After mothballing Amazon Care, Amazon reenters tele-health with Amazon Clinic, a marketplace for third-party virtual consultants

The ink is not yet dry on Amazon’s $4 billion acquisition of OneMedical, but in the meantime, the online services giant is making one more move into telehealth, and into medical services overall, on its own steam. The company today is taking the wraps off of Amazon Clinic, which Amazon describes as a virtual health “storefront”: users can search for, connect with, and pay for telehealth care, addressing variety of conditions that are some of the more popular for telehealth consultations today.

Amazon Clinic is initially launching in 32 states in the U.S.. It does not work with health insurance and this point, and overall pricing will vary depending on providers, conditions, and location. (One example, connecting with a clinic for acne treatment in Nevada will cost around $40, and you get a choice of two providers whose different offers are provided in a comparative table. Another example, for pink eye (conjunctivitis) in New Jersey, has a wider price gap of between $30 and $48 between the two providers listed.)

Amazon Clinic appeared to leak out about a week ago when users spotted a video on YouTube that was then quickly removed as media picked up on the attention. Now, it is launching officially, and at a critical moment.


It’s only been a few months since Amazon shut down Amazon Care, which had been a telehealth service that it created for its own employees before stepping up plans to launch it nationwide and to third-party companies. And more generally, the company is, like many others in tech, feeling the economic pinch. It is reportedly gearing up to make a big round of layoffs, potentially 10,000 jobs and possibly this week; and additionally to that it’s been downsizing and cutting a number of its operations.

Amazon Clinic is about the company taking another pass at the healthcare market, and positioning itself as a player in what is a perpetual problem in the U.S.: how to bridge the gap between people needing medical help for ailments that are more complicated that a trip to the drug store, but might not justify expensive and time-consuming trips to the doctor.

(Other conditions it will cover addition to acne and pink eye include asthma refills, birth control, cold sores, dandruff, eczema, erectile dysfunction, eyelash growth, genital herpes, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), hayfever, hyperlipidemia refills, hypertension refills, hypothyroidism refills, men’s hair loss, migraines, sinusitis, smoking cessation, urinary tract infections (UTIs), yeast infections and so on.)

Clinic is very much built in the Amazon mold. It’s a marketplace where third parties can leverage Amazon’s platform and reach to find customers, and Amazon can leverage third parties to quickly scale what offers to its consumers. And it helps Amazon extend the business funnel for other Amazon operations — in this case Amazon Pharmacy, which can fulfill any prescriptions that come out of Clinic consultations, and has reportedly not been as big of a boom in business as expected. (Users can fill Amazon Clinic scripts in other pharmacies, too.)


We’ve asked Amazon if it plans to provide its own in-house (private label, in e-commerce parlance) telehealth consultancy utalongside third parties, and what the plans are for further states, whether there are international ambitions, and if it will accept health insurance for Clinic in the future. It may well be that this is laying the groundwork for Amazon to link up what it is building here with OneMedical when that acquisition closes.


The bigger picture for Amazon Clinic is that the service will sit within Amazon’s bigger ambitions in the healthcare market. The company already has an online chemists, Amazon Pharmacy, which fulfills subscriptions and lets users additional buy over-the-counter drugs via Prime memberships that ship the items within two days.

Amazon also believes its new telehealth service addresses a gap in the market for providing users with health consultations for more minor ailments. Some situations need more direct physician involvement, which might be covered with One Medical or one’s existing healthcare coverage; some situations might be addressable by visiting a pharmacy on one’s own steam.

“But we also know that sometimes you just need a quick interaction with a clinician for a common health concern that can be easily addressed virtually,” the company noted in its blog post announcing the service.

Amazon has been making inroads, and laying out its ambitions, in healthcare for a number of years. Amazon Pharmacy was launched off the back of its acquisition of PillPack. And it’s been exploring healthcare as an enterprise opportunity, with integrations of Alexa into healthcare environments.


But Amazon Care is not the only step back it’s taken in its longer journey. In 2018, it formed a JV with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway to build an employee healthcare operation, appointing a high-profile doctor to lead it. That service never appeared to take shape as expected and shut up shop in 2021.

We’ll update this piece as we learn more.

source: techcrunch.com

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Adobe snaps up Figma for $20B, taking out one of its biggest rivals in digital design

 

Big news in the world of digital creative technology: Adobe today announced that it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, taking out one of its biggest rivals in the realm of digital design.

Both the WSJ and Bloomberg reported earlier this morning that Adobe was close to announcing the deal to acquire Figma. In the end, Adobe confirmed the news to coincide with its quarterly earnings.

Those Q3 earnings saw the company post revenues of $4.43 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $3.40, which respectively met and exceeded analysts’ expectations. Nevertheless, the company said that it might need to finance this deal with a loan, and it provided a lukewarm outlook for the next quarter, with revenues expected to be $4.52 billion and EPS of $3.50, citing “the overall macroeconomic environment” and “FX headwinds”. Its stock is trading down nearly 10% pre-market open — one sign of how Adobe likely hoped the news of consolidating and taking out a rival could give it a boost.

Investors are not the only ones a little worried…

Source: Tech Crunch

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Google hits pause on Chrome and Chrome OS releases

Google  today announced that it is pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases “due to adjusted work schedules.”

The company confirmed that we will still see security updates, though, which will get merged into version 80, the browser’s current stable release version. “We’ll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80,” the team writes in today’s brief announcement.

Don’t expect any new feature updates anytime soon, though. Chrome version 81 is currently in beta testing and will likely remain in this channel for now. Like so much in this current situation, it’s unclear when Google plans to resume regular updates.

Earlier this week, Google also noted that Android app reviews will likely now take longer as the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced in-office staffing levels. The same holds true for YouTube. As YouTube  is taking measures to protect its staff, it says it’ll rely more on its AI algorithms to moderate content (which in turn will likely lead to more false positives and YouTube taking down more videos that weren’t actually violating its terms).

With most of Google (and other tech companies) now working from home, we’ll likely see more of these announcements in the future as the impact of this crisis becomes clearer in the coming weeks

Source: TechCrunch

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Facebook announces $100M grant program for small businesses

Regardless of how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out in the coming weeks and months, it has already been brutal for small businesses, with some forced to close for public safety, while others are taking a big hit in both revenue and access to credit.

So Facebook announced today that it’s creating a $100 million grant program for small businesses. Applications aren’t open yet, but the company says this will include both ad credits and cash grants that can be spent on operational costs like paying workers and paying rent. It will be available to up to 30,000 businesses in the 30-plus countries where Facebook operates.

Facebook has also created a Business Hub with tips and resources for businesses trying to survive during the outbreak.

“We want to do more,” said COO Sheryl Sandberg in a Facebook post. “Teams across our company are working every day to help businesses. We’re looking at additional ways to host virtual trainings – and will have more to share in the coming weeks – and we’re finding more ways to help people connect and learn to use technology through Blueprint, our free e-learning training program.”

In addition, the company announced today that it’s partnering with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association to offer a total of $1 million in grants for U.S. and Canadian newsrooms that need more resources to properly cover the pandemic. These individual grants will be for up to $5,000.

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Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube issue joint statement on misinformation

Ian unprecedented move to reassure customers and flag the potential for misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, all of the major social media companies and their parent corporations issued a joint statement on their efforts.

“We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe,” the statement read.

Facebook Newsroom

✔@fbnewsroom

Joint Industry Statement from @Facebook, @google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @reddit, @Twitter and @YouTube https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus/#joint-statement …

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Last week, U.S Chief Technology Officer Michael Michael Kratsios held a remote meeting with representatives from major tech companies on how to coordinate various efforts related to COVID-19, including fighting disnformation. The Washington Post and Politico reported that the White House asked Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Cisco and Twitter for help.

The World Health Organization’s director-general said last month that disinformation is as dangerous as COVID-19. During an address at the Munich Security conference on Feb. 15, almost a month before the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.”

But tech companies aren’t just battling the spread of questionable posts by the public. They also have to contend with misleading information in several of President Donald Trump’s public statements on COVID-19, including his tweets and Facebook posts.

TechCrunch has contacted each of the companies in the joint statement for more details, and will update this post as we hear back from them.

In response to an email, a LinkedIn  spokesperson directed TechCrunch to a post published by the company on March 13, with links to information about finding trustworthy news sources and working remotely.

Facebook’s efforts to fight disinformation about COVID-19 have included information cards on Instagram and Facebook, that redirect to sources like the World Health Organization or local health authorities.

Source: Techcrunch

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Nvidia’s GTC developer event will be online-only over coronavirus fears

Nvidia has canceled the in-person portion of its GPU Technology Conference, which would have brought more than 10,000 people to San Jose three weeks from now. The company cited “growing concern over the coronavirus” for its decision, and said it will attempt to host as much of the content online as possible.

In an update to the GTC page, Nvidia explained:

“Jensen will still give a keynote. We will still share our announcements. And we’ll work to ensure our speakers can share their talks. But we’ll do this all online.”

The five-day event was scheduled to take place at the San Jose convention center starting on March 22. Some 250 companies would be exhibiting or attending in some form or another, presenting and hearing talks on the latest applications of GPUs and high performance computing.

Unfortunately, GTC has gone the way of the Game Developers Conferences, Mobile World Congress, F8, and numerous other major events that rightly worried that such a high concentration of international travelers might prove to be a breeding ground for the coronavirus currently spreading worldwide.

No doubt a good number of exhibitors and attendees were already canceling or questioning their attendance; Many companies have already restricted international travel for any reason at all.

Anyone who paid for a pass to GTC will receive a full refund, but Nvidia is hoping to salvage at least some of its programming.

“We will be working with our conference speakers to begin publishing their talks online beginning in the weeks ahead,” wrote the company in a blog post announcing the decision. “Additionally, for those in NVIDIA’s developer program, we plan to schedule availability with our researchers, engineers and solution architects to answer technical questions.”

All updates, including content, should appear on the GTC page going forward.

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Google cancels Cloud Next because of coronavirus

Google today announced that it is canceling the physical part of Cloud Next, its cloud-focused event and its largest annual conference by far with around 30,000 attendees, over concerns around the current spread of COVID-19.
Given all of the recent conference cancellations, this announcement doesn’t come as a huge surprise, especially after Facebook canceled its F8 developer conference only a few days ago.
Cloud Next was scheduled to run from Apri 6 to 8. Instead of the physical event, Google will now host an online event under the “Google Cloud Next ’20: Digital Connect” moniker. So there will still be keynotes and breakout sessions, as well as the ability to connect with experts.

“Innovation is in Google’s DNA and we are leveraging this strength to bring you an immersive and inspiring event this year without the risk of travel,” the company notes in today’s announcement.
The virtual event will be free and in an email to attendees, Google says that it will automatically refund all tickets to this year’s conference. It will also automatically cancel all hotel reservations made through its conference reservation system.
It now remains to be seen what happens to Google’s other major conference, I/O, which is slated to run from May 12 to 14 in Mountain View. The same holds true for Microsoft’s rival Build conference in Seattle, which is scheduled to start on May 19. These are the two premier annual news events for both companies, but given the current situation, nobody would be surprised if they got canceled, too.
Source: Techcrunch

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SOLVING AFRICAN PAYMENT PROBLEMS THROUGH UNIFIED GATEWAY

Article by: Temitope Adeyemi  

HNG6.0 - Slack: @Appep Team: Herecles / Digital Marketing Git: topeadeyemi367 

Flutterwave is changing the way payment is being done across Africa and other part of the world. With a unified payment gateway is making it easy for a Pan-African transaction through an effective integration across commercial banking institutions and other businesses making it faster to do Pan- African transaction with a simple click. With over $2b in payment transaction processed and counting, Flutterwave clearly is leading with its innovative payments unified payment solution and easy setup which helps easy adoptions by Organizations and Businesses.

Nigeria happens to be one of many least developed nations in terms of technology, even with the rise of numerous technological solutions, one can still point to the fact that a lot needs to be done. One of finest young Nigeria’s leading serial entrepreneur and our very own iteration of Iron Man, in person of Iyin Aboyeji co-founded Flutterwave after his Departure from Andela. Flutterwave was founded in 2016,   by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder Olugbenga Agboola, and a team of African payments, technology and banking veterans from Standard Bank, Google Wallet, Andela and PayPal, amongst others. Flutterwave was started due to payments challenges experienced in Africa which resulted in fledging e-commerce market. Flutterwave allows clients and companies to tap its APIs and work with Flutterwave developers to customize payments applications.

Why Flutterwave?
Flutterwave falls under the category of a fintech organization that allows for seamless and secure payments to banks, diverse businesses and a number of their customers. With their solutions, sellers can accept payments locally or internationally via card and bank accounts. Currently Flutterwave holds 25,000 plus merchants in its abode and accepts a variation in mode of payment. As operated in distinct countries Flutterwave’s stack also powers services such as; Megabet, an online gaming service, entered the Nigerian scene and reached out to Flutterwave to be one of their payment technology partners. Megabet ,Walletng, PiggybankNG, MAXGO and a multitude of other platforms

Products and Services

The two major products of Flutterwave are:
1. Rave
2. Barter

RAVE:
Rave by Flutterwave is a service  product that allows website owners and merchants to accept payments globally from customers in 154+ countries with zero setup fees and no troubles. Cards( Visa, MasterCard, Verve e.t.c), bank accounts, and USSD modes of payment are supported. Your customers both local and international can pay you directly from their bank accounts. Merchants accept global payments from card, bank accounts and USSD. In the past year, RAVE has been integrated into a number of online websites and platforms.   With Rave, you avoid high conversion fees and can receive funds in your local currency. Rave supports a range of payments in various currencies: Naira, US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, and many more. As a PCI DSS compliant solution, Rave ensures the security of your customer data. Rave is backed with vault-level security to ensure all transactions are secure.

BARTER:
Flutterwave partnered with Visa to launch a consumer payment product for Africa called GetBarter. The payment product was launched in 2019 which target market is for everyone who has a payment need in Africa,that includes  the entire bank customer base in Nigeria, mobile money and bank customers in Ghana, and everyone on the  continent. GetBarter is aimed at facilitating personal and small merchant payments within countries and across Africa’s national borders. Visa cardholders can send and receive funds at home or internationally. In other words, Barter Issues and manages virtual and physical cards for retail, loyalty and expense management

Achievements:
In 2017, Flutterwave raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding. Key investors at that time included Green Visor and Greycroft Partners.

In 2018, Flutterwave was one of several African fintech companies to announce significant VC investment and cross-border expansionFlutterwave added operations in Uganda in June and raised a $10 million Series, a round in October that saw former Visa CEO Joe Saunders join its board of directors. making the Country Flutterwave’s fifth destination in Africa after Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, where it has launched the company also plugged into ledger activity in 2018, becoming a payment processing partner to the Ripple and Stellar blockchain networks. A major Achievements for Flutterwave was the conclusion an extension of its Series A funding round, with participation from global payments company MasterCard, CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures, and Raba Capital,  and the raise of a total of $20 million investments. As part of the deal, Green Visor Capital Chairman and General Partner and former CEO of Visa, Joseph Saunders, joined the Flutterwave Board of Directors.
 In 2018, Flutterwave received the ‘Best Payments Company’ award at the Ghana eCommerce Awards ceremony.

All together
Flutterwave makes it possible to take and make payments with no iota of stress. Making payments, hassle free and easy is just testament of Flutterwave’s alphabetic slogan, and of things to come. In recent times, Flutterwave’s success journey has moved beyond their local community, Flutterwave’s Alipay collaboration also tracks a trend of increased presence of Chinese companies in African tech. The Alipay collaboration follows a previous one between Flutterwave and Visa earlier in 2019 that launched a consumer payment product for Africa Flutterwave recently moved in to Uganda, first; Online Payment Technology Solutions | Flutterwave

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Amazon wants to put microphones into your rings and glasses

At the end of its hardware event today, Amazon  announced a new program for testing and selling its own experimental, limited-volume hardware: Day 1 Editions.

The first of these new products is Echo Frames. These are Alexa-enabled glasses, though, unlike Google  Glass, there’s no camera and no display, just microphones and a speaker.

The second is the Echo Loop, a rather large Alexa-enabled ring with two built-in microphones and, of course, a tiny speaker. Both of these will be available on an invite-only basis and in limited volumes later this year.

The frames will retail for $179.99 and the Loop will cost $129.99 for the introduction period.

The glasses, which will sell without any prescription lenses (though you can add those if you want), weigh in at 31 grams. They aren’t especially stylish, though they look pretty acceptable.

The ring is maybe the oddest product Amazon demoed at its event today. It’s pretty large and I can’t quite see people talking into their rings and then listening to what Alexa has to say in response, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s the next big thing.

“Paired with your phone, this ring lets you access information throughout the day,” Amazon writes. “It’s super easy to connect with Alexa without breaking stride or digging out your phone, for those simple things like turning on the lights or calculating the tip on your lunch bill. Simply press a button, talk softly to Alexa, and then the answer comes discretely through a small speaker built into the ring.”

To be fair, though, these are very much experimental products that are meant to allow Amazon to get feedback from real customers. But that’s what Amazon said about its Alexa-enabled microwave, too, and now it’s the best-selling microwave on the site.

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Gogoro launches its newest electric vehicle, a lightweight scooter called Viva

Image Credits: Gogoro(opens in a new window)

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, revealed its newest vehicle today, a lightweight scooter designed for people who want something smaller than one of the company’s Smartscooter mopeds, but more powerful than an electric bike. Called the Viva, the scooter can run for 85 kilometers on one of Gogoro’s  swappable batteries, which are charged at the same stations as its Smartscooters.

Horace Luke, co-founder and CEO of Gogoro, tells TechCruch that the Viva was created as an environmentally-friendly alternative to 50cc to 100cc gas scooters. It will be available starting in October, launching first in Taiwan next year before being released in some international markets.

Made from recyclable scratch-proof solid-core polypropylene and available in five color combinations, the Viva weighs 80 kilograms and has up to 21 liters of storage. It will retail at USD $1,800, with about 100 optional accessories available, including baskets and racks.

As in many other Asian cities, mopeds are popular in Taiwan and serve as the primary vehicle for many drivers, transporting multiple passengers and deliveries. Luke says Gogoro’s scooters now account for 95% of the country’s electric vehicle market share and about 17% of all new vehicles sold in Taiwan, including gas ones.

Viva was created to attract customers who don’t want to deal with the costs, including maintenance visits and parking, of owning a bigger moped.

“The Viva is aimed toward the population going no more than 5 kilometers a day, who don’t want to worry about scratches, cost of ownership, having to take it to the shop for maintenance or parking,” he adds. “We have 17% market share and now the question is how do you get to 25% or 35% market share?”

Like Gogoro’s mopeds, the Viva is also connected to the company’s iQ system, which lets users unlock their vehicles and monitor mileage and maintenance with a smartphone app. With Taiwanese government subsidies for electric vehicles, it will cost NTD $25,980 (about USD $837), making it competitive with the pricing of high-end electric bikes. Gogoro will also offer two years of free maintenance for Vivas sold in Taiwan.

Gogoro has now sold more than 200,000 Smartscooters and is present in international markets including the European Union (through a partnership with scooter-sharing service Coup), South Korea, where it recently launched electric scooters designed for delivery drivers, and Japan. It also runs a mobility platform designed to be a white-label solution for ride-sharing companies.

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Nintendo’s ‘Mario Kart Tour’ is out now for iPhone, iPad and Android

Mario  Kart Tour, Nintendo’s  latest mobile game, is now available on iOS for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, as well as on Android devices. The game, like Nintendo’s other mobile releases, is free to play, with in-app purchases (in-game currency called “rubies”) that you use for upgrades and unlocks.

Players immediately unlock one rider and get a tutorial to start, which introduces them to the Mario Kart Tour driving mechanics, which are slightly different than the ones you’re probably used to if you’ve played Mario Kart games for Nintendo’s various consoles. Specifically, your kart will always be moving forward, so there’s no acceleration to press; instead, you slide your finger side to side on the screen to steer left and right, with a tap firing off any items or weapons you might pick up.

High scores earn you points that can be redeemed for in-game unlocks, and the game also features other new mechanics, like “frenzy mode,” which gives you a timed period of unlimited item use whenever you pick up three of the same. Special challenges are also new in this mobile iteration, which introduce new ways to win instead of just placing first in a race with other kart drivers. Mario Kart Tour also features online ranking with other mobile players worldwide.

The “Tour” component of the game is also a new twist: Nintendo is mixing courses inspired by real-world cities in with levels that are taken from classic Mario Kart games, and these will be cycling every two weeks for a fresh global tour on a regular basis. In-game characters will also get costume variants that are inspired by these globe-trotting destinations.

Based on Nintendo’s track record, Mario Kart Tour should be perfectly playable without any in-game purchases, but players may feel that they hit a progression wall pretty quickly without picking up some currency. It’ll be interesting to see how this one fares, given that Apple  has just introduced its own Arcade subscription service focused on games that eschew in-app purchase mechanics — including cart racer Sonic Racing, which looks very much like it was once intended to offer similar in-app mechanics before Arcade came along.

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