UKTI Belgium is running an excellent webinar series on eHealth & the European Union. Dates/times are:
- Thu, Oct 9, 2014 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM BST
- Thu, Nov 13, 2014 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM GMT
- Tue, Dec 2, 2014 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM GMT
During these webinars they will discuss tools that will enable you and your organisation to react to EU opportunities and challenges. For more information and to register go here.
TechUK and the BCS are running another of their very successful Healthtech Startup Schools, starting on Monday 20 October, ending on Monday 08 December. It is at techUK London , 10 St Bride Street, London , EC4A 4AD. Registration is here.
The University of Bath’s Assisted Living Action Network (ALAN) is holding an evening meeting in Bristol on 22nd October entitled on the flyer “Digital Health Apps: Insider views on the Challenges and Opportunities”, and on the website “Understanding the new regulatory and information environment for health apps”. It is being addressed by many worthies including Rob Turpin of BSI and Graham Worsley, recently retired from the TSB and now assembling a portoflio of really interesting roles. Book here
The GSMA has announced a whole bunch of awards for 2015 – entries are now open. Don’t dismiss them without checking each one out first – for example the Best Connected Life Award has eight categories, each with an award, including Best Mobile Innovation for Health. (If you wonder why this is under opportunities to learn – complete an entry into a competition and, if the entry form is well designed, you’ll be surprised what it teaches you about the product or service you are entering.)
If you’re into wearables, looks like you should think of going to the Glazedcon 2014 conference entitled “The Dawn of the Wearable Economy; Calculating Business Strategy in the New World of Wearables & IoT” on October 22. (On which topic, sad to report that this editor’s fourth Jawbone Up in a year has just failed after four months, which seems to be about their maximum life expectancy – when his last one failed it was made very clear that he had 90 days warranty only). On a related topic, Gartner is apparently forecasting that Android smartwatches will retail for $30 in 2015 – clearly not where the Apple watch wants to go, as we reported earlier (as the October edition of Wired points out, “smartwatch” was never used by Tim Cook when he launched the product). As yet this editor sees no cause to dump his expensive piece of clockwork metal…though there is one big attraction: even at $30, smartwatches will surely be more reliable than his Jawbone Up, costing rather more than that, has proved to be!
Another wearables event is Cambridge Wireless’s “Wearables – The Internet of Us”, a Connected Devices SIG Event, at Deliotte’s in London. Sign up here.
The day before the Glazedcon event, SMi presents a masterclass on the Latest on 112-based emergency call legislation and end to end security for a digital society in Central London, hosted by Gemalto. eCall, the emergency call system that is activated by a vehicle involved in a crash, is already installed in 0.7% of vehicles in the EU. As most accidents involve more than one vehicle, presumably utilisation will be ahead of the 0.7% figure though, so there is hope for the projected 2,500 lives saved/year and the alleviation of the severity of road injuries sustained in 15% of cases, when adoption is more widespread. (In addition to the number of injuries, road traffic accidents in the EU apparently also carry an economic burden of around EUR 130 billion in costs to society every year.)
A few days before that, on 16th October, we have another evening Health Technology Forum London event kindly hosted by Baker Botts, at the back of the Bank of England, featuring this time Professor Jeremy Wyatt, who will be talking about how best to assess medical apps. Tom Lewis, recent author of a paper with Jeremy entitled “mHealth and Mobile Medical Apps: A Framework to Assess Risk and Promote Safer Use”, has also been invited. Attendance at the October event is already high, however there are a few spaces left – to book go here.
Finally, as already mentioned here last week, DHACA-Day II is on 7th October (with very few spaces left now), and the RSM conference on Integrated Care – how can technology help?, still on ‘earlybird’ reduced charges, is on November 24 & 25 November.
Hit tips to Prof Mike Short & Nicholas Robinson for much of the above.
Salmagundi
Salmagundi is a salad dish, originating in the early 17th century in England, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices. Wikipedia
Indeed that is the original definition. As Wikipedia is not a dictionary, it does not mention though that because of its original meaning, the word salmagundi has acquired a second meaning of a heterogeneous collection, not necessarily of edible items – it is in that sense that I use the word.
Interestingly the reverse has happened with the word ‘collation’, which I have previously used to describe a more ordered collection of items on TTA. The original sense was used by John Cassian in his Collationes Patrum in Scetica Eremo Commorantium (‘Conferences with the Egyptian Hermits’) written CE 415–20, from which a reading would be given in Benedictine communities prior to a light meal after a fast. As a result that light meal came to be called a collation.