Facial Recognition Technology in Public Housing Prompts Backlash

This year in Detroit, crews working for the city’s public housing authority cut down a row of bushy trees that had shaded the entryways to two public housing units known as Sheridan I and II.

Their aim: to give newly installed security cameras an unobstructed view of the hulking, gray edifices, so round-the-clock video footage could be made available to the Detroit Police Department and its new facial recognition software whenever the Detroit Public Housing Commission files a police report.

“I think that police departments won’t make frivolous claims based solely on technology,” said Sandra Henriquez, the commission’s executive director. She added, “I think that they will use the technology as one tool that they use in bringing people into the criminal justice system.”

To critics of the widening reach of facial recognition software, such assurances are likely to ring hollow. As the software improves and as the price drops, the technology is becoming ubiquitous — on wearable police cameras, in private home security systems and at sporting events. Landlords are considering the technology as a replacement for their tenants’ key fobs, a visual check-in that could double as a general surveillance system.

But the backlash has already begun. San Francisco; Somerville, Mass.; and Oakland, Calif., all banned facial recognition software this year. And Congress is taking a look, worried that an unproven technology will ensnare innocent people while diminishing privacy rights.

“We can’t continue to expand the footprint of a technology and the reach of it when there are no guardrails for these emerging technologies to protect civil rights,” said Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, and a sponsor of the No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act, which would ban facial recognition systems in federally funded public housing. It would also require that the Department of Housing and Urban Development send to Congress a detailed report on the software.

At this point, the federal government does not regulate facial recognition software in any way, and HUD officials say they have no plans to create any regulations.

But the technology’s spread is raising serious concerns — on the political right as well as the left. The Chinese government’s use of a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control its Uighur Muslim minority has set off international outrage. It has also demonstrated how functional the technology has become.

In one month this year, law enforcement in the central Chinese city of Sanmenxia, along the Yellow River, screened images of residents 500,000 times to determine if they were Uighurs.

More read at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/facial-recognition-technology-housing.html

To understand AI advancements in health care, there are two storylines we must follow

If ever there were an industry that could reap the benefits of AI, it is healthcare. The adoption of this technology to actually make medicine better is obvious. However, with this adoption comes a slew of ethical issues.

Let’s start with some numbers: In 2018, the US spent $3.65 trillion on healthcare. That works out to $11,121 per capita, a 4.4% increase over 2017. In addition:

• Spending on hospitals, doctors, and other clinic services was $2.16 trillion, holding steady at 59% of total health care spending.
• The spending category that experienced the most substantial year-over-year increase was the general cost of administering health insurance, which rose 7.7% in 2018.
• Spending on prescription drugs purchased in retail pharmacies went up 3.3% in 2018, higher than the 0.4% rate in 2017.
• A majority of the more significant spending totals were due to higher overall prices, while the “use and intensity” of health care services played a smaller role.

The per capita spend in western economies, other than Switzerland, which was about 80%, was 50% or less. The worse news is that the US has slipped to 36th in the world in quality of healthcare. (The above data is from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and CIA World FactBook.)

Another lesser-known statistic is the magnitude of iatrogenic disease. From Wikipedia: an iatrogenic disorder occurs when the deleterious effects of the therapeutic or diagnostic regimen causes pathology independent of the condition for which the regimen is advised.

In other words, they are harmed by medical practice. According to a Johns Hopkins study, 251,454 deaths stemmed from a medical error – making it the third leading cause of death in the US, just behind cancer and heart disease.

All industries are facing the problem of which areas to apply AI. In an article in Healthcare IT News, some advice for the healthcare industry was: while AI may have the potential to discover new treatment methods, the report finds strongly entrenched ‘ways of working’ in the healthcare industry that are resistant to change. The authors warn that ‘simply adding AI applications to a fragmented system will not create sustainable change.’ Good advice for any industry.

To continue this: http://bit.ly/2lUwsZj

Robotic surgeons set to spark ‘revolution in healthcare’

Specialists working on patients while controlling automated arms could turn into another standard in medical clinics.

The help of robots in careful rooms are anticipated to change the manner in which activities are performed by enabling medical procedures to be done as keyhole techniques.

As the utilization of mechanical medical procedure turns out to be progressively well known, an expanding number of surgeons are being prepared in how to utilize them. They enable specialists to perform complex strategies utilizing an insignificantly obtrusive methodology.

Expert colorectal specialist Jonathan Morton is among a bunch of doctors who have evaluated the hardware.

He said: “It’s quite exciting to see robotic techniques rolled out – from an ergonomic point of view, the system is set up better so that the stresses on the body are less, reducing injury rates for surgeons.

“It’s not actually the robot doing the surgery – it’s the surgeon with the experience and the knowledge telling the robot what to do, effectively it’s the same as keyhole surgery with robotics.”

The robots have four flexible joints like a human arm and are controlled by a surgeon using a joystick and a 3D screen. The technology is capable of carrying out a wide range of tasks.

CMR Surgical, the company behind the robot, claims the technology will revolutionise healthcare.

The firm’s chief medical officer, Mark Slack, said: “The vision we have is that we have built a system to enable many more patients to get MAS (minimal access surgery) and all the benefits that that brings for them – like reduced complications, reduced pain – and the aim is to put these in as many hospitals as we can.”

The NHS is developing a £50m framework for robotic surgical equipment, soon to be rolled out across the country.

So does the future of surgical procedures rest in non-human hands?

Richard Kerr, of The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS), believes it’s poised to change the nature of surgery forever.

“The robots are not going to be taking over what surgeons do. They will become an integral part of the tools surgeon use to carryout operations on their patients,” he said.

“Maybe in the long-distance future some aspects of surgery may potentially be delivered by robots.”

The RCS says a majority of NHS trusts have guidelines which surgeons are expected to follow when using robotics

More at https://news.sky.com/story/robotic-surgeons-set-to-spark-revolution-in-healthcare-11810158

GlobalCompliancePanel to organize two-day seminar on “FDA and U.S. Customs Import Rules and Export Traps in 2020”

GlobalCompliancePanel, a leading provider of professional training for all the areas of regulatory compliance, is organizing a two-day, in person, live seminar on the topic, “FDA and U.S. Customs Import Rules and Export Traps in 2020”, on December 4 and 5.

Casper Uldriks, an ex-FDA Expert and former Associate Center Director of CDRH, will be the Director of this seminar. Please enroll for this session by visiting https://www.globalcompliancepanel.com/seminar/tougher-import-rules-for-FDA-901966SEMINAR

————————————————————————————————————

Smarter, more sophisticated, more agile and more demanding. These are what the FDA and the Customs and Border Patrol Service (CBP) have become of late when it comes to their expectations and requirements from importing firms of the submission of information and adherence to government procedures. Firms that fail to properly execute an import and export program can expect the FDA and the CBP to delay, detain or refuse their shipments.

The new Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) computer program from the CBP has brought in many changes to the process of import logistics and information reporting for FDA regulated products. As a result, companies that do not comply with the requirements set out in the ACE program can experience one of the worst nightmares they can think of: having their shipment stopped before it is even loaded at the foreign port! And then, if they refuse to or fail to use the ACE program, such ships also carry a fine of up to $10,000 for every offense.

There is more: such companies whose products the FDA detains face a cumbersome, long winding and expensive legal process. The FDA expects companies to have the import coding information accurate and up-to-date. Any company that lacks a thorough and clear understanding of the automated and human review process are almost certain to have their shipments detained.

And then, what happens in a scenario in which the FDA decides that importers should bring the products back to the port of entry after they received a release but cannot locate the product that has been sold? Well, in such instances, such companies are slapped a fine that is three times the value of the shipment, not to speak of the additional adverse legal concerns and strategies that come along.

What do all these mean? Simple: if you are an importer, you are doomed if you fail to comply with the FDA’s guidelines on imports.

Yet, there is a way out of this quagmire, in the form of the Voluntary Qualification Importer Program, which the FDA is implementing under the FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act. This plan seeks to reward importers who demonstrate a level of confidence about the quality of food they import by establishing an FDA-supervised, fee-based program. What this program does is that it facilitates the review and importation of foods from importers who establish a higher level of control over the safety and supply chain aspects of the imported food items.

And then, there is also the extra perk that the FDA offers: its export certificates. Offered at a reasonable fee; these certificates can go a long way in giving an importer a competitive advantage in foreign markets. In fact, a few foreign governments make an FDA export certificate a requirement.

————————————————————————————————————–

The aim of this seminar is to offer learning on all these core areas of the FDA and US Customs Import Rules in 2020. The Director will explain how to deal with common problems, such as returns for repair, importing QC samples, and investigational products. The learning will be taught over the following agenda:

Day 1 Schedule

Lecture 1:

FDA Legal Authority Customs and Border Control (CBP) Import Process FDA Import Process Registration and documentation

Lecture 2:

FDA Import Process (continued)

• Import Brokers
• Prior Notice Information
• CBP and FDA computer programs
• Import Codes
• Bonds and Bonded Warehouses
• FDA “Notice of Action”

Lecture 3:

Import Delays Import Alerts Detention Refusals

Day 2 Schedule

Lecture 1:

Foreign Inspections FDA 483 – Inspectional Observations

Lecture 2:

FDA Warning Letters and Automatic detention

Lecture 3:

Import Hypothetical FDA Import for Export Program FDA Export Program Export Hypothetical

Lecture 4:

FDA Export Program Special Import Issues

• Trade Shows
• Personal Use
• Compassionate Use

—————————————————————————————————————–

https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/ucm448728.htm