One of the unpleasant technological reminders of the pandemic is fading away. States have turned off COVID-19 exposure notifications on iPhones across the US now that the public emergency has expired. At least some states also appear to be shutting down notifications for Android users. You won't get alerts if you approach someone who tested positive and reported their results. No personal data traded hands, as the system relied on anonymized Bluetooth exchanges rather than GPS.

California and other states chalk up the decision to a combination of vaccines, wide immunity and effective treatments. The risks of serious illness have declined, according to officials. Omicron variants have also been less severe than early strains. Simply put, there isn't as much need for exposure alerts.

The technology was first announced in April 2020 as Apple and Google raced to create a common approach to exposure notification in the early days of the pandemic. The initial notifications came through states' individual apps beginning in August that year, but OS updates in September brought an Exposure Notifications Express feature to many Android and iOS devices. This theoretically reduced infections by getting people to stay home in the event of possible contact.

That's not how the exposure notifications worked in practice, however. Researchers determined that the rollout was fragmented. As there wasn't a nationwide protocol early on, states either implemented their own COVID-19 alerts or delayed launches. A user from one state might not get an exposure warning if they came close to someone from another state. Only 26 states released apps to make full use of notifications, and just 36 million Americans had either installed an app or enabled Exposure Notifications Express as of May 2021. While there's evidence the tech prevented cases (Washington State's app may have prevented 5,500 cases in its first four months), most of the population wasn't sharing data.

That's not to say the exercise was pointless. California's Department of Public Health says it's still studying the benefits of the state's app, and the findings from the COVID-19 response could help deal with future diseases. Don't be surprised if health agencies and tech companies are better prepared going forward.

Samsung has unveiled its upcoming user interface for Galaxy Watches, and it comes with new health-related features, with a focus on ones designed to help you get a better quality of sleep. Its new Sleep Insights UI, for instance, now prominently displays your sleep score that's based on several metrics, such as your snoring hours and blood oxygen levels. 

That way, you can easily see why you feel tired even though you've just woken up. Or, you can take note of when you feel especially refreshed in the morning so you can try to replicate anything you did that may have contributed to the quality of sleep you got. In addition, Sleep Coaching is now available on the Watch itself, and not just on its paired phone, allowing you to track your habits more easily.

Samsung has also added a new running tool called Personalized Heart Rate Zone that analyzes your capabilities and sets five optimal workout intensity levels based on your stats and history. This enables you to set your own goals and achieve new heights when it comes to activity, as you're only competing with yourself. 

Samsung

If you like outdoor activities and have a Galaxy Watch Pro, you'll see an improved Route Workout feature that supports running and walking, not just hiking and cycling. Finally, the upcoming Watch UI will have an updated SOS feature that directly connects to an emergency number to relay your location. First responders will also be available to access your medical information when emergency mode is activated. And in case you're 55 or older, fall detection will be activated by default. 

Samsung's One UI 5 Watch will officially launch with the next-generation Galaxy Watch series later this year. However, you can register for the beta program on the Samsung Members app starting this month if you have a Watch 4 or a Watch 5 device. 

Samsung

Withings has rounded out its current lineup of smart scales with a new entry-level model. The Body Smart, which is available starting today for $100, replaces the Body+. It comes with a swathe of bells and whistles, including an Eyes Closed mode. With this enabled, Withings won't display your weight on the scale's color screen. Instead, the company's app will track your weight. Withings says that, with Eyes Closed switched on, you'll "see encouraging, motivating messages or daily information such as step counts, air quality and the weather" instead of numbers in pounds and ounces.

Other modes offered by Body Smart, which is compatible with the Withings+ subscription service, include one for athletes, one for pregnant people and another for babies. The scale supports up to eight users, so one should be enough for most households.

Withings says, as with its other models, Body Smart offers accurate and consistent weight measurements up to 50 grams. Along with weight and body composition analysis, the company says it can help you track metrics such as heart rate, visceral fat (a type of fat that surrounds internal organs) and metabolic age.

The device is able to monitor these factors thanks to multifrequency bioelectrical impedance analysis technology. This sends an electrical signal through the body to measure the resistance and reactions of body tissues to the currents. "The more frequencies used, the more complete and accurate the picture of body health can be created," Withings says.

Along with the other advanced metrics, Withings claims that, for the first time, Body Smart will be able to measure your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which monitors how many calories one burns while resting. This can provide helpful information about your metabolic health and the scale will use it to determine your metabolic age, Withings says. The company will add these features in May.

Meanwhile, Withings has upgraded the mid-tier, $200 Body Comp scale with a color LCD screen. As for the high-end Body Scan option, Withings expects that to be available in the US in the coming months after gaining Food and Drug Administration clearance. The $400 smart scale, which is already available in Europe, features segmental body composition and a six-lead electrocardiogram with atrial fibrillation detection. Unlike the other two models, the Body Scan comes with a rechargeable battery.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine have made a promising discovery that could lead to new cancer treatments in the future. Scientists conducted tests in which they altered the genomes of skin-based microbes and bacteria to fight cancer. These altered microbes were swabbed onto cancer-stricken mice and, lo and behold, tumors began to dissipate.

The bacteria in question, Staphylococcus epidermidis, was grabbed from the fur of mice and altered to produce a protein that stimulates the immune system with regard to specific tumors. The experiment seemed to be a resounding success, with the modified bacteria killing aggressive types of metastatic skin cancer after being gently applied to the fur. The results were also achieved without any noticeable inflammation.

“It seemed almost like magic,” said Michael Fischbach, PhD, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford. “These mice had very aggressive tumors growing on their flank, and we gave them a gentle treatment where we simply took a swab of bacteria and rubbed it on the fur of their heads.”

This is yet another foray into the misunderstood world of microbiomes and all of the bacteria that reside there. Gut biomes get all of the press these days, but the skin also plays host to millions upon millions of bacteria, fungi and viruses, and the purpose of these entities is often unknown.

In this instance, scientists found that staph epidermidis cells trigger the production of immune cells called CD8 T cells. The researchers basically hijacked the S. epidermidis into producing CD8 T cells that target specific antigens. In this case, the antigens were related to skin cancer tumors. When the cells encountered a matching tumor, they began to rapidly reproduce and shrink the mass, or extinguish it entirely.

“Watching those tumors disappear — especially at a site distant from where we applied the bacteria — was shocking,” Fischbach said. “It took us a while to believe it was happening.”

As with all burgeoning cancer treatments, there are some heavy caveats. First of all, these experiments are being conducted on mice. Humans and mice are biologically similar in many respects, but a great many treatments that work on mice are a dud with people. Stanford researchers have no idea if S. epidermidis triggers an immune response in humans, though our skin is littered with the stuff, so they may need to find a different microbe to alter. Also, this treatment is designed to treat skin cancer tumors and is applied topically. It remains to be seen if the benefits carry over to internal cancers.

With that said, the Stanford team says they expect human trials to start within the next few years, though more testing is needed on both mice and other animals before going ahead with people. Scientists hope that this treatment could eventually be pointed at all kinds of infectious diseases, in addition to cancer cells.

NVIDIA is deepening its efforts to fight cancer using AI. The GPU maker is teaming with Medtronic to build AI into the GI Genius endoscopy tool (shown below). The two will use NVIDIA's IGX hardware and Holoscan medical platform to help detect the polyps that can lead to colorectal cancer. Doctors will get "AI-enhanced" diagnostic images, the companies say.

The first GI Genius systems built with NVIDIA tech are expected to arrive later this year. The device can use a range of AI tools, and Medtronic is betting that using NVIDIA's Clara platform could help develop algorithms for real-time medical procedures.

Medtronic

The news comes the same time as NVIDIA is expanding its BioNeMo Cloud service that helps bring generative AI to drug discovery. The new offering helps train AI models (and handle inference) used to develop new therapeutic proteins and otherwise advance fields like biology and chemistry. Researchers can speed up one of the most time-consuming processes in their pipeline, NVIDIA claims.

The news comes soon after Google unveiled AI technology for cancer therapy and ultrasound diagnosis. Other tech giants have devoted more of their AI work to healthcare in recent years. Intel partnered with Penn Medicine on AI to detect brain tumors, while Microsoft aimed to speed up cervical cancer detection and take some of the load from overworked doctors.

For NVIDIA, this is as much about translating its AI expertise to health tech as it is winning another customer. Still, the alliance could lead to some very practical benefits. As with some other AI-based cancer detection systems, this could help physicians begin treatment early and increase the chances of recovery.

AI isn’t just good for writing term papers or clickbait financial explainers; it could help save lives in the medical field. At Google’s annual The Check Up healthcare event, it announced AI-related partnerships for ultrasound readings, medical language models and cancer treatments — areas where the technology could someday serve as a force for good.

Google sees AI as crucial in reading ultrasound devices in regions without enough trained specialists. Although the sensors are more accessible than ever, they require experts to conduct exams and interpret images. The company’s AI models could help simplify that process by identifying data like the early detection of breast cancer and gestational age in expectant mothers. To help make that a reality, the search giant is partnering with Kenya nonprofit Jacaranda Health to research AI-based ultrasound treatments for mothers and babies in government hospitals. “Through this partnership, we’ll conduct exploratory research to understand the current approach to ultrasound delivery in Kenya and explore how new AI tools can support point-of-care ultrasound for pregnant women,” said Google’s Health AI head Greg Corrado and Engineering VP Yossi Matias in a blog post today.

The company is also working with Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Taiwan to research how AI can detect breast cancer via ultrasound as an alternative to mammograms, which have limited availability in lower-resource regions. Mammograms can also be less effective in populations with higher breast density. 

Evelyn Hockstein / reuters

In other areas, Google says its medical-focused large language model (LLM) has improved significantly. Med-PaLM 2, the company’s next-generation healthcare LLM, recently scored 85 percent on doctor-level medical exam questions — an 18 percent improvement from the previous version’s score. “This model not only answered multiple choice and open-ended questions accurately, but also provided rationale and evaluated its own responses,” said Corrado and Matias.

However, don’t expect a ChatGPT-like bot to replace your doctor anytime soon, as Google cautions the technology still isn’t ready for real-world work settings. For example, an evaluation on criteria like scientific factuality, precision, medical consensus, reasoning, bias and harm found “significant gaps” when answering medical questions. Corrado and Matias noted, “We look forward to working with researchers and the global medical community to close these gaps and understand how this technology can help improve health delivery.”

Google has also partnered with Mayo Clinic to explore AI’s part in planning radiotherapy for cancer treatment. The research focuses on reducing the tedious and time-consuming steps of the radiotherapy process — most notably, “contouring.” This technique requires clinicians to draw lines on CT scans to separate cancerous areas from nearby healthy tissues that the radiation could damage, a process that can take up to seven hours for one patient. The company says it will soon publish research from the three-year study while formalizing an agreement with Mayo Clinic to explore more radiotherapy-based research, AI models and commercial uses.

Finally, Google sees AI as helping with chest x-ray screening for tuberculosis. The company is partnering with an AI-based organization to make AI-powered TB screenings widely available in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its partners have committed to donating 100,000 free screenings to help detect tuberculosis early and provide early treatment to reduce its spread.

A new Senate bill aims to expand protections for Americans' health and location data. It follows concerns that such information could be used to identify individuals seeking reproductive health care services after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year. 

The Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act seeks to block companies from selling personally identifiable health data for advertising purposes and ban data brokers from buying and selling precise location data. Moreover, the proposed legislation would afford consumers more access to and ownership over their health data. It would also place more restrictions on companies’ use of personal health data without the explicit consent of a user.

The bill aims to prohibit the use of personally identifiable health data from any source for advertising. This includes data from users themselves, medical centers, fitness trackers and browser histories. The UPHOLD Privacy Act's restrictions wouldn't apply to public health campaigns.

The legislation was introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono. “With Republicans working to ban and criminalize reproductive health care nationwide, it’s critical we safeguard the reproductive data privacy of everyone in our country,” Hirono said in a statement. “Everyone should be able to trust that personal data about their bodies and their health care will be protected. By restricting the sale and use of personally identifiable health data, this bill will give patients and providers the peace of mind that their private information is secure.”

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, legislators have not made much headway toward protecting consumer health data. Period-tracking apps have given some particular cause for concern. Developers of some of these apps have since introduced features and policies to help protect their users' data.

The Federal Trade Commission said soon after the Supreme Court ruling that it would clamp down on companies which misuse health and location data. This week, the agency moved to ban online counseling service BetterHelp from sharing consumers' health data for ad targeting without consent. The FTC found that the company shared users' email addresses, IPs and health questionnaire responses. BetterHelp says it has never shared clinical data from therapy sessions with advertisers, publishers or social media companies.

Amazon's months-long effort to acquire One Medical is finished — for now, at least. The company has officially completed its $3.9 billion purchase, giving it a primary healthcare provider with in-person and virtual treatment as well as lab tests. The successful buyout isn't leading to any immediate changes in One Medical's services beyond a temporary $55 discount on a one-year membership (now $144), but Amazon said last July that it planned a "reinvention" of healthcare with the takeover.

The completion comes just a day after the Federal Trade Commission said it wouldn't contest the buyout. However, the regulator also says it's still investigating the deal to explore potential anti-competitive effects and privacy concerns raised by Amazon's access to health data. An FTC official toldCNN the agency will warn Amazon it's closing the purchase at its own risk, and might still face a government challenge later.

Amazon has spent years making deeper forays into healthcare. It bought PillPack in 2018 and used the provider to launch an in-house pharmacy service. The online shopping heavyweight also introduced an app-based health service for employees in 2019 that it later offered to other companies. In 2021, the company introduced a custom Alexa for healthcare. The One Medical move theoretically completes the picture by letting Amazon handle everything from minor doctor's appointments through to prescriptions.

Whether or not Amazon could endure an FTC challenge isn't clear. Commission chair Lina Khan is known to be wary of Big Tech, and her stance even prompted Amazon to ask for her recusal from antitrust cases. There's no certainty the FTC might succeed, though, and it recently lost an effort to block Meta's purchase of Within. One Medical is considerably larger than Within, though, and its healthcare focus brings up privacy concerns that aren't always present in tech acquisitions.

Amazon has launched a new subscription service that will let customers in the US get as many eligible medications as they need for $5 a month. The new service called RxPass is part of the e-commerce giant's Pharmacy business that originally launched in 2020 as a two-day prescription drug delivery offering for Prime users. That makes RxPass a $5 add-on for Prime, which sets users back $139 a year or $15 a month in the US. 

While it doesn't look quite as affordable bundled with Prime pricing, the RxPass program does offer medications for 80 common health conditions, including high blood pressure, acid reflux, anemia and even depression, diabetes, breast cancer and dementia. At the moment, it has 60 generic medications in its list — all of which require a valid prescription — and subscribers can choose to have them delivered for free either on a monthly or a quarterly basis. 

Take note that customers will need to pay $5 out of pocket, since the service does not take insurance like Amazon Pharmacy does for purchases outside of the program. People who are enrolled to Medicare, Medicaid and any other government healthcare program will not be able to sign up for RxPass, as well, though they can still use their government insurance when purchasing medicine from Pharmacy.

For people with multiple conditions paying a lot more than $5 a month for their medications out of pocket, RxPass could be worth trying out, especially if they already have Prime. Those interested may want to take a look at the service's full medication list first to see if it does offer what they need before heading to the Pharmacy website or the Amazon app to sign up. 

Stroke patients in the US could soon take advantage of cutting-edge robotics during the recovery process. The Food and Drug Administration has cleared Wandercraft's Atalante exoskeleton for use in stroke rehabilitation. The machine can help with intensive gait training, particularly for people with limited upper body mobility that might prevent using other methods.

The current-generation Atalante is a self-balancing, battery-powered device with an adjustable gait that can help with early steps through to more natural walking later in therapy. While the hardware still needs to be used in a clinical setting with help from a therapist, its hands-free use lets patients reestablish their gait whether or not they can use their arms.

Wandercraft plans to deliver its first exoskeletons to the US during the first quarter of the year, though it didn't name initial customers. It only recently launched its commercial business in the country, but financial backer Quadrant Management says Wandercraft could "significantly scale" its operations within the next one to two years.

FDA-cleared exoskeletons are still relatively rare, and are still limited to helping with specific conditions. Last June, Ekso Bionics received permission to market its EksoNR device for multiple sclerosis rehab. Wandercraft's approval makes the technology accessible for a wider range of patients, and may be especially helpful when strokes are a major cause of long-term disability in the US. Over 795,000 people have a stroke in the country each year — this could help some of them regain freedom of movement.