Arezu's News

A collection of my best journalistic work, most of which comes from my daily writing for MassDevice.com.

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Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson park billions in offshore accounts

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Some of medtech’s largest players, including Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson and Abbott, rank high on the list of companies with the most money housed in offshore tax havens, according to a new report. There are no awards handed out for … Continue reading → from WordPress http://ift.tt/1my8BC0 via IFTTT

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Looks like I've hit a major milestone! How exactly does one go about celebrating this sort of thing?

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Fire forecasting: Texas watches for wildfires before they burn

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J It’s around 5 p.m. on a warm Sunday in April 2014, and there is a 1,000-acre wildfire burning in Northwest Texas. The area is under a “Red Flag” warning, meaning that high winds and low humidity are likely to make … Continue reading → from WordPress http://ift.tt/1ic4gTK via IFTTT

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Fire forecasting: Texas watches for wildfires before they burn

It’s around 5 p.m. on a warm Sunday in April 2014, and there is a 1,000-acre wildfire burning in Northwest Texas. The area is under a “Red Flag” warning, meaning that high winds and low humidity are likely to make the fire extremely difficult to fight. By 10 p.m. the fire is just 60 percent contained.

April is near the peak of the region's winter-spring fire season, and the Texas A&M Forest Service is working hard to stay one step ahead of its wildfires. Using NOAA’s monitoring tools, the agency’s Predictive Services team watches for environmental patterns that signal rough days ahead.

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Silicon Valley in-depth: Tapping medtech's Big Data with AliveCor CEO Euan Thomson

AliveCor's interim-ish CEO Euan Thomson talks about the data-driven future, why he jumped ship at Accuray and how to navigate the intersection between the tempered medical device world and the wanton nimbleness of Silicon Valley.

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Hacking healthcare: Would we know if a medical device was hacked?

The absence of reported hacks on medical devices doesn't mean they aren’t happening, experts say, because there are no mechanisms in place to detect them.

The FDA has made medical device cybersecurity a high priority, even as it stresses that there have been no reported incidents of malicious medical device hacks or of patients harmed by a security-related issue.

But that assurance is based more on assumption than fact, experts say. And other evidence gathered in real-world healthcare environments suggests that the lack of cybersecurity reports at the FDA is more suspicious than comforting.

"I think we're making a reasonable assumption that [malicious hacking] hasn't happened, but it's not based on any empirical evidence one way or the other," Codenomicon medical security global director Mike Ahmadi told MassDevice.com in an in-depth interview. "It may have happened."

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PETA takes an inside approach to targeting medical device makers who experiment on animals

Animal rights activists have long raised concerns about some of the largest medical device companies, taking up minuscule stock holdings to gain access to shareholder meetings at a raft of medtech makers.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been acquiring stakes in various companies, either through donations or by taking an active interest in firms it deems guilty of cruelty to animals. Even with meager holdings, the group is considered a partial owner entitled to submit proposals during annual meetings.

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