Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Deloitte hack compromised US government and major firms' emails
 The hack into the accountancy giant Deloitte compromised a server that contained the emails of an estimated 350 clients, including four US government departments, the United Nations and some of the world’s biggest multinationals, the Guardian has been told.

Sources with knowledge of the hack say the incident was potentially more widespread than Deloitte has been prepared to acknowledge and that the company cannot be 100% sure what was taken.

Deloitte said it believed the hack had only “impacted” six clients, and that it was confident it knew where the hackers had been. It said it believed the attack on its systems, which began a year ago, was now over.

However, sources who have spoken to the Guardian, on condition of anonymity, say the company red-flagged, and has been reviewing, a cache of emails and attachments that may have been compromised from a host of other entities.

The Guardian has established that a host of clients had material that was made vulnerable by the hack, including:

The US departments of state, energy, homeland security and defence.

The US Postal Service.

The National Institutes of Health.

“Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”, the housing giants that fund and guarantee mortgages in the US.

Football’s world governing body, Fifa, had emails in the server that was breached, along with four global banks, three airlines, two multinational car manufacturers, energy giants and big pharmaceutical companies.

The Guardian has been given the names of more than 30 blue-chip businesses whose data was vulnerable to attack, with sources saying the list “is far from exhaustive”.

Deloitte did not deny any of these clients had information in the system that was the target of the hack, but it said none of the companies or government departments had been “impacted”. It said “the number of email messages targeted by the attacker was a small fraction of those stored on the platform”.

This assurance has been contested by sources that spoke to the Guardian. They said Deloitte’s public position belied concern within the company about exactly what had happened and why.

The Guardian first revealed the existence of the hack on 25 September.

Since then, the Guardian has been provided with further details of the attack, which seems to have started in autumn last year at a time Deloitte was migrating and updating its email from an in-house system to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 service.

The work was being undertaken at Deloitte’s Hermitage office in Nashville, Tennessee.

The hackers got into the system using an administrator’s account that, theoretically, gave them access to the entire email database, which included Deloitte’s US staff and their correspondence with clients.

Deloitte realised it had a substantial problem in spring this year, when it retained the Washington-based law firm, Hogan Lovells, on “special assignment” to review and advise about what it called “a possible cybersecurity incident”.

In addition to emails, the Guardian understands the hackers had potential access to usernames, passwords, IP addresses, architectural diagrams for businesses and health information.

It is also thought that some emails had attachments with sensitive security and design details.

Deloitte has insisted its internal inquiry, codenamed Windham, found that only six clients had information that had been compromised. The review had also been able to establish “precisely what information was at risk”, the company said.

However, that analysis has been contested by informed sources that have spoken to the Guardian. They say the investigation has not been able to establish definitively when the hackers got in and where they went; nor can they be completely sure that the electronic trail they left is complete.

“The hackers had free rein in the network for a long time and nobody knows the amount of the data taken,” said one source.

“A large amount of data was extracted, not the small amount reported. The hacker accessed the entire email database.”

Another source added: “There is an ongoing effort to determine the damage. There is a team looking at records that have been tagged for further analysis. It is all deeply embarrassing.”

The Guardian has been told Deloitte did not at the time have multi-factor authentication as standard on the server that was breached. A cybersecurity specialist told the Guardian this was “astonishing”.

The expert said the migration to the new email system would have “utterly complicated the kind of forensic investigation required to see what had happened”.

“A hacker has got into Deloitte’s email system and been undetected for months, and only six clients have been compromised? That does not sound right. If the hackers had been in there that long, they would have covered their tracks.”

When the Guardian put all these points to Deloitte, it declined to answer specific questions, but a spokesman said: “We dispute in the strongest terms that Deloitte is ‘downplaying’ the breach. We take any attack on our systems very seriously.

“We are confident that we know what information was targeted and what the hacker actually did. Very few clients were impacted, although we want to stress that even when one client is impacted, that is one client too many.

“We have concluded that the attacker is no longer in Deloitte’s systems and haven’t seen any signs of any subsequent activities.

“Our review determined what the hacker actually did. The attacker accessed data from an email platform. The review of that platform is complete.”

In recent months, Deloitte has introduced multi-factor authentication and encryption software to try to stop further hacks.

Dmitri Sirota, co-founder and CEO of the cybersecurity firm BigID, warned that many companies had failed to use such methods because they were inconvenient and complex.

“Privileged accounts are like keys that unlock everything, from the castle to the treasury. They provide unfettered access to all systems, which is why they are so valuable.

“Organisations are monitoring databases, not the data in it. It’s hard to detect changes, prevent incidents or compare your data to notice breached information unless you have an inventory of what you have.”

Output: Further investigation of the Deloitte hacking a year ago has revealed that the breach was potentially far more extensive than first reported. Initially Deloitte suggested the hack had "impacted" only six clients, but the compromised server contained emails of an estimated 350 clients, including Fifa, banks and other major companies. Among the emails and attachments were ones from US government departments, including State, Energy, Homeland Security and Defense. The extent of details stolen by the hackers is not known by Deloitte but user names, passwords, IP addresses and health information, along with attachments with sensitive security details would have been vulnerable.


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Online professional development courses launched by MIT
 Distance Learning

MIT Launches Digital Plus Courses for Professional Learning

MIT Professional Learning is launching a new program designed to offer organizations courses for their employees that feature project-based challenges designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty.

Dubbed Digital Plus Programs, these new offerings aim to provide personal and effective learning environments for individual participants while providing their organizations information on participant engagement and outcomes by leveraging online platforms and collaborative tools.

Ranging from six to 10 weeks in length, the courses use "a variety of design and teaching modalities that range from interactive online to in-person sessions in order to impart leading-edge content and practices that are highly relevant to professionals across all industries," according to a news release. "The courses include embedded group-based projects, challenges and learning activities, enabling knowledge-sharing, networking and innovation."

The first course offered through the new initiative, The Intersection of Leadership and Innovation, is being offered in partnership with Cahoot Learning, provider of an online platform designed to accommodate multiple cohorts from around the world with features such as collaboration and live communication tools, customizable assessments and analytics focused on engagement and progress.

Digital Plus Programs will also include professional certificate programs that require completion of four courses. The first two certificate programs, Leading in the Transformative Era and Strategic Leadership and Innovation, are currently in development and will require completion of the first course offering, The Intersection of Leadership and Innovation.

For more information, visit professional.mit.edu.

Output: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has launched a programme of online professional development courses. MIT's Digital Plus offers organisations courses for their staff that involve project-based challenges and last between six and 10 weeks. The first course being offered is The Intersection of Leadership and Innovation, which is being developed in partnership with Cahoot Learning. Students who complete the first course can apply for the certificated courses Leading in the Transformative Era and Strategic Leadership and Innovation.


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Neighbourhood Ventures sets up crowdfunding property platform
 PHOENIX, Oct. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Neighborhood Ventures (NV), Arizona's first crowdfunding real estate company, is pleased to announce its formation and launch in the Arizona (Phoenix) marketplace. The company allows all Arizona residents the opportunity to be shareholders in apartment projects in the Phoenix area.

The company was formed by apartment real estate veteran John Kobierowski and former Goldman Sachs tech analyst Jamison Manwaring.

Mr. Kobierowski, also Senior Managing Partner at Phoenix based ABI Multifamily, brings 25+ years' experience in multifamily real estate, has brokered 900+ multifamily transactions, owned/operated over 1,000+ multifamily units and successfully developed and sold 500+ condominium units.

Mr. Kobierowski states, "The new Crowdfunding legislation has empowered all Arizonans with the opportunity to invest locally in business start-ups, which had been for decades reserved for only qualified investors. Neighborhood Ventures will focus on commercial Real Estate investment property, specifically multifamily assets. Investing in income-producing apartment buildings with the guidance of a team of seasoned professionals is the core of our investment strategy. We intend to be the go-to company for Arizonans to make investments in the apartment market."

Prior to launching Neighborhood Ventures, Mr. Manwaring was VP of Investor Relations at Tempe-based LifeLock, where he helped lead the company to a successful sale in February 2017. Prior to LifeLock, Mr. Manwaring was a software analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York City where he participated in over a dozen software IPOs, including LifeLock's public offering in 2012.

Mr. Manwaring states, "Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have given entrepreneurs a large audience to showcase and fund new technologies. Platforms like GoFundMe have transformed how donations for charitable causes can be raised quickly online. Neighborhood Ventures is excited to take crowdfunding to commercial real estate to allow every Arizona resident the opportunity to own a portion of an apartment project within their neighborhood."

Thomas M. Brophy, Director of Research for Neighborhood Ventures, states, "Never has there been a better time to invest in multifamily (apartment) real estate than now. Rental housing has entered its most significant growth period in a generation fueled, in large part, by monumental demographic changes at both ends of the age spectrum. These changes will continue to propel the industry for years to come."

The company plans to open its first project for investment in November 2017.

Neighborhood Ventures is Arizona's first, exclusively multifamily, real estate crowdfunding platform and asset management company.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE Neighborhood Ventures

Related Links

http://www.neighborhood.ventures

Output: Arizona-based property start-up Neighbourhood Ventures is to launch a crowdfunding site for local retail property investors. The company will give residents of the state the chance to invest in income-producing apartment projects in the Phoenix area using its crowdfunding site, under the guidance of professionals. Neighbourhood Ventures hopes to offer its first project to investors in November.


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Training New Doctors Right Where They’re Needed
 https://californiahealthline.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/10/2017_1005_06.mp3

About Capitol Desk Capitol Desk delivers the latest in health care policy and politics from Sacramento and around the state. Have an idea? Let us know.

Don’t see the audio player above? Click here to download.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Dr. Olga Meave didn’t mind the dry, 105-degree heat that scorched this Central Valley city on a recent afternoon.

The sweltering summer days remind her of home in Sonora, Mexico. So do the people of the Valley — especially the Latino first-generation immigrants present here in large numbers, toiling in the fields or piloting big rigs laden with fruits and vegetables.

Meave’s sense of familiarity with the region and its residents drew her to an ambitious program in Bakersfield whose goal is to train and retain doctors in medically underserved areas.

She is now in her third and final year of the Rio Bravo Family Medicine Residency Program, operated by Clinica Sierra Vista, a chain of more than 30 clinics, mostly in the Central Valley. Meave, 34, graduated from medical school in Mexico and has pursued additional education and training in the U.S.

This story also ran on The World . It can be republished for free ( details ).

She plans to practice in Bakersfield after she completes her residency next year.

“The goal is for [doctors in training] to come for three years and stay for 20,” said Carol Stewart, director of the program.

Rio Bravo is one of eight teaching health centers in California and 57 nationwide that were created by the Affordable Care Act in 2010 to serve areas with large unmet medical needs.

This academic year, there are 732 residents in teaching health centers across 24 states.

Unlike the Affordable Care Act itself, these teaching centers enjoy bipartisan support among federal lawmakers, who say such hubs will alleviate the primary care doctor shortage. But long-term funding is still in question. Last week, Congress agreed to temporarily finance the teaching health centers through the end of the year while debating whether to extend funding beyond that. President Donald Trump later signed the temporary extension.

A residency is a stage of graduate medical training that’s required after medical school and before doctors can set up their own practices. Most family practice residencies last three years.

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Traditional residency programs are generally based at large, urban hospitals in areas where there are typically a sufficient number of doctors to go around.

The first teaching health centers began training residents in 2011. They operate primarily out of clinics in rural communities and other areas where primary care physicians are in short supply.

The ideal ratio of primary care physicians to patients is about 1 for every 2,000, Stewart said. The ratio in east Bakersfield “is more like 1 to 6,000, so we have a lot of catching up to do.”

Though teaching health centers remain relatively new, experts say they’re already succeeding: Their residents generally stay in the regions where they trained, putting down roots in communities with a big demand for health care.

In June, the Rio Bravo program graduated its first class of six doctors. Two joined the staff at a Clinica Sierra Vista clinic in east Bakersfield. The other four are practicing in clinics serving low-income communities in Sacramento, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

Stewart estimates that the six recent graduates together saw nearly 10,000 patients during their three years of training.

“That’s a significant contribution,” she said.

Though not all teaching health centers have affiliations with medical schools,

the Rio Bravo program has an academic partnership with the UCLA medical school, which helps develop its curriculum, Stewart said. It also coordinates with a local hospital, Kern Medical, where residents complete rotations in different specialties related to family medicine.

A 2015 survey by the American Association of Teaching Health Centers found that 82 percent of their graduates stay in primary care and 55 percent remain in underserved communities. By contrast, about a quarter of graduates from traditional residency programs remain in primary care and work in underserved areas, according to the same survey.

Many graduates of teaching health centers have an incentive to stay in these areas because they may qualify for other programs that offer perks, such as help with paying off medical school loans.

The centers take their patient populations into consideration when selecting applicants. For instance, Rio Bravo aims to train culturally sensitive doctors, given the large local immigrant population, Stewart said.

It looks for applicants with ties to the Valley or who come from the cultures — and speak the languages — that are familiar to patients they will serve.

Meave doesn’t have a personal connection to the Valley, but she worked with low-income patients in Mexico. She has found that the population in the Valley, and its needs, aren’t much different from those in her home country.

At Clinica Sierra Vista, she sees patients who haven’t been to a doctor in decades. “They’ve never had a physical exam, never had their eyes checked. … They just deal with their aches and pains,” she said. “I think they feel happy that I can understand them and excited that someone from the same background is providing them care.”

Teaching health centers are financed by federal grants administered by the Health Resources & Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Congress determines the amount and duration of the funding. The current allocation, an extension of the two-year funding that expired Sept. 30, runs through the end of the year.

In July, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) introduced legislation that would fund the program for an additional three years at about $157,000 a year per student — a total of $116.5 million annually.

The amount proposed would be a 65 percent increase from the current funding of $95,000 a year per resident.

Lawmakers are likely to begin debating the funding measure this week, and it is still subject to change.

“I’m glad we moved forward with a short-term extension of the … program, but we also must advance a long-term solution to provide certainty for our teaching health centers, their residents, and their patients,” McMorris Rodgers said in a prepared statement. “Without a sustainable funding level … the program will unravel.”

Should that happen, California’s teaching health centers could draw from a pot of money administered by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development to pay for the remainder of the current residents’ training.

Programs in other states may not have the same safety net.

“If [federal funding] went away, our residency program would have to close,” said Dr. Darrick Nelson, director of the teaching health center at Hidalgo Medical Services in Lordsburg, N.M.

Lordsburg, with a population of roughly 2,500, is a “small railroad town,” Nelson said, and like many rural towns desperately needs versatile primary care doctors.

“What you’re getting is three doctors for the price of one,” he said. “You get someone who can do pediatrics, someone who can do obstetrical care and someone who can do internal medicine.”

In California’s Central Valley, there is no medical school, and new doctors often avoid the area in favor of richer urban centers, where they can make more money.

Earlier this year, lawmakers earmarked $465 million from the state’s new tobacco tax to boost payments for some Medi-Cal providers, which could help make poor areas like the Central Valley more attractive to doctors.

At Clinica Sierra Vista’s location in east Bakersfield, where Meave’s residency is based, 75 percent of patients are covered by Medi-Cal — the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program for low-income residents — and 15 percent are uninsured, Stewart said. Asthma, diabetes and other chronic conditions are major health problems.

Veronica Ayon, a former farmworker, is one of Meave’s patients. Like her doctor, she is a native of Sonora.

Ayon, 48, was treated for cervical cancer in 2010 and last year underwent surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. She feels comfortable with Meave because of their similar backgrounds and language, she said.

“She is very special to me,” Ayon said, speaking in Spanish inside her home in the town of Shafter, about 20 miles north of Bakersfield. “She explains things at a level I can understand.”

Output: Dr. Olga Meave didn’t mind the dry, 105-degree heat that scorched this Central Valley city on a recent afternoon. The sweltering summer days remind her of home in Sonora, Mexico. So do the people of the Valley — especially the Latino first-generation immigrants present here in large numbers, toiling in the fields or piloting big rigs laden with fruits and vegetables.


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California Today: Homeless Camps, With Official Blessing
 Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Governmental czars have been appointed, ambitious plans crafted and billions of dollars spent, yet California’s homeless crisis still grows.

Roughly a quarter of the nation’s homeless — about 118,000 people — live in California.

Frustration over the lack of headway has some city leaders now embracing a strategy once considered unthinkable: Sanctioned homeless camps.

“The entire West Coast is in a housing crisis,” said Joe DeVries, an assistant city manager in Oakland. “What we really need is housing. But as we build it, we need something to make people’s lives better.”

Oakland plans to open two camps for roughly 80 people within the next month or so, Mr. DeVries said. The sites will have prefab sheds, round-the-clock security and social services.

Output: Governmental czars have been appointed, ambitious plans crafted and billions of dollars spent, yet California’s homeless crisis still grows. Roughly a quarter of the nation’s homeless — about 118,000 people — live in California.


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Culture of buy-in can improve healthcare's performance
 An organization's culture and philosophy is one of the primary predictors of its financial success and ability to retain employees. That was the message from organizational culture experts and authors Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick at the Medical Group Management Association's conference Monday in Anaheim, California.

Elton and Gostick used numerous examples from other industries to make the case that healthcare organizations would benefit from a culture of positive engagement, both internally with their employees and externally as they reach out to service their customer base.

[Also: Clinician satisfaction tied to healthy workplace, report says]

Being engaged, energized and enabled were the three main tentpoles of their approach, and they pointed to statistics that highlighted the efficacy of that type of culture. According to their research, companies with high engagement had a 14.3 percent higher operating margin, while companies that focused on those three E's showed an average 27.4 percent higher margin.

In particular, Elton pointed to Canadian airline WestJet, which ran a promotion one holiday season in which customers received free Christmas presents, simply for flying on the airline.

[Also: NYC H+H announces hiring cuts in response to state withholding $380 million in DSH payments]

"Their profitability is through the roof," said Elton. "They're the most popular airline in Canada, bar none. It's harder to get a job as a baggage handler at WestJet than it is to get into the Harvard School of Business." And he wasn't joking.

Gostick said that healthcare leaders looking to implement the three-E approach would be wise to consider a cautionary tale offered by General Motors. A few years ago, in an effort to make cars more in line with the quality that was coming out of Japan, GM embarked on a joint venture with Toyota, learning the latter company's production method. But GM didn't become more efficient. The production method, they decided, was too much work, they were too busy to focus on quality, and employees and middle managers all resisted, thinking the whole exercise was an excuse to start shedding employees. GM declared bankruptcy soon afterward.

"Great organizations are more agile," said Gostick. "People in these organizations feel psychologically safe to speak up. They can challenge the status quo, the conventional way of doing things."

The key to making that work in the medical world, he said, is to create a safe atmosphere in which everyone can ask questions and challenge each other without being negative. Anyone in the organization, from top to bottom, should be able to suggest innovative ideas without being considered disruptive. The most successful businesses, he said, are prone to experimentation and unique ideas.

Aside from having the potential to increase margins, such cultures typically fare better when it comes to turnover, particularly among Millennials, said Gostick. Microsoft had cut its MIllennial turnover in half by having aspirational meetings, asking employees how they want to grow, and encouraging them to give and receive feedback.

It's a challenge businesses will continue to face, as Millennials tend to job-hop much more frequently than past generations -- staying 1.5 to 2 years in an organization, on average. Knowing they're making an impact, having a good work/life balance and being able to learn in their jobs were ranked highly among Millennials, while things like autonomy and money rank near the bottom, according to Gostick. Healthcare organizations should heed these trends if they want their younger employees to stick around.

Twitter: @JELagasse

Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com

Output: An organization's culture and philosophy is one of the primary predictors of its financial success and ability to retain employees. That was the message from organizational culture experts and authors Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick at the Medical Group Management Association's conference Monday in Anaheim, California.


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Can the U.S. Repair Its Health Care While Keeping Its Innovation Edge?
 The United States health care system has many problems, but it also promotes more innovation than its counterparts in other nations. That’s why discussions of remaking American health care often raise concerns about threats to innovation.

But this fear is frequently misapplied and misunderstood.

First, let’s acknowledge that the United States is home to an outsize share of global innovation within the health care sector and more broadly. It has more clinical trials than any other country. It has the most Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine. It has won more patents. At least one publication ranks it No. 1 in overall scientific innovation.

Strong promotion of innovation in health care is one reason the United States got as far as it did in our recent bracket tournament on the best health system in the world. Though the United States lost to France, 3-2, in the semifinals, it picked up its two votes in part because of its influence on innovation, which can save lives in the United States and throughout the world.

Now we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking Americans are inherently more innovative than people in other countries. In fact, many American innovators are immigrants who may or may not be citizens. Many technological and procedural breakthroughs in medicine have occurred in other countries.

Output: The United States health care system has many problems, but it also promotes more innovation than its counterparts in other nations. That’s why discussions of remaking American health care often raise concerns about threats to innovation.


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Researchers Predict a Quarter-Million New Cases of Breast Cancer in the U.S.
 Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women except for skin cancers.`

Researchers at the American Cancer Society estimate that there will be 252,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women in the United States in 2017. Some 40,610 women will die from the disease.

In addition, there will be 63,410 cases this year of carcinoma in situ, abnormal cells that may be an early form of cancer.

Over a lifetime, a woman living in the United States has a 12.4 percent risk — one in eight — of being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks have higher breast cancer incidence and mortality than other racial and ethnic groups. The incidence of cancer in black women was slightly lower than that of whites, but the death rate during 2011 to 2015 was 42 percent higher in black women.

Output: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women except for skin cancers.` Researchers at the American Cancer Society estimate that there will be 252,710 new cases of invasive breast cancer in women in the United States in 2017. Some 40,610 women will die from the disease.


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Shouldn’t Doctors Control Hospital Care?
 Doctors were once expected to scrutinize and, when necessary, challenge administrative actions on behalf of patients. No more.

The dispute at Tulare must be viewed in the context of this larger struggle. As hospital managers make decisions based on business, not clinical, imperatives, both patients and their care providers are getting squeezed. For example, doctors are being pressed to discharge patients quickly — sometimes too quickly — to maintain “throughput.” There is a focus on increasing the rates of profitable procedures, such as orthopedic and heart surgeries, at the expense of relatively poorly remunerated general medical care. Administrators are even exerting control over traditionally medical domains, such as the credentialing of new physicians with hospital privileges. If a hospital board can dismiss elected medical officers with impunity, as at Tulare, it will indicate to many doctors the increasingly tenuous nature of the position they currently hold.

The very best hospitals in America are still run by physician chief executives — Toby Cosgrove at the Cleveland Clinic, for example, and John Noseworthy at the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic says that it is physician-led because “this helps ensure a continued focus on our primary value” — namely, that “the needs of the patient come first.” Indeed, a study in 2011 found “a strong positive association between the ranked quality of a hospital and whether the C.E.O. is a physician.” Overall hospital quality scores were about 25 percent higher when physicians, not business managers, were in charge.

Of course, correlation does not prove causation; it is certainly possible that better hospitals choose physicians as their leaders. But when day-to-day decision making is done by people with clinical training, it appears that patients do benefit.

There are many factions to blame for the corporate takeover at America’s hospitals. Doctors need to accept some of the responsibility, too. If we had taken better care of our institutions, perhaps there would not have been a need for others to manage them for us.

How the court rules in the Tulare case, once it resumes, will have profound consequences for whether medical staffs can do their work independently of nonclinical administrators. And it will also provide an answer to the more important question of who should be in charge of hospital care.

Output: Who ultimately should be in charge of care at our nation’s hospitals — physicians or businesspeople? In January 2016, the board of directors at Tulare Regional Medical Center, a small community hospital in central California, voted to terminate the elected leaders of its medical staff office.


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Trump’s Cuts to Health Law Enrollment Efforts Are Hitting Hard
 All told, the Trump administration has reduced funds for the navigator program by 41 percent, to $36.9 million, from $62.9 million last year. Among the states hit the hardest, according to data provided to Congress by the administration, are Georgia, down 61 percent; Michigan, down 72 percent; New Jersey, down 62 percent; and Ohio, down 71 percent.

In the face of such numbers, some navigator groups have simply quit.

To Democrats and supporters of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the cuts are another sign that President Trump will sabotage a law that he could not persuade Congress to repeal. To social workers in the trenches, eager to connect those in need with the insurance available, it is mystifying.

“When we received the notification, we were shocked, to say the least,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, the executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, which was notified by the Trump administration that its budget would be cut by 71 percent, to $486,000, from $1.7 million. “We have yet to receive any explanation of the cut. We have met or exceeded every one of our performance metrics. There was never any feedback that gave us any indication that we were not going to receive the same amount.”

Indeed, in an email to the Ohio Association of Foodbanks earlier this year, the federal employee supervising its work, Donnamarie Spencer, said, “You guys are superstars!”

Her group decided to pull out of the navigator program altogether.

The cuts come at a time of turmoil in insurance markets, when more consumers than ever may need help navigating the health care system. Insurers are withdrawing from many markets, rates are shooting up more than 40 percent in some states and the enrollment season will be shorter than in the past. Mr. Trump has stoked uncertainty, saying he would “let Obamacare fail” and threatening to cut off certain subsidies paid to insurers for low-income people.

Output: Michigan Consumers for Health Care, a nonprofit group, has enrolled thousands of people in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and was honored last year as one of the nation’s top performers — a “super navigator” that would serve as a mentor to enrollment counselors in other states.


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Officials air concerns about potential for worse flu season
 About Bara Vaida Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico, The Washington Post and other outlets. View all posts by Bara Vaida →

Public health officials have warned over the past several weeks the U.S. flu season this year may be worse than usual following a tough flu season in Australia.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told CNN that “in general, we get in our season what the Southern Hemisphere got in the season immediately preceding us and an intelligent guess” is that North America will most likely have a bad flu season.

Further, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, influenza chief at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press that: “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s a chance we could have a season similar to Australia.”

The warnings come as the CDC began its annual campaign to encourage Americans to get their flu shots before the virus begins spreading during the fall and winter. About 5 percent to 20 percent of the U.S. population gets the flu each year. The flu can cause severe illness and life-threatening respiratory complications. Adults 65 and older, children, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems are among those that are the most at risk. In the 2016-17 flu season, which was described as a “moderate,” more than 600,000 were hospitalized due to complications from the flu, said Jernigan. Since 2010, 200,000 to 710,000 people have been hospitalized annually due to the flu, and 12,000 to 56,000 died each year too, according to the CDC.

“Influenza is an unpredictable infectious disease,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “I like to say flu is fickle. I am often asked ‘how severe will the season be?’ It will be severe and it will always be severe. Flu vaccination is our first and best line of defense to prevent flu.”

Though Australia has not finished collecting all its data from its past flu season, the flu vaccine may not have been as effective as past years, and more than the usual number of older adults and children contracted the flu. Flu vaccine effectiveness fluctuates annually because the virus constantly mutates. Researchers have also recently questioned whether the vaccine manufacturing process might also make the vaccine less effective. About half of Americans were vaccinated during last year’s flu season and the vaccine was about 42 percent effective. The figure means that people who got the shot had about a 42 percent lower chance of needing additional medical care due to the flu.

To monitor the flu’s development, go to the CDC’s FluView, which provides weekly state-by-state summaries of the disease’s progress. Written reports on the flu based on data collected from health providers and state health departments in the previous week are posted every Friday. This hour-long Flu101 webcast hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, a Bethesda, Md.-based nonprofit that often partners with the CDC to promote disease prevention efforts, explains in detail how the CDC monitors the flu, what information the agency provides on its website and common questions and answers about the flu.

Reporters looking for more information on understanding how the flu virus works, how the flu vaccine is made, how the CDC monitors the flu and many more resources, can check out this new tip sheet on covering the seasonal flu. And be sure to join us for a webcast on Oct. 10: Is the U.S. prepared for a flu pandemic?

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico, The Washington Post and other outlets.

Output: Public health officials have warned over the past several weeks the U.S. flu season this year may be worse than usual following a tough flu season in Australia.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Technology speeds access to patients' end-of-life wishes
 Story highlights Nearly every state has a program to document the care patients want at the end of life In Oregon, organizers have taken a step to ensure that medical wishes are honored

Just four hours earlier, Sallie Cutler had been sharing Mother’s Day lunch with her mom, Alyce Cheatham.

Then, that same evening, Cheatham, 96, landed in a Portland, Ore., emergency room, lethargic, unable to speak and paralyzed on her right side by a massive stroke.

Cutler now admits her first impulse was to demand action.

“It’s, like, do something; make her better,” said Cutler. “As a child, you can’t just say let her die.”

But Cheatham’s medical records contained a different demand. When the doctor on duty at Oregon Health and Science University clicked once in the chart header, it was immediately clear: Cheatham wanted no efforts to prolong her life.

“He said, ‘The good news is, your mom had a POLST form, so you don’t really have any decisions to make,’ ” recalled Cutler, 63, of Sherwood, Ore.

“I was so relieved. I cannot tell you how relieved I was. She had made all the decisions for me ahead of time.”

POLST forms, formally known as Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment, have become a staple in care for the fragile or seriously ill. They document in detail what kind of medical treatments patients want – or don’t want – at the end of life. Nearly every state in the U.S. has a program; dozens are established or developing.

But in Oregon, where the documents were developed in the early 1990s, organizers have taken a step to ensure that final medical wishes are honored.

Officials at OHSU have partnered with a California technology firm, Vynca, to allow health care providers to electronically find any of the 172,000 active forms in Oregon’s POLST registry with a single click, no matter where they were filed.

Since the link went live June 1, OHSU providers have clicked nearly 14,000 times, said Dana Zive, the registry’s director.

“It’s not just in the ER setting,” Zive said. “It’s actually any health professional, in any setting.”

Previously, OHSU providers had access to the 16,000 POLST forms filled out by patients within the hospital system, but not those submitted elsewhere. The hospital, which tops the state list in the annual U.S. News & World report rankings, reports more than 1 million visits from nearly 300,000 patients each year.

Now, during any of those visits, the information is easy to see at the top of the patient’s medical chart, said Dr. Susan Tolle, director of the OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care and a co-founder of the state’s POLST program.

“POLST forms only work if health care professionals can find these orders quickly, especially in an emergency,” she said.

Expanding OHSU’s electronic capability is the first step toward universal, instant access to the forms by health systems across the state. Samaritan Health Services, a nonprofit network of hospitals and clinics in Portland and the surrounding area, plans to add the feature later this year. And Oregon officials are negotiating with additional vendors to expand accessibility, Tolle said.

The state’s Oregon Health Authority pays about $380,000 a year to run the POLST registry. The cost of the electronic expansion is paid by the hospitals, however. Neither hospital officials nor Vynca representatives would reveal the price tag, saying it was proprietary information.

Research suggests that POLST forms guide end-of-life care, whether patients die at home or in a health care facility. A 2014 study of deaths among Oregon POLST users found that 6.4 percent of patients who specified comfort-only measures died in a hospital, compared with 44.2 percent of those who chose full treatment – and 34.2 of people with no POLST form on file.

A recent analysis found that seriously ill patients in Oregon are more likely to have their end-of-life wishes honored than those in nearby Washington state – or the rest of the U.S.

Still, it’s been difficult to ensure immediate access to POLST forms and other advance care planning documents in emergency settings, said Dr. Ryan Van Wert, a critical care physician and chief medical officer for Vynca.

“The problem is, if you come into an ER in distress and you’re unable to speak for yourself, the default is we do everything,” he said.

So, sick or frail patients who don’t want CPR or intensive care might receive aggressive treatments against their will, simply because medical personnel couldn’t find the forms.

Oregon is the first state with one-click access to POLST registry forms. New York, which uses forms called Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment, or MOLST, has a different system, a web-based application that allows completion of and access to forms at sites statewide.

Amy Vandenbroucke, executive director of the nonprofit National POLST Paradigm, said individual states are still figuring out what works.

“We’re still very much in an innovation stage,” she said. “Right now, we don’t have any guidance to say what is the best way to do it.”

For Alyce Cheatham, however, OHSU’s easy access to her POLST form ensured her wishes were followed. After the stroke last May, she returned to her Portland retirement home, where she died a week later.

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“She didn’t want any kind of life support at all,” Cutler, her daughter, recalled. “She didn’t want to be on any feeding tubes at all.”

Being able to determine her care was important to Cheatham, an independent, forceful woman who was active in many Portland civic groups and projects, including development of the POLST program. Over the years, she contributed more than $500,000 to the center that developed it, records show.

“She was very excited about the POLST form,” Cutler said. “There’s a symmetry to it. It’s good that it worked so well.”

Output: Just four hours earlier, Sallie Cutler had been sharing Mother's Day lunch with her mom, Alyce Cheatham. Then, that same evening, Cheatham, 96, landed in a Portland, Ore., emergency room, lethargic, unable to speak and paralyzed on her right side by a massive stroke.


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Many Medicare Advantage members have narrow provider networks
 Dive Brief:

Medicare Advantage (MA) has gained popularity with members and payers, but a new study of 2015 data by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that MA plans offered narrow networks to many enrollees.

In what KFF said is the first study to examine the size and composition of MA plans’ physician networks, researchers found that 35% of MA enrollees were in narrow-network plans compared to 22% who were in broad-network plans in 2015.

The report also found that an average of only 46% of all physicians in a county were in MA networks, which limited doctor offerings for members.

Dive Insight:

About one-third of those in Medicare have an MA plan, and the CMS predicted that number will increase in 2018. Payers have also been bullish about MA’s future. UnitedHealth Group, which is the largest MA payer, expects that eventually half of all Medicare beneficiaries will have an MA plan.

The KFF analysis looked at 2015 data for 391 plans offered by 55 insurers in 20 counties, which made up 14% of MA enrollees.

Researchers found that physician network size varied greatly. Access to psychiatrists was more commonly restricted compared to other specialties. MA plans only provided an average of 23% of psychiatrists in a county. That includes 36% of MA plans that had less than 10% of psychiatrists in their county. Other specialty problems included few cardiothoracic surgeons, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and radiation oncologists in many MA networks.

The narrower networks meant fewer physician options, but much lower prices for members. Broad-network HMOs averaged $54 per month compared to $4 for narrow-network plans, and broad-network PPOs were $100 a month compared to $28 for narrow-network plans.

Payers have increasingly turned to narrow networks as a way to control costs and improve quality of care. To take part in the narrower networks, physicians usually have to agree to payer demands about cost and quality.

So, though the narrow networks are reducing costs and are cheaper for MA members, the trade-off is fewer in-network doctors. If there’s an emergency, MA members in narrower networks are unlikely to make sure providers are in-network, so may receive out-of-network care and face hefty medical bills.

“Differences across plans, including provider networks, pose challenges for Medicare beneficiaries in choosing among plans and in seeking care, and raise questions for policymakers about the potential for wide variations in the healthcare experience of Medicare Advantage enrollees across the country,” said KFF.

KFF's findings aren't the only concern about MA provider networks. The CMS has said that many MA provider directories include incorrect information, such as which providers are taking patients. The CMS found that 45% of MA provider directors had wrong information. The CMS is requesting more oversight over MA payers’ provider networks, so insurers will give current and accurate information about their providers.

Output: Medicare Advantage (MA) has gained popularity with members and payers, but a new study of 2015 data by the Kaiser Family Foundation(KFF) found that MA plans offered narrow networks to many enrollees.


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Rethinking connected health for our aging population
 No doubt, aging is a hot topic, both for each of us as we grow older, and for society. It is also a significant opportunity for digital technologies to create a new kind of old, enabling individuals to remain vital, engaged and independent through their later years. Connected health tools can also better understand the “soft science” of wellbeing and address the neglected crisis of caregiving.

It is such an important topic that this year’s Connected Health Conference focuses on The Connected Life Journey, featuring cutting-edge developments in aging, chronic care management, consumer and physician adoption, as well as policy, research and the investment community. I'm especially excited about our closing plenary session, Envisioning the Connected Life Journey, when I have the privilege of sharing the stage with some insightful and truly visionary colleagues, including Charlotte Yeh from AARP and Rudy Tanzi, a renowned researcher who co-discovered the first Alzheimer’s disease genes and directs the Alzheimer’s Genome Project.

I have also taken on the topic of aging in my new book, The New Mobile Age: How Technology Can Extend the Healthspan and Optimize the Lifespan, which will look at how digital technologies are enabling people to remain vital, engaged and independent through their later years. We explore what needs to be done in order to achieve healthy longevity and create a better and more responsive healthcare system for everyone. Below is a sneak peek at two fundamental concepts we discuss in-depth in the book.

First some context. We’ve added 25 years to our lifespan in the last century through various public health innovations, but we haven’t provided tools to help us use those additional years in the most productive, fulfilling way. Instead, we’ve put folks in that demographic (those in the latter 25 years of their life) into a category of “old.” They retire, are perceived as no longer adding value or, even worse, become a burden to their “sandwich generation” adult children.

We must turn aging from being a dreaded inevitability into something to be celebrated. My friend Jody Holtzman from AARP, who is quoted in the book, coined the term “Longevity Economy,” and defines it as the 100-plus million people in the United States over age 50 who account for $7.1 trillion in annual economic activity. He quite accurately notes that only in the eyes of the U.S. government would this population be viewed as a burden. Rather, we need to refocus on this group of older adults as an opportunity!

Hence, our priority should be to enhance the healthspan, by giving people the tools needed to improve their health and inspire them to maintain healthy lifestyle choices. If we do this right, we will turn this growing cohort of older adults from being seen as a burden to one that is remaining vital, connected and adding value. And, of course, connected health is a big part of the solution. There are multiple dimensions at play, and I can’t cover it all here, but I want to touch on two areas that became clear to me while researching the book.

The first group of insights comes from another respected friend and colleague who is helping society rethink aging, Charlotte Yeh, MD, Chief Medical Officer for AARP Services. Once I learned of her perspective, I became tuned in to several reproducible findings in patients in my own clinical practice.

We’re used to thinking of predictors of longevity in a very scientific, dry way – measures such as exposure to tobacco, high blood pressure, blood cholesterol level and the like. Of course, these are valid and important, but Charlotte opened my eyes to a different set of important measures. One is a sense of purpose. People who have some purposeful activity they pursue in retirement are healthier. Research bears this out. The second is social connections. Again, there is a remarkable body of evidence on this, and it turns out that isolation eats away at an individual and has the same effect on health as multiple packs of cigarettes a day! Finally, physical activity. This can range from taking the stairs or walking each day to going to the gym or even remaining a competitive athlete.

None of these measures are unique to aging, but to strip away the traditional, clinical science and break it down into these three simple predictors was liberating for me. Of course, the bonus is that connected health can play a role in all three, whether it is participating in the gig economy to drive purpose, being active on social media or FaceTime to keep up social connections or tracking your steps on a Fitbit. All of these challenges are made easier by modern technology.

The second important insight driving new, increasing opportunities for personal health technologies has to do with managing chronic illness. As much as we’d all like to stay healthy all our lives and die peacefully at a ripe old age, the fact is we all suffer from system wear and tear and require more illness management as time goes on. We are at the breakpoint as a society, and, very soon, we won’t have enough healthcare providers and caregivers to tend to the aging population if we only rely on one-to-one care delivery models. We spend a lot of time in The New Mobile Age talking about how to use technology to create one-to-many care delivery models.

I look forward to sharing the learnings in my new book during the opening keynote at the Connected Health Conference, continuing the discussion and advancing care delivery to support healthy longevity for all in this New Mobile Age.

Join us in Boston this October 25-27. Learn more at www.connectedhealthconf.org

About the Author: Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, Vice President, Connected Health, Partners Healthcare, Program Chair, 2017 Connected Health Conference

Output: No doubt, aging is a hot topic, both for each of us as we grow older, and for society. It is also a significant opportunity for digital technologies to create a new kind of old, enabling individuals to remain vital, engaged and independent through their later years.


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P&G turns digital marketing focus to deliver personalised content
 Procter & Gamble says it will seek to strike a balance between personalisation and mass targeting by not compromising on its brands’ purpose.

P&G’s Always brand will look to target a mass audience with personalised messaging.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) is pivoting its digital marketing to deliver more personalised messages on a mass scale. To lead this transformation, it is also looking to champion an increasingly diverse set of marketing skills.

The consumer goods giant, which claims to reach five billion consumers every day, has set its sights on building brands digitally that “meet and exceed consumer expectations”. It looks to do this by using ‘big data’ to determine what people really want, according to Sophie Blum, P&G’s vice-president of marketing for Europe and IMEA (India, the Middle East and Africa), speaking at the Festival of Marketing last week.

“This depth and intimacy of understanding every single consumer is very new. That is what’s transforming the profession. You either get overwhelmed, or you embrace it with tools to be able to interact with and answer [consumers] in a way that is better than your competitors,” she tells Marketing Week.

What follows this focus on big data is mass one-on-one marketing – something the company’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard briefly referenced in a speech at Dmexco last month.

One example is Pampers. The moment mums-to-be start searching for pregnancy-related information on Google, P&G gets a signal that someone is starting their “journey” and will target them accordingly. During a woman’s third trimester of pregnancy, for example, it might offer advice on what to put into nappy bags, or once the baby is born it will show consumers different nappies to buy as the baby grows.

“At P&G we have this ongoing understanding of one-to-one [messaging]. It’s a day-to-day journey. We are there to accompany consumers by having the right message at the right time,” she says.

It’s not about the channels or tools that are transforming. For us it’s important [to focus] on the way we go about it. Sophie Blum, P&G

When asked how P&G ensures it gets the right balance between personalisation and mass messaging, Blum says staying true to a brand’s purpose is key – and points to feminine hygiene brand Always.

“Always is about female empowerment, no matter what age you are. What will change are consumer expectations. I have different expectations of Always compared to my 14-year-old daughter. The moment I’m in touch with Always, the product [on show] is going to be different. But there are things we don’t compromise on; the brand is the brand,” she says.

P&G has also had a focus on cleaning up the “murky” digital ecosystem after Pritchard’s now seminal speech in January. But when asked if these issues impact the company’s ability to use digital as a brand building tool, Blum instantly refutes this.

“No – it just forces us to be extremely rigorous and disciplined in what we do and how we measure things. We are serving our consumers, it’s not about the channels or tools that are transforming. For us it’s important [to focus] on the way we go about it,” she explains.

READ MORE: ‘Marketer of the Year’ Marc Pritchard on his quest for transparency

The marketing team of the future

Overhauling the company’s culture to become more digitally-focused hasn’t been easy, however. Blum claims one of the biggest challenges has been to create “talent for tomorrow”, where marketing leaders are expected to be able to work across multiple disciplines, understand mathematics and algorithms, while also being able to empathise with people.

“You have a base and then a unique human understanding of what is behind data that is telling the consumer story. You need both the human and tech-savvy side. That’s the new level of recruitment, and a whole new ballgame of leadership,” she says.

As a result, Blum’s plea to young people in the profession is to adopt a diverse set of skills, and to think of brands as a “force of good and growth”.

She concludes: “That’s the role of big brands. The weight on the shoulders of marketers today has never been so heavy; not only to change behaviours and change the conversation, but to be a force for good.”

Output: Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) is to focus its digital marketing on delivering more personalised messages. P&G, which says it reaches five billion consumers each day, wants to build digital brands that "exceed customer expectations" by using big data. But Sophie Blum, P&G's vice-president of marketing for Europe and IMEA, stressed that staying true to a brand's purpose was key to striking a balance between personalisation and mass messaging.


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Chris Forrester joins The Telegraph as chief revenue officer
 The Telegraph has appointed Chris Forrester, formerly the country manager of Spotify UK, to the newly created role of chief revenue officer.

In this new role, Forrester will lead the company's advertising revenue teams including display ad sales, client strategy and development, as well as Spark, the Telegraph's branded content and data division.

He will also have responsibility for all commerce revenues, excluding that generated by Telegraph Travel and Telegraph Financial Services.

He joins the newspaper with over 20 years experience from some of the industries biggest brands including four years at Primesight, where he first held the position of commercial director and later becoming managing director.

In May 2016 he became country manager of Spotify UK, a role he held until April this year.

The appointment of Forrester forms part of the Telegraph’s ongoing commitment to focus on diversifying into new revenue streams, including advertising, digital subscriptions, travel and financial services and events, in order to offset declines in print.

In 2016 revenues at Telegraph Media Group fell sharply to £295m from £314m in 2015, while advertising revenues declined 12% and circulation revenues 3%, according to TMG accounts.

Forrester will report directly into chief executive Nick Hugh.

Hugh said: “We are delighted to welcome Chris Forrester to the Telegraph in the role of CRO. His extensive experience and forward thinking attitude make him well positioned to lead our commercial efforts into the future.”

Forrester added: "The Telegraph has consistently broken new ground and I am excited to be able to join now, at a time when never before have so many people, from such diverse backgrounds consumed the content we create in so many different ways.”

Output: The Telegraph has hired Chris Forrester as chief revenue officer, a newly-created position at the paper. Forrester, previously country manager of Spotify UK, will head up The Telegraph's ad revenue teams, including Spark, the media organisation's content and data division brand. He will also be responsible for all commerce revenues, bar those generated by Telegraph Financial Services and Telegraph Travel. "The Telegraph has consistently broken new ground and I am excited to be able to join", said Forrester.


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Spanish law firm Garrigues develops legal transcription AI
 The Spanish law firm, which is hosting the first legal tech competition in the country, has created a robot to streamline its processes for its lawyers.

The law firm has pioneered its own AI tools, giving lawyers the ability to improve response times, César Mejías, chief information officer at Garrigues, said at an event discussing how AI was changing law firms. He said that his firm had developed a robot with the Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento (IIC), making the firm at the forefront of the use of artificial intelligence and robotics in the sector. It was 'the first tool in Spanish that allows scanned legal texts, videos and audio to be transcribed and indexed quickly and easily, with minimal errors, a functionality that facilitates the work of our lawyers while at the same time improving our client response times. Proces@ includes advanced search options, legal dictionaries etc, meaning that it has sufficient context to make sense of any text it is given. We are the first law firm in the world to have a robot of these characteristics in Spanish.' He added that AI enabled the law firm 'to automate work of lesser value and increase our professionals’ productivity, giving them more time to provide added value to clients.

South Summit

The impact of artificial intelligence on the legal services industry was one of the main subjects at an event entitled 'How artificial intelligence is changing law firms', held today as part of South Summit, the summit for entrepreneurs in Southern Europe, which runs this week in Madrid. 'Artificial intelligence will take our sector into a new dimension, although not in the short term. With the ultimate aim of providing value to clients, inspiring trust and offering better quality service, at Garrigues we are harnessing the multitude of options offered by technology to provide our lawyers with the tools necessary to be more productive and reduce response times,' Mr Mejías said.

Prescriptive analytics

Álvaro Barbero, director of Algorithm Engineering at Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento (IIC), said that 'the main revolution will not only be in terms of automation but also in terms of prescriptive analytics, since artificial intelligence systems will generate valuable recommendations that will improve lawyer decision-making.” In his opinion, machine learning solutions aimed, for example, at reducing the length of lawsuits “will help clients to make decisions.'

Automation

José Ángel Sandín, CEO of publishing house Lefebvre - El Derecho, added: 'Artificial intelligence and, above all, automation, are already transforming the legal services industry. We must adapt our roles to this new reality and, in our case, we do so directly with our clients in mind, who demand quick, affordable and tailor-made solutions that we can only offer if we combine technology and quality content.'

Tasks of little value

According to the three experts, within a law firm there are an infinite number of tasks that professionals spend a long time on but that provide little value: transcriptions from the courts, review of contracts on a major scale, extracting data from different documents, review of uncertified extracts, identification of potential fraud, etc.

Employment

As regards employment, Mr Sandín believes that artificial intelligence will lead to a major transformation of legal and paralegal services, while Mr Mejías says it will modify lawyer profiles. It is increasingly important for lawyers to have technological skills, meaning that one of the challenges is to have more professionals with the necessary training in this field”. He added that Garrigues is one of the first law firms in Spain to have engineers on its workforce, putting together multidisciplinary, technology-oriented teams and we have a specific area dedicated to information and communication technology.

Legal Tech Competiton

The 1st Legal Tech Competition, organised by Garrigues and Spain Startup, will take place at South Summit on 5 October. The four finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects and the judges will choose a winner, who will receive free advisory services from Garrigues professionals.

Output: Spanish law firm Garrigues has been working with the Instituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento (IIC) to develop a Spanish-law legal transcription artificial intelligence tool. Called Proces@, the technology is able to transcribe and catalogue Spanish-language legal texts, videos and audio with a very low error rate. Proces@ uses legal dictionaries and a variety of advanced search options to give it the legal context necessary to carry out semiotic analysis. Álvaro Barbero, director of algorithm engineering at IIC, said "artificial intelligence systems will generate valuable recommendations that will improve lawyer decision-making”.


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Google buys Relay Media to speed up loading of mobile web pages
 (Image: Doogee DG580 | CC)

Google has acquired Relay Media, potentially to take advantage of the firm's technology for speeding up mobile web pages.

On Monday, as reported by TechCrunch, the news was quietly posted on Relay Media's homepage.

The company, a creator of a converter of web pages to the AMP HTML format, said Relay Media was acquired by Google this month.

No financial details have been disclosed.

"We're excited to announce that Google has acquired Relay Media's AMP Converter technology," Relay Media says. "Service for current customers will continue uninterrupted as we transition the Relay Media AMP Converter to Google's infrastructure. We're pausing new publisher onboarding as we focus on the integration effort."

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open-source initiative to promote the new AMP HTML standard for quickly loading mobile pages -- adverts, analytics, paywalls, and all.

It is sometimes the case that a company or vendor will have a sleek, intuitive desktop browser-based domain, but when attempting to load the same domain on a mobile device, extra embedded content such as adverts or popups can slow down loading or disrupt the entire structure of a page.

The AMP Project utilizes AMP HTML -- with some restrictions -- to improve performance; the AMP JS library for quick rendering, and the AMP Cache, Google's cache, which can be used to serve cached pages.

Relay Media launched in May 2016. At the time, CEO and co-founder David Gehring, who has otherwise worked with Google and news publishers through the Digital News Initiative (DNI), said that mobile is far from dead, as there are "favorable currents amidst the troubled waters of the digital ecosystem for quality publishers."

"More users encounter content on the open mobile web than on desktop browsers or apps, and total mobile ad spending is now outpacing desktop," Gehring said. "Programmatic CPMs are rising for quality publishers and viewable impressions. Unfortunately, publishers' ability to compete for revenue and engagement is impeded by cluttered, slow-loading pages and non-viewable ads."

"AMP is a well-timed opportunity to course-correct, providing the instant experience users desire and a clean, well-lit environment for monetization," the executive added.

Google may close down the separate service and harness the converter technology itself to boost its own AMP push. Faced with the issues that mobile pages often present consumers, dedicated apps for particular sources -- such as news outlets -- have become a viable alternative.

However, if AMP takes hold, then Google is able to scrape revenue from mobile searches, and so it makes sense for the tech giant to invest in the project.

Update 15.58 BST: A Google spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to ZDNet.

Top essential Android smartphone, tablet apps

Previous and related coverage

Output: Relay Media, which developed technology to speed up loading of mobile web pages, has been acquired by Google. The company's software converts publishers' web content into the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) HTML format, which simplifies data and makes pages quicker to load on smartphones. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Antibiotic resistance may cost global economy $100tn by 2050
 Understanding how human cells and tissues operate can help us fight diseases and develop new drugs. Creating lab-based models of tissues is one way to do this, but it has its challenges. In their research, Dr Chris Spicer and his team are tackling this head-on using newly engineered biomaterials.

Output: Bacteria carrying the antibiotic resistant mcr-1 gene is spreading fast globally, warn scientists. Since the UN general assembly cited drug-resistant infection as a key threat to humanity last September, around 700,000 "super bug" related deaths are reported. However, Wellcome Trust estimates that by 2050, deaths caused globally by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could number 10 million p.a., cost the economy about $100tn and push 28.3 million more people to extreme poverty. A recent study reported mcr-1 is prevalent in China's water, food, animal and human population, and separately, the World Health Organisation warned of a global shortage of antibiotics in pipelines to deal with drug-resistance.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Antibiotic resistance may cost global economy $100tn by 2050
 Scientists attending a recent meeting of the American Society for Microbiology reported they had uncovered a highly disturbing trend. They revealed that bacteria containing a gene known as mcr-1 – which confers resistance to the antibiotic colistin – had spread round the world at an alarming rate since its original discovery 18 months earlier. In one area of China, it was found that 25% of hospital patients now carried the gene.

Colistin is known as the “antibiotic of last resort”. In many parts of the world doctors have turned to its use because patients were no longer responding to any other antimicrobial agent. Now resistance to its use is spreading across the globe.

In the words of England’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies: “The world is facing an antibiotic apocalypse.” Unless action is taken to halt the practices that have allowed antimicrobial resistance to spread and ways are found to develop new types of antibiotics, we could return to the days when routine operations, simple wounds or straightforward infections could pose real threats to life, she warns.

That terrifying prospect will be the focus of a major international conference to be held in Berlin this week. Organised by the UK government, the Wellcome Trust, the UN and several other national governments, the meeting will be attended by scientists, health officers, pharmaceutical chiefs and politicians. Its task is to try to accelerate measures to halt the spread of drug resistance, which now threatens to remove many of the major weapons currently deployed by doctors in their war against disease.

The arithmetic is stark and disturbing, as the conference organisers make clear. At present about 700,000 people a year die from drug-resistant infections. However, this global figure is growing relentlessly and could reach 10 million a year by 2050.

The danger, say scientists, is one of the greatest that humanity has faced in recent times. In a drug-resistant world, many aspects of modern medicine would simply become impossible. An example is provided by transplant surgery. During operations, patients’ immune systems have to be suppressed to stop them rejecting a new organ, leaving them prey to infections. So doctors use immunosuppressant cancer drugs. In future, however, these may no longer be effective.

Or take the example of more standard operations, such as abdominal surgery or the removal of a patient’s appendix. Without antibiotics to protect them during these procedures, people will die of peritonitis or other infections. The world will face the same risks as it did before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.

“Routine surgery, joint replacements, caesarean sections, and chemotherapy also depend on antibiotics, and will also be at risk,” says Jonathan Pearce, head of infections and immunity at the UK Medical Research Council. “Common infections could kill again.”

As to the causes of this growing threat, scientists point to the widespread misuse and overuse of antibiotics and other drugs and to the failure of pharmaceutical companies to investigate and develop new sources of general medicines for the future. Western doctors are over-prescribing antibiotics to patients who expect to be given a drug for whatever complaint they have. In many countries, both land and fish farmers use antibiotics as growth promoters and indiscriminately pour them on to their livestock. Drug manufacturers also often do not dispose of their industrial waste appropriately. In the latter case the end result is antibiotics leaching into streams and rivers with alarming results, particularly in Asia.

“Environmental areas around drug manufacturing plants in Hyderabad, for instance, have had alarming concentrations of antimicrobials. Effluent from one treatment plant had concentrations of antibiotics higher than levels we try to achieve in the bloodstream of patients,” says Davies.

In Asia, the widespread use of the antibiotic colistin as a growth promoter in pigs encouraged the evolution of resistant strains which have spread to humans. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The creation of these soups of antibiotic-laden waters and banks of drug-soaked soils is ideal for the development of “superbugs”. Rare strains that are resistant to antibiotics start to thrive in farm animals that are raised in these artificial environments and emerge as highly potent infectious agents that then spread across the planet with startling speed. Examples of these include tuberculosis, which was once easily treated but which, in its modern multi-drug-resistant form, known as MDR-TB, now claims the lives of 190,000 people a year.

Another even more revealing example is provided by colistin. “Colistin was developed in the 50s,” says Matthew Avison, reader in molecular biology at Bristol University. “However, its toxic side-effects made it unpopular with doctors. So it was taken up by vets and used in animals. But as resistance – in humans – to other antibiotics has spread, doctors have returned to colistin on the grounds that it was better than nothing.”

But the antibiotic’s widespread use as a growth promoter for poultry and pigs in Asia had – by this time – encouraged the evolution of resistant strains and these have now spread to humans. “Colistin was a drug we discarded and gave to the vets and now, all of a sudden, we expect that we can take it back again,” said Avison. “However, the genie is already out of the bottle.”

The position is summed up by Lance Price, an antibiotic researcher at George Washington University in Washington DC. “Superbugs are gaining strength because we continue to squander these precious medicines through overuse in human medicine and as cheap production tools in animal agriculture.”

Bans on the agricultural use of antibiotics like colistin are being imposed in Asia but have come far too late to be effective, a problem acknowledged by Lord Jim O’Neill, whose report to the UK government on antimicrobial resistance was published last year. “When we were putting our report together, colistin resistance was considered to be a problem that would not affect us for some time. Now we find it has already spread all over the place.”

The report that was overseen by O’Neill – who will be speaking at this week’s conference in Berlin – put forward a number of proposals to stop antibiotic resistance from overwhelming health services. In particular, it argued that drug companies should now foot the bill for the development of new antibiotics and that patients should not be allowed to get them without a test to ensure they are needed.

“I find it incredible that doctors must still prescribe antibiotics based only on their immediate assessment of a patient’s symptoms, just like they used to when antibiotics first entered common use in the 1950s,” O’Neill said in the report, adding that the development of rapid diagnostic tests on patients – which would establish whether an antibiotic was necessary and, if so, which kind – must now be an urgent priority.

The proposal – to be debated at the conference this week – is popular, although Professor Alastair Hay of Bristol University counselled caution. “It is a very good idea, but we should note that a new type of diagnostic test like this will also add time and work for our already overburdened health service,” he points out.

Then there is the issue of travel, one of the biggest problems we face over the spread of antimicrobial resistance, according to Davies, who has spearheaded Britain’s part in the battle to fight its spread around the world.

“One Swedish study followed a group of young backpackers who went off on holiday to different parts of the world. None had resistant bacteria in their guts when they left. When they returned a quarter of them had picked up resistant bugs. That shows the pervasive nature of the problem we face,” she said.

Tourism, personal hygiene, farming, medical practice – all are affected by the issue of antibiotic resistance, and it will be the task of the conference to highlight the most effective and speedy solutions to tackle the crisis.

“In the end, the problem posed to the planet by antimicrobial resistance is not that difficult,” says O’Neill. “All that is required is to get people to behave differently. How you achieve that is not so clear, of course.”

Output: Bacteria carrying the antibiotic resistant mcr-1 gene is spreading fast globally, warn scientists. Since the UN general assembly cited drug-resistant infection as a key threat to humanity last September, around 700,000 "super bug" related deaths are reported. However, Wellcome Trust estimates that by 2050, deaths caused globally by antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could number 10 million p.a., cost the economy about $100tn and push 28.3 million more people to extreme poverty. A recent study reported mcr-1 is prevalent in China's water, food, animal and human population, and separately, the World Health Organisation warned of a global shortage of antibiotics in pipelines to deal with drug-resistance.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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More insurtech IPOs likely after ZhongAn success
 The mainland’s first purely online insurance platform is up 52 per cent on its IPO offer price when the shares debuted on September 28

Output: The success of China's online-only insurer ZhongAn's initial public offering in Hong Kong is likely to encourage similar Chinese firms to seek funding in the public market. ZhongAn's share price has risen 52% since its IPO in late September. With the liquidity of the Hong Kong stock exchange a major plus, mainland China's start-ups may look to the exchange when they require funding, according to Nick Yu Fengqi, founder of ZCX Management Consulting. The number of international participants trading in Hong Kong is another draw, Yu said.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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CNN's branded content accounts for 60% of revenue
 Despite the struggles of many publishers’ in-house branded-content studios, CNN International’s branded-content revenues continue to swell. The news broadcaster claims 60 percent of its revenue comes from deals that incorporate branded content created by its in-house studio Create, up from 54 percent last year.

Much of that growth is due to changes in how deals are sold to clients, along with a spurt in distribution capabilities across its own and off-site properties. The media owner has tried to move away from banner ads and click-based reporting, and it has increased the number of native ad placements on its sites by 300 percent since it started using native ad firm Sharethrough’s distribution platform a year ago, though CNN International wouldn’t share specific numbers.

The Create team has 25 permanent staffers and grows when necessary based on the scope of client campaigns. Around 75 percent of what Create produces runs across multiple platforms, including mobile devices and social platforms. Formats span long- and short-form video, animation, graphics-led ad formats and text and image-led articles and galleries. The ads are all distributed using Sharethrough’s technology across CNN’s main site and its money, style, travel and sports verticals, as well as its social video network Great Big Story, which counts Japanese airline All Nippon Airways among its biggest clients.

Publishers commonly use native ad platforms like Sharethrough. But fully automating the distribution of native ads has freed up CNN International’s sales team to focus on larger, video-led creative pitches with advertisers, helping to differentiate it in the highly competitive ad market, said Rob Bradley, vp of digital commercial strategy and revenue at CNN International Commercial.

“We’re no longer in a position where the sales team around the world from Latin America to London, mainland Europe or Asia and Pacific markets are selling traditional advertising,” Bradley said. “They’re all tasked with selling creative, video-based stories. The goal is that any of the cross-platform teams can sell a PMP as much as a video or native campaign.”

This took time, though. Create is 10 years old, and, historically, it predominantly made traditional TV ads for clients. The arrival of Great Big Story, CNN’s answer to BuzzFeed, and the development of its advanced data-monitoring service, AIM, which now runs through all its clients’ on- and off-site campaigns, required retraining. Parent company Turner introduced the latest mass training exercise after the roll-out of Launchpad, an in-house platform created to help advertisers distribute sponsored videos that Turner companies, including CNN and Great Big Story, create.

Since growing branded-content revenue relies on increasing views of content, growing campaigns is tough without serious paid social investment. About 80 percent of publishers use some form of paid distribution on half of their campaigns, according to native ad firm Polar. The downside: That can eat into margins on branded-content campaigns, which are costly to produce. Launchpad addresses this, Bradley said.

Like many U.S. publishers that launch in Europe, CNN is often regarded as a U.S.-centric news brand and therefore not the go-to media brand for branded-content projects for Europe, according to some agencies.

“CNN’s reach in [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] is far greater than perhaps some buyers expect,” said Julian Purnell, partnerships and emerging media director at agency Essence. Great Big Story is a “compelling” proposition for buyers, being geared toward young audiences, though it faces competition from more established brands like BuzzFeed and Vice, he added.

“Undoubtedly, the quality of their [Great Big Story] videos is on par with the very best, and they have the scale and data, through CNN and Turner, to ensure a smart distribution strategy,” Purnell said. “We’ll see more branded-content plays from them in 2018.”

Image courtesy of CNN for ANA campaign

Output: Branded content now accounts for 60% of CNN's revenue, up from the 54% recorded last year. The broadcaster's in-house production company Create was launched ten years ago to make traditional TV adverts for clients, but has now evolved to produce a range of content from video to graphics, image-led articles and galleries. The role of Create has changed since the launch of CNN's 'Great Big Story' website other developments including the rolling out of parent company Turner's in-house ad platform, Launchpad.


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Japanese bank's cryptocurrency set to enable micro-payments
 TOKYO -- All three of Japan's megabanks are attending the annual Ceatec IT and electronics expo for the first time to show off financial technology from digital currencies to biometric payment authentication.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group presented its prototype digital currency, dubbed MUFG Coin, to reporters on Monday ahead of the exhibition's Tuesday kickoff at the Makuhari Messe convention center near here.

Output: Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) unveiled a digital currency prototype called MUFG Coin ahead of this year's Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies IT and electronics expo in Tokyo, which took place earlier in October. A blockchain-powered mobile app would allow users to buy and transfer MUFG Coin, and make it possible to send smaller amounts of money deemed impractical by traditional banks; an area expected to grow along with hourly on-demand services, such as insurance, said Hirofumi Aihara, general manager of MUFG's digital innovation division.


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Regus Regus launches workplace app in South Africa
 Regus, a company that provides flexible workspace solutions, has launched an app that aims to make it possible for businesses to find a location when on the move and book the space they need. The app also allows businesses to manage bookings, it provides directions as well as invite colleagues.

Regus specialises in co-working spaces in over 100 countries and in 3000 locations worldwide. According to Regus, they understand that clients require a mobile app to be a major touchpoint between them and their mobile office. An app is a way that people want to work. Along with the co-working concept, the key lies in keeping people connected wherever the workday takes them. Whether it be in city centres, on the road, at a transport hub, in South Africa and around the world, a professional workspace, fully-equipped with all the tools you need to stay productive, is now at your fingertips.

Research from Mobithinking suggests that the estimated number of app users worldwide will hit more than four billion by the end of 2017. Such a figure not only indicates the growing demand for mobile applications, but the reality lies in the fact that mobile content is shaping the way people utilise their mobile devices.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted that by 2017 South African consumers will be spending a total of R59.6 billion on internet access (a massive leap from 2014’s R19.8 billion).

What the app does

Find the perfect space for your meeting and work

Check live availability and reserve in confidence

Choose the right space for the job, from meeting rooms and private offices to drop-in business lounges

Book space for you or your whole team, from as little as an hour

Stay flexible, workspace at short notice when your plans change

Book on the go, either online or with our mobile apps

Sign up or Log in with the email address associated with your account

Edited by Fundisiwe Maseko

Follow Fundisiwe Maseko on Twitter

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Output: Regus has launched its mobile app in South Africa, which provides access to information about flexible workplaces in a wide range of locations. The app allows users to check the availability of workspaces from private offices to meeting rooms and business lounges, and to book them for as little as an hour. The app also gives directions to workplaces and allows users to invite colleagues to them.


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Sony relaunches Aibo robo-dog as smart home device
 tech2 News Staff

Sony is bringing back its robotic pet Aibo as a smarthome assistant. The pet was first available to the public in 1999, a futuristic companion that had a new version coming out every year till 2005. The development of robotics at Sony stopped because of the lack of AI technologies to make the robots fully autonomous at that time. Now, with AI emerging as the transformational force for technologies over the next decade, Sony feels that the time is ripe for another foray into the market.

The new Aibo will be infused with AI, and will help control smarthome devices, as well as act as a robotic dog. Think of it as a smarthome speaker such as the Google Home or the Amazon Echo, but with an outer shell of a robotic dog. Sony has plans to open source the operating system, and invite developers to add more functions and capabilities to the new incarnation of Aibo, according to a report in Nikkei Asian Review.

Sony is bringing together the original engineers who worked on the initial run of Aibo robots, for the new Aibo project. The workers were absorbed into different teams in Sony after the company stopped making new models of the Aibo. Sony will be making its own AI, but it does not have the amount of data that is available with Google or Amazon to stay competitive, according to company executives at a high level meeting.

Sony has indicated that it will be returning to the toys business with the launch of the Toio, a rotating motorised cube scheduled to be released in Japan on 1 December. Sony does not have plans on making the Toio available worldwide. Last year, Sony had indicated its intentions of returning to the robotics business, about a decade after it stopped making and selling robots.

Output: Sony is returning to the robot market by relaunching its Aibo household companion as an AI-powered smart home assistant. The company created the robot dog in 1999 and produced new versions each year until 2005, when it was discontinued. The new version will be developed by the same engineers who designed the original Aibo, and the operating system will be open sourced, with outside developers invited to add capabilities. It will be capable of controlling smart home devices, acting in a similar way to smart speakers like Google Home or Amazon Echo.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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DONG distances itself from hydrocarbon past with name change
 While memorable, "DONG" had become a misleading name for a Scandinavian clean energy heavyweight.

Now, the sound of DONG will peal out and vanish, like the chimes at midnight.

The change in name follows the comprehensive overhaul of the company's business model from fossil fuels to exclusively clean energy. The mellifluous moniker arose from the company's original products: Danish Oil and Natural Gas.

In its place comes a new identity with an old heritage: Pending approval by the energy company's shareholders October 30, it will adopt the name Ørsted, to honor "the innovative Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851)."

Ørsted discovered electromagnetism in 1820, making him an intellectual forebear to the modern electric power industry. He also founded the Technical University of Denmark, published philosophical writings and poetry, and befriended fairytale maestro Hans Christian Andersen.

The Danish state created the company in 1972 to extract fuels from the North Sea. A few decades down the road, Dong moved into electricity production, and renewable generation in particular, parlaying its North Sea drilling experience into offshore wind. Meanwhile, oil and gas drilling in the North Sea became relatively expensive due to the basin's maturity.

In May, Dong agreed to sell its complete upstream oil and gas interests to global petrochemical manufacturer Ineos for $1.05 billion plus contingent payments.

This year, offshore wind prices also started to beat fossil fuels on cost in tenders in Germany and the United Kingdom, CEO Henrik Poulsen said.

"It has never been more clear that it is possible to create a world that runs entirely on green energy," Poulsen said in a statement. "The time is now right for us to change our name to demonstrate that we want to help create such a world.”

The company is off to a strong start. It has already decoupled earnings from carbon emissions. Company-wide emissions are down 52 percent compared to 2006, and they will be 96 percent below 2006 levels by 2023, when its last coal plants abandon that fuel.

"For a major utility to have gone this fast in the transformation to CO2-free generation, I cannot think of anyone who's close," said Thomas Brostrøm, president for North America, in an interview.

In the last few years, Dong has chased global expansion, as the company brings its pioneering offshore experience to new markets.

"That has been entirely driven by renewables, in this case offshore wind," Brostrøm said. "This is what we do the best. We have enough cash coming in that we have an appetite to invest in new markets."

The company's Boston outpost is now developing the Bay State Wind project south of Martha's Vineyard, with other projects on the way. Dong also set up a small office in Silicon Valley to poke around for new venture opportunities in the clean energy space. It hasn't made its first investment yet.

There's also a new energy storage solutions practice in Austin, Texas. The company has begun deploying storage alongside wind farms in the U.K., as developers across the wind industry explore business cases for storage add-ons.

"When you look to wind, it's a fantastic synergy with storage given that wind is intermittent," Brostrøm said. "It's still early days, but we're quite serious about storage solutions."

In addition to offshore wind, Dong has expanded its waste-to-energy and biomass capacity -- those coal plants have largely been converted into the latter. It has not extended into solar development, so far anyway.

Now the North America offshore market is finally gaining momentum, years after the Europeans worked out the kinks on the North Sea. The five-tower, 30-megawatt Block Island project that came on-line in Rhode Island last year looks like a toy compared to Dong's 174-turbine, 1.2-gigawatt Hornsea Project One, under construction off the east coast of England.

Now, though, the U.S. stands to benefit from Europe's learning by doing.

"You are deploying the newest and the latest technology, so you'll get whatever is best in the market," Brostrøm said. "The time is right. We like to go out early and create the market; we like to be the pacesetter."

Soon, Dong's swan song will end, and a new name will rise in its place, one more fitting of a pure-play renewables company. Enterprising readers who Google the name will enrich their minds with Danish scientific history, rather than other forms of edification.

And for other companies mulling such a transition and wondering if it can be done profitably, the rise of Ørsted may prove instructive.

"We do care a lot about the world -- 'the home,' as we call it -- but you have to make your investment in a disciplined way," Brostrøm said. "Balancing those two is the whole challenge here. It's been very good business the last few years, and we expect to remain profitable while we transform ourselves into being a renewable energy company."

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Output: Pending approval by shareholders on 30th October, DONG Energy is to change its name to Ørsted, after the Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted, who worked extensively on electromagnetism in the 19th century. Danish Oil and Natural Gas (DONG) was created by the Danish state in 1972, to extract fossil fuels from the North Sea. In May 2017, the company agreed to sell all of its upstream and gas interests for $1.05bn to Ineos, following two decades of investment in electricity production and renewable generation.