified Self”

  May 25, 2012

  The goal of the 2012 CTO Design Challenge: to create a new field of medicine and a research platform for understanding human health and disease, and their connection to the human genome, by evaluating the inputs on a chemical level and their effects on the body’s processes.

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• “Integrating Robots into Our Homes, Healthcare, and Beyond”

  May 24, 2012

  A conversation with Colin Angle, CEO and Co-Founder, iRobot; hosted by Patrick Lane, Technology Correspondent, The Economist

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• “Integrating for Better Healthcare Solutions”

  May 23, 2012

  With Kian Saneii, CEO, Independa; Philippa Lewis, CEO, Simavita; Davis Brimer, Founder and CEO, Active Life Scientific; and Fred Lee, Business Development Strategies, Health Sciences Global Business Unit, Oracle; hosted by Doug Smith, President, W.D. Smith & Associates

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• “Quantified Health: Towards Digitally Enabled Genomic Medicine”

  September 29, 2011

  An SNS Special Letter, written by Pure Science Ambassador Larry Smarr

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• “How Systems Medicine and Emerging Technologies Will Transform Healthcare”

  May 26, 2011

  A Centerpiece Conversation with Leroy Hood, President, Institute for Systems Biology

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• “The Quantified Self: Personal Monitoring and Control for Health”

  May 26, 2011

  A conversation with Larry Smarr, Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), UC San Diego and Irvine; hosted by André de Fusco, CEO and Director, Cynvenio Biosystems

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• “A New Drug Delivery System from HP”

  November 11, 2010

  "A New Drug Delivery System from HP" With Janice Nickel, Senior Scientist, Hewlett-Packard Labs; hosted by Russ Daggatt, General Partner, Denny Hill Capital

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• “Providing Clean Water for 200 Million”

  November 11, 2010

  A conversation with Jin Zidell, Founder/Chairman, Blue Planet Network

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• “Repairing Brains”

  March 24, 2010

  SNS Special Letter, written by guest author Matthew Klipstein

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• “Assessing the N1H1 (‘Swine Flu’) Pandemic: What to Expect for the Next Few Years”

  May 21, 2009

  Larry Brilliant, President, Skoll Urgent Threats Fund, and Senior Advisor to Jeff Skoll; hosted by Alan Smith, Founder and CEO, Vesta Health Systems Inc.

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• “Fixing Healthcare III: Radical Approaches for Improving Healthcare”

  May 23, 2008

  Nobelist Lee Hartwell, President and Director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; hosted by Mark Anderson

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• “Diagnosing Your Own DNA”

  May 25, 2007

  A conversation with Ryan Phelan, Founder and CEO, DNA Direct; hosted by Stewart Brand, Founder, the Long Now Foundation

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• aids2031: The Future of AIDS

  May 24, 2007

  A conversation with Peter Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS, and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations; hosted by Heidi Larson, Research Associate, Harvard Center for Population and Development

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• “From Mainframe to Personal Healthcare: Proactive Technologies for a Global Age Wave”

  May 23, 2007

  A conversation with Eric Dishman, General Manager & Global Director, Intel Health Research & Innovation Group; hosted by Stephen Evans, Presenter, Business Daily, BBC World Service

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