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Viridian to pay $80m dividend to US private equity firm owner
 Belfast-based energy group Viridian plans to pay a €60 million dividend up to its ultimate parent group, majority owned by US private equity firm I-Squared, as it undergoes a refinancing of its debt.

The onwner of electricity and gas supplier Energia and Power NI has confirmed it plans to redeem in full its €540 million of existing bonds and issue the equivalent of €600 million of cheaper notes, denominated in sterling and euro.

The company plans to pay a £60 million (€66mn) dividend to its recently-formed Cayman Islands-based parent, Viridian Topco Limited, which was set up by I-Squared earlier this year as it sold a minority stake in Viridian to an unknown investor.

The existing debt, issued in February 2015, carries a 7.5 per cent interest rate and Viridian's chief executive Ian Thom noted on a call with analysts late last month that its rivals' funding costs are currently below 4 per cent, given how bond yields have fallen in the past two-and-a-half years.

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Viridian passed a milestone on September 1st where it could exercise an option for early redemption of the debt, which was ordinarily not due to mature until 2020.

I-Squared, founded in 2012 by former executives from Morgan Stanley, bought Viridian in an estimated €1 billion deal last year from Bahrain’s Arcapital Bank, which owned the power company for almost decade.

Output: New York-based private equity firm I-Squared is in line for an $80m dividend once Northern Irish energy company Viridian restructures its debt. The Belfast-based group plans to redeem €540m ($645m) of existing bonds and issue the equivalent of €600m of cheaper notes in euro and sterling, with the existing debt carrying an interest rate of 7.5%. In September, the company became able to exercise an option for early redemption of the debt, which was not due to mature until 2020. I-Squared set up Viridian's parent company, Viridian Topco, earlier this year, which will receive the dividend payment.


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Reporter’s Notebook: In Health Care, A Good Price (Or Any Price) Is Hard To Find
 A recent story about why Northern California is the most expensive place in the country to have a baby began as a tip from an obstetrician. Dr. Sarah Azad told me that insurers were paying her just a third of what they pay doctors employed by large hospital systems in her town of Mountain View, Calif.

Unfortunately, she explained, she could speak only in general terms. She couldn’t share her actual payment rates with me because she was barred from doing so by a gag clause in her contracts with insurers.

So, I called the insurers who pay her, and the hospital systems that employ most of the other obstetricians in Mountain View. They all had the same answer: It would be illegal for them to tell me the dollars and cents.

Use Our Content This KHN story can be republished for free ( details ).

As it turns out, the vast majority of contracts between doctors or hospitals and insurance companies are subject to a gag clause, which prohibits either party from disclosing negotiated rates. That means it’s almost impossible for consumers, researchers or journalists to find actual, accurate numbers, despite the fact that cost differentials among doctors can be so stark. And it’s particularly problematic for the growing number of people who have insurance plans with deductibles that can run more than $10,000 for a family.

The underlying problem of our health care system — beyond the corrosive partisan politics — is its high cost. I have long understood that the lack of price transparency is one reason our system stays so expensive. It was a surprise, though, to find out that this opacity is cemented by legally binding contracts.

Think about what this would look like for a mundane purchase, say, a gallon of milk. Advertisements and price tags would disappear, so you couldn’t compare prices at different stores. And you wouldn’t even know how much you had paid for the milk until you got a bill in the mail weeks or months later. On top of that, the store and the dairy farmer would be barred from telling a journalist or an economist what you had paid.

It’s absurd, but I wasn’t going to let the absurdity kill my story.

I started by asking all of the health policy analysts, researchers and economists I could find, “How can I find these rates, by physician, for an uncomplicated vaginal delivery?” Everyone told me the same thing: You can’t get that.

I searched online, but most of the websites claiming to offer health price transparency offered only “average costs” for specific services in your area. Not much help if you’re trying to compare the costs of individual doctors.

Next, I asked Castlight, a “transparency tool” that gathers payment data and allows employees of certain companies to estimate the costs of their medical care. But Castlight told me that as a journalist, I wasn’t allowed to have access to the exact pricing information of individual providers. It, too, was subject to the gag clause.

So I turned to the consumers who might have access to those tools. I asked friends and colleagues, and put out social media requests: Would anyone be willing to share the information from the cost estimators they got from their employers or insurers? I found a few willing sources and was able to mine the results of their inquiries to find out the basic cost differentials between independent doctors and those employed by large systems, including Sutter Health.

Unfortunately, these estimators are difficult to use and often provide incomplete data. And when I tried to confirm that information, I ran up against the gag clauses again.

Finally, I found out about a health data company called Amino that was willing to send me the claims data it had been gathering. At last! The Holy Grail! It had hundreds of claims for vaginal births performed by obstetricians in the Bay Area. KHN data correspondent Sydney Lupkin helped me decipher a Medicare provider database to determine where each doctor worked. In cases where the doctor’s employment status was unclear, I called the health system or physician directly. We then calculated the median billing amount, on average, for a routine vaginal birth for each health system.

Weeks of digging and data analysis confirmed the imbalance Dr. Azad had told me about at the start of my quest. The few independent doctors left in the Bay Area receive a median amount of $2,408.45 for a routine vaginal delivery, which includes prenatal and postnatal visits. That compares with $5,238.13 for the same bundle of services provided by Stanford physicians and $8,049.84 when the doctors are employed by University of California-San Francisco — a fourfold difference.

Hard data, hard won.

The database we built gave us a strong sense of the cost variation between doctors who work at other health systems and those who have remained independent. But it did not include enough claims from the largest hospital system in the region, Sutter Health. For Sutter, I used the data from the online cost estimators, and found that obstetricians employed by the system are reimbursed about $6,452 for a vaginal delivery.

It’s no accident that data on physician costs are so hard to find. Its inaccessibility allows hospitals to keep raising their prices. It’s simply not in their interest for the public to know how much they’re charging. And insurers don’t want other doctors or hospitals to see the high prices they’ve agreed to pay, for fear they would demand the same.

In the end, all of us — through our insurance premiums and our taxes — pay a price for non-transparency.

Output: A recent story about why Northern California is the most expensive place in the country to have a baby began as a tip from an obstetrician. Dr. Sarah Azad told me that insurers were paying her just a third of what they pay doctors employed by large hospital systems in her town of Mountain View, Calif.


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It’s now time for Medicare for all
 Senator Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Jeff Merkley, are introducing a Medicare For All bill in the Senate. It’s a model for where this nation needs to be headed.

Some background: American spending on health care per person is more than twice the average in the world’s 35 advanced economies. Yet Americans are sicker, our lives are shorter, and we have more chronic illnesses than in any other advanced nation.

That’s because medical care is so expensive for the typical American that many put off seeing a doctor until their health has seriously deteriorated.

Why is health care so much cheaper in other nations? Partly because their governments negotiate lower rates with health care providers. In France, the average cost of a magnetic resonance imaging exam is $363. In the United States, it’s $1,121. There, an appendectomy costs $4,463. Here, it’s $13,851.

The French can get lower rates because they cover everyone — which gives them lots of bargaining power.

Other nations also don’t have to pay the costs of private insurers shelling out billions of dollars a year for advertising and marketing — much of it intended to attract healthier and younger people and avoid the sicker and older.

Nor do other nations have to pay boatloads of money to the shareholders and executives of big for-profit insurance companies.

Finally, they don’t have to bear the high administrative costs of private insurers — requiring endless paperwork to keep track of every procedure by every provider.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicare’s administrative costs are about 2 percent of its operating expenses. That’s less than one-sixth the administrative costs of America’s private insurers.

To make matters worse for Americans, the nation’s private health insurers are merging like mad to suck in even more money from consumers and taxpayers by reducing competition.

At the same time, their focus on attracting healthy people and avoiding sick people is creating a vicious circle. Insurers that take in sicker and costlier patients lose money, which forces them to raise premiums, co-payments and deductibles. This, in turn, makes it harder for people most in need of health insurance to afford it.

This phenomenon has even plagued health exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Medicare for all would avoid all these problems and get lower prices and better care.

Ideally, it would be financed the same way Medicare and Social Security are financed, through the payroll tax. Wealthy Americans should pay a higher payroll tax rate and contribute more than lower-income people. But everyone would come out ahead because total health care costs would be far lower, and outcomes far better.

A Gallup poll conducted in May found that a majority of Americans would support such a system. A poll by the Pew Research Center shows that such support is growing, with 60 percent of Americans now saying government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans — up from 51 percent last year.

Democrats are wise to seize the moment. The time has come for Medicare for all.

Output: Senator Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Jeff Merkley, are introducing a Medicare For All bill in the Senate. It’s a model for where this nation needs to be headed.


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Health Care Next Steps: Listen, Learn, and Strengthen Today’s Marketplace
 As I listen intently to members of Congress, thought leaders and members of the Trump administration, I am encouraged by how Congress and President Donald Trump came together in the last week to supply urgently needed aid to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. They responded to the emergency with overwhelming bipartisan support, and they may need to do so again rapidly for storm victims in Florida.

I am also heartened by what could be an emerging, bipartisan health policy direction to respond to struggling individual insurance markets — at least in the near term. While we must engage over the long term about how to restructure the health care marketplace, we need to increase the chances right now for the existing marketplace to succeed. This means policymakers should consider immediate legislation to appropriate funds for cost-sharing reductions that help the most vulnerable afford insurance and provide states more flexibility to demonstrate different ways to achieve the goal of increasing coverage and decreasing costs.

I applaud Chairman Lamar Alexander and ranking member Patty Murray of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the Senate for scheduling four committee hearings this month on short- and long-term health care reform. One of the witnesses at the second hearing was Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. He joined with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and a bipartisan group of six other governors on Aug. 30 to outline a commonsense, short-term approach to strengthen the existing markets, jump start state innovation and more effectively control costs.

Their recipe for achieving these goals includes funding the CSRs through 2019; creating a temporary state stability fund; keeping the individual mandate for now; and adding flexibility and a fast track process to the state waiver process, among a number of other thought-provoking ideas.

Others are coalescing around similar bipartisan proposals. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Future of Health Care expert panel called for a two-stage approach to health care reform. First, the panel advocates for stabilizing the individual insurance market and then taking on the more challenging task of addressing the more fundamental structural challenges in our health care system. The BPC’s recommendations are similar in scope and content to the eight governors’ letter. The BPC recommends a two-year extension of the CSRs, a health insurance stability fund, greater use of health savings accounts and a study of alternatives to the individual mandate.

While details will differ and must be worked out, Ascension applauds the efforts of each of these groups of thought leaders in driving consensus around a short-term bill that will strengthen the health care marketplace. Ascension supports continued funding of the CSRs. We believe that the parties should engage on ways to increase flexibility for states so that they can unleash innovation and creativity on expanding coverage and decreasing costs. We hope that the federal government and states will do more to hasten the transformation of our health care system to one that rewards value rather than volume. The kind of flexibility that allows more proactive experimentation with value-based financing should be applauded.

Strengthening the health care marketplace is an issue that unites policymakers, thought leaders, consumers, providers and insurers, and there is a spark of agreement forming across the political parties. All of us want a strong marketplace, and it is essential we get the right premium rates, care delivery networks and care management programs in place to stabilize the marketplace. While thought leaders and policymakers differ markedly on how that marketplace should be constructed for the long term, all of us agree that the marketplace that we have right now should be as strong as possible in the near term to serve all of us, especially those most vulnerable. Congress should act now to take the steps needed to strengthen today’s health care marketplace. For those without access to affordable insurance, it is an emergency. Every health care consumer will benefit, and it would provide us the opportunity to then re-engage in the fundamentally important debate about how to structure the marketplace for the long term.

Anthony R. Tersigni, EdD, FACHE, is president and CEO of Ascension, the nation’s largest nonprofit health system.

Morning Consult welcomes op-ed submissions on policy, politics and business strategy in our coverage areas. Updated submission guidelines can be found here.

Output: As I listen intently to members of Congress, thought leaders and members of the Trump administration, I am encouraged by how Congress and President Donald Trump came together in the last week to supply urgently needed aid to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. They responded to the emergency with overwhelming bipartisan support, and they may need to do so again rapidly for storm victims in Florida.


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Some Democrats Willing to Replace Obamacare’s Individual Mandate
 As a Senate panel tries to agree on a bipartisan fix to stabilize the Affordable Care Act, some Democrats appear willing to part with the law’s controversial individual mandate — as long as there is an adequate replacement.

Now that debate on Capitol Hill has started to shift from repealing Obamacare to broader issues in the health care system, some Democrats say they are willing to look at alternatives to the mandate that requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. And those alternatives have some Republican support.

At least two Democratic senators — Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tim Kaine of Virginia — have expressed interest in automatically enrolling uninsured Americans in a low-cost insurance plan, a proposal that was included in one Republican plan to repeal Obamacare earlier this year. And 10 moderate House Democrats raised auto-enrollment as a potential tool to increase coverage and stabilize the Obamacare exchanges in a health care proposal released in July.

“Maybe auto-enroll would be a more effective way to get more healthy people in the pool,” McCaskill said Wednesday in a brief interview on Capitol Hill. “But we got to stay focused on getting healthy people in the pool, either with a stick or with a carrot.”

Even some Democrats who are more supportive of the mandate say they are willing to have a discussion about alternatives, as long as it’s through the committee process.

“For those who don’t want to see the individual mandate maintained, let’s figure out what would be at least as good as a substitute – maybe it’s some combination of approaches,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who favors the mandate, said in an interview Tuesday.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is working to shore up the ACA’s individual marketplaces.

Most, if not all, congressional Democrats want to keep the mandate unless they can find a better option. But even ardent supporters of Obamacare acknowledge the mandate hasn’t met their expectations for encouraging young, healthy people to enroll for coverage to balance the risk pool.

The provision has also been unpopular with many voters. A plurality of 49 percent said in a recent Morning Consult/POLITICO poll of registered voters that they oppose the mandate. The national poll surveyed 1,976 voters from Sept. 7 through Sept. 11.

Several former Obama administration officials who helped implement the ACA also say auto-enrollment could be an effective replacement. In a policy paper from the Bipartisan Policy Center published Aug. 30, Obama administration veterans Andy Slavitt, Chris Jennings and Cindy Mann were among health care experts who recommended that Congress study whether auto-enrollment could replace the mandate without reducing coverage rates, increasing premiums or adding to the federal deficit.

“The individual mandate plays an important role in keeping premiums low but is also unpopular with the American public,” Slavitt, who served as acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017, co-wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece on Monday with former Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist, a fellow contributor to the BPC policy paper. “Congress should direct the administration to explore an option similar to one used in Medicare — automatically enrolling consumers in low-cost coverage and providing incentives to enroll on time.”

All of the proposals on this front would allow individuals the ability to opt out of auto-enrollment, but proponents expect few would do so, citing research showing that companies with auto-enrollment for 401(k) retirement plans have higher employee participation rates compared to employers that don’t.

“We know from the experience with 401(k) plans that if you auto-enroll employees they stay in the plan overwhelmingly, whereas if you hand them a packet of information they never get around to signing up,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who co-sponsored a GOP bill in January that includes an auto-enroll option for states, said at a hearing last week.

But some experts are skeptical that auto-enrollment could work on its own; they recommend pairing it with policies, such as late-enrollment penalties, to encourage people to obtain health insurance.

That’s partly because auto-enroll plans would help uninsured Americans who get Obamacare subsidies to cover their monthly premiums. People with higher incomes, and therefore lower subsidies or no subsidy at all, would need other policies to encourage them to sign up.

Jennings, who served as a senior health care adviser to former President Barack Obama, said replacing the individual mandate with a system based on auto-enrollment would be complicated. But given its controversy and unpopularity with many voters, Jennings said it’s probably more likely that Congress would replace the mandate than try to fix it.

“We don’t see a lot of Democrats and Republicans lining up to increase the enforcement or the size of the penalty on the individual mandate,” Jennings, founder and president of Washington-based Jennings Policy Strategies Inc., said in an interview last week.

Output: As a Senate panel tries to agree on a bipartisan fix to stabilize the Affordable Care Act, some Democrats appear willing to part with the law’s controversial individual mandate — as long as there is an adequate replacement.


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More and more older Americans are slipping into poverty
 There was good news in the Census Bureau's poverty report for most age groups in America. The data revealed one concerning trend, however: rising poverty among older Americans.

"Individuals ages 65 and older had the unique distinction of being the only population segment to experience a significant increase in the number of individuals in poverty, with 367,000 more older Americans in poverty in 2016," Ashley Edwards, Adam Bee, and Liana Fox of the Census' Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division wrote in an analysis of the latest Census report.

The national poverty rate declined by 0.8 percentage points to 12.7%, the broader survey showed. Poverty rates, while still the highest among wealthy nations, fell across the board for groups including whites, blacks, Hispanics, males, females, children, American citizens, and immigrants.

Why the reversal of fortunes for the elderly?

Part of the trend "could be explained by the aging of the baby boom generation, which contributed to faster population growth in the population ages 65 and over in 2016 compared with the overall population," the experts suggest. "Population growth alone would lead to increases in the number of older Americans both in and out of poverty."

But that doesn't tell the whole story. Issues like inadequate safety nets, elevated healthcare costs, and longer lifespans are also playing a role.

"Among older Americans living alone (or with nonrelatives), increases in the number of individuals in poverty outpaced their population growth, leading to statistically significant increases in their poverty rate from 16.0% in 2015 to 18.1% in 2016," the Census analysis found.

In addition, Americans 65 and older were the only demographic group in which the proportion of people with income below 50% of their poverty threshold — another key measure known as the supplemental poverty rate — increased, to 3.3% in 2016 from 2.8% the year prior.

"While the change in the official poverty rate among those ages 65 and older was not statistically significant, the supplemental poverty rate for older adults increased by 0.8 percentage points in 2016," the report said. The share of people ages 65 and older with resources below half their supplemental poverty threshold also spiked, from 4.5% in 2015 to 5.2% in 2016.

Output: There was good news in the Census Bureau's poverty report for most age groups in America. The data revealed one concerning trend, however: rising poverty among older Americans.


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As Telemedicine Expands, Quality Measures Try to Keep Pace
 Data is thin, but the search is on for the best ways to measure the quality of healthcare that is being delivered via telehealth to remote patients.

Remember when you had to go to the video store to catch up on (and return) the movies you wanted to see?

Fast and cheap digital bandwidth enabled the digital streaming that essentially put video stores out of business. Now broadband is changing the way healthcare is delivered.

It is now even cheaper and faster to move large data files than it was only a few years ago. But how good is the quality of care that is delivered via a video screen?

Providers say that for many consults, telemedicine is just as good as in-person care delivered in a clinic or exam room. But the evidence to support these assertions is thin.

Now comes the National Quality Forum's attempt to start the discussion on quality measures for telemedicine. The 80-page report does not endorse any measures – although it suggests some candidates. The report instead offers "a framework to support the development of measures."

A Step Forward

"It's another example of how the field is maturing," says Joseph Kvedar, MD, the vice-president for connected health at Partners Healthcare. His operation has been holding annual Connected Health meetings for 12 years. The next one is next month in Boston.

Telemedicine was initially seen as a way to extend access to care to rural communities. That was a couple of decades ago. Now "anything that has to do with connectivity seems be moving at the speed of light," Kvedar says.

Quality remains a hurdle, however.

One fast-growing area is teledermatology and other direct-to-consumer services. Walgreens got in the game this past summer with its "Dermatologist on Call" program. A company called First Derm invites customers to send in a selfie for a diagnosis.

Speaking in industry-wide terms, there is concern about the lack of internal policing of direct-to-consumer sites, says Kvedar, a dermatologist by training.

Right now, telemedicine is governed by and subject to some federal rules and a patchwork of policies and regulations that vary from state to state.

Many state laws call for parity in payment, but coverage varies from payer to payer. Still, US hospitals are plugged in. More than 80% report using at least one "connected health tool" according a 2016 survey from The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

The survey also found that 67% of hospitals report deploying multiple tools from a list that includes telemedicine, phone apps, patient portals, text messaging, and patient monitoring.

Divergent Standards for Telemedicine

Brian Wayling notes that standards of care and practice models diverge widely across the broader practice of medicine. He is the assistant vice president for telemedicine services at Intermountain Healthcare, a 22-hospital health system based in Salt Lake City, UT.

"We are seeing evidence of the same thing in telehealth, which should be no surprise, simply because the standards of care are not well established," he says.

Intermountain is considered a leader in telemedicine, offering services for seven different specialties including cancer and mental health. It has 1,200 access points, which are either rooms or mobile carts equipped with cameras to serve remote patients.

Wayling knows telemedicine has limitations, both in the type of care it can deliver and the quality of information it can return to providers. With that in mind, if a provider in his program isn't comfortable with a video visit, the patient gets a face-to-face appointment.

Steps are being taken to address quality concerns. For example, the use of antibiotics in the system's telemedicine program is in line with the hospital's guidelines.

"Some of the direct-to-consumer provider groups are readier to prescribe," Wayling says. "We take a more cautious approach."

Intermountain also uses the system to validate the use of clinical practice models. Wayling thinks adherence to the models is going up because of the telemedicine validation.

Sabrina Smith of the American Telemedicine Association says she sees the NQF report which as an "important first step" in the discussion of quality issues for telemedicine.

ATA reports that it represents 10,000 industry leaders and is promoting quality care through practice guidelines, she says. The group has also brought in a third-party partner to boost its accreditation efforts.

ATA wants telemedicine to be governed by the same health quality measures that apply to in-person exams, Smith says.

Output: Data is thin, but the search is on for the best ways to measure the quality of healthcare that is being delivered via telehealth to remote patients.


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Telemedicine visits save families time and money
 Patients and families who use telemedicine for sports medicine appointments saved an average of $50 in travel costs and 51 minutes in waiting and visit time, according to a new study by Nemours Children's Health System. Each telemedicine visit also saved the health system an average of $24 per patient, researchers reported at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference & Exhibition.

"There's a constant need to innovate care delivery to demonstrate value to patients and families," said Alfred Atanda Jr., MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and author of the study. "Nemours' tech-savvy care environment provides another way to get patients the care they need—where and when they need it. We were able to do so while saving families time and money."

In a cohort study of 120 patients younger than 18 who had at least one telemedicine visit between September, 2015 and August, 2016, the Nemours researchers compared total time of clinical visit, percentage of time spent with attending surgeon, and wait time, to data from in-person visits in the department. Data were collected for postoperative evaluations, surgical/imaging discussions, and follow-up visits. Demographic data and diagnosis were recorded from the electronic medical record.

The findings support the use of telemedicine to reduce costs for both the patient and hospital system, while maintaining high levels of patient satisfaction, researchers said. After each visit, parents were asked to complete a five-item satisfaction survey. Ninety-one percent of parents found the application easy to download, 98 percent would be interested in future telemedicine visits, and 99 percent would recommend telemedicine to other families.

The study, which was conducted in a pediatric sports medicine practice, also found that the percentage of time spent with the provider was significantly greater for telemedicine than for in-person visits (88% vs. 15% of visit time). Families also saved significant travel time and expense, avoiding an average of 85 miles of driving, resulting in $50 of savings in transportation cost per telemedicine visit.

Researchers said the study demonstrates that telemedicine can successfully be used in pediatric subspecialties to maximize healthcare resources and stretch the availability and expertise of the limited number of pediatric subspecialty providers.

"We know that telemedicine is often looked to for common childhood ailments, like cold and flu, or skin rashes. But we wanted to look at how telemedicine could benefit patients within a particular specialty such as sports medicine," said Atanda. "As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve and the emphasis on value and satisfaction continues to grow, telemedicine may be utilized by providers as a mechanism to keep costs and resource utilization low, and to comply with payor requirements."

Nemours has implemented telemedicine throughout its health system with direct-to-consumer care for acute, chronic, and post-surgical appointments, as well as through its partner hospitals, schools, and even cruise ships. Nemours CareConnect is a 24/7 on-demand pediatric telehealth program which provides families access to Nemours pediatricians through a smartphone, tablet, or computer—whether they are at home, school, or even on the sports field. If necessary, the physician may order a prescription, using geo-location service on the smartphone or tablet, and send it to the nearest pharmacy.

Provided by Nemours Children's Health System

Output: Patients and families who use telemedicine for sports medicine appointments saved an average of $50 in travel costs and 51 minutes in waiting and visit time, according to a new study by Nemours Children's Health System.


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US energy department to invest $62m in concentrated solar
 Concentrated solar is at the top of the reshuffled list of research priorities, suggesting DOE officials think the technology can do more to improve grid stability over the long term. That’s because, while the energy it produces has been far more expensive than photovoltaics, it can store some of it in the form of heat. That means it can continue to generate electricity even when the sun isn’t shining, helping to balance supply-and-demand loads on the grid.

Given past behavior, the announcement raises at least some suspicions that the department, under Energy Secretary Rick Perry, may be seeking additional ways to diminish support for photovoltaics, potentially slowing progress behind the solar technology that’s done the most so far to threaten fossil fuels. After all, it follows the Trump Administration’s 2018 budget proposal to cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which oversees the SunShot program, by nearly 70 percent. (So far, Congress has pushed back on most of the proposed cuts to DOE research programs.)

But with that all said, energy researchers are quick to stress that the storage issue is a very real problem for photovoltaics—and a very real advantage for concentrated solar.

“[Concentrated solar power] today hasn’t been able to compete with photovoltaics, but there are some promising research areas,” says Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford. “Given the climate challenge, we need to put eggs in many, many zero-carbon baskets.”

Concentrated solar generally relies on mirrors to concentrate sunlight, which converts liquid into turbine-driving steam. Some of that heat can also be stored using molten-salt tanks, allowing the plants to continue supplying electricity when the sun isn’t shining.

In contrast, photovoltaic power plants only work when the sun is out, unless they’re coupled with expensive batteries or other forms of external storage. The same goes for wind.

The downside to concentrated solar, however, is that it’s proven to be more expensive and technically challenging. Notably, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah plant in California’s Mojave Desert has struggled to meet production goals and produce electricity at competitive prices. The facility has been relying on increasing amounts of natural gas, the local Press-Enterprise newspaper reported earlier this year.

But there are some promising research avenues that could improve efficiency and costs. In 2015, the DOE’s moonshot ARPA-E division provided $24 million in funding to 11 projects focused on essentially combining the two approaches into what’s known as “concentrated photovoltaic technologies,” using lenses and mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto small photovoltaic cells (see “DOE Attempts to Jump-Start Concentrated Solar”).

Output: The US Department of Energy will invest $62m in concentrated solar power, a technically challenging and more expensive form of renewable energy compared with photovoltaics, but which is capable of storing as well as generating energy. Concentrated solar uses mirrors to focus sunlight, converting liquid into steam to drive turbines, with excess energy stored in molten-salt tanks. While some experts have questioned the Trump administration's move, which appears to diminish support for photovoltaics, others have praised the decision to back an underdeveloped technology.


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Too many older diabetes patients are being overtreated
 Anyone with diabetes who takes blood sugar medication knows their doctor prescribed it to help them. After all, the long-term effects of elevated blood sugar can harm everything from the heart and kidneys to the eyes and feet.

But what if stopping, or at least cutting back on, such drugs could help even more in some patients?

In some older people, such "deintensification" of diabetes treatment may be the safer route, because of the risks of falls and other issues that come with too-low blood sugar.

But a new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine suggests more doctors and such patients should work together to dial back diabetes treatment.

Who's over-treated?

Almost 11 percent of Medicare participants with diabetes had very low blood sugar levels that suggested they were being over-treated, the new study finds. But only 14 percent of these patients had a reduction in blood sugar medication refills in the next six months.

Patients over age 75, and those who qualified for both Medicare and Medicaid because of low incomes or serious disability, were most likely to be over-treated. Those who lived in urban areas or were of Hispanic origin were less likely to be over-treated.

Patients over age 75 were less likely than others to have their treatment dialed back, as measured by prescription doses and refills.

But patients who had more than six chronic conditions, or who lived in urban areas or had frequent outpatient visits, were more likely to experience a deintensification.

The results were compiled by a team of researchers from Duke University, the University of Michigan and the VA hospitals in Durham, North Carolina and Ann Arbor, Michigan. They studied detailed records from 78,792 Medicare participants over age 65 in ten states, all of whom had diabetes.

The authors, led by Duke/Durham researcher Matthew Maciejewski, Ph.D., warn against a one-size-fits-all approach when treating diabetes in older patients. They call for greater personalized care that takes account of the risks and benefits that such treatment holds for individual patients.

Jeremy Sussman, M.D., M.S., a co-author of the new study and U-M/VA researcher, suggests that older patients with diabetes - and the adult children who often assist with their care - should talk to their care teams about whether de-intensification is right for them.

The risk of too-aggressive treatment

In people in their 70s and older, very low blood sugar levels - called hypoglycemia—can actually raise the risk of dizzy spells, confusion, falls and even death.

In recent years, experts have started to suggest that doctors ease up on how aggressively they treat such patients for high blood pressure or diabetes—especially if they have other conditions that limit their life expectancy.

It can be hard for an older person to recognize the signs of too-low blood sugar, such as confusion and combativeness, or of too-low blood pressure, such as dizziness.

Meanwhile, keeping up with taking multiple medications, and checking blood sugar daily or even more often, can be a struggle for the oldest patients. De-intensifying their treatment can often be a relief.

A previous study by Sussman and his U-M/VA colleagues showed that only one in four of nearly 400,000 older patients in the VA system who could have been eligible to ease up on their blood sugar medicines actually had their dosage changed.

Even those with the lowest readings, or the fewest years left to live, had only a slightly greater chance as other patients of having their treatment de-intensified.

The VA system is actively trying to encourage de-intensification of blood sugar-reducing treatment in its oldest patients nationwide. The U-M/Ann Arbor VA team, led by Eve Kerr, M.D., M.S., is studying the effects of that effort.

More about the new study

For the new study, the team looked at prescription refills among those whose blood sugar levels - represented by a measure called HbA1c - were already well below recommended levels.

They focused on those who had an A1c at or below 6.5 percent, at a single point in time in 2011 - as well as those with an A1c over 9, which is considered very high.

The patients under 6.5 A1c levels would be eligible to ease up on their blood sugar medication dosages, to lower their risk of the consequences of hypoglycemia.

In fact, the American Geriatrics Society recommends that the only medication an older person with diabetes should be on if they have an A1c level below 7.5 percent is metformin.

While 10.9 percent of all the Medicare participants in the study were being over-treated to the point of an ultra-low A1c level, only 6.9 percent were being under-treated and had A1c levels over 9.

"The oldest Medicare beneficiaries are the least likely to benefit from tight glycemic control and most likely to be harmed, so it is troubling that they were more likely to be overtreated and less likely to have their medication regimens de-intensified," explains Sussman, who is a member of the VA Center for Clinical Management Research and the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

"By focusing on both overtreatment and undertreatment ends of the diabetes quality spectrum, we can best begin to improve the quality of diabetes care in all respects, ensuring that patients get needed care while avoiding unnecessary potential harm," he adds.

Long-term gain, short-term pain

Sussman notes that the reasons why doctors prescribe medication to help people get their diabetes under control mostly focus on the long term.

Controlling these factors for years can help people cut their risk of problems that result from too-high sugar levels, like stroke, heart attack, blindness, nerve damage, amputation and kidney failure.

"Every guideline for physicians has detailed guidance for prescribing and stepping up or adding drugs to control these risk factors, and somewhere toward the end it says 'personalize treatment for older people'," says Sussman, a U-M assistant professor of general internal medicine and VA Ann Arbor researcher. "But nowhere do they say actually stop medication in the oldest patients to avoid hypoglycemia or too-low blood pressure."

If a patient has been on medication for diabetes for many years, and is now in their late 70s or older, they may have gotten many long-term benefits from keeping their levels in control.

But because their chance of a dangerous blood sugar or blood pressure dip goes up with age, the short-term risk starts to balance out any long-term gain they could still get.

Sussman and his colleagues write that effective treatment of diabetes requires a major shift in approach towards greater personalization of treatments based on potential for individual risk and benefit.

More information: Matthew L. Maciejewski et al, Overtreatment and Deintensification of Diabetic Therapy among Medicare Beneficiaries, Journal of General Internal Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s11606-017-4167-y Journal information: Journal of General Internal Medicine

Provided by University of Michigan

Output: Up to 11 percent of older Americans insured through Medicare are receiving too much medication to control their diabetes, and around 7 percent are being undertreated. This is according to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine which is published by Springer.


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Alcohol Abuse Is Rising Among Older Adults
 In the summer, Henry Wrenn-Meleck likes to sit on the stoop of his building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, observing the passing urban parade.

One day in late July, “one of my neighbors could see something was wrong,” he recently recalled. “I was sort of rolling around, obviously in a lot of pain. He said, ‘I have to call 911,’ and he did.”

Mr. Wrenn-Meleck, 63, an independent music publisher and dealer in rare guitars, spent three weeks in a hospital, being treated for trauma from a fall he does not recall. But the underlying problem was “40 years of being a very serious alcoholic,” he said. “My body finally said no more.”

Discharged from the hospital after detoxing, Mr. Wrenn-Meleck went to the New Jewish Home in Manhattan for physical therapy. He also entered its geriatric substance abuse recovery program where, he found, he was one of the younger participants.

Output: In the summer, Henry Wrenn-Meleck likes to sit on the stoop of his building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, observing the passing urban parade.


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Five Tips for Choosing a Reliable Nursing Home
 Hospitals may have an incentive to save money by discharging patients, putting pressure on families to make a decision quickly, but consumers should know they can ask for more time. “I tell people this may be one of the most important decisions you ever make regarding this person’s life,” Mr. Chicotel said. “Don’t feel pressure to go to a place that you haven’t vetted.”

Do your homework.

Investigate the track record of the facilities you are considering. A federal website, Nursing Home Compare, is the most comprehensive source of data on nursing homes and allows consumers to sort and compare facilities based on geography and other factors. The site includes information about a home’s staffing levels, recent inspection reports and measurements of the quality of residents’ care. Another website, Nursing Home Inspect — run by ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism group — allows visitors to dig more deeply into facilities’ inspection reports and any citations they have received from regulators.

The federal website is not perfect — some key information, like staffing data, is reported by the nursing homes themselves, for example — but changes in recent years have improved the site. Nursing Home Compare also does not always include state-level reports or penalties. To view those, families must search the websites of individual states, such as the one run by the state of Florida.

Taken as a whole, the websites can provide an overview of a nursing home’s quality and identify potential red flags. A facility that has been given only one or two stars on the federal website, for example, should likely be ruled out, advocates said.

Florida officials are still sorting out who is to blame for the death of residents this week when the facility’s air conditioning stopped working, but the nursing home in question — the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills — had a federal rating of two stars (out of a possible five). Inspection reports show that in 2016 and 2014, it was cited for problems with maintaining its emergency generators, though this year, a follow-up inspection concluded that the issues had been corrected.

Output: The news that eight Florida nursing home residents died in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma has prompted a criminal investigation and spurred widespread outrage.


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AXA adopts blockchain technology for insurance product
 BI Intelligence

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

French insurance giant AXA has rolled out a new flight-delay insurance product, Fizzy, which will store and process payouts via "smart contracts" — self-executing contracts triggered automatically once pre-determined parameters are met in the real world — based on Ethereum's public blockchain.

For now, payouts will be issued in fiat currencies, though AXA aims to use Ether eventually. Fizzy is currently in a testing phase, and AXA hasn't yet specified a date for a full launch.

AXA says using smart contracts stands to deliver two major benefits:

Streamlining the compensation process for both providers and claimants. When an AXA customer buys flight-delay insurance on the Fizzy platform, the purchase is automatically recorded on an Ethereum-based immutable ledger, and a smart contract is created on the blockchain. The smart contract is linked to global air traffic databases, which means that as soon as a delay of over two hours is registered on the ledger, compensation is automatically triggered. Moreover, the customer is told how much they will receive when they first buy the coverage.

When an AXA customer buys flight-delay insurance on the Fizzy platform, the purchase is automatically recorded on an Ethereum-based immutable ledger, and a smart contract is created on the blockchain. The smart contract is linked to global air traffic databases, which means that as soon as a delay of over two hours is registered on the ledger, compensation is automatically triggered. Moreover, the customer is told how much they will receive when they first buy the coverage. Improving the insurer-customer relationship. This process means the need for a customer to file a claim is removed, and the compensation decision is delegated entirely to an automated arbitrator — the smart contract — which eliminates potential disputes between insurer and client. In turn, the company says, this brings greater transparency to the claims processing procedure, which should build up trust between customers and their insurance providers, whose interests are often seen as being at odds.

Smart contracts promise particularly large benefits for insurers, but legal dilemmas are likely to stand in the way of widespread use for some time. The insurance industry is particularly well positioned to benefit from implementing the technology, as it promises to reduce friction between the many disparate parties typically involved in an insurance payout, thereby reducing costs and conflicts between carriers and end customers. As such, incumbents will likely be keeping a close watch on how well Fizzy does in its test phase. However, even if the solution does well, we might not see smart contracts take off for some time: This is because, beyond the success of individual solutions like Fizzy, unresolved questions remain about the enforceability and legality of smart contracts, which might take a longer time to solve than technical hurdles.

The global insurance industry is worth nearly $5 trillion, and insurance companies are at risk of losing a share of this valuable market to new entrants. That's because these legacy players have been even slower to modernize than their counterparts in other financial services industries.

This has created an opportunity for a group of firms known as insurtechs. These startups are leveraging new technology and a better understanding of consumer expectations to increase efficiencies in the insurance industry. Some are helping incumbents deliver better end products, while others are directly competing with legacy players.

Sarah Kocianski, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on insurtechs that:

Explains the structure and current state of the insurance market.

Highlights areas where insurtechs can help legacy players modernize.

Describes where insurtechs are competing with incumbents and how their models compare.

Provides case studies of insurtechs.

Outlines the legacy response.

And much more.

To get the full report, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full report from our research store.

Output: French insurance company Axa is testing Fizzy, a platform for flight-delay insurance relying on smart contracts, powered by the ethereum blockchain. The platform, which automatically triggers a payment if a delay of more than two hours is registered on the ledger, is aimed at streamlining the claims process and increasing transparency and trust between clients and insurers. Compensation will be paid in fiat currencies, though Axa plans to issue ether payments in the future. The company did not indicate a date for the full launch of the platform.


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Nvidia and Avitas partner to improve drone inspections
 Join top executives in San Francisco on July 11-12, to hear how leaders are integrating and optimizing AI investments for success. Learn More

Avitas Systems has partnered with Nvidia to use artificial intelligence, drones, and analytics to improve inspections of heavy industry facilities, such as oil rigs.

The deal marries Nvidia’s DGX-1 and DGX Station AI computers with the inspection services of Avitas Systems, which is a spinout from GE Venture, the investment arm of General Electric. AI has become a huge priority at Nvidia, the largest stand-alone maker of graphics chips.

Avitas has been working on its AI software for about a year and is optimizing systems such as robots or drones so they can fly around industrial assets and record everything with video. The AI computers will then analyze the video to automatically detect defects and other problems.

The whole system is meant to enhance the capabilities of human inspectors. It also keeps them out of harm’s way, as drones and robots can go into places that are dangerous for human inspectors. Right now, inspectors have to do dangerous things like hang on ropes on ocean rigs.

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“Oil and gas companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maintenance and inspection each year,” said Alex Tepper, founder and head of corporate and business development at Avitas Systems, in an interview with VentureBeat. “They make decisions based on people walking around with sensors, helicopters looking down at sites, people in harnesses in precarious positions.”

Image Credit: Nvidia

Avitas Systems is targeting specific points of inspection and developing paths to collect data in the form of images and video for a variety of robotics, including drones, robotic crawlers, and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). These paths, driven by 3D models, can be repeated from the same angles and locations. The paths’ repeatability means a wide variety of images captured over time can be put into the Avitas Systems cloud-based platform. So advanced image analytics can detect changes and measure exact defects on an industrial asset, such as cracks and corrosion.

The platform can also rate the severity of defects, which are often not visible to the human eye, allowing customers to determine when equipment needs to be replaced and enabling earlier resolution of potential issues.

Avitas is using the Nvidia DGX-1 and DGX Station systems for AI training to enable automated defect recognition. Avitas Systems data scientists build convolutional neural networks for image classification and generative adversarial neural networks to minimize the amount of work involved in labeling captured images. The result is that the defects can be discovered without a massive amount of computing power.

Image Credit: Nvidia

“Avitas has the experts on things like corrosion, and they tap what we have,” said Jim McHugh, general manager of DGX Systems for Nvidia, in an interview. “They’re using the raw compute power of our hardware as we had intended it to be used.”

“Using our latest DGX systems to help train robots and better predict industrial defects increases worker safety, protects the environment, and leads to substantial cost savings for companies,” McHugh added.

The companies have been working on a solution for the past six to nine months, and they believe that the cost of inspections can be cut 25 percent over other methods. The robots will be used in harsh conditions, as will trucks that carry the computers, from the North Sea to the desert.

“We can dramatically reduce turnaround time or time an asset has to be taken down,” Tepper said. “A refinery that is not in production costs a lot of revenue. We partnered with Nvidia around the DGX platform because they were the obvious choice for us as a partner.”

Output: Automated inspection firm Avitas Systems has partnered with chip manufacturer Nvidia to develop software that can assess and analyse heavy industry facilities. Using Nvidia’s DGX-1 and DGX Station AI computers, drones, robotic crawlers, and autonomous underwater vehicles are deployed to collect imaging data which is then put into the Avitas Systems cloud-based platform. Advanced analytics track the components in the images, discovering defects not visible to the human eye and enabling customers to repair or replace them, reducing disruption and cost.


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'Lipidcane' could replace 65% of US jet fuel consumption
 URBANA, Ill. – A Boeing 747 burns one gallon of jet fuel each second. A recent analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois estimate that this aircraft could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on 54 acres of specially enagineered sugarcane.

Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS), funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), has developed sugarcane that produces oil, called lipidcane, that can be converted into biodiesel or jet fuel in place of sugar that is currently used for ethanol production. With 20 percent oil - the theoretical limit - all the sugar in the plant would be replaced by oil.

"Oil-to-Jet is one of the direct and efficient routes to convert bio-based feedstocks to jet fuel," said Vijay Singh, Director of the Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory and Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at U of I. "Reducing the feedstock cost is critical to improving process economics of producing bio-jet fuel. Lipidcane allows us to reduce feedstock cost."

This research analyzed the economic viability of crops with different levels of oil. Lipidcane with 5 percent oil produces four times more jet fuel (1,577 liters, or 416 gallons) per hectare than soybeans. Sugarcane with 20 percent oil produces more than 15 times more jet fuel (6,307 liters, or 1,666 gallons) per hectare than soybeans.

"PETROSS sugarcane is also being engineered to be more cold tolerant, potentially enabling it to be grown on an estimated 23 million acres of marginal land in the Southeastern U.S.," said PETROSS Director Stephen Long, Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at U of I. "If all of this acreage was used to produce renewable jet fuel from lipid-cane, it could replace about 65 percent of national jet fuel consumption."

"We estimate that this biofuel would cost the airline industry $5.31 per gallon, which is less than most of the reported prices of renewable jet fuel produced from other oil crops or algae," said Deepak Kumar, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at U of I and lead analyst on the study.

This crop also produces profitable co-products: A hydrocarbon fuel is produced along with bio-jet fuel or biodiesel that can be used to produce various bioproducts. The remaining sugar (for plants with less than 20 percent oil) could be sold or used to produce ethanol. In addition, biorefineries could use lipidcane bagasse to produce steam and electricity to become self-sustainable for their energy needs and provide surplus electricity, providing environmental benefits by displacing electricity produced with fossil fuels.

The paper "Biorefinery for combined production of jet fuel and ethanol from lipid-producing sugarcane: a techno-economic evaluation" is published by Global Change Biology Bioenergy (10.1111/gcbb.12478).

PETROSS (Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sorghum) is a research project transforming sugarcane and sweet sorghum to naturally produce large amounts of oil, a sustainable source of biofuel. PETROSS is supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which funds initial research for high-impact energy technologies to show proof of concept before private-sector investment.

Output: Sugarcane specially engineered to produce oil, called lipdc-ane, can be converted into jet fuel, in place of sugar that is currently used for ethanol production, according to a research project - Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS) - funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E). Lipid-cane with 20% oil (the theoretical maximum) produces more than 15 times more jet fuel per hectare than soybeans. PETROSS sugarcane is also being engineered to be more cold tolerant. If it could be grown on an estimated 23 million acres of marginal land in the Southeastern US, it could replace about 65% of national jet fuel consumption.


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GSAM ETF pricing could harm asset management industry: Moody's
 A new exchange traded fund from Goldman Sachs' asset management arm is fueling a Wall Street price war that could hurt the industry, credit agency Moody's says.

The new "smart-beta" product, which tracks an equal weight index of roughly 500 large cap equities, was announced Thursday and is set to be one of the lowest priced ETFs out there. It will trade under the ticker GSEW and has an expense ratio of 0.09%.

Most smart-beta products, like GSEW, have an expense ratio between 0.24% and 0.39% while traditional mutual funds are generally more expensive, near 0.63%, according to Moody’s.

"The ETF price war beyond vanilla ETFs is credit negative for traditional active equity players entering the smart-beta realm," wrote Moody’s analyst Stephen Tu in a note Thursday morning.

"GSAM has a long history in quantitative investing on behalf of institutions in both traditional and alternative strategies and had earlier forays launching competitively priced products. With this recent move, GSAM is now solidifying a price point below 10 basis points for simple smart-beta strategies."

Here’s a breakdown of other similarly priced ETFs, from Moody’s:

Moody's

ETFs are some for the hottest investment products on the market, and outnumber individual securities in the United States. GSEW will be Goldman’s 11th ETF since it started offering the products in 2015. Today, Goldman manages $5.6 billion in ETF assets.

"GSEW seeks to help investors looking for a low cost way to avoid market cap biases, by allocating evenly to the largest U.S. companies, independent of their relative size," Michael Crinieri, GSAM’s chief ETF strategist, said in a press release.

Output: A new smart-beta exchange-traded fund from Goldman Sachs Asset Management may permanently lower the pricing bar for similar products, damaging the industry, according to credit agency Moody's. The ETF has an expense ratio of nine basis points, substantially below the average of 24 to 39 usually charged for similar smart-beta offerings investing in factor-based indices. Offering prices below 10 basis points on more complex equity ETFs is likely bad news for traditional active managers seeking to enter the ETF space with quantitative products, according to Moody's.


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US added 2.4 GW solar capacity in Q2 with 12 GW expected in 2017
 Updated June 8, 2023

The US solar industry installed 6.1 gigawatts-direct current (GWdc) of capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a 47% increase from Q1 2022 and a 19% decrease from Q4 2022. This was the best first quarter in the industry’s history, led by delayed utility-scale solar projects coming online.

Each segment had a record-setting first quarter, except for community solar, which faced interconnection and siting challenges in several key state markets. The residential segment set a first quarter record and would have likely set another overall quarterly record had it not been for intense rainstorms that hampered installation crews. Utility-scale solar installations were up 66% compared to the first quarter of 2022. The industry is still operating in a supply-constrained environment, but conditions are improving as module shipments are finally making their way through ports.

Overall, photovoltaic solar (PV) accounted for 54% of all new electricity-generating capacity additions in the first quarter of 2023.

Click here to read the Executive Summary of the latest Solar Market Insight Report. The full report includes all the data and analysis from our Executive Summary plus incisive, state-level breakdowns of installations, costs, manufacturing and demand projections. To learn more about the Solar Market Insight Report series, click here.

WASHINGTON D.C. — The U.S. solar industry installed 6.1 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity and had its best first quarter in history, according to the US Solar Market Insight Q2 2023 report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.

The record quarter was driven in large part by supply chain challenges abating and delayed solar projects moving forward. Due in part to the strong first quarter numbers and a surge in demand from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Wood Mackenzie expects the solar market to triple in size over the next five years, bringing total installed solar capacity to 378 GW by 2028. (Keep Reading)

For more facts and figures about the U.S. solar industry, including historical data and future projections, click here.

Need a quick summary of all the key facts and figures about the U.S. solar industry? Download SEIA's Solar Data Cheat Sheet.

Output: The US added 2.4 GW of solar-energy capacity in 2Q 2017, a surge of 8% on the same quarter last year. The increase is the largest for any 2Q and brings total installed solar capacity for the US to 47.1 GW, or enough to power more than nine million homes. The figures were published by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research, which predict the industry will have installed 12 GW of solar capacity by the end of the year.


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PE firm Waud Capital ties up with TrustCommerce
 Waud Capital Forms Partnership with TrustCommerce

September 14, 2017 By: Payment Week

CHICAGO and SANTA ANA, Calif. September 14, 2017 – Waud Capital Partners, a leading growth-oriented middle market private equity firm, today announced a strategic partnership with TrustCommerce, a premier provider of payment security software and technology that allows clients to process highly secure and compliant payments that are deeply integrated within their core business software.

Waud Capital and Andrew Rueff formed Sphere Payments LLC to facilitate the investment in TrustCommerce. A seasoned executive with more than 20 years of payments technology experience, Mr. Rueff will serve as Executive Chairman of Sphere Payments to guide the company in its next phase of growth. Mr. Rueff and Waud Capital partnered in January 2017 to identify attractive investments in the payments and software industries. Mr. Rueff was previously one of the original founders and architects of TransFirst Holdings, Inc., a leading private equity-backed U.S. merchant solutions provider that was acquired by TSYS (NYSE: TSS) in January 2016 for $2.35 billion.

“TrustCommerce has long been at the forefront of two of the most important trends in payments technology: integrating payments capabilities within mission-critical enterprise software, and providing security and compliance technology necessary to protect all constituents in the payments value chain.” said Mr. Rueff, Executive Chairman of Sphere Payments. “The management team of TrustCommerce has established a strong technology platform with deep vertical market expertise in healthcare and other attractive market segments. This partnership provides TrustCommerce with additional capital and operating experience to extend its product capabilities, expand its relationships with clients and enterprise software providers, and accelerate the growth of the company.”

Founded in 2000 by Rob Caulfield, TrustCommerce was an early innovator in developing tokenization to protect sensitive payment data and has been a leading provider of highly-secure, integrated payments software ever since. TrustCommerce delivers a full suite of payment acceptance solutions, allowing clients to accept payments securely within an omnichannel environment. At closing, Mr. Caulfield and other key executives of TrustCommerce will maintain their current roles with the company and will participate in ownership through Sphere Payments.

Added Justin DuPere, Principal at Waud Capital, “Our partnership with Andrew and TrustCommerce is the result of our careful diligence of the payments technology market. TrustCommerce is a rapidly growing software provider and an innovator within the financial technology landscape. Andrew brings an unprecedented level of expertise in building businesses and delivering strong returns for shareholders over time. We look forward to continuing our partnership and executing on this multi-year growth opportunity.”

Matt Clary, Partner at Waud Capital, added, “This transaction highlights Waud Capital’s disciplined approach of matching experienced industry leaders with the best platforms for growth. Our investment team leveraged its experience in financial technology markets to identify key growth drivers within the payments technology sector. We then developed a relationship with Andrew which resulted in him becoming an Operating Partner in January 2017. Within six months of formalizing our relationship, using our collective network and operating expertise, the Waud Capital team together with Andrew found an attractive platform for growth and completed the transaction with TrustCommerce.”

About TrustCommerce

An innovator and veteran in the payment security software and technology industry, TrustCommerce offers a comprehensive suite of payment software and solutions with a focus on security, data protection, and risk mitigation. Featuring Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE), tokenization, EMV, and seamless redirects, TrustCommerce solutions assist partners and clients with reducing the cost and complexity of PCI DSS compliance. Whether accepting payments in a card-present or card-not-present environment, TrustCommerce solutions protect transactions and reduce risk. TrustCommerce is a focused provider of integrated solutions to the healthcare sector, as well as other specialized verticals focused on providing a high level of security to their clients. To learn more about TrustCommerce, and its full breadth of products and solutions, visit www.TrustCommerce.com.

About Waud Capital Partners

Based in Chicago, Waud Capital Partners is a leading growth-oriented private equity firm with total capital commitments of approximately $2.1 billion since its founding in 1993. Waud Capital partners with exceptional management teams to build market leading companies within two industries: healthcare services and business and technology services. Since its founding, Waud Capital has successfully completed more than 210 investments, including platform companies and follow-on opportunities. For additional information on Waud Capital, visit www.waudcapital.com.

Output: Chicago-based private equity firm Waud Capital Partners has formed a strategic partnership with payment security software and technology provider TrustCommerce. The deal offers TrustCommerce "additional capital and operating experience to extend its product capabilities, expand its relationships with clients and enterprise software providers, and accelerate the growth of the company", according to Andrew Rueff, executive chairman of Sphere Payments, which is facilitating the deal.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Incumbents unwilling to change business models to adopt fintech
 It's quick, easy and as a registered user you'll have full access to all Pensions Expert articles. You will also be able to receive editorial emails.

If you are already registered, please click here to login.

Output: Incumbent banks and financial service companies, who are loath to change their business models or culture to accommodate fintech innovations, are preventing customers from enjoying the potential financial benefits, according to a panel of pensions and technology experts. It found start-ups have difficulty dealing with the incentives structure of some innovation departments, while "behemoth" firms have little incentive to change their models as they have already cornered particular markets. Established companies also fear diluting a brand's strength in an unknown market.


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Korean city puts robot street cleaners to the test
 GWANGJU, Sept. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — Seo District in the city of Gwangju announced on Thursday it has introduced street cleaning robots in the community that can also be operated by remote control.

The move by district officials to trial street-sweeping robots comes with the community seeking ways to effectively deal with the issue of illegal trash dumping.

Seo District’s newly deployed cleaning robots, which are 1.75 meters long, 0.94 meters wide, and 1.3 meters tall, are capable of collecting garbage on the street using their brushes, or cleaning flower beds with a hose.

With a floating population of tens of thousands traveling in and out of the neighborhood, the cleaning robots’ waste collection capacity of 100 liters and their accessibility to areas difficult to reach, such as narrow alleyways, are expected to come in handy.

The robots can detect pedestrians and other obstacles and are designed to remain a certain distance from human street cleaners to secure a safe working environment.

Including an autonomous parking system, the prevention of workplace accidents also figured prominently during the robots’ development process.

“After a trial run in Sangmu District, we will decide whether to increase the number of street cleaning robots in other neighborhoods,” said an official from Seo District Office.

“We hope this move will improve working conditions for street cleaners.”

Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)

Output: Authorities in the South Korean city of Gwangju have deployed street-cleaning robots in a trial scheme to crack down on fly-tipping. The 1.3m-tall robo-dustbins, which also can be operated remotely, sweep up rubbish using brushes or a hose, and have been programmed to identify pedestrians and other obstacles. They will operate at a minimum distance from human street cleaners to ensure worker safety. If the trial in Gwangju's Seo District is successful, the robots could be sent to other areas of the city.


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Reactive Robotics wins funding to develop physical therapy robot
 Munich-based company Reactive Robotics GmbH secured a second seven-digit funding round to continue its work in rehabilitation robotics development.

Investors included new lead investor Dr. Doll Holding GmbH and existing investors MTIP MedTech Innovation Partners AG, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital and TQ-Group.

Reactive Robotics intends to use the funds to further market entry in Germany as well as in other countries.

CEO Dr. Alexander Koenig founded the company in 2015 to provide quality Very Early Mobilization, which improves patient recovery times, to intensive care patients in their beds within 24 hours of their hospital admission.

The team is working on an intelligent therapy device that replaces the manual VEM therapy with a robotic option. The solution would help critically ill patients recover quicker, reduce the work and strain on caretakers and would bring the therapy directly to patients instead of requiring them to go to therapy.

So far the company has developed a prototype, established a quality management system and cooperated with business partners and suppliers.

Previously, the company was able to secure approximately $1.5 million in funding.

Output: German firm Reactive Robotics has secured significant funding in a round led by new investor Dr Doll Holding and featuring participation from existing backers MTIP MedTech Innovation Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital and TQ-Group. Reactive Robotics provides very early mobilisation (VEM) therapy to intensive care patients and is developing an intelligent physical and occupational therapy robotic device that will replace manual VEM therapy. The new funds will be used to expand at home and abroad.


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Indian insurance chatbot AskArvi gains investment
 Jang Capital backs insurance chatbot AskArvi

Credit: Thinkstock

Mumbai-based Haida Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates insurance aggregating platform AskArvi.com, has raised an undisclosed amount from a clutch of investors led by US-based early-stage investment fund Jang Capital LLC.

A few American angel investors also participated in the round, AskArvi founder CEO Sushant Reddy told VCCircle.

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Co. advised Jang Capital on the acquisition of a minority stake in Haida Technologies by way of primary share subscription. The transaction closed on 21 August.

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AskArvi, which aims to provide a more personalised experience to customers, has built an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant to answer questions on various products and policy-related information, besides helping the user raise claims.

Though it is still at a beta stage, the company has already helped over 15,000 customers with products and claim-support information, he claimed. “We are planning to use the money to build our AI platform and acquire the first 1,000 customers for travel and health insurance.”

The startup aims to build a fully-automated platform, which can intelligently help customers in pre- and post-sale support across health, travel, motor and life insurance segments.

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AskArvi was launched in January by Reddy, Alok Tiwari, Ashwin Narkhede and Mandar Zope. Reddy is a former CEO of Mumbai-based financial technology company Quantum Phinance; Tiwari had earlier co-founded two other startups, Aptivaa and Xplanr Analytics; Zope is a former CTO of Omnikart; and Narkhede had stints in Quantum Phinance and Omnikart.

On his plans about the next round of funding, Reddy said: “This was our first round of investment. Based on the projected cash burn rates, the capital gives us an 18-month runway.”

Reddy said that the Indian insurance industry has a huge outgo in terms of paying commissions to intermediaries, to the tune of about Rs 45,000 crore, or $7 billion. “If there ever was one industry where we could eliminate the dependence on agents, this has to be it.”

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Several startups in the AI space have also raised funds recently. In July, chatbot creation tool Bottr.me had raised an undisclosed amount from 500 Startups, Purvi Capital, Google India’s managing director Rajan Anandan, and Abhishek Gupta from TLabs.

Bangalore-based Niki.ai had raised $2 million in a Series A round from San Francisco-based fund SAP.iO and existing investor Unilazer Ventures.

AirCTO, a human- and artificial intelligence-powered recruitment platform that helps companies hire technical talent, had raised an undisclosed amount in angel investment from former Nokia director Francesco Cara.

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In June, Bangalore-based Boxx.ai had raised $500,000 from Mumbai-based venture capital firm Unicorn India Ventures, besides a clutch of investors.

In May, Vernacular.ai, which offers a multilingual AI platform for businesses, had raised an undisclosed amount from KStart Capital, the seed programme run by venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.

In February, Botworx.ai, a conversational commerce platform, had raised $3 million in seed round led by California-based venture capital firm Costanoa Ventures with support from San Francisco-based angel investment firm S V Angel.

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Output: Indian insurance aggregation platform AskArvi.com, operated by Mumbai-based Haida Technologies, has received an investment of an undisclosed sum in a round led by US investment fund Jang Capital. AskArvi.com is developing a virtual assistant, capable of answering product and policy-related questions, which has already helped more than 15,000 customers despite still being in beta testing. The additional funding will be used to build the AI platform and on-board the first 1,000 travel and health insurance customers.


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Solar power could greatly benefit the US military
 Using solar power could give the U.S. military some advantages – and more security. Credit: Diane Durden/U.S. Marine Corps

As the U.S. military increases its use of drones in surveillance and combat overseas, the danger posed by a threat back at home grows. Many drone flights are piloted by soldiers located in the U.S., even when the drones are flying over Yemen or Iraq or Syria. Those pilots and their control systems depend on the American electricity grid – large, complex, interconnected and very vulnerable to attack.

Without electricity from civilian power plants, the most advanced military in world history could be crippled. The U.S. Department of Energy has begged for new authority to defend against weaknesses in the grid in a nearly 500-page comprehensive study issued in January 2017 warning that it's only a matter of time before the grid fails, due to disaster or attack. A new study by a team I led reveals the three ways American military bases' electrical power sources are threatened, and shows how the U.S. military could take advantage of solar power to significantly improve national security.

A triple threat

The first threat to the electricity grid comes from nature. Severe weather disasters resulting in power outages cause between US$25 billion and $70 billion in the U.S. each year – and that's average years, not those including increasingly frequent major storms, like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The second type of threat is from traditional acts of crime or terrorism, such as bombing or sabotage. For example, a 2013 sniper attack on a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in California disabled 17 transformers supplying power to Silicon Valley. In what the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission called "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred," the attacker – who may have been an insider – fired about 100 rounds of .30-caliber rifle ammunition into the radiators of 17 electricity transformers over the course of 19 minutes. The electronics overheated and shut down. Fortunately, power company engineers managed to keep the lights on in Silicon Valley by routing power from other sources.

The third threat is from cyberspace. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security responded to approximately 200 "cyber incidents" across critical infrastructure sectors, nearly half of which attacked the electrical grid. A major breach in the electric system could cost as much as $1 trillion. And China, Russia and North Korea are all trying to break into the grid, potentially to disrupt the U.S. electricity supply the way Russia has in Ukraine in recent years. The security firm Symantec recently warned that hackers have already gained direct access to the electric grid.

A major grid failure, thanks to nature or malicious humans, could easily outstrip the ability of generators and fuel supplies to fill the gaps. Rebuilding or replacing large numbers of damaged transformers could take months or even years: Fixing just 17 of them after the 2013 attack in California cost roughly $100 million and took 27 days.

It wouldn't just be homes and businesses waiting for the lights to come back on: Military bases, too, would be in the dark.

Remote overseas bases already use solar power to sustain themselves. Credit: Maj. Paul Greenberg, U.S. Marine Corps

Securing the ability to fight

U.S. national security requires that the military have electricity even during a long-term blackout for other parts of society or the country. Fortunately, there is a solution that addresses all three types of threat to the electric grid at once: distributed power generation.

In a sense, stationing diesel-fueled generators outside key buildings to provide emergency power is a start down this path. But fuel supply lines can be disrupted too, so renewable energy is best for a long-lasting solution. Solar photovoltaic systems, which generate electricity directly from sunlight, are best because they are easy to maintain, can be located almost anywhere and don't need to be refueled.

The U.S. military is already working toward this goal. Congress has decided that military facilities must get 25 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025. To meet that requirement, also by 2025, the department wants to be able to generate 3 gigawatts of renewable power every year. (A nuclear power plant operating at peak capacity produces about 1 gigawatt.)

Much more to be done

These steps are in the right direction but are not enough to relieve the threat. Only a few military bases have installed solar panel systems, which generally cover only part of their loads. Most military bases remain unprotected against long-term interruption of electrical power.

In our study, we found that the 3 GW goal by 2025 is far short of the real need: About 17 GW of solar-generating capacity would be enough to fortify the U.S. military domestically. And more is needed to protect overseas bases, which are vulnerable because other countries' civilian electricity grids are as vulnerable as those in the U.S.

This is an enormous need for solar capacity: Only in 2015, after years of effort and investment, did the U.S. as a whole reach 20 GW of solar-generating capacity. And while our study found that the work will cost around $42 billion, it will save as much as $2 billion a year in electricity bills the military now pays to civilian suppliers.

Companies already serving the military are ready and able to do the work. For example, Lockheed Martin, a major defense contractor, has built a demonstration system at Fort Bliss in Texas with a 120-kilowatt solar array and a 300-kilowatt energy storage system. The equipment is connected together – and to buildings it serves – in what is called a "microgrid," which is normally connected to the regular commercial power grid but can be disconnected and become self-sustaining when disaster strikes.

To truly secure the U.S. military, every base will need this kind of system – supersized, including both rooftop and ground-based solar arrays. The costs are manageable – and the solar panels are largely one-time costs. In fact, we found that the military could generate all of its electricity from distributed renewable sources by 2025 using these types of microgrids – which would provide energy reliability and decrease costs. And it would largely eliminate a major group of very real threats to national security.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Output: The US military needs 17 GW of solar capacity by 2025 to guarantee functionality in the event of a catastrophic cyber attack on the US grid, according to Professor Joshua Pearce, academic engineer at Michigan Tech. As reliance on remotely piloted vehicles grows, distributed power generation and microgrids, comprising solar panels and energy storage facilities, are crucial to the country's military infrastructure, said Pearce. Lockheed Martin has developed a demonstration system at Fort Bliss in Texas, capable of producing reliable clean energy and reducing costs.


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Input:
GMO Internet unveils $89.5m cryptocurrency-mining plan
 GMOインターネットは本日2017年9月13日、先日9月7日に発表した仮想通貨のマイニング（採掘）事業について説明会を開催しました（参考「GMOインターネットが仮想通貨採掘に参入 最新チップ採用」）。

発表されたのは高性能でありながら低消費電力を実現する次世代7nmプロセスの半導体と使用電力削減を実現するデータセンターの存在で、GMOインターネット代表取締役会長兼社長・グループ代表 熊谷正寿 氏は「圧倒的な競争優位である確証を得られた」として、すでに半導体の論理設計は終了しており共同開発パートナーとも契約済み。北欧に設置するとしているデータセンターは2017年12月にも既存半導体を使った試験稼働がスタートする予定だといいます。

投資総額は、半導体の研究開発およびデータセンターの設営、運用まで含めおよそ総額100億円となる見込みで、GMOインターネットグループ企業でどう分配するか今後検討しながら事業を進めていく考えだといいます。

なぜGMOは仮想通貨マイニング事業に参入するのか？

代表取締役会長兼社長・グループ代表 熊谷正寿 氏

GMOインターネット代表取締役会長兼社長・グループ代表 熊谷正寿 氏は「インターネットの登場によって情報の壁が取り払われました。一部の人にコントロールされてきた情報が、今や世界に瞬時に伝わるようになったわけです。それにより企業活動にしても営業力よりもプロダクトやサービスが勝るところのほうが選ばれるようになりました。

仮想通貨はお金における境界線を無くす。これはインターネットが登場し、我々が事業を始めたときのような興奮を感じています。私たちは、インターネットの普及を支援し広めることを目的に1995年に創業し、今や上場企業9社・世界5000名を超える総合インターネットグループに成長しましたが、そのときと同じような気持ちに仮想通貨事業に参入します」と話します。

GMOインターネットグループは、サーバーのホスティングから金融サービスまで幅広く展開していますが、仮想通貨のマイニングには膨大な量の計算機を使い、大量の電力を消耗、かつ消費者保護の仕組みが不可欠であり、それらの全ての要素がGMOインターネットグループにあるとしています。

また、熊谷氏は「日本の旧財閥グループは自ら鉱山を掘ることで莫大な財を得ました。一方で、アメリカのゴールドラッシュではリーバイスを筆頭とする周辺事業者が利益を獲得しました。私たちが今回提供するクラウドマイニングセンター」事業は、自社でマイニングをする以外に、誰でもマイニングに参画できる「クラウドマイニングセンター」や共同開発するチップを搭載したマイニング用のボードを一般に向け販売も計画しており、まさにその両輪を一気に手がけたい」と述べ、収益面のみならず周辺事業をも盛り上げることで、仮想通貨マイニングおよび仮想通貨そのものの価値を高めていきたい考えであることを明らかにしました。

ビットコインマイニング事業の核心

マイニング事業責任者 奥村真史 氏

GMOインターネットは2年に渡り仮想通貨の知見をグループ社内に浸透させつつ検討を進めており、今回以下「3つのポイントをクリアした上で、仮想通貨マイニング事業参入を決めた」とマイニング事業責任者 の奥村真史 氏いいます。

・高性能・大量の計算機を使えるか

・消費電力をおさえられるか

・以下に電気代を安く調達できるか

パートナーとの独占契約によって開発が進められる次世代半導体は、同等性能の従来比約56％の電力で動作するものになっており、2018年明けにもテスト版が完成する見込みです。

このチップをモジュールカードに搭載。

さらにそのカードをシステームボードに複数挿入。

システムボードはサーバー運用で使われるブレードに収納されます。

ブレードを8台搭載できるタワーラック。

これをマイニングセンターと呼ばれるデータセンターに設置し運用するということになります。

設置予定のデータセンターは、消費電力＆コスト削減メリットを出すために日本の約3分の1の価格で利用できる北欧に設立を決めたと言います。実際の運用は2018年春を予定。

ハードウェア仕様（概算） 単体スペック ：計算性能 10TH/s

消費電力 500W以下（同一性能で56％以上削減）

投入マイニングチップ： 50000チップから段階的に増強

計算総パワー： 500PH/s（当初見込み・順次拡大予定）

設備：ラック、冷房、配電、消防、セキュリティ

電力： 再生可能エネルギー（地熱、水力）

対応仮想通貨：ビットコインおよびビットコインSHA256方式に対応した代表的なアルトコインの採掘を計画中 設置場所：北欧某所・再生可能エネルギーを一時エネルギーとする。寒冷な気候、冷房設備や冷房稼働電力が削減可能

100億の投資にはこれら全ての機材と、7nmプロセスで開発される次世代チップのさらに技術的高度化を狙った5nmや3.5nmプロセスの開発も含まれます。

また、このチップはPCIeという一般のPC向けのボードに搭載して販売する予定です。

PCIeインターフェイス、Win・Linux

1ボードあたり、8TH/s、300W

競合をみながらリーズナブルな設定を計画

事業の勝算は

常務取締役 次世代システム研究室室長 堀内敏明 氏

熊谷代表は「技術的な圧倒的優位性」を主張しましたが、果たしてマイニング事業の勝算はあるのでしょうか？2年にわたり同社常務取締役 次世代システム研究室室長として調査研究やノウハウの社内共有などの事業を展開してきた堀内敏明 氏は急成長を続けるビットコインマーケットの推移を挙げた上で「次世代チップや効率よく使える電力、そして十数年間数万台手がけてきたサーバー事業、FXなど金融サービスやそれで活用するビッグデータ処理や人工知能のノウハウ、これらを総動員できるGMOインターネットグループの優位性は世界で通用する」と言います。

GMOインターネットは今後、マイニングセンターの実験後の2018年春にも次世代チップでの運用をスタートする計画。規模としては世界的な影響力を持つことも想定されるが「あくまで新参者、仮想通貨コミュニティに学ばせてもらいながら事業を展開したい」と熊谷氏は語ります。

将来的には、マイニングしたビットコインをGMOコイン事業（仮想通貨の交換・取引事業）に提供し、流動性供給により取引機会を確保しつつ、取引できる通貨ペアや対応アルトコインの拡充、クロス円、クロスドル、クロス仮想通貨取引などへと拡大したい考えです。

【関連URL】

・GMOインターネットグループ

https://www.gmo.jp

・GMOインターネットが仮想通貨採掘に参入 最新チップ採用

http://techwave.jp/archives/gmo-internet-enters-into-cryptcurrency-mining.html

Output: GMO Internet said it will enter the cryptocurrency mining business with a data centre run on energy-efficient hardware it's developing with partners. The Japanese web-hosting firm has budgeted JPY10bn ($89.5m) for the project, including the opening this year of the data centre in northern Europe. It'll use semiconductors that are being developed especially for solving mining algorithms. The system will be able to operate on almost half the power requirements of other energy-hungry mining setups, which will give GMO an edge when combined with the company's expertise in data processing and artificial intelligence, it said.


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Input:
Samsung eyes autonomous driving market with Harman deal
 “It’s time to communicate our intent to enter the autonomous driving market,” Young Sohn, the company’s president and chief strategy officer, told Reuters. “Samsung has been incubating this business for quite a while.”

Samsung is set to announce on Thursday at the Frankfurt Motor Show that it has set up an automotive strategic business unit for autonomous and advanced driver assistance services (ADAS), together with a $300-million fund to invest in automotive start-ups and technology.

Output: South Korean conglomerate Samsung is set to follow IBM and Qualcomm and enter the self-driving car sector, following its $8bn acquisition of audio and auto parts supplier Harman. A formal announcement at the Frankfurt motor show is expected to reveal that it has set up an autonomous and advanced driver assistance services (ADAS) unit. "Samsung has been incubating this business for quite a while," said company president Young Sohn. The firm expects to have a viable autonomous strategy by 2020, and recently secured licences for pilot projects in South Korea and California.


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Input:
Beijing bike-sharing providers required to supply insurance
 Shared bikes clutter a street in Xicheng District, Beijing, Sept. 15, 2017. (Photo/ Ecns.cn）

(ECNS) -- Beijing is requiring providers of public shared bikes to purchase life accident insurance while banning children under 12 from using them and prohibiting commercial advertisements on the two-wheelers, according to a new guideline.

Jointly issued by Beijing's 11 governmental departments, the guideline aims to regulate the booming bike-sharing industry while acknowledging that it's a green solution to traffic congestion and flexible mobility.

The rules require all bikes to have GPS and meet safety standards. Users must register with their IDs and companies providing the bikes have the responsibility to remind them of safety information and provide accident insurance. The companies also need to open special accounts to save user deposits.

Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport said the guideline was based on studies of Mobike, Ofo and other startups as well as administration practices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu.

Beijing's 15 bike-sharing companies have altogether placed 2.35 million bikes across the city. New additions were banned in the city.

The guideline also made it clear that electric bikes will not be encouraged here.

Beijing is still working on more specific technical standards and parking requirements to be released later under the newly introduced guideline.

Output: Beijing's 11 governmental departments have collaborated to issue guidelines to providers of publicly shared bikes, including the mandatory purchasing of life accident insurance and the prohibition of use by children under the age of 12. In addition, all bikes must have GPS, meet minimum safety standards and may not carry advertising. The regulations were based on studies of bicycle-sharing start-ups Mobike and Ofo, as well as rules laid down in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu.


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Input:
Asian fintech more complementary than challenging to incumbants
 The Asia-Pacific region has established itself as a leader in fintech, but established banks there are unlikely to be replaced anytime soon, according to a white paper by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

“In Asia-Pacific, we have seen an ecosystem of fintech companies emerge that are focusing on the applicability of technology like blockchain, artificial intelligence and biometrics has emerged with the aim of working with conventional financial institutions, rather than replacing them,” Chris Foye, manager of financial crime compliance at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said in the paper.

The paper referred to a report by IDC Financial Insights finding that of fintech vendors that gain more than a third of their revenue from financial institutions, four of the top nine are in Asia.

“‘Challenger banks’ have emerged in the U.K. and elsewhere to disrupt big banking institutions, including crowdfunding/P2P platforms, payment processors and lenders,” Foye said. “Yet in recent years there have been no signs — and no instances — of banks disappearing due to tech interlopers.”

The key is finding ways to “encourage and regulate digital disruption at the same time,” according to John Price, fintech commissioner at the Australia Securities and Investments Commission.

(Related: International Regulatory Shift Could Tame Cryptocurrency Market)

Banks are ideally suited to that purpose, Foye said, being intimately familiar with regulation and compliance obligations, and many have established innovation labs to experiment with ways to bring innovation to consumers.

Output: Fintech firms in the Asia-Pacific region are working with established banks and financial institutions to implement technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and biometrics, according to a report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. In Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia the active development of tech "sandboxes" has been allowing financial firms to test technology without violating regulations. The dynamic contrasts with the way fintech firms in Europe position themselves as challengers to incumbent institutions.