Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Meals on Wheels tests high-tech health checks for seniors
 Meals on Wheels is now not only delivering meals to geriatric clients, but checking after their healthcare.

Just after he finished delivering a meal to 70-year-old Anne Stillman of Vista, a question popped up on Christopher Topper’s smartphone screen.

Before getting into his truck to head to his next delivery, the Meals on Wheels courier took just a second to respond to the query.

“The app asks me if there is a change in condition, meaning, is there anything that needs to be reported about her wellness? Anne looks great, I’m going to hit ‘no’ and, boom, on to the next client,” Topper said just before sliding back behind the wheel.

Advertisement

That quick tap puts Meals on Wheels on the edge of a revolution in health care that seeks to take action on potential problems in homes before seniors end up in the back of an ambulance.

This kind of work, experts say, is becoming more vital as baby boomers enter retirement age and advances in health care mean that their parents have a better chance than ever of celebrating their 100th birthdays.

Those age 65 and older were already consuming significantly more of the nation’s emergency department visits in 2014 than they were in 2006, according to an estimate from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. During that year span, seniors jumped from 16.8 percent of all visits to 18 percent nationwide, an increase of more than 4 million visits in eight years. And demographers expect that trend to accelerate.

San Diego has recently become something of a hotbed for efforts to stem the tide through prevention, either on the front end by stopping accidents before they happen or on the back end by reducing the chances that hospitalized older patients will be readmitted once they are sent home.

Meals on Wheels, for example, has asked its volunteers and paid couriers to keep an eye on the senior clients they see many times per week. But that oversight has been largely ad-hoc.

Here is the classic opportunity for data-driven change, said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at San Diego’s West Health, a research and philanthropy non profit.

Dinner with a side of health

West helped add a module to the “SERVtracker” software that many Meals on Wheels operations use to guide their drivers from one home to the next and confirm that each delivery has been made. That “has the client’s condition changed” question is asked each time a driver confirms delivery, and, if they say yes, then the system automatically moves through a list of ever more precise follow-ups, helping to triage the specific problem that needs attention.

Once that problem is identified, drivers can hit send and the information moves electronically back to headquarters where a care coordinator can take a look often before the driver has left the driveway.

Though Topper did not find anything amiss at Stillman’s mobile home, he said he has had a few cases over the last two and a half months where the software made a difference. In one case, a female client had extreme dental pain and no way to get to a dentist. In another case, he noticed that a woman’s home, which was always meticulously kept, was a mess, indicating she may have been experiencing a mental or physical problem.

“As soon as you hit the button, lots of people know that there is an issue, and they can get right on it,” Topper said.

Some might wonder what the clients make of the idea that the people who are delivering their meals are also scoping them out for health problems and reporting any that they might observe.

Standing in the doorway of her mobile home, Stillman said she doesn’t consider this kind of observation intrusive. A while back, she said, she would have died due to undiagnosed diabetes if her nephew hadn’t happened to come check on her and saw that she was too weak to walk outside. The paramedic, she said, told her she wouldn’t have lasted another day.

“I don’t think it’s invasive if you’re truly concerned about somebody, you know,” she said.

Debbie Case, president of Meals on Wheels of San Diego County, said having the incoming information pre-sorted into categories helps elicit a rapid connection to the right resources, whether it’s social services, health providers or transportation networks.

The system started this spring on single North County delivery route and was used with only a handful of the program’s full-time paid couriers but expanded this summer to include about 40 volunteers serving six routes around the county.

Case said that, in eight weeks of trial operation, volunteers reported 60 changes in condition on 22 of their clients, using the software to immediately send a report which can bring about a response in less than a day in non-emergency situations that otherwise might take several days to sort out.

Now, she noted, the challenge is to expand electronic delivery tracking to the thousands of volunteers who deliver meals across San Diego, and across the country. Most are seniors themselves, and many aren’t that interested in using smartphone apps.

“We can’t just pull the bandage off or we lose 3,000 volunteers. You have to do it strategically over the next couple of years,” Case said.

Emergencies not the whole story

Still, these kind of problem-interceptor programs are not a panacea, says Dr. Daniel Waxman, a UCLA Los Angeles emergency department doctor and health policy researcher.

Preventive programs, he said, can certainly help reduce visits and costs.

But most senior emergency visits, he said, are appropriate. In many cases, an older patient may come in with a condition — vague chest pain, say — that could be a heart attack or simply the kind of pain that comes with aging blood vessels. People with these kinds of symptoms, Waxman said, need to come in for an immediate workup, even if most will not turn out to be heart attacks.

It’s what happens after a workup like that where costs can soar, he said. Even if a full workup in the emergency department, complete with electrocardiogram, shows there is no heart attack happening, doctors know that vague chest pain is often reported hours or even days before a heart attack.

These patients need follow up the next day and if doctors are not confident they’ll get what they need outside the hospital, they admit.

In 2008, a government report estimated that one in 10 hospital admissions was preventable and that 60 percent of those estimated 4 million hospitalizations were for Americans age 65 and older.

Just over a third of health care expenses for those age 65 and older were on in-patient admissions compared to only 2.3 percent in the emergency room, according to a 2013 report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Following up

This reality has not been lost on San Diego health care providers.

San Diego County’s Aging and Independence Services Department received funding in 2010 to run a local care transitions team that focused on follow-up care after hospitalization for patients with chronic diseases.

That work, according to a 2015 report, resulted in a 24.7 percent drop in hospital readmissions overall and a 72 percent drop for high-risk Medicare patients.

Though the federally-funded program lost its grant in 2016, many local hospitals have continued the practices they honed while they were in the program. Sharp Grossmont Hospital, for example, tries to connect seniors with whatever services they need after they leave right down to issuing them food bags at discharge.

Kaiser Permanente San Diego often creates follow-up appointments before its members leave the emergency department and sets up what it calls “bridge clinics” for patients who have complex needs to visit after they have an emergency.

UC San Diego and West Health are taking things one step further with a pilot program called Acute Care at Home. It identifies stable patients who need attention that might otherwise have meant hospitalization — say a requirement for intravenous antibiotics to take care of an infection.

Dr. Vaishal Tolia, who runs the program, said that about 70 patients have been enrolled in Acute Care at Home since it started last summer. Nurses are assigned to visit the patients in their homes as often as necessary and Tolia said that, so far, there have been no readmissions to the hospital for the same health problem that they were enrolled for.

“We’ve found that we’re able to mimic the care that they would be receiving in the hospital, and some end up getting visited by a nurse three times per day,” Tolia said.

Health Playlist × On Now Video: Leaders urge public to help extinguish hepatitis outbreak On Now San Diego starts cleansing sidewalks, streets to combat hepatitis A On Now Video: Scripps to shutter its hospice service On Now Video: Scripps La Jolla hospitals nab top local spot in annual hospital rankings On Now Video: Does a parent's Alzheimer's doom their children? On Now EpiPen recall expands On Now Kids can add years to your life

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

Output: Just after he finished delivering a meal to 70-year-old Anne Stillman of Vista, a question popped up on Christopher Topper’s smartphone screen.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
U.S. Health Care Reform Can’t Wait for Quality Measures to Be Perfect
 U.S. policymakers have been debating health care payment reform. While the Trump administration has yet to weigh in, delaying the move to value-based payment is not an option for three reasons. First, even imperfect measurement and transparency accelerate quality improvement. Second, the act of using measures will improve measurement. And third, returning to fee-for-service is not an option.

There’s a debate in the United States about whether the current measures of health care quality are adequate to support the movement away from fee-for-service toward value-based payment. Some providers advocate slowing or even halting payment reform efforts because they don’t believe that quality can be adequately measured to determine fair payment. Employers and other purchasers, however, strongly support the currently available quality measures used in payment reform efforts to reward higher-performing providers. So far, the Trump administration has not weighed in.

The four of us, leaders of organizations that represent large employers and other purchasers of health care, reject any delay in payment reform efforts for the following three reasons:

Even imperfect measurement and transparency accelerate quality improvement. One set of measures often questioned is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and others in value-based payment programs. These indicators measure surgical complications and errors in hospitals, which is critical given that one in four hospital admissions is estimated to result in an adverse event.

Insight Center Transforming Health Care Sponsored by Medtronic How leading providers are delivering value for patients.

PSIs remain among the most evidence-based, well-tested, and validated quality measures available. CMS uses many in its value-based purchasing programs. Use and reporting of PSIs through AHRQ’s Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System has measurably improved quality. For instance, CMS reported a reduction in inpatient venous thromboembolisms (VTEs) from 28,000 in 2010 to 16,000 in 2014, meaning that 12,000 fewer patients had potentially fatal blood clots in 2014.

In addition to using quality measures in payment programs and for quality improvement, making measures public is key to accelerating change. “If transparency were a medication, it would be a blockbuster,” concluded a multi-stakeholder roundtable convened by the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute in 2015. The foundation’s report cited the Leapfrog Group’s first-ever reporting of early elective delivery rates by hospitals in 2010, which galvanized a cascade of efforts to curtail the problem and thus reduce maternal harms and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions. This was effective: The national mean of early elective deliveries declined from a rate of 17% to 2.8% in only five years.

Using measures improves measurement. Providers and health care executives sometimes point to flaws in their medical-record and billing systems as a main reason certain measures shouldn’t be used. As they see it, their performance on the measures isn’t the issue; it’s their medical records or billing coding that’s the problem. They believe these internal systems should be fixed before measures that use this information are applied in payment formulas or public reporting.

But use of these measures is often necessary to break logjams in correcting the health care industry’s long-neglected weaknesses in data-quality control. Indeed, many of the nuanced imperfections providers criticize were only uncovered by public reporting, which revealed unexpectedly poor performance for some providers, prompting them to research the medical records to find out the reasons.

Even rough measures make a big difference when they are publicly reported. For instance, New York State’s release of surgical mortality data for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedures jump-started the movement to define and more carefully collect much stronger measures of CABG outcomes, and today we have many advances in cardiac care and its measurement.

In the New York example, the success in generating ever better measures — and more importantly, achieving ever better outcomes for patients — came about because providers made the changes that saved lives, and they deserve all the credit for that. A thorough, respectful process for building scientific and stakeholder consensus around measures has been orchestrated by leaders like the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Purchasers are committed to partnering in the development and refinement of excellent measures while we advance transparency and payment reform alongside that work.

Returning to fee-for-service is not an option. Given the widely acknowledged waste, heavy costs, and quality-of-care issues produced by the fee-for-service system, the fact that there are rough spots on the road to value-based payment is hardly a justification for slowing down reform. If converting to a more sensible payment system were easy, it would have been done a long time ago.

The change to performance-based payment and market share requires tenacity and patience. Current quality measures may have rough edges, but stakeholders have worked hard to steadily improve their validity and reliability. Employers and other purchasers, such as those involved in our organizations, must work with forward-thinking colleagues in the health care system to continually improve the measures that publicly signal value. It will be a learning process for providers and purchasers as long as we’re guided by a spirit of transparency.

Whatever the risks of imperfect measurement, America’s first priority must be to eliminate avoidable suffering, mortality, and waste in its uniquely costly health care system. We hope that the Trump administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will continue to recognize what our members see clearly: delaying payment reform is not an option.

Output: There’s a debate in the United States about whether the current measures of health care quality are adequate to support the movement away from fee-for-service toward value-based payment. Some providers advocate slowing or even halting payment reform efforts because they don’t believe that quality can be adequately measured to determine fair payment.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Why healthcare needs to become even more consumer-focused
 Thanks in large part to digital technology, consumers expect a lot from healthcare these days. Much like what they experience in the retail and consumer goods worlds, they want an easy, seamless, individualized experience -- and what makes healthcare unique are the pressures from governments and employers to lower costs amidst these rising consumer expectations. Becoming more consumer centric is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity.

A new report from Prophet sheds some light on some of the reasons for this shift, and provides some insight into how to make the transition. Hint: Technology is key.

[Also: Kaiser Permanente first in Medicare Advantage consumer satisfaction, study finds]

In fact, the authors suggest that every healthcare business should think and act like a technology company. Measures of patient dissatisfaction seem to bolster this claim: Prophet found that 81 percent of consumers are dissatisfied with their healthcare experiences, and the ones who are happiest are those who interact with the health system the least.

It's not hard to see why. The healthcare system has plenty of faults, including insurance plans full of indecipherable jargon, long wait times for appointments and procedures, bills that arrive in the mail months after a visit, and lack of coordination between physicians, insurers and pharmacies.

[Also: Health plans get low marks for patient engagement in new Healthmine survey]

Patients are feeling the burden, according to the report. Rising healthcare costs are expected to outpace population growth at least four times from 2017 to 2020. Meanwhile, there's been an 86 percent increase in worker contribution to to health insurance premiums from 2005 to 2015, and a 67 percent increase in employee deductibles from 2010 to 2015.

All of that means consumers are becoming more discerning shoppers. They have to be. The time they spend searching for a physician, their ability to schedule an appointment when convenient, their time spent in the waiting room, their appointment follow-up -- all of things become a lot more important when the price tag is so high.

The shift from volume-based reimbursement models to value-based models is where the rubber meets the road. The continued shift in that direction seems inevitable, and according to Prophet, consumer engagements that keep that keep patients healthier is how healthcare organizations will remain financially stable in the future.

In fact, payers predict that 59 percent of all payment models by 2021 will be a mix of capitation, pay-for-performance and episodic payment, all various forms of value-based care. This also means that private payers need to be equipped to deliver on risk-based contracts, the authors said.

So what should healthcare organizations do? A few things.

For one, healthcare organizations should optimize the entire healthcare journey as a strategic priority, rather than enhancing consumer experiences in one-off initiatives, the authors said. That requires a vision for the organization, hiring the right leaders to take change, and creating a plan to change the experience and win over consumers.

The healthcare experience also needs to become less fragmented. Fragmentation breeds frustration, inefficiencies and a whole lot of dissatisfaction; what's needed is a healthcare ecosystem.

Being person-centric rather than population-centric certainly wouldn't hurt, either. Many healthcare organizations currently create products and services for groups of similar consumers, such as those who have share the same condition of demographic. Those products and services, according to Prophet, should be tailored to consumers based on their individual needs.

It's about giving consumers a voice similar to what they experience in other industries, and also giving them the ability to manage their health in a way that keeps them well and out of the hospital. These shifts, the authors said, will ultimately lower costs and lead to stronger brand loyalty.

Twitter: @JELagasse

Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com

Output: Thanks in large part to digital technology, consumers expect a lot from healthcare these days. Much like what they experience in the retail and consumer goods worlds, they want an easy, seamless, individualized experience -- and what makes healthcare unique are the pressures from governments and employers to lower costs amidst these rising consumer expectations.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
GOP budget plan slashes $473 billion from Medicare, $1 trillion from Medicaid over next decade
 Photo from Wikipedia.

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders has released a five-page report showing the Republican plan to cut $473 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.

Billions would be slashed from Affordable Care Act tax credits, making it easier for Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

[Also: Community health centers anxiously await budget from Congress]

The Senate budget plan would take $37 billion out of the National Institutes of Health over the next decade, which would cut funding for Alzheimer's disease, cancer and other critical medical research, the report said.

The Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to begin a mark-up of the budget proposal Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., and again on Thursday. The plan would then be reconciled with the House budget.

[Also: Draft budget gives HHS additional $14.5B over president's request, cuts additional funding for ACA programs]

"The Republican budget is a massive transfer of wealth from working families, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor to the top 1 percent," the report said. "Not only would it cut Medicaid by $1 trillion, it would also cut Medicare by more than $470 billion in order to pay for hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America."

There are also cuts to housing, heating, nutrition assistance, Pell Grant funding, Head Start services and transportation, according to the report.

Proposals include cutting $37 billion to affordable housing and the Section 8 rental assistance program, $4 billion in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, $6.5 billion to the Women, Infant and Children's nutrition program, more than $100 billion, or 33 percent of Pell Grant funding for students and $3 billion from Head Start services.

The Republican plan would increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, which would pave the way for cuts to Social Security, the report said. At the end of the year, if legislation has added to the deficit, the Office of Management and Budget is required to enact an across-the-board spending cut in a sequestration.

Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, is a proponent of Medicare for all in a single payer plan for healthcare.

Twitter: @SusanJMorse

Email the writer: susan.morse@himssmedia.com

Output: Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders has released a five-page report showing the Republican plan to cut $473 billion from Medicare and $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Community-Based Program Cut ED Visits by Nearly 30%
 The program also reduced hospital admissions and increased the use of primary care doctors.

A community-based program that helped high ED users get things like household resources, access to transportation, and help applying for assistance programs reduced ED visits and hospital admissions, finds new research.

It also increased the use of primary care doctors, according to the study published in the journal Health Affairs.

"Many programs have tried to tackle the problem of high utilizers of hospital emergency departments. These are usually people who are on Medicaid," the study's first author Roberta Capp, MD, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a statement. "But this is the first program to show that care coordination actually works."

Capp and her team used and evaluated Bridges to Care (B2C), an ED-initiated, community-based program. It was one of four sites funded by a CMS Innovations grant. The program was led by Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy and developed in collaboration with four Colorado stakeholders including an urban academic hospital, a network of 13 local federally qualified health centers, a mental health clinic and a community advocacy organization.

The B2C program targeted Medicaid-eligible high ED users, defined as adults who had two or more ED visits or hospital admissions within the last 180 days.

These patients got a personally tailored, 60-day care plan that included housing help, refugee services, and access to transportation. They also got help applying for insurance and disability benefits, setting up medical appointments, and filling prescriptions, among other services.

During the six months after B2C enrollment, the participants had:

29.7% fewer ED visits

30% less hospitalizations

123% more primary care visits than the control subjects

"There is a perspective from multiple stakeholders that high users of the ED are difficult patients," Capp said. "But this study shows that patients use the ED because of there are serious barriers to care.”

Those barriers can include multiple chronic diseases, including mental illness, the authors said.

Although care coordination has been shown to reduce costs, other programs aimed at reducing ED usage have been only hospital based and have had mixed results, the researchers said.

The difference with the B2C intervention is that it combines active ED outreach with multidisciplinary, community-based services, including a care coordinator, a health coach, a behavioral health specialist, a community health worker, and frequent home visits.

"We believe that our success stems from bringing together different healthcare systems, breaking down silos between disciplines and focusing on continuity of care in the outpatient setting," Capp said.

"We learned that active outreach in the ED is key to ensuring successful high utilizer and enrollment and engagement," the study said.

Output: A community-based program that helped high ED users get things like household resources, access to transportation, and help applying for assistance programs reduced ED visits and hospital admissions, finds new research.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Older-adult patients more likely to disclose suicidal thoughts as they age
 Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Suicide among older adults is a growing public health issue. Conditions associated with aging—chronic pain, diagnosed or perceived terminal illness, social isolation, and the death of friends and family—can push older Americans towards ending their own lives. A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that 23% of individuals aged 50 and older who died by suicide had disclosed their suicide intent.

Using 10 years of data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), researchers were able to identify key trends about older suicide decedents. They found the older the decedents were, the more likely they were to have disclosed their intent to die by suicide. Decedents who had depressed mood or health problems were more likely to have disclosed, as well as those who had recently received mental health care or undergone substance abuse treatment.

"Findings that depressed mood, health problems, and other stressors were associated with increased odds of disclosure indicate that suicide may have been prevented by providing the services needed to alleviate these problems," explained lead investigator Namkee Choi, PhD, Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in Gerontology, Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Austin, TX. "Healthcare providers need better preparation to screen and aid those in need to prevent suicide."

The study also looked at other aspects of older-adult suicide. The data revealed that disclosure was most often to an intimate partner or other family member, with only a small number talking about suicide to a healthcare professional. In terms of methods of suicide, researchers found that the use of firearms and hanging/suffocation were associated with lower overall disclosure odds. Among firearm users, however, men were more likely to have disclosed than females.

"Because disclosing suicide intent provides an opportunity to prevent suicide and offer assistance in coping with stressors, the study findings have important clinical implications for increasing disclosure and preventing suicide among older adults," said Dr. Choi. Investigators pinpoint four important interventions that may help prevent suicide by the elderly:

Healthcare providers, especially primary care physicians who work closely with older adults, should routinely assess suicide risk and inquire about access to guns and other means of suicide. Evidence-based prevention training programs such as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training should be considered.

Public health campaigns aimed at families and other social support systems for elderly patients should discuss suicide warning signs and give information on how to seek help after a disclosure.

Healthcare and social service systems need to ensure that older adults have access to services that address their mental and physical health needs, such as therapy for ongoing emotional turmoil and crisis counseling, palliative care for chronic pain, and affordable and accessible long-term care services for chronic illness and disabling conditions.

Older adults suffering from depression, mental illness, or substance abuse need tailored treatment services made to suit their specific needs. These services can be integrated into the primary car setting to ease access and reduce the stigma of getting mental health help.

As suicide rates for older Americans continue to climb, it is crucial to take a close look at this issue and find opportunities for intervention. "High late-life suicide rates in a rapidly aging society call for more effective ways to identify older adults at risk and provide prevention and intervention services," concluded Dr. Choi.

More information: Namkee G. Choi et al, Older Suicide Decedents: Intent Disclosure, Mental and Physical Health, and Suicide Means, American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2017.07.021 Journal information: American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Output: Suicide among older adults is a growing public health issue. Conditions associated with aging—chronic pain, diagnosed or perceived terminal illness, social isolation, and the death of friends and family—can push older Americans towards ending their own lives.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Department of Veterans Affairs Aims to Trump State Telemedicine Rules
 Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) is taking a significant step towards expanding needed services to Veterans by proposing a rule to preempt state restrictions on telehealth.

Most states currently restrict providers (including VA employees) from treating patients that are located in that state if the provider is not licensed there. As a result, the VA has had difficulty getting a sufficient number of providers to furnish services via telemedicine for fear that they will face discipline from those states for the unlicensed practice of medicine.

The VA has a real need for expanding its telemedicine capabilities as many of its patients are located in rural and underserved areas. The VA’s top clinical priority is mental health, and having more robust telemedicine capabilities could help improve timeliness of treatment (a reputational sore spot for the VA). The VA could also use telemedicine to reach more people in need that may not otherwise seek help. The rule would allow the VA to more evenly distribute care by hiring providers in urban areas where there is larger pool and have them treat in rural areas (via telemedicine).

The American Medical Association (“AMA”) has expressed support for the proposed rule. Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., Chair-elect of the AMA Board of Trustees, issued the following statement showing the AMA’s support:

“The AMA supports expansion of clinically validated telehealth services within the VA, and this decision ensures that important patient protections are in place for the delivery of high quality and reliable care. The VA has a unique federally controlled healthcare system with essential safeguards to help ensure that both in-person and virtual beneficiary care meet and exceed the standard of care. The AMA strongly supports that the proposed rule explicitly provides that this program’s multi-state licensure exception applies only to VA-employed providers and would not be expanded to contracted physicians or providers who are not directly controlled and supervised by the VA and would not necessarily have the same training, staff support, shared access to a beneficiary’s EHR and infrastructure capabilities. We applaud the VA’s expansion of telehealth services in a manner that promotes quality and access.”

Not everyone is happy about the proposed rule, however. Some organizations oppose the rule as undermining each state’s ability to govern the practice of medicine within its borders. The concern is that states would have no ability to regulate their citizens’ care under this new framework.

While this rule is limited only to VA patients and providers, the hope is that other federal agencies or even states will follow the VA’s lead. Given the importance of increasing access to care and the advances in the delivery of care via telemedicine, it might be time for states to reexamine their restrictive approach to professional licensure.

Output: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) is taking a significant step towards expanding needed services to Veterans by proposing a rule to preempt state restrictions on telehealth.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
GM more than doubles size of test fleet for self-driving cars
 General Motors' self-driving unit, Cruise Automation, has more than doubled the size of its test fleet of robot cars in California during the past three months, a GM spokesman said.

As the company increases the size of its test fleet, it has also reported more run-ins between its self-driving cars and human-operated vehicles and bicycles, telling California regulators its vehicles were involved in six minor crashes in the state in September.

"All our incidents this year were caused by the other vehicle," said Rebecca Mark, a spokeswoman for GM Cruise.

In the past three months, the Cruise unit has increased the number of vehicles registered for testing on California streets to 100 from the previous 30 to 40, the GM spokesman Ray Wert said.

Cruise is testing vehicles in San Francisco as part of its effort to develop software capable of navigating congested and often chaotic urban environments.

Investors are watching GM's progress closely, and the car maker's shares have risen 17 per cent during the past month as some analysts have said the company could deploy robot taxis within the next year or two.

A US senate panel approved legislation on Wednesday that would allow car makers to greatly expand testing of self-driving cars. Some safety groups have objected to the proposal, saying it gives too much latitude to motor manufacturers.

As Cruise, and rivals, put more self-driving vehicles on the road to gather data to train their artificial intelligence systems, they are more frequently encountering human drivers who are not programmed to obey all traffic laws.

____________

Read more:

How a hacked robot could cause you harm

More car makers need to make vehicles upgradeable on the fly

Driverless buses road-tested amid bustle of Parisian financiers

____________

In filings to California regulators, Cruise said the six accidents in the state last month involved other cars and a bicyclist hitting its test cars.

The accidents did not result in injuries or serious damage, according to the GM reports. In total, GM Cruise vehicles have been involved in 13 collisions reported to California regulators in 2017, while Alphabet's Waymo vehicles have been involved in three crashes.

California state law requires that all crashes involving self-driving vehicles be reported, regardless of severity.

Most of the crashes involved drivers of other vehicles striking the GM cars that were slowing for stop signs, pedestrians or other issues. In one crash, a driver of a Ford Ranger was on his cellphone when he rear-ended a Chevrolet Bolt stopped at a red light.

In another instance, the driver of a Chevrolet Bolt noticed an intoxicated cyclist in San Francisco going the wrong direction toward the Bolt. The human driver stopped the Bolt and the cyclist hit the bumper and fell over. The bicyclist pulled on a sensor attached to the vehicle causing minor damage.

"While we look forward to the day when autonomous vehicles are commonplace, the streets we drive on today are not so simple, and we will continue to learn how humans drive and improve how we share the road together,” GM said.

Output: General Motors has doubled the number of self-driving cars it is testing in California through its specialist subsidiary company Cruise Automation. The test fleet now comprises 100 vehicles, up from between 30 and 40 previously, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco to gather data to improve the company's software for navigating busy streets. The company has reported an increase in collisions involving its vehicles, with six minor crashes in September, but blamed all of these on the other party.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
US Treasury plans to track assets with blockchain
 The US Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services has announced that it is piloting the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to monitor the movement of physical assets like smartphones and computers. A yet-to-be-named contractor will be hired as a partner in developing the prototype system.

As part of the project, the Treasury will determine whether its physical assets can be tracked and reconciled in real-time as they are transferred from person to person. It will use Blockchain technology to make digital records of the transfers. The bureau will also study other possible use cases of the technology, particularly in the improvement of processes for the management of government finances.

According to Assistant Commissioner John Hill, they intend to identify the opportunities where technological innovations are used to improve efficiency, accountability, and customer service in government agencies.

"There are many exciting innovations coming out of the commercial sector that can be applied to federal financial management. I hope that these two pilot projects identify the opportunities where the innovations will have the most impact on efficiency, accountability and customer service."

Brief profile of the bureau

The Bureau of Fiscal Services was created through the merger of two separate agencies in 2012. Its main responsibility is to borrow money to finance the government and handle interagency payments and accounting.

Other US agencies testing Blockchain

Aside from the Bureau of Fiscal Services, there are already several US government agencies piloting Blockchain projects to improve or streamline their operations. One of these agencies is the General Services Administration (GSA), which trialed the use of the technology in reviewing information technology (IT)-related contract bids from vendors. Another agency is the State Department, which has launched a project to examine the potential of the technology in diplomatic applications.

Output: The US Department of the Treasury is planning a pilot programme that uses blockchain technology to track office equipment, including smartphones and computers. The project is being pursued by the department's Bureau of Fiscal Services, which is examining the potential for distributed ledger technology (DLT) to be used to improve efficiency and accountability in the management of government assets and finances.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Insurance involvement sees dash cam usage rise
 Sales of dash cams (dashboard cameras) throughout Europe have rocketed in the last few years. The latest figures available show that dash cam sales shot up 918% in the UK alone in 2015.

Initially, consumers were the primary buyers of dash cams, and arguably it was for entertainment (sharing footage on YouTube and social media) but then insurance companies got involved and now LCV (Light Commercial Vehicle) fleets are seeing the benefits too.

The phenomenon is due in part to insurance companies agreeing to accept dashboard-mounted video footage as evidence in the event of a claim. “Cash-for-crash” fraud forced insurers to take drastic action. Not only have they allowed dash cam footage, they have incentivised drivers to self-install the evidence capturing equipment by reducing premiums for those who do.

However, enthusiasm for the devices in some European countries has cooled, primarily due to perceived privacy breaches. Luxemburg and Austria, for example, have restricted the use of dash cams to only certain sectors and have collected heavy fines from drivers installing them illegally.

UK-based logistics management and transport company Wincanton operates a fleet of 250 LCVs and has a mix of dash cam solutions, single channel, forward-facing, plus 360-degree multi-channel camera systems.

Carl Hanson, Wincanton’s fleet director, takes up the story: “It depends on what you’re looking for. If all you want is something to address insurance claims, then a single, forward-facing camera in each vehicle may be sufficient. But if you want to come at it from a preventative perspective, you’re going to need something that aids drivers.”

In this case, the dash cams have had a positive impact: “We’ve been able to reduce our accident rate by 30%.” Hanson declares.

Much of Wincanton’s LCV fleet operates within the construction industry, in built up areas where hidden obstacles and potential risks are commonplace. So, having a full, 360-degree view around the vehicle helps increase visibility of vulnerable road users and eliminates blind spots. The system enables drivers to be aware of pedestrians, cyclists, straying animals, plus it acts as a driver aid, helping with difficult manoeuvring when no one is around to assist.

In addition to resolving insurance claims quickly, the next stage for fleets is camera integrated telematics.

Says Hanson: “Cameras record events but telematics is about avoidance and prevention. It has to support driver engagement positively.”

He is keen to point out the importance of linking the rollout of dash cams into an overall safety and behavioural change program.

“Get drivers involved and demonstrate the safety benefits for them and not merely the ‘Spy-in-the-cab’ scenario.” He says.

Hanson also highlights another important issue to consider - complacency.

“The thing to watch out for is that drivers get used to the cameras and in some cases quickly forget about them and regress into old habits. Any improvements in their driving could be short-term. Telematics gives you the ability to monitor driver behaviour over the long-term.”

It also provides the data needed to make informed decisions about where, when and what action needs to be taken.

But like all technology, telematics is only a tool. It provides the data but if that data is not acted on, long-lasting driving habits cannot be changed.

When thinking about what system to invest in, Wincanton’s Hanson advises the following:

Think about the benefits you want to achieve – is it safety or financial gain?

Consider the risks your fleet faces daily and how likely these things are to happen.

How many miles does your fleet drive and are those journeys mostly motorways or urban?

Also, how will you view the footage? Does it have to be instant (streamed) or will recorded suffice?

The positioning of cameras needs to also be thought through carefully. They tend to move, or be knocked by drivers or other in-cab personnel, which could deactivate the recording function.

Under its brand name RoadHawk, TrakM8 offers a multi-camera system that can deliver high-quality streamed video and audio using the cellular network. It also supports GPS and G-Force data.

UK-based vehicle recovery company The AA runs a fleet of 3000 LCVs, mostly Transit and more recently Custom and Courier-types. The company relies on a telematics system supplied by TrakM8 but no dash cams currently, although they are beginning trialled. Why so late to the table?

Stuart Thomas, Head of Fleet and SME Services, The AA, explains: “We were early adopters of telematics technology. Our fleet is complex and we carry a lot of equipment. It is comprised of very specific, specially kitted out vans that have beacons and we need to know when they are on and off. We have recovery trailers in the van and we need to be alerted as to when they are deployed and when a driver is towing, how long he has stopped for, where he is.”

“Our need for telematics data has always been far stronger than the insurance issue for us. However, now that integrated dash cam and telematics systems are available, we are beginning to trial them so this may change.”

Andrew Tillman, fleet strategy director at TrakM8, has been selling dash cams since they first launched and strongly believes that for LCV fleets telematics/dash cam integration is a “no brainer”: “Instead of having to collect an SD card, with this system you can access footage from a specific date and time so if an accident happened at around 2pm on Thursday, you can request that exact footage, say 10 minutes either side of that. It negates having to watch hours of video to reproduce and analyse collision data.”

London-based provider of textile maintenance services Berendsen, which operates a 680-strong mixed fleet, claims to have cut carbon emissions by 2,000 tonnes a year by introducing a fleet and driver efficiency programme underpinned by OptiDrive 360 and TomTom Telematics’ integrated telematics and fleet camera solution. The system scores and provides feedback to drivers on a range of performance indicators (fuel consumption, speeding, harsh braking and steering).

Dash cams have their place in LCV fleets but they must be viewed by fleet managers and drivers as an aid, not a spy or source of entertainment.

Output: Cameras installed on dashboards of vehicles have seen increasing usage since insurance companies have promoted their adoption. In particular, the willingness of insurance providers to use dash-cam footage when assessing a claim is behind the rise in the use of the cameras. This has allowed claims to be paid out with greater ease, something greatly benefiting operators of large fleets of vehicles.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Oxford PV to receive EIB funding for German perovskite pilot site
 UK perovskite technology developer Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd (Oxford PV) is poised to get financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for its pilot site in Germany.

The bank is considering providing EUR 15 million (USD 17.6m) for the project, which will turn an existing PV thin-film module factory in Germany into a "first-of-a-kind" plant for the production of tandem silicon-perovskite PV cells.

Oxford PV, a spin-out of Oxford University, announced the acquisition of the pilot line in Brandenburg, Germany in late 2016. EIB says on its website the site will allow the company to demonstrate its perovskite technology at full wafer scale in pilot volumes and deploy perovskite on silicon tandem cells. The total cost of the project is EUR 30 million.

Oxford PV has been backed by investors including Statoil ASA and Legal & General Capital in its drive to commercialise its perovskite-based solar technology that is set to boost the performance of ordinary solar cells. At the end of 2016 the company announced a joint development agreement with an unnamed global manufacturer of solar cells and modules.

(EUR 1 = USD 1.174)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!

Output: British perovskite technology company Oxford PV is expected to be provided $17.6m by European Investment Bank for a trial project in Germany. The operation will convert a PV thin-film module factory into a production plant for tandem silicon-perovskite PV cells.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Remixpoint offers bitcoin payment option for energy bills
 Remixpoint, a Japanese company engaged in a number of energy-related businesses, has recently launched a new electricity service with bitcoin payments integrated to serve customers all over Japan. The company is now offering customers who pay with bitcoin a discount on their electricity bills. Bitcoin payments are processed by the company’s cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary, Bitpoint.

Also read: Russia Proposes Adding Cryptocurrency to the Population’s Financial Literacy Strategy

Integrating Power Business with Bitcoin Payments

Established in March 2004, Remixpoint is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has a market capitalization of approximately 57 billion yen at press time. The company engages in a number of energy-related businesses such as developing and selling energy management systems; energy conservation consulting; selling energy-saving equipment; and electricity retailing.

In February 2016, Remixpoint developed a retail electricity business centered on high-voltage clients in the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) service area. This service was expanded across Japan in August this year. The company subsequently expanded its retail electricity business to service low-voltage consumers beginning on October 1. Low-voltage customers include households, corporations, and retailers.

Along with the new service, Remixpoint also announced the integration of bitcoin payments into its new offering. Bitcoin is not only accepted for electricity payments, but the company offers discounts for customers paying with the digital currency. The company wrote:

Payment of utility bills in virtual currency has already been introduced.

Bitcoin payments are made through the company’s subsidiary, Bitpoint, a cryptocurrency exchange and payment service provider.

Last week, Bitpoint became one of the first eleven bitcoin exchanges in Japan to be granted registration as a “virtual currency exchange” by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA). In May, the exchange partnered with Peach Aviation to bring bitcoin payments to the airline and its affiliated stores. In addition, Bitpoint partnered with Evolable Asia to bring bitcoin payments to over 1,400 hotels and inns across Japan.

At the “Energy Innovation Japan 2017” event last week, the company promoted its new service, stating:

We introduce a new scheme that makes maximum use of the integration of the power retailing business and virtual currency exchange management…By using our electricity service, we propose a total cost reduction from existing services by introducing bitcoin and energy-saving equipment.

Service Areas

In Japan, the electricity market is divided up into 10 regulated companies. They are Chugoku Electric Power Company; Chubu Electric Power Company; Hokuriku Electric Power Company; Hokkaido Electric Power Company; Kyushu Electric Power Company; Kansai Electric Power Company; Okinawa Electric Power Company; Tohoku Electric Power Company; Shikoku Electric Power Company; and TEPCO.

Remixpoint purchases electricity from all of the aforementioned power companies except one, Okinawa Electric Power Company. Through the nine power companies, Remixpoint is able to provide electricity to customers all over Japan.

Promoting Cryptocurrency Payments

In its announcement, Remixpoint stated that its target customers are corporations and retailers, citing tough competition for ordinary households. “Low-voltage customers in the retail electric power market have small electricity bills compared to high-voltage customers,” the company detailed, noting that the savings are minimal when additional costs such as “invoicing and transfer fees” are included.

The company, therefore, opened an account at Bitpoint to enable customers to pay with bitcoin and save on fees. According to reports, customers can save up to 3 percent in fees using this option. The company added:

We will promote the spread of virtual currency settlement in Japan by developing payment services that take advantage of the strength of reducing remittance and settlement costs, which is the original value of virtual currencies.

What do you think of Remixpoint’s strategy to integrate bitcon payments with its power business? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, FECP, Tepco, and Remix Point.

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

The post Large Japanese Energy Supplier Adds Bitcoin Payments With a Discount appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Output: Japanese firm Remixpoint has launched an integrated service allowing customers across the country to pay their electricity bills with bitcoin. The service offers savings of up to 3% on fees for those who use it. The transactions will be processed by Remixpoint subsidiary Bitpoint, which the Japanese Financial Services Agency recently granted the status of "virtual currency exchange". Bitpoint has also partnered with Peach Aviation and Evolable Asia to bring bitcoin payments to Japan's airline and hotel sectors.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Australia urged to legalise drink-driving in autonomous cars
 Uber drivers could one day be spared from engaging in small talk with drunks if a National Transport Commission suggestion to allow people under the influence of alcohol to use fully automated vehicles is adopted by state road authorities.

The NTC, an independent statutory body tasked with reforming Australia’s driving laws to prepare for the arrival of driverless cars, has recommended an “exemption” from drink and drug-driving laws for people who ride in fully automated vehicles.

In a new discussion paper it argues there is a “clear-cut” justification for an exemption from drink-driving laws because there is “no possibility that a human could drive a dedicated automated vehicle”.

“The situation is analogous to a person instructing a taxi driver where to go,” the NTC report states.

State traffic laws prohibit driving under the influence of varying levels of alcohol but the NTC says they could be a “barrier” to the benefits of driverless vehicles, which it argues could improve road safety by reducing the incidence of drink-driving.

Advocates of the new technology argue its largest benefit would be reducing Australia’s road toll. There are about 1,300 deaths in Australia every year and the vast majority are caused by human error.

However, it recommend the rules remain in place for semi-autonomous vehicles or those that allow manual driving.

While individual states and territories set road rules, the NTC provides a model for nationally consistent laws.

It has been tasked with grappling with the enormous regulatory overhaul required to respond to the introduction of driverless-vehicle technology, which some estimate could be on roads in Australia by 2020.

That includes the question of who is liable in the event of driverless vehicle malfunction that results in an accident and to what extent a person in an autonomous vehicle is deemed to be in control.

Current laws assume that a person is in control of a vehicle but the NTC believes that should be changed so that a person “would not expect to be held responsible for contraventions of the laws” while an automated vehicle was engaged.

“To hold the human responsible may restrict the introduction of automated vehicles into Australia and unnecessarily deny or delay the many potential benefits of the technology,” the NTC found.

Instead, the law should be changed so that the automated driving system itself was legally responsible.

The NTC is due to make recommendations for reforms at the 2018 transport and infrastructure council meeting of Commonwealth, state and territory transport ministers.

Various states and territories have legislated to allow trials of driverless-vehicle technology in recent years.

South Australia passed legislation last year, while New South Wales passed legislation to allow its own trials in August.

Output: Australia's National Transport Commission (NTC) has said there should be no drink-driving limitations imposed on people using fully automated vehicles, but current rules should still apply for partially automated cars. The proposal is part of the independent statutory body's attempts to overhaul the country's regulations ahead of the wider deployment of self-driving vehicles, which some predict could be as soon as 2020. The NTC will present its recommendations next year.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
IBM insists Watson should not be regulated as a medical device
 IBM to Congress: Watson will transform health care, so keep your hands off our supercomputer

To the public, IBM trumpets its Watson supercomputer as the next big thing in medicine, a new kind of machine that melds human expertise with digital speed to give patients personalized treatment advice.

Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress, company executives have been delivering a blunter message: We will revolutionize patient care, so please get out of the way.

advertisement

Like any new technology, Watson poses unknown risks; for example, what if its advice is wrong and harms a patient? But IBM argues that its machine doesn’t need to be regulated because it’s different from other medical devices. It’s not like a pacemaker or a CT scanner, so the company shouldn’t have to prove to the government that it’s safe and effective.

Output: IBM has been trying to persuade the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that its Watson supercomputer does not need the same regulatory oversight that medical devices are subject to. The FDA is set to release guidelines on which software products will be exempt from the forthcoming 21st Century Cures Act. The impending legislation prompted IBM to launch a $26m lobbying campaign seeking a "common-sense regulatory distinction between low-risk software and inherently higher risk technologies". Critics have said IBM's artificial intelligence algorithms are still not widely understood, blur decision-making between man and machine, and should be subject to regulation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Brisbane airport to become biojet refuelling port
 PRESS RELEASE

Brisbane is set to become one of a handful of hubs around the world for sustainable aviation fuel, under an agreement supported by the Palaszczuk Government between Virgin Australia and US-based biofuel producer Gevo.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the biojet trial was yet another show of confidence in Queensland’s growing biofuel industry.

“Biojet is a proven fuel source, one that is already bringing Virgin Australia flights into Brisbane from Los Angeles,” the Premier said.

“By establishing Brisbane Airport as a biojet refuelling port, we can help open another key market for our cane farmers and biofuture pioneers alike.”

The Palaszczuk Government has already signed a biofuel agreement with the US Navy as part of its Great Green Fleet initiative, which is a commitment by the US to source 50% of its fuel needs from renewable sources by 2020.

“The biorefinery projects currently under development across Queensland have the potential to create 1100 jobs when they are operational,” the Premier said.

“To get up and running, industrial-scale biorefinieries need a critical mass of customers to supply.

“That’s why it’s vital to get big industries like aviation and defence on board as potential customers.”

State Development Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said biojet can be produced from a range of organic materials, including sugarcane bagasse, molasses, wood waste and agave.

“Some of the existing refinery projects being developed in Queensland will have the capability to produce biofuel for commercial aviation,” Dr Lynham said.

“This partnership between the Virgin Australia Group and Gevo, Inc. has the potential to draw even more proponents into the industry, as demand for biofuels grows.

“That means more demand for sugar cane, and more jobs in agriculture and biofutures across our regions.”

Work on using biojet as a complementary fuel source to conventional jet aviation fuel has been underway for more than a decade, and the fuel is now being supplied at airports at Oslo and Los Angeles, including on Virgin Australia’s services from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Dr Lynham said that the project showed the Queensland Government’s Biofutures Roadmap was paying dividends.

“Queensland has a vision for a $1 billion biofutures sector by 2026,” Dr Lynham said.

“Since the launch of our Biofutures Roadmap in June 2016 we have directly supported 15 new biofutures projects, including today’s announcement.

“Queensland’s bio-industrial revolution is here, and the dividends it’s going to pay our state in jobs and economic growth will mean a greener and more prosperous future for all Queenslanders.”

Virgin Australia Group CEO John Borghetti said this initiative built on Virgin Australia’s commitment to be a leader in the commercialisation of the sustainable aviation fuel industry in Australia.

“The agreement announced today is critical to testing the fuel supply chain infrastructure in Australia to ensure that Virgin Australia and Brisbane Airport are ready for the commercial supply of these exciting fuels,” Mr Borghetti said.

Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) Acting CEO Stephen Goodwin said the initiative was clearly aligned with BAC’s strategy to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions produced as a result of airport operations.

“Energy efficiency and increased use of renewable energies are the foundations of BAC’s emissions reduction program, so we are enthusiastic supporters of this initiative as it will help reduce Brisbane Airport’s carbon footprint even further by assisting the airlines to reduce their emissions,” Mr Goodwin said.

“We applaud the Queensland State Government, Virgin Australia and Gevo Inc for their foresight and commitment to sustainability and we’re pleased to be affiliated with this exciting partnership and the home base for this world-first initiative.”

CEO of Gevo, Inc., Dr Patrick Gruber, said that although his company would initially supply jet fuel from its hydrocarbon plant based in Texas, and derived from isobutanol produced at its commercial isobutanol plant located in Minnesota, there would be significant opportunities for production in Queensland.

“When I visited Queensland last year for the Biofutures Industry Forum, I discovered the depth and diversity of your agriculture sector,” Dr Gruber said.

“We believe Queensland offers huge potential for low-cost sugar feedstocks to produce biofuels. It really opened our eyes to Queensland’s potential for sustainable aviation fuels based on Gevo’s alcohol-to-jet technology.”

The partnership has received positive recognition from the aviation sector’s global peak body, the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

“We applaud the policy vision of the Queensland Government to support aviation’s desire to advance the deployment of sustainable jet fuel,” said the CEO of IATA, Alexandre de Juniac, from the IATA offices in Switzerland.

“Effective collaboration between airlines, producers, airports and policy makers is crucial to accelerate the deployment of sustainable jet fuel and this project is a great example that can benefit the entire industry.”

Media Contact:

Premier’s Office: Geoff Breusch 0417 272 875

Minister Lynham’s Office: Jan Martin 0439 341 314

Output: Brisbane aims to become a hub for sustainable aviation fuel following a deal between Virgin Australia and US-based biofuel producer Gevo. Brisbane joins airports in Oslo and Los Angeles capable of providing biojet fuel to airlines. Queensland is trying to establish itself as a hub for bioproducts with a goal of generating $1bn from the sector by 2026.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Xiaomi plans base in Indonesia to expand its 'golden triangle'
 Xiaomi has announced plans to set up a permanent business entity in Indonesia.

Indonesia is pushing for foreign firms that have internet-based services there to set up local companies for the purpose of tax compliance.

Speaking at the Xiaomi Way of Innovation event in Jakarta, CEO/founder Lei Jun said Indonesia was the company’s “most important” market after China and India.

International Data Corporation (IDC) data for the first quarter of this year ranked Xiaomi, which entered the smartphone market in 2010, the fifth-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. It has a presence in more than 60 countries and last month shipped a record 10 million smartphones, thanks to growing demand in India.

Lei said Xiaomi was mostly known in Indonesia as a smartphone manufacturer, but he wanted to change that by taking more of the firm’s products mainstream. Xiaomi was also an internet and e-commerce company, he said.

He referred to the company’s business model as a “golden triangle” as it was propped up by three key elements: hardware, internet and retail.

Xiaomi’s products include robot vacuum cleaners, rice cookers, washing machines, scooters, toys and desk lamps.

“Hopefully in the future Xiaomi’s ecosystem of products can deliver a great impact on Indonesian users and producers.”

Output: Xiaomi is setting up a permanent unit in Indonesia as the company views the country as the "most important" market after China and India and wants to be known for more than just a smartphone maker but also for its hardware, internet and retail abilities, or "golden triangle", as the company's CEO Lei Jun describes it. Xiaomi is now the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer globally, with presence in over 60 countries, according to International Data Corporation, thanks in particular to its growing demand in India.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
American Family to integrate drone software with claims system
 One major insurance carrier already has a program underway to train claims adjusters to visit accident sites and fly drones to gather data.

American Family Insurance started working on developing a drone program around 2013, and the company now has a “batch” of adjusters training to fly unmanned aerial vehicles at the sites where clients have reported property damage or other losses, according to Taylor Horsager, UAV chief pilot and instructor for American Family.

Horsager was speaking on drones in the insurance industry on Wednesday at the Drone World Expo in San Jose, Calif., which runs through Thursday.

“We see drones as an opportunity to service people faster and more effectively,” Horsager said.

American Family is currently working on a research and development project to develop hardware and software for drones, which will eventually be directly integrated it into the carrier’s claims system, he said.

He said the plan right now is to keep the process straightforward, as in teaching an adjuster to go to a site and operate a drone via a cellphone.

“We’re looking at the technology on the market and trying to do things as simply as possible,” he added.

The company is currently conducting “proof of concept” testing, and creating a check list for adjusters who are going out to a site that includes basic check boxes on a list like: Is it safe to fly? Do I have permission from the property owner?

It’s a start, but it appears the company is already beefing up to be a big user of drones.

Asked how many American Family adjusters have been trained on drones, he only offered “a small batch” in response.

“We are in proof of technology mode,” he said, adding that there are issues to be overcome and “the technology is not there yet.”

One challenge is the visual line of site rule implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration, which requires an operator to be able to see the drone with the naked eye at all times. That makes it hard to gather data for large sites.

However, the said the sky may literally be the limit for what drones can do in the insurance industry, according to him.

“We definitely have a potential of scaling, and definitely have a potential of having third-party needs,” he said.

The moderator on the panel was Kathleen Swain, senior director of UAS programs for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

She believes that if more drones were already deployed by the industry, money could have been saved by getting adjusters out to disaster sites to gather information to pay claims earlier.

“After hurricanes Harvey and Maria, we really see how important it is to get that technology up and running,” she said.

Beverly Adams, head of catastrophe planning and response with Guy Carpenter, views drones and their advanced data collection capabilities as an opportunity to get the insurance industry “a seat at the table” before disasters happen instead of responding to them.

She noted that many national disaster plans don’t even mention insurance, but that the industry should be invited to partake in such planning.

“We’ve almost got to earn our stripes,” Adams said.

In fact, she said she envisions the need for drones to grow to the point where many insurers will need to seek out third-party providers to fill demand.

“We know right now that we’re not going to be charging vast amounts of money to do this,” she added, addressing her comments to those potential providers in the audience who may entertain working with her company. “These are risk surveys.”

Jessica Magill, who works with Swain as an account executive at AOPA, said she’s seen a “drastic change in the market” in just the last 18 months, when she fielded a call from a drone pilot who wanted to make a change on his policy.

That got her to learn about drone insurance and she’s been embedded in it ever since. At that time she got the call, AOPA could only offer customers two choices for policies: a $1 million liability policy, or a $500,000 liability policy.

And they had only one carrier to work with back then.

Now they’re working with five carriers, “and we’ve got more coming on board,” she added.

The firm can also now offer liability for damage caused by a drone, but also coverage for the drone itself, and underwriters are starting to open up to covering a broader range of drone operations, she said.

“It’s really changed and it’s really kind of cool to see how our carriers have changed and how they are viewing the risk,” she said.

Swain put in that as more carriers have entered the drone insurance world, they’re coming in with a lot more to offer insureds.

“A lot of times we’re seeing open peril, no exclusion policies come to market,” Swain said. “Carriers are stepping up to the plate and offering policies with no exclusions.”

Drone VCs

A surefire way to figure out how bright the future is for the drone business is to follow the money.

That’s just what one group of experts discussed on a panel titled “Follow the Money: Exploring the Drone Investment Climate.”

“The last few years there’s been a noticeable venture uptick in investing in drones,” said panel moderator Jonathan Evans, co-president of Skyward, a venture-backed software company based Portland, Ore., which was recently acquired by Verizon.

The other panelists were: Yoshi Iwakami, a partner in World Innovation Lab; Ashley Carroll, a partner in Social Capital; Bilal Zuberi, a partner in Lux Capital; Jake Kaldenbaugh, a technology M&A banker at Growthpoint Technology Partners; and Tammi Smorynski, a director with Intel Capital.

Zuberi agreed with the assessment that investments in drones have picked up in recent, but he believes tha tover the past year or more that more venture capitalists are wanting to see more revenue being produced by what is so far a small number of successful drone companies before putting more money into the industry.

“I think all the major VCs at this point have an investment in drones,” he said.

He said some of the smaller drone companies may be struggling to find capital, while “there’s a lot of money for later-stage companies.”

For now, much of the backing for the industry is waiting for more success stories, he said.

“I think there’s a lot of companies sitting in valuation between $40 and $100 million and they’re still trying to figure things out,” he said.

Still, he said there’s a bright horizon for drones.

“But if you take the long-term perspective, drones are going to be around for a long time and they’re going to be an important part of the economy,” he said.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

Drone response to hurricanes Harvey and Irma seemed to play an important enough role to demand a panel on it at the conference.

“When Harvey first happened in it became apparent pretty quickly that drones were going to be part of the story,” said Christopher Korody, principal with DroneBusiness.center, an information website focused on drones.

Korody was a moderator for the panel to discuss the response to these disasters. Others on the panel were Justin Adams, director of business development for Kovar and Associates, Tony Eggimann, captain of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, Dyan Gibbens, CEO and founder of Trumbull Unmanned, Bradley Koeckeritz, chief of the UAS division for the of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Art Pregler, UAS program director of AT&T.

Adams was an early responder to both Harvey and Irma.

“The biggest challenge I know we had was controlling airspace,” he said. “We tried to control airspace very quickly.”

He said he and his team during Harvey had to go to the FAA to get flight level authorizations and to restrict drone flights from other operators to prevent interference.

One of their big tasks following the disaster was separating fact from fiction. The drone team often flew over areas to confirm or deny that rumored flooding had occurred there.

“It was more rumor control,” he said.

When all was said and done, he and his team provided 2.8 terabytes of data to Fort Bend County, Texas, where they were surveying.

Koeckeritz, who noted that the Department of the Interior is a steward for “about one-fifth of the landmass in the United States,” and therefore a big user for drones, said the department deployed 12 pilots and their drones to Harvey.

Flight missions included data processing, flood inundation mapping and damage assessment.

One of the biggest benefits of the drone missions was cost avoidance, he said, adding that they saved “thousands of dollars” from having to use boats to go in and assess flooded areas.

Saving costs and time spent deploying boats to areas that may or may not have been flooded was also a major takeaway for Eggimann.

He and his team of drone operators were OK’d to head to Wharton, Texas to conduct search and rescue reconnaissance.

During their time responding to Harvey, they deployed a drone to map out a plan on how to deploy boats. They sent out the drone to gather information on where to go with the boats, and then began preparing to deploy.

“As the guys were getting the boats up and running, the drone came back and we were able to download images and devise a plan,” Koeckeritz said.

He said that using drones is something his department plans to do more often. The department started a UAS program roughly three years ago, and now has five trained pilots, with what he thinks is a need to train as many as a dozen more.

Pregler said AT&T deployed drones for both Harvey and Irma.

The drones provided valuable information to assess the damage to communications systems in both areas and report back.

However, in one case a drone proved a bit more useful than as a mere information conduit, when the drone team came across an area without power that was disconnected from fiber optic cable across the river.

“We pulled the fiber optic cable across the river to establish connectivity,” he said.

Related:

Topics Carriers Flood Tech Aviation Market

Output: American Family Insurance is working on a development project to allow the integration of drone software directly into its claims operations. At present, the firm has trained a small number of its claims team to fly drones over sites which clients have reported are damaged. The firm is, however, still in a "proof of technology" phase regarding widespread drone use, according to its unmanned ariel vehicles chief pilot Taylor Horsager. He added larger sites are also harder to assess using drones due to laws requiring the vehicles be in line of site at all times.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Amazon opens new office, creates 2,000 jobs
 Amazon continues to make serious inroads into the advertising business. Its latest move: a new office in Manhattan that it says will bring 2,000 jobs, mostly in advertising, to the city — and closer to Madison Avenue. Multiple media agency executives in New York said they’ve been hearing more from Amazon reps who are trying to sell them and their clients on Amazon advertising. Another executive said he’s hearing from Amazon more, and Amazon has hired programmatic specialists from his agency in New York.

Amazon’s sales team for advertising is growing fast: It’s different from other platforms in that its team works cross-functionally across advertising and retail. For larger brands, Amazon has dedicated teams. The company has had a team in New York for many years but also has big ad presences in other places including Tokyo and Paris — “anywhere there are ad agencies in place,” said Saurabh Sharma, director of programmatic at Amazon.

Amazon is increasingly trying to pitch to what the company dubs “non-endemic” advertisers — brands that don’t sell on Amazon. Asked what he considers a challenge, Sharma mentioned that push, adding that it’s not really a challenge, but an opportunity. Non-endemic advertisers would cover, for example, brands in categories like cable, wireless, airlines or restaurants. “There are opportunities to bring that value,” said Sharma.

Amazon’s ad buckets cover everything from search (the sponsored products that appear when people search for things on Amazon.com), to more traditional display in the form of banner advertising, to newer video advertising or device-based advertising on Kindle, or through its new streaming service for entertainment. There’s also what is known as “custom” advertising, which could include anything from a full homepage takeover of Amazon.com on Black Friday to using Amazon boxes themselves as ad inventory.

Sharma said more advertising offerings are coming. The company is doing more with other pieces of “inventory” such as Amazon Lockers, self-service kiosks that let customers pick up Amazon packages, as well as starting to offer TV-like advertising for its new streaming service on Prime Vide, which includes “Thursday Night Football.” (The kickoff Bears-Packers matchup had 1.6 million viewers initiating the stream in late September.)

“To really go after the Google and Facebook duopoly, [Amazon needs] to think outside of just product advertising,” said one agency buyer who works with Amazon. “Retail is just one piece of online business overall.”

Geico, a non-endemic advertiser, advertises within Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football,” for example, said Sharma. Another example is Hyundai, a non-endemic brand that did a custom test-drive campaign called “Prime Now. Drive Now.”

That push for non-endemic brands is most of what the “education” piece for agencies is around. “We’ve been hearing from them more,” said Nicholas Pappas, CEO at indie media shop SwellShark, who works with brands including Applegate, Virgin Atlantic, Spike and Dos Equis. “We’ve been discussing ways to bring more non-endemic partners onto Amazon advertising, and we’re excited.”

Sharma said Amazon’s big competitive advantage as a platform is that it is about the intersection of e-commerce and advertising. “It’s not only about being able to place ads in the right place and right time; it’s also the right relevance,” he said. At a high level, Amazon offers measurement metrics from impressions and clicks to deeper data on sales information, full shopping journeys and things like a customer’s worth over a lifetime. E-commerce and marketing at Amazon go hand in hand — the platform does plenty of consulting with brands and agencies on what it calls “retail readiness.”

“We can tell you how a campaign does, but in order to do something about it, you have to do something beyond advertising,” said Sharma. So agencies and brands have to be trained on things like creating the right product page, making sure inventory is in stock and policing reviews, according to agency execs.

But the key with non-endemic brands is that you can’t necessarily sell them on straight display or search advertising. So along with training programs for items sold on Amazon, agencies are also hearing more about how to do advertising for brands not sold on Amazon. “[Amazon] has to educate planners on how to use data,” said one exec. For example, a non-endemic brand can examine what else its customers buy to create a fuller picture of who their customer is. One agency, for instance, is working with a real estate company and looking for data on people shopping on Amazon.com for moving boxes.

“Advertising for us is another big area … in terms of tech,” said Sharma. “Like Amazon Web Services can provide tech solutions for other developers, for people building on our cloud, within ad tech we can bring the same value to agencies — as a tech leader.”

Output: Online retail giant Amazon is adding to its New York and Paris advertising teams with an office in Manhattan, where it plans to employ up to 2,000 staff. The company is making its presence felt in the advertising sector, with media agency executives claiming that Amazon's team contacts them frequently. Amazon is expanding its suite of advertising offerings and increasingly targeting non-endemic advertisers, such as restaurants or airlines, said Saurabh Sharma, director of programmatic at the company.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Tokio Marine teams up with Pand.ai for life insurance chatbot
 Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore (TMLS) has launched an AI chatbot in Singapore, in a bid to simplify life insurance and make it more accessible to the public. The chatbot’s name is TOMI and stands for Tokio Marine Insurance. It was built in collaboration with local AI startup Pand.ai.According to the statement, the technology behind TOMI is called Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing (Deep NLP). The technology is able to interpret sentences regardless of length and grammatical accuracy, compared to the traditional NLP approach which only interprets short phrases and sentences.This capability allows TOMI to understand grammatically inaccurate sentences, and even Singlish."This sets TOMI apart from many other chatbots, which rely primarily on keyword recognition or require grammatical accuracy from users,” the statement added.The chatbot builds on the success of an earlier version released in January, which was launched for its financial advisers. The current version is targeted towards users to increase understanding and enable users to manage their insurance coverage more independently.This is through the provision of users with instant and accurate explanations of commonly-used terms in insurance, information on TMLS products and solutions. The chatbot also looks to serve as a potential touch point for those looking to join the industry as a financial adviser with TMLS.The move will also be supported by regional headquarters Tokio Marine Asia (TMA), which will be exploring the potential extension of TOMI and its functionalities to other regional markets in Asia.“Conversations play an important role in how a customer buys and consumes life insurance products. As customers’ behaviour shift towards digital, we see intelligent AI-powered chatbots as a natural evolution of websites and mobile apps, and will eventually become a dominant digital channel in how a customer interacts with an insurer,” James Tan, CEO of TMLS, said.Marketing has reached out to TMLS for additional comment.

Output: Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore has introduced a chatbot to aid customers. The bot is said to rely less on perfect grammar and sentence construction than other virtual assistants. The firm worked with artificial intelligence firm Pand.ai to develop the bot. The chatbot will be used in providing information to clients regarding their policies while also providing on-demand explanations of commonly-used insurance terms.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
SEC plans fiduciary rule with DOL involvement
 Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton told lawmakers on Wednesday that the agency is drafting a proposal for a fiduciary rule.

The agency is trying to catch up with the Department of Labor, which partially implemented its own fiduciary rule in June and is currently conducting a review of the regulation’s enforcement mechanisms as ordered by President Donald J. Trump that could lead to revisions. The SEC is currently receiving public comments about a fiduciary rule.

“The next step in anything like this would be a rule proposal. We’re working on such a proposal,” Mr. Clayton said in an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee. “We’re going to work with the Department of Labor. If this were easy, it would already have been fixed.”

As he did in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last week, Mr. Clayton outlined the rubric that he would use for a fiduciary rule. It must preserve investors’ choice to use a broker or investment adviser, be clear, and apply consistently to all types of investment accounts. It must also be the product of cooperation between the SEC and DOL, whose rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of their clients in retirement accounts only.

Mr. Clayton said he is “confident” the agency can propose a rule that “addresses those core issues and that has a standard that protects investors that they understand.”

He declined to provide a timeline for when the measure might be released.

The SEC is currently operating with only three of its normal complement of five commissioners. Mr. Trump has nominated Republican Hester Peirce and Democrat Robert Jackson to fill the two openings. The Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing. It’s unlikely the SEC would advance a fiduciary rule before Ms. Peirce and Mr. Jackson come on board.

Mr. Clayton reassured Republican lawmakers that the SEC would address concerns they have raised about the DOL fiduciary rule. Republicans and financial industry opponents assert that the measure, finalized during the Obama administration, is too complex, increases litigation risk and will force brokers to abandon investors with modest retirement accounts because of the increased costs of providing fiduciary advice.

Supporters of the DOL rule maintain that it would mitigate broker conflicts of interest that lead to the sale of inappropriate high-fee investment products that erode savings.

One of the most strident GOP critics, Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., touted the bill she introduced last week that would kill the DOL rule and replace it with a disclosure-based best-interests standard for brokers. The legislation directs the SEC to write the rule, putting the agency in the driver’s seat on the regulation of investment advice, instead of the DOL.

Mr. Clayton aligned himself with Ms. Wagner.

“A lot of the themes that you outlined are themes that I have, which is [investor] choice,” he said.

Near the end of the hearing, which lasted more than three-and-a-half hours, Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., asked Mr. Clayton whether he supported the DOL rule.

“I like the words,” Mr. Clayton said, referring to the DOL rule’s goal of reducing brokers’ conflicts of interest. “The question is, are we going to implement it in a way that adversely affects choice?”

Output: The US Securities and Exchange Commission is drafting a proposed fiduciary standard rule, according to its chairman Jay Clayton. The SEC is working with the Department of Labor (DOL) in establishing the new legislation. The DOL's own fiduciary rule, finalised in 2016, was criticised for being complex and having the potential to lead brokers away from all but the largest retirement accounts due to the fiduciary duty it placed on intermediaries.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
UK firms lag US counterparts in understanding benefit of robotics
 Today, Redwood Software, has revealed that businesses in the US consider robotics more important than organisations in the UK, with 19% of UK businesses ranking the technology as a ‘top priority’, compared to over 30% in the US.

In fact, while 64% of UK survey respondents see robotic process automation (RPA) as important to their wider IT strategy, over three quarters of US businesses answered the same, again placing them in the number one spot.

>See also: The robots keep rising as AI-driven business transformation evolves

However, the research does also reveal similarities in robotic uptake over the last year, as both the UK (62%) and U.S. (78%) participants admitted RPA has become ‘more of a priority’ for them in this timeframe.

A lack of buy-in from leadership

The research also highlights a worrying lack of understanding from those in senior positions across the UK, with just 20% of businesses believing their company’s management understands the essentials. This demonstrates quite a difference to the US market, as 34% of businesses believe their management are pioneers of robotics.

Neil Kinson, chief of staff at Redwood Software, commented: “While it’s great to see an increase in the number of businesses across both the UK and U.S. that have prioritised RPA over the last 12 months, there’s still a lot to be done to educate those at management level as to the benefits of software robotics.”

>See also: The secret behind scaling RPA across the enterprise

“Without buy-in from those in senior positions the success of automation within a business will be limited. And not only buy-in from the c-suite but from across the business in general. The impact of understanding the benefits of automation will see a significant shift in the overall culture of the company and attitude towards the technology. Most importantly, every employee will understand how robotics can help them in their role and day to day tasks.”

When asked to consider whether they felt 80% or more of business processes could be automated using RPA in the next five years, just 12% of UK organisations agreed, while almost 50% more US businesses agreed.

Robotising the digital transformation

Despite the research unveiling many differences between the American and English robotics landscapes, one fundamental area that both agree on is the role of robotics in achieving digital transformation. Overall, 83% of the IT decision makers surveyed believe RPA is an ‘essential’ or ‘key part’ of their digital transformation.

>See also: 5 steps to successful RPA implementation

Unsurprisingly, the top reasons for favouring the role of robotics in the digital transformation process included cost saving (59%), increased agility (54%) and scalability (43%). In addition, 32% of US and UK businesses referenced RPA as bringing improved customer satisfaction to their transformation strategy.

Supporting the understanding that RPA plays an essential part in digital transformation, the research revealed that over two thirds (80%) of organisations involved in the survey have a robotics process automation strategy in place, with 82% using RPA to automate business processes.

Output: A fifth of UK businesses say their management understands the importance of robotic process automation (RPA), compared with 34% in the US, according to a survey by Redwood Software. While 64% of UK firms think RPA should be part of their wider IT planning, three-quarters of their US counterparts did, the study found. "There’s still a lot to be done to educate those at management level as to the benefits of software robotics," said Redwood chief of staff Neil Kinson. The study also revealed that 83% of UK and US IT managers believe RPA is crucial to their digital transformation.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
India to allow transactions between digital wallets
 There has been a boom in India’s e-wallets industry lately, but most such apps—and thereby, their users—have been siloed. Due to a lack of interoperability, users of one wallet app can transact only with those who use the same app. So they are left in a fix as they need to maintain separate wallets for separate services.

On Oct. 4, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it will allow e-wallets of private firms to interoperate. So, users of one app will now be able to transact with users of a different app. This facility is currently functional under the state-owned Unified Payment Interface (UPI), available only to banks and those e-wallets built on the UPI platform.

Advertisement

E-wallets interoperability will be allowed within six months to those compliant with know your customer (KYC) norms, RBI announced under its developmental and regulatory policies.

Some platforms have been more open all along. For instance, Flipkart-owned PhonePe partners with YES Bank to access the UPI platform, BookMyShow’s wallet accepts payments from multiple wallets, and Google Tez uses the UPI platform to function as an extension of one’s bank account. But once RBI allows interoperability, several others like Paytm, MobiKwik, FreeCharge, Ola Money, and Amazon Pay, too, will be able to do it.

RBI’s decision comes amidst a massive market opportunity—India’s digital payments scene is slated to surpass Rs30,000 crore ($4.6 billion) by the end of 2022. However, hardly any player has achieved profitability yet. To add to the pressure, competition is getting fierce in an already overcrowded market: A slew of public and private players, from the government to myriad fin-tech companies to messaging apps are vying for customers’ wallets.

The central bank’s move may well be the catalyst for India’s digital payment companies who have long sought interoperability.

Advertisement

Paytm welcomed RBI’s move towards openness saying it “should act as a strong boost for digital payments ecosystem in India.” ”For the user, this means they do not have to download another wallet if they already have MobiKwik (or any other),” Bipin Preet Singh, founder and CEO of MobiKwik, told Quartz. “They can pay across the merchant network of any other pre-paid payment instrument. This helps us widen our reach and brings enormous value to our business.” Ola and Amazon did not respond to Quartz at the time of publishing.

E-wallet firms have always claimed that banks have an unfair advantage in the digital payments ecosystem as bank-to-bank fund transfers are as easy as sending a text message, thanks to UPI. For transferring funds via UPI, customers don’t even need to remember the Indian Financial System Code (needed for online bank transactions) or bank account details.

The Ratan Watal Committee, tasked by the government with suggesting measures to encourage e-payments, had recommended in December that e-wallet players be open to interoperability to improve user convenience and their own market share.

Output: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to allow interoperability between digital wallets provided by different firms within six months, provided they comply with regulations. Companies will be granted access to the state-owned Unified Payment Interface, which is currently only available to banks and a handful of digital wallets. The decision follows a recommendation made last December by the Ratan Watal Committee and lobbying from e-wallet firms, which claimed the move would improve the user experience.