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Apple and Healthcare

Is Apple following in the footsteps of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase in creating their own network of Health Clinics?

It’s quite possible that Apple’s been working on this initiative for at least 2 years if not more given that the Apple Watch has been around for a good part of almost 3 years, released on April 24, 2015. But research on the device might’ve started 2 years prior.

Recent History

The Apple Watch gave apple a direct link to enabling health-conscious individuals and athletes a way to track their heart-rate and other health-related information with the well-established Health app which had successfully been tracking other human activities such as counting steps, flights climbed, heart-monitoring & blood pressure monitoring via 3rd party apps and devices.With the launch of HealthKit in 2014 with support and research partnership with major US hospitals such as Mayo Clinic, Ochsner, Stanford University Hospital and Duke University to name a few. Apple had already built relationships with Hospitals and Clinics.

As the Apple Watch was released it helped health providers to track heart-rate directly from the users and this cause a relationship as well as research information coming back to health providers via the ResearchKit in 100 folds.

Not only were the people using their Apple Watches to track their own fitness, health-care providers had access to data that was previously not possible to acquire with such ease.

The Now

As it turns out, Apple had been working in secrecy (big surprise) with other providers and creating these clinics to start with providing support and health to their own employees. It’s certainly a noble movement and completely makes sense. Why not provide healthcare (a major requirement for being a human being) everyone like literally everyone needs access to these basic needs. So a company creating solutions for their own employees simply falls into place as part of the benefit an employee can not have to think twice about.

We spend 1/3rd if not more of our life working for a company, spending our precious time in creating solutions and helping the overall cause of the company forward. No matter who you are. You need healthcare, and if the company you work for is paying for your health-insurance the Health industry has been taking advantage of the corporations (LOL) in charging more and more over the years.

Hopefully, this move will start the much-needed disruption.

In health and wellness. Let us embrace this new future with open arms and Apple Watches for everyone 🙂

 

This article was originally published on Linkedin.com pulse.

Hello, Sketch 49!

Hello, Sketch 49!

Rejoice!

Sketch 49 brings us a killer update, reducing the need for a few 3rd party plugins but also giving a head start for new users. Speeding up the user experience and interaction design for the 1000s of UX designers out there.

When you launch Sketch 49 and start with their Tutorial File, you’ll notice the flag icon (this is the start point)

You can enable the “Flag” icon to show up next to your artboard by enabling it on the “Preview” window.

Recalling the history

When Adobe introduced Adobe XD we were all so amazed by the inherent prototyping ability.

Of course, Adobe built the app purely based on the number of prototyping apps emerging for the UX community.

With apps like Flinto, Marvel, Atomic, Kite, Origami, Principle, Framer and many more. Each offering the user to let them create a prototype that can show off to the end user or developer how the application they’re designing work.

Adobe XD took about a year to mature as I remember wanting to get my hands on it when I read and experienced the keynote in 2015, the first beta was here around spring 2016 lacking a lot of features and affordances we were used to in Sketch, Photoshop, and Illustrator. I had a go at the beta build and subsequent updates bringing more and more features. Finally around fall of 2017 Adobe XD could stand on its own with quick abilities to copy your layers from Photoshop and Illustrator leaving Sketch in the dust.

Adobe XD enabled prototyping and ability to share via the web, a feature that was available in Sketch only with the use of third-party plugins by InVision as Craft Labs.

With Sketch 47 we started to see Sketch Cloud and it matured with Sketch 48, with the ability to share entire Sketch files in read-only mode.

Where there’s a demand there’s development. The folks over at Sketch are geniuses, they finally integrated some of the awesome features surfaced by plugins and 3rd party developers, prototyping, collaborations, cloud sharing, shared libraries to name a few.

This is an initial response to an article by SketchAppSources on Medium.

Other cool apps that have updated and build on this power is Zeplin, they recount how they’re taking this information and enabling preview mode on their own web-app.

Advice from 41 year old me to 21 year old me

Advice from 41 year old me to 21 year old me

I’m sure you’ve already heard the phrase ‘Time Flies…’ Well I’m certain and it sure does! I know you’ve just made a major move in your life. Having graduated from high school and moving to completely different country and totally new people. Lucky for you though most of the people you’re going to encounter are related to you in one way or another.

“Two people holding cups of coffee while seated opposite to each other at a round table” by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

You’ll get advice from a lot of people, mostly uncles and aunts. One thing you want to make sure is to keep in touch with your parents. Find a way to talk to them on a weekly basis, if not daily (since you’re moving away from your parents and siblings).

(more…)

How to get it back?

What am I talking about? Yeah most of the times I’m not sure myself but I’m certain that the more I do this the better I should get at it.

I’m talking about writing, blogging, constantly cresting content and talking about my passions.

In the past 5 years I’ve gotten involved in many projects outside of work which fall in categories from film making, cycling, post production, video editing, photography, wood working, server setup and management as well as playing with paper, card stock and vinyl cutter.

I’m fascinated by the level of depth and expertise that can be achieved in each of those areas of interest.

I also keep switching up the path I want to take to achieve satisfaction and a peace of mind.

Recently I’ve gotten back into learning more about blockchain technology by taking some introductory courses to reteach myself how it works and the purpose behind it as well being able to speak to it at an intelligent manner.

I’ve also enrolled in numerous classes on Udemy.com and Masterclass.com with the most popular ones completed first, these courses include

  1. Intro to blockchain
  2. iOS 10 complete with 18 apps
  3. Developing for blockchain
  4. Super learning
  5. How to make it big on Udemy
  6. How to sell on amazon (with your own products)
  7. Mobile App design

Now is the time to go out and make it happen.