Mediaboss Marketing

BALTIMORE, April 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --b.well Connected Healthtoday announced a partnership with Mastercard to provide individuals a simpler and more secure way to prove their identity online and in-person when accessing healthcare services.

The b.well platform brings together patient data across providers, insurers, pharmacies, and a patient's own apps and devices, so people can share their information, manage their medications, understand their costs, and receive personalized health insights and alerts. Now, with the introduction of Mastercard's ID Verification service, b.well users will also be able to securely verify their identity in real time using their mobile phones.

"Consumers want to use their phones to connect with their doctors, get information about their insurance, and share sensitive information with trusted sources, but the process for authenticating themselves is complicated, difficult, and not always secure," said Kristen Valdes, CEO and Founder of b.well. "Our partnership with Mastercard solves that problem by enabling consumers to protect their identity, while at the same time simplifying the verification of their identity, giving them more control over their personal information and streamlining interactions with their providers and health plan."

The partnership enables healthcare organizations to provide their members and patients with a biometric alternative to verify their identity in-person or virtually, replacing traditional processes involving physical documents such as a driver's license. Mastercard's ID Verification service employs a combination of government ID document scanning, facial biometrics with liveness detection, and mobile phone intelligence to deliver high success rates for automated user verification.

ThedaCare, a 7-hospital Wisconsin health system that has made b.well available to its communities under the name "Ripple," is the first U.S. health system to use Mastercard ID Verification.

"As part of our mission of creating a healthier community, we strive to make it easier for our patients and community members to use digital tools to engage with our providers and manage their health," said Jim Albin, Chief Information Officer of ThedaCare. "The Mastercard ID Verification provided through Ripple offers added safety and security for them to use their smartphones to verify their identity when accessing virtual care or sharing personal medical information, adding convenience as well as peace of mind."

"Mastercard is working to deliver a globally interoperable ID, ensuring strong security and governance. Our partnership with b.well offers consumers the ability to interact with their health plan providers and third parties while better protecting their personal identity information," said Sarah Clark, Senior Vice President Digital Identity of Mastercard. "We're pleased to join b.well in helping to provide consumers with a trusted and truly patient-centered digital health care journey."

b.well will offer the service to its health plan and health system customers, who depend on b.well's Connected Health Platform to engage and connect their members and patients in a single mobile application.

Mastercard ID Verification is designed to comply with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2), the federal government's highest level of assurance for remote consumer-facing identity proofing.The NIST IAL2 benchmark is cited as a requirement in many healthcare use cases involving patient data sharing, aligned with the ONC Cures Act Final Rule for secure patient access to their medical record.

About b.well Connected Health

b.wellConnected Health is a healthcare technology company providing platform services comprised of five core capabilities that work together to enable health systems, payers, and employers with a configurable and personalized digital health experience for their populations. The b.well technology platform is transforming how consumers interact with the healthcare system by integrating data, insights, and partners into a single customized solution that helps people take control of their healthcare experience.

Media Contacts:

Todd Stein for b.well

510-417-0612

todd@toddsteincommunications.com

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bwell-and-mastercard-partner-to-give-consumers-secure-mobile-control-over-their-digital-health-information-301259815.html

SOURCE b.well Connected Health

See more here:
b.well and Mastercard Partner to Give Consumers Secure, Mobile Control Over Their Digital Health Information - Herald-Mail Media

Cox today unveiled new eye-tracking technology in Phoenix and Tucson that empowers people with disabilities to control their TV with their eyes. The Accessible Web Remote for Contour gives those who have lost fine motor skills whether from degenerative conditions or paralysis the ability to browse the video guide with a glance.

Specifically, afreeweb-based tool is navigableusing various assistive technologies already owned by customers, including eye gaze hardware and software, switch controls, and sip-and-puff systems, which the user controls by gently blowing into a tube.

READ ALSO: Cox Business launches work-at-home solution for remote workforce

Eye-tracking technology gives people living with conditions like paraplegia, Parkinsons disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) the same access to their TVs as customers with the latest edition of Contour.

Innovative technology like this gives people with disabilities an added level of independence, said Steve Gleason, founder of Team Gleason and former New Orleans Saints football player who has been living with ALS since 2011. We appreciate that companies like Cox continue to empower their users by adopting products like the Accessible Web Remote, which allows every customer to do something most people take for granted, like controlling their TV.

According to the Bureau of Internet Accessibility, approximately 16% of people in the United States have difficulties with their physical functioning, making things like using a traditional TV remote either a challenge or impossible, depending on the condition. Throughout the last three years, Cox has partnered with organizations like Team Gleason to ensure accessible design and development of its products, increase awareness and education, and improve processes and procedures focusing on disability inclusion.

Cox is proud to partner with Team Gleason because we believe in its mission to improve life for people living with conditions such as ALS, said John Wolfe, Senior Vice President and Region Manager for Cox, Southwest Region. We will continue to create products and solutions with accessibility built in, so all Cox customers can use our products.

Customers can now visithttps://webremote.cox.comto sync their device and begin changing channels, set a recording, search for programming within the Contour guide, and access integrated streaming apps all with a glance of their eyes.

To learn more about accessibility, please visitcox.com/accessibility.

View post:
Cox uses eye-tracking technology to help disabled control TV with eyes - AZ Big Media

Partisanmedia outlets are often blamed for growing polarization, but new research points to another consequence of consuming partisan news: an erosion of trust in the media.

A team of researchers combined computational social science techniques and experimentation to study the long-term effects of online partisan media on political opinions and trust.

Illustration by

Egan Jimenez, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Internet users were asked to change their default browser homepages to either the Huffington Post, a left-leaning news site, or Fox News, a more conservative outlet, during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. As participants went about their daily activities, they allowed the researchers to survey them multiple times as well as to collect data on millions of web visits and their posts on Twitter.

After eight weeks, the participants trust in the media appeared to decrease, and this effect remained detectable nearly a year later for visitors to both partisan news sites. Increased exposure to partisan news led to an immediate though short-lived boost in the number of visits to both sites, as well as improved knowledge of recent events. However, these effects did not appear to translate to changes in political attitudes, opinionsor behaviors.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illustrate a powerful new approach for studying the effects of exposure to partisan news. The results also expose a subtle, long-term effect that has eluded the attention of prior research: skepticism of the media after prolonged news exposure.

Past studies have shown links between exposure to partisan news and polarization, but the driver behind this has been up for debate, said study co-author Andy Guess, assistant professor of politics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Our work adds a piece to this puzzle, showing that its difficult for people to be persuaded by competing media outlets during an election campaign. That said, longer time spent on these sites does lead to a growing distrust in the news.

Guess conducted the study with Pablo Barber of the University of Southern California; Simon Munzert of the Hertie School; and JungHwan Yang of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The researchers partnered with the online polling firm YouGov, an international research data and analytics group. They initially recruited 1,551 respondents from YouGovs Pulse panel, which included users who had previously installed passive metering software on their desktop and mobile devices. This software collects in-depth data about online behaviors.

Participants agreed to join a Politics and Media study with multiple survey waves and could leave at any time.

In the first waves of the study, the researchers asked participants about the news they consume, their attitudes on domestic and foreign policy issues, whether they voted and their voting preferences, as well as if they approved of President Donald Trump. They also were asked to predict what might happen in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

In the third survey wave, the researchers implemented what they call a nudge-like approach where a third of the group was asked to change their browser homepage to a left-leaning news outlet (Huffington Post) and another third was asked to change it to a right-leaning news outlet (Fox News). The other third werent asked to change anything, becoming the control group.

The researchers chose Fox News and Huffington Post for their significance in the current political environment, as well as on the basis of empirical web tracking data of who consumes news on their sites.

They found that those in the Huffington Post homepage group visited approximately one additional page on the website per day, which amounted to nearly 50 seconds of additional browsing time.. The Fox News group visited nearly four more pages per day, or an additional two minutes. Before the study, participants had only spent about 34 minutes per week on average on any news site.

Study subjects were able to recognize and recall recent political events and distinguish them from made-up events more accurately than those in the control group. This held true regardless of which news site they viewed. That said, their political beliefs and voting behaviors did not measurably change.

Guess and his collaborators currently have other research papers in the works using the same data from YouGov.

We asked our study participants to change a default setting on their devices the browser homepage. The result was a classic nudge-like effect, demonstrating the importance of basic digital opt-ins to structure peoples information consumption. Just as we were able to boost the partisan composition of peoples news diets, social platforms, public media, and other intermediaries can draw on our findings to promote authoritative, nonpartisan sources of information. This could be part of the solution as society looks for ways to reverse our downward spiral of distrust, Guess said.

The paper, The consequences of online partisan media, first appeared online in PNAS on March 29. It is co-authored by Andrew Guess of Princeton University; Pablo Barber of the University of Southern California; Simon Munzert of the Hertie School; and JungHwan Yang of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This research was funded by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation Computational Social Science Initiative. The experiment was additionally supported by the Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California.

See the rest here:
Consuming online partisan news leads to distrust in the media Read more - Princeton University

Amazon is taking a bigger step into cars today by integrating Alexa into Lamborghinis Huracn EVO, and not just to ask questions or remotely control your home its giving the assistant the ability to control settings inside the car, hands-free. The partnership was originally announced last year as part of Amazons push into cars, but the integration goes beyond Alexas usual bag of tricks.

Alexas integration allows users to control climate and comfort settings including air conditioning, heater, fan speed, temperature, seat heaters, defroster and air flow direction, as well as lighting, Lamborghini says. (It can also pull up a screen showing you the cars torque vectoring and traction control.) Of course, Alexa also has its own suite of skills for interacting with your smart home appliances, playing music and podcasts, and basic navigation.

The Huracn EVO has some physical controls on the steering wheel and driver side door, but a majority of the cars features are adjusted through a screen in the center console. Giving Alexa more control over the actual car itself means less time hunting and pecking through menus Alexa, I am hot is apparently enough to get air conditioning going and more time with eyes actually on the road, which could be a win for safety and convenience.

Its not like Alexa will be driving your car, but give it time.

The automotive industrys switch from controls like knobs and dials to entirely touchscreen-based displays has been ongoing, and we even ran a review series examining in-car displays as gadgets a few years ago. Amazons tried to help smooth the transition with the Alexa-enabled Echo Auto in the past, but we found the accessory worked best as a simple speakerphone and Bluetooth adapter in our review tasks that required knowledge of location or a consistent cellular connection did poorly. The Huracn EVOs implementation of Alexa, with all the benefits of actually having real control over a connected car, might be a better version of the idea.

Amazon and Lamborghini isnt the only automaker / tech company team-up tackling the problem of built-in car software. Volvos Polestar 2 launched in 2020 with Android Automotive built-in and Google Assistant integration for similar control over settings like air conditioning, something that wasnt part of the old Android Auto. We liked the Polestars Google-built software, though much like Lamborghini, it comes with a high price tag.

New Huracn EVOs should have the feature from the jump, but Lamborghini says all existing Huracn EVO customers can be retrofitted with support for Alexa, free-of-charge.

Here is the original post:
Amazons Alexa lets you control a Lamborghinis air conditioning with just your voice - The Verge

Ball State University is hosting a virtual ribbon cutting ceremony for its state-of-the-art Esports Center.

The ceremony, which will be livestreamed at bsu.edu/live, begins at 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, April 5.

Were ecstatic to officially unveil our new home, said Dan Marino, director of Ball States Esports program. At Ball State, our beautiful campus is our canvas. This Esports Center is our Universitys latest addition, which improves the sense of place for our students.

Ball States College of Communication, Information, and Mediais the home of the Universitys new Esports program. Ball States team is one of 12 members of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) to join the newly created independent Esports Collegiate Conference (ESC). The conference fields teams in League of Legends, Rocket League, and Overwatch divisions.

The 3,611-square-foot Esports Center located on campus in the Robert Bell Building features:

Our program and new facilities will help us achieve our goal of enhancing academic offerings by bringing esports experiences into curricula across multiple disciplines including digital sports production, business, computer sciences, animation, and sport administration, said Dr. Paaige Turner, Dean of the College of Communication, Information, and Media at Ball State.

Link:
Ball State University To Host Ribbon Cutting Ceremony For State-Of-The-Art Esports Center - Ball State University News