As the 2021 year comes to a close and we anticipate what’s to come in 2022, it’s with great appreciation and honor to announce that Dogtown Media has received a global accolade from the major digital rating agency, Clutch.co, as a Top Global B2B Company for 2021.

After 10 years in the mobile app space, reaching a highly regarded and recognized global accolade is a major accomplishment and points to the continued dedication of Dogtown Media to their global client base and their hyper-focus on producing high-quality applications. 

Dogtown Media is Los Angeles’ leading mobile application company, working with organizations in nearly every vertical to bring their unique ideas and solutions to the app market. Dogtown Media prides itself on the satisfaction, approval, and happiness of our clients. And aims to create cutting-edge solutions that are pushing the boundaries of what’s thought o be possible in the mobile application space.

the mobile application space.

And for those who may be unaware, this Clutch.co accolade is only one in a series of major accolades awarded to Dogtown Media such as Top 2021 B2B Leader in Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, a top 2020 Service Provider, and the 27th Best B2B Service Provider in the World in 2019. All of these great accolades point to the dedication to craft and customer, and only scratch the surface of their long laundry list of accolades from Clutch and other prominent rating agencies in the mobile app space. 

“This recognition feels surreal and we are lost for words”, notes founder Marc Fischer. “We feel truly honored to be recognized by such a prestigious rating firm, and hope to continue to provide high-quality, meaningful applications for our clients today and far into the future. “

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

“They were an effective team, met deadlines, and created a great end product.“. — Director, Risk Comm Lab, Temple University

“They built an intuitive and simple design, and the team works quickly to address bugs and solve problems.”— Senior Ops Manager, Hospital Innovation Lab

Let’s build something amazing together! Connect with us and get a free tech consultation.

Mobile is the future. At Dogtown Media, we help you build your dream apps and technologies. Known as Los Angeles’ finest, we’ve delivered brilliantly created and intuitive products that help companies digitally transform. We are a proud team that puts our money where our mouths are.

With that in mind, we are absolutely excited to announce that we have teamed up with Top Design Firms, a creative portfolio site, for their inaugural launch!

Brought by the creators of Clutch, Top Design Firms is a new platform that is designed to help companies stay in the know about different industries and services providers. The site encompasses the IT, design, development, and marketing spaces, helping users find the right firm to help their unique needs.

According to Top Design Firms, we rank among the top 100 in 2021 in the category of artificial intelligence app development. As service providers, this highlight means a lot to us. Our team’s growth, dedication, and excellence is paying off, and this new partnership will take all those to a whole new level.

Want to know how we made it on their list? The Top Design Firms’ team evaluated our company based on a set of criteria, screening our past projects, recognitions, and market position. Our strong presence on Clutch also allowed us to rank highly.

With 27 reviews as of press time, Dogtown Media is honored to be a top-performer on Clutch. Here are some of our clients’ phenomenal reviews:

The fact that they’ve done this before for several other health systems is great. They know exactly how to tailor their product and what to ask the client. Their team has really perfected the art of this. They’re responsive and quick to make any improvements or changes. Dogtown Media is great to work with.”

— Senior Management Associate, Atrium Health

“As a program manager, having Dogtown Media always deliver on their promises is a big plus. They’ve never let me down. I also appreciated their ability to generate a report in the fashion requested. It serves everyone who works on the detailed aspects of the project and gives staff at the senior management level an overview of progress. We were very pleased with their work.” 

— Engineering Consultant, Biotronik

Ready to transform and innovate? Get in touch with Dogtown Media and let’s work hand in hand to bring your ideas into reality. Send us a message today and schedule a free consultation with our team. 

A new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm is testing just how important attractiveness is by attempting to figure out who you’ll find attractive and why you find that person attractive. A team comprised of researchers from the University of Helsinki and Copenhagen University generated images of fake faces that they then asked people to rate for attractiveness. It then used that feedback to further tune the AI algorithm, making it perform even better at generating fake attractive faces.

Adversarial Strengths

The application, which uses a machine learning development algorithm called generative adversarial network (GAN), creates fake faces by pitting two “adversarial” algorithms against one another. Adversarial means the two algorithms have differing goals: one, called the generator, creates images based on what it learned during its training phase, and the other (called the discriminator) tries to figure out which of the generated images are fake or real. The latter algorithm is tested with photos of real people and fake faces.

The two algorithms eventually start training each other in a loop that allows the generator and discriminator to improve their performance greatly with each cycle. The generator improves its ability to create realistic images, and the discriminator gets better at finding fake faces. This symbiotic relationship may first sound unproductive, but the algorithms work well together and also successfully test each other.

The GAN algorithm was trained on 200,000 images of celebrities, who usually have attractive faces—at least, according to Hollywood standards.

Testing Attractiveness

After the training phase, the generative algorithm developed hundreds of unique faces of people who it believed were of similar attractiveness as the celebrities it “knew” to be attractive. These fake faces were shown to real people who wore brain-computer interfacing equipment hooked up to an EEG (electroencephalography) reader. Using this data, the researchers could measure each person’s brain activity for each photo they saw, down to the neuron’s exact moment of firing.

When a participant saw an image of an attractive face, there was a marked increase in brain activity. This could be partially attributed to the fact that the participants were told to focus harder on faces they thought were attractive. The participants weren’t asked to articulate what specifically they found attractive about any of the images. Instead, the AI stored the EEG datapoints and found the commonalities within each photo.

Those commonalities could be big eyes, high cheekbones, a medium-sized nose, wide-set eyes, small ears, or any other facial feature. The AI found that most participants liked the same aspects of a face in an image. In other words, humans seem to favor most of the same facial features when asked about attractiveness.

Using the common features found by the algorithm, the team distilled this data back down in a format that could be fed to the GAN algorithm. The generative algorithm then took this new information as instruction in making its second batch of attractive faces. Now, the faces had more chiseled jawlines, darker and more mysterious eyes, curlier hair, and more features that we find conventionally more attractive.

Real Looks vs. Fake Faces

When this second round of generated photos was shown to participants, they were instructed to rate the face as attractive or unattractive. For 87% of the newly-generated photos, participants rated the face as attractive. The remaining 13% were either too perfect or there was something that seemed off about their facial features. Even though the participants were told to focus on attractiveness, they were unable to look past how some faces looked fake or off.

AI developers and AI ethics experts worry that this type of well-performing technology could be used to generate faces that look realistic for the purposes of deepfake videos or fake images. Not only do the faces not need to be real, they don’t need to be attractive to cause issues for people or even nations. And the consequences don’t need to be so far-reaching: even social media accounts used for a malicious purpose could use AI-generated fake faces to blend in with the crowd. They might even look normal and real at a quick glance. After all, how much detail can you see in a small circular avatar?

The Future of Dating?

The future of this type of technology extends far beyond dating and social media. It could be used for political gain or even start a war. The research team is interested in advancing the technology, and it has some ideas for how to use their application in a productive and non-malicious way. Associate professor at the University of Helsinki, Tuukka Ruotsalo, says that the team hopes to dig deeper into attractiveness, as well as explore stereotypes, biases, preferences, and individual differences.

Have you come across an AI-generated face that was attractive but looked off? How did it make you feel? Let us know in the comments below!

COVID-19 has forever changed how we approach work. When the pandemic began, Dogtown Media said goodbye to its Los Angeles-based development headquarters for the past decade. We left this office, moved the entire team to remote work, and don’t have any intention of going back. The future of work has changed, and we’ve changed with it. Here are the trends that I believe we can expect to see soon.

Remote Work Will Provide More Opportunities for Job Candidates

Moving to San Francisco used to be a prerequisite for working in the high-tech industry. Today, this is no longer the case. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to figure out how to build cohesive remote work teams fast. And with this new change comes new opportunities.

Organizations will hire more remote workers than ever before now that they know how to get things done outside of an office environment. This is great news for many employees — it means they have better access to more job opportunities. But it also yields some other pertinent benefits worth mentioning.

Knowledge workers can now move to places they want to live, not somewhere they have to work. We can already see this occurring: A recent survey of tech professionals discovered that an average of 30% of respondents had left major metropolises such as Seattle and Los Angeles for greener pastures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Don’t think this trend will continue? Another survey found that 81% of tech workers are either considering or making plans to move to more affordable cities.

The financial incentives certainly play a role in this exodus. Remote workers earn $4,000 more per year than their in-office counterparts, and 30% save $5,000 more per year due to less commuting and eating at home. Moving to smaller, cheaper towns allows these employees to stretch their dollar even further. But if we put money aside, the advantages are still substantial. By choosing where they live, remote workers attain better control over their personal lives. Whether you want to get outdoors more or start raising a family, this is certainly an appealing factor.

Office Models Will Adapt to the Future of Work

On the other side of the equation, remote work also offers a significant financial benefit for organizations that embrace it: Companies can save $11,000 annually for each employee who works remotely half of the time. With that said, it’s no wonder that a Gartner survey of 127 business leaders found that 82% of respondents plan to maintain a hybrid or remote work dynamic after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

While the same survey elucidated that 47% of business leaders plan to let employees work from home permanently, it also found that another 43% of respondents plan to implement a flexible hybrid work dynamic going forward. For example, some organizations will ask their team members to come into the office two or three days a week instead of five. This will transform how companies structure their headquarters and satellite offices.

Many enterprises are already restructuring how they’re organized. For instance, outdoor retailer REI recently sold its newly-constructed headquarters building to Facebook to pursue a more distributed work model. Known as a hub-and-spoke office model, this paradigm allows companies to shed office space and slim down headquarters while maintaining optimal productivity.

In a hub-and-spoke office model, a smaller headquarters (the hub) and satellite offices (the spokes) serve as locations for employees to congregate, communicate, and collaborate. Instead of long commutes, team members can meet at the hub or spoke that’s most convenient for them. This lean approach eschews large underutilized offices in favor of lean spaces that can accommodate employees who come in two or three times a week and work the rest remotely.

Every Work-Related Industry Hit by COVID-19 Will Reinvent Itself

COVID-19 has proven that change is the only constant in our lives. Although, for many industries related to work, adapting is easier said than done. Co-working and commercial real estate were hit particularly hard during this pandemic. Fortunately, both will bounce back — but it won’t happen without preparing for the future of work.

As companies move towards more flexible hybrid work dynamics and hub-and-spoke paradigms, office-on-demand models will make more sense for many organizations instead of overpaying for underutilized real estate. WeWork and other co-working spaces will be the biggest beneficiaries of this trend. They can provide these businesses with turnkey solutions and an intimate office footprint where team members can work together. In such scenarios, “hot desks” that employees coming in and out can use for the week will replace dedicated workspaces.

Commercial real estate will likely hurt for some time due to all of these pandemic-induced work changes. But it will eventually reinvent itself. This industry will pivot more to mixed-use buildings; a proportion of space will be reserved for industrial or work-related endeavors while the rest is used for residential property. With that said, I’m sure the day will come when a remote work employee has to attend a meeting at one of their company’s “spoke” offices, and it happens to be located a few floors down from their loft!

The Future of Work Is Closer Than It Feels

Several promising COVID-19 vaccines are being expedited to roll out to healthcare workers and the general population. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has even alluded to the possibility that we may all return to a normal semblance of life by this summer. But although COVID-19 may soon be in humanity’s rearview, its effect on how companies get things done will be everlasting.

COVID-19 has accelerated the future of work to an unprecedented pace. This means that we fortunately won’t have to wait long to see the fruition of these predictions. Are you ready?

Want to leverage emerging technologies like 5G, AI, and IoT in your organization? Get in touch with my team for a Free Consultation.

Digital vaccine passports have become a contentious topic over the past few months. Whether you agree with their necessity or not, one thing’s become readily apparent: They are coming. But these passports may not take on the shape or format you imagined.

The U.S. government will not be implementing a vaccine passport. Instead, it is handing off the responsibilities of building and enforcing one to private enterprise. The reasoning behind this decision? Private organizations can solve this problem, faster, better, and more efficiently. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be releasing guidelines for how to develop a vaccine passport in the coming weeks. But if you’re eager to get started on developing yours, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog post, we’ll give you a glimpse into our future with digital vaccine passports. We’ll also examine some of the common pitfalls that this paradigm is susceptible to. Lastly, we’ll round up this piece with a checklist that health tech developers should try their best to meet when creating a digital vaccine passport. Let’s get started!

Our (Near) Future With Digital Vaccine Passports

Whether you want to visit a certain country, partake in events like attending a concert, or work in a particular sector, it’s likely that you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve received your COVID-19 vaccine in the near future. For example, unless they have very good reason to abstain from it, healthcare employees will need to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. This also goes for frontline workers across industries. Companies have the right to fire an employee or forgo renewing their contract if they have not been vaccinated.

Across the world, many organizations and countries are already taking action to implement vaccine passports and regulations of some kind. For instance, E.U. legislators recently proposed rules for a certificate system to verify the vaccine status of people moving between this union of 27 member countries. While those who pass these checkpoints can travel without the need for quarantine restrictions or additional tests, anyone who fails to comply with these regulations could be denied admittance or forced into quarantine.

While the concept of vaccine passports may seem stringent to some, its success is readily apparent in Israel. The country has issued “green passes” to citizens who are fully vaccinated. With this pass, people are free to eat at restaurants, socialize at bars, and attend concerts or sporting events. Public health experts believe that the country’s vaccine passport implementation has helped tremendously in keeping its COVID-19 numbers down and allowing its economy to reopen safely.

The arrival of vaccine passports will cause a big shift in society. After all, how do you really prove you’ve been vaccinated? In the U.S., people receive flimsy cards as proof. But these can potentially be forged and possibly lost. Well, that’s why vaccine passports are going digital. But there are still myriad pitfalls to address for this concept to be a success.

Potential Pitfalls of Digital Vaccine Passports

As we’ve alluded to with forgery, security is a prime concern when it comes to vaccine passports. But there’s also the potential issue of non-compliance. People as well as private and even public organizations may not follow the regulations that come with these passports. There’s also the question of fragmentation — as we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, each state took different measures to stave off this illness from spreading. If you were in Los Angeles, California, you probably had a drastically different experience than a citizen of Miami, Florida.

The problem of non-uniformity in vaccine passports only becomes magnified when you examine the entire world. Different vaccines are being distributed and used around the globe, and what’s permitted in one country may not be allowed in another. For example, China does not accept travelers who received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Such fragmentation between countries, along with the fact that digital vaccine passports will be developed by different organizations, could make things quite confusing.

Then there’s the question of time. Currently, there isn’t much data to go off of to see how long the COVID-19 vaccines are effective for. A quick Google search shows that there’s conflicting information regarding each specific vaccine’s efficacy against the COVID-19 variants circulating throughout the world. It’s likely that we’ll need to receive annual booster shots to ensure proper protection against this virus, so we’ll also need to factor in proof of these into passport iterations.

Clearly, several questions must be answered. While digital vaccine passports may differ from one another, there are a few key factors that all of them should possess.

Best Practices for Building a Digital Vaccine Passport

Here are some elements that every digital vaccine passport should have:

An Intuitive User Experience

A digital vaccine passport should be seamless to access and use. It should also enable the passport holder to easily disclose the minimum amount of information needed for verification. This can be difficult since the information required to be disclosed is dependent on the use case.

Privacy Protection Must Be Prioritized

Obviously, digital vaccine passports should be forgery-proof. But that’s only one segment of security in a long list of many. Be prudent and examine each component of your digital vaccine passport and every step required in a verification process. Identify any weak areas and ask yourself how you can strengthen them to ensure complete end-to-end privacy.

Build Trust Through Credibility and Transparency

Digital vaccine passports must strike a fine balance between information security and transparency. They must also work and be recognized across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Your solution should not only be multi-lingual but also credible enough that it’s recognized by various organizations such as airline companies and foreign governments. It should also be transparent enough to pass stringent requirements set forth by these organizations in a timely manner.

Data Portability

At the end of the day, digital vaccine passports are all about data. And developers of these passports must prioritize data portability. Passport holders should have complete control over the data they choose to share. Create your solution with granular data-sharing in mind so that users can easily compartmentalize and choose what information is displayed for various use cases.

Factoring In the Future

We believe that digital vaccine passports will become an essential part of humanity’s future. With that said, it’s vital for developers of these solutions to plan with the future in mind. This can be difficult to do since nobody knows what the future holds as far as health crises like the pandemic go. But it can help to examine the potential benefits that emerging technologies offer.

For instance, blockchain is a strong candidate for a tech stack that supports vaccine passports. it’s transparent, encrypted, and private. Not only does it store information securely, but you can choose who you share it with. And if you end up needing booster shots in the future to protect against COVID-19 variants, it can easily log that.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of digital vaccine passports. What components would you like to see in these health tech solutions. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The goal of robotics is to develop and construct meaningful machines that will support and help human processes. The multidisciplinary field fuses technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning together to develop innovative solutions.

Dogtown Media is Los Angeles’ leading robotics company, working with enterprises and organizations to help their businesses. Our team prides itself on the satisfaction, approval, and happiness of our clients. We want to create cutting-edge solutions to solve simple frustrations and tackle business hurdles.

Just recently, Dogtown Media was hailed as a top agency on Clutch for its excellence in AI for robotics. If you’re not familiar, Clutch is a B2B review platform based in Washington, DC. The site is well respected in the space for its commitment to providing data-driven content and verifying client reviews.

This recognition feels surreal and we are lost for words. Our team wants to send its sincerest thanks to Clutch for this award. We believe that this award is a great sign for our 2021 run, and we are looking forward to a prosperous year. 

 We know that this recognition was made possible thanks to our clients’ amazing feedback. We owe this success to our clients especially those who left us their review on Clutch. 

Here are some of the quotes that stood out most to us:

“They’re a small shop that’s motivated and offers a comprehensive list of services and capabilities. They’re accountable and willing to work by our side to make the best product possible. The entire team is professional and eager to solve our problems.” — Founder, Mobile Sales Training Company

“Dogtown Media developed a solution for a project considered impossible to do in the tech world. They’ve taken every goal we’ve had and delivered above and beyond our expectations, beating our requirement of achieving a 50% accuracy rating on visual search capabilities with a software that is over 90% accurate.” — CTO, Innovengine

Let’s build something amazing together! Connect with us and get a free tech consultation.

Telehealth has changed how we treat and care for those who have medical maladies and are vulnerable. The latest innovations in this field are enabling people to live safer, fuller lives without the need for constant human supervision. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear; more healthcare facilities than ever before are embracing telemedicine in an effort to keep patients from in-person appointments that risk exposure to the deadly virus.

Recent telehealth innovations such as wearables heavily rely on the Internet of Things. With this technological paradigm, we can securely transmit and analyze data in order to unearth life-improving care plans. These capabilities allow aging populations to continue to live in their own homes while reducing the burden that many care facilities are experiencing at the moment. In this post, we’ll examine the benefits of furthering telehealth connectivity innovation and the factors needed to make it happen.

Enabling Patient Independence

Good connectivity is essential for three types of telehealth monitoring: passive, active, and condition.

Passive monitoring deals with medical applications and technologies in the patient’s home that quietly monitor his or her behavior. These devices usually only initiate action if they notice something concerning. For instance, the Alcuris Memo Hub connects a variety of smart devices around a patient’s home, like a tea kettle, TV, and lighting. If this platform notices a change in the patient’s typical pattern of behavior, it will issue an alert. It can also observe and trigger an alert for gradual changes that may indicate a revision to a health regimen is required.

Active monitoring entails devices such as panic buttons and two-way intercoms. In summation, these devices require proactive action, either from the patient or a caretaker.

Lastly, as its name implies, condition monitoring involves the monitoring of specific health conditions. It combines aspects of the first two approaches we’ve discussed with detailed health data, like blood pressure, heart rate, and movement.

Simplicity Is Essential

Digital health innovations help improve the quality of life for aging populations as well as patients living with chronic conditions and disabilities. They also help lower the costs and resources needed for adequate healthcare delivery for these cases.

Ensuring that telehealth devices have enough connectivity to reliably capture, share, and analyze data is absolutely necessary. Without proper connectivity, wrong conclusions (and consequently, outcomes) could be reached. But these connected devices need one more feature to take telehealth to the next level: the ability to work right out of the box.

Telehealth device manufacturers should configure their devices to seamlessly connect to a healthcare provider’s system seamlessly without any complexities. They should also be able to work anywhere, whether that’s Beijing or Los Angeles. Making telehealth devices and platforms plug-and-play is imperative since a large portion of their audience may not be tech-savvy or have the time to set up complicated systems.

Overcoming Connectivity Obstacles

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, chances are good that you have some experience with mobile phones. This means you’re also painfully familiar with the occurrence of black spots where your mobile device can’t receive a strong, reliable signal. Can you imagine this conundrum for a device that your life depends on?

When a patient’s life is on the line, we cannot compromise on connectivity. To mitigate this issue, telehealth devices should be capable of selecting the best network based on its location and even change between networks to minimize drop-out time. During a critical moment, a dropped connection can mean the difference between life and death. So any device in the telehealth market should offer strong, reliable, and continuous connectivity.

To ensure optimal connectivity, medical device makers must consider its importance from the start of the design process. This often translates to a few common factors for the device. For example, it must be lightweight, easy to operate, robust, and unobtrusive. Often, these elements restrict the design of these devices, which is something that manufacturers may have not dealt with before if they previously focused on larger or fixed devices.

On top of this, manufacturers must also think through what occurs at the back end of their telehealth devices. Do they connect to a cloud service through which analyses are run? Or is the data being transmitted to another human who needs convenient access to it? In this case, how should the information be presented? Alongside connectivity, this focus on communication must also be considered at the beginning of the design stage.

Don’t Forget Security

End-to-end security is always crucial for anything that handles sensitive data such as telehealth devices. Whether it’s your hardware or software, all of your connectivity platforms must be secured properly in order for your device to work effectively.

Unfortunately, several consumer SIMs lack advanced security protocols. They actually send data over standard internet channels, which increases the risk of this information being stolen or lost. To mitigate this, prioritize security early on in the device design phase.

Numerous IoT manufacturers treat device security as an afterthought. As we know from the IoT industry’s track record with data breaches, this has not worked out well. The same mistakes cannot be made when it comes to the personal data of patients.

Dedicated end-to-end security solutions are usually the best for telehealth devices. This involves measures such as data encryption at the device level, communication through trusted private networks and secure gateways, authentication, and authorization.

If you want to take things a step further (which is never a bad idea), add in data flow monitoring tools to detect any unusual activity. These could be your first indicators of a malicious attack taking place. Lastly, consider consulting a third-party pen tester before deployment.

Are You Ready for the Future of Telehealth?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of how connectivity can help accelerate telehealth innovation. It may not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think of new capabilities in digital medicine, but it’s certainly among the most important. By emphasizing connectivity during the design of a telehealth device, you’re able to give patients and providers more peace of mind and unlock better outcomes for both parties.

Have you had any unusual experiences with telehealth connectivity? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

We’ve barely just begun 2021, but it’s already shaping up to be an amazing year for Dogtown Media. We were recently featured as a top machine learning developer by Techreviewer.co! Thanks so much to our clients, team, and community for your continued support — you’re the ones who make this possible.

Techreviewer is a trusted B2B information platform that regularly conducts market research across numerous sectors, such as development, design, and marketing. Its meticulous methodology quickly helps companies identify high-quality services for a variety of complex technical tasks. Whether you’re searching for experts in AI app development, the Internet of Things, or business analysis, Techreviewer’s analysts can expedite the process of finding the best technology partner for your business needs.

For Techreviewer’s list of 2021’s top machine learning companies, the review hub evaluated each contender by examining its demonstrated expertise, experience, quality of services, and reliability to deliver products that went above and beyond clients’ requirements. That last component was especially crucial in elucidating the top players in this sector; the product must leverage key aspects of machine learning to help transform a client’s digital presence.

Over 500 companies were considered for this prestigious award. We’re extremely proud to be able to say that we made the cut after quite a few time-intensive assessments!

Besides being recognized as one of the best machine learning app developers of 2021, we’re also grateful to have been featured as one of 2021’s best iPhone app developers as well as a top mobile app developer in Los Angeles by Digital.com!

With this award, we couldn’t be more excited to see what else is in store for our company in the new year! Thanks to Techreviewer for recognizing our hard work. And thanks again to our clients, team, and community — we couldn’t have done this without you!

About TechReviewer.co

Techreviewer a trusted analytical hub that carries out studies and compiles the lists of top development, design and marketing companies. The platform helps to find the best companies that provide high-quality IT services for technical support, development, system integration, AI, Big Data, and business analysis. As a result of objective market analysis, the Techreviewer platform determines the most successful and reliable IT companies and makes top ratings for each of the service categories. Techreviewer’s ranking lists help organizations select the right technology partner for their business needs.

And although this brings about more efficiency and productivity at the end of the day, we must still prioritize cybersecurity in IoT applications used by the media and entertainment industries. Without adequate and robust security protocols, there are substantial consequences. For example, major releases could lose significant amounts of revenue by hackers who publish the film ahead of its premiere.

IoT in Entertainment

IoT is being used in media and entertainment applications in a variety of interesting ways from Hollywood in Los Angeles to Bollywood in Bombay. First, the industry is using IoT to increase its customer base and profitability. By getting an idea of their customers, preferences, and household demographics, companies are building more accurate profiles of where their revenue comes from using data taken from social media, wearables, mobile devices, surveys, and more. This allows companies to develop or acquire more content that meshes well with their main audience, which in turn increases profit.

Having user profiles of customers yields incredible insights through advertising efforts. Ads can be targeted more granularly and with more focused copy and visuals. As the effectiveness of an ad campaign grows, the return on investment exponentially increases for the company by reaching other customers that have similar traits and by convincing existing customers to buy.

On the other hand, companies can include better-targeted advertisements in their media according to what their customers prefer in content and ad delivery. They can also schedule the media to run at a time when their customers are already watching something else they enjoy. Lastly, companies can run marketing campaigns and promotional offers at highly effective times as a result of knowing their customer base.

For theme parks and cruises, sensors and electronic bracelets create a new technological, hands-free experience for customers. These bracelets allow theme parks and cruises to track their customers’ movements for analysis and optimization. IoT also helps companies utilize preventative maintenance of media equipment based on sensor data.

While IoT is bringing about better customer experiences for the media and entertainment industry, it’s also opening up companies to cybersecurity incidents and hacking attempts. The industry is already being attacked frequently, especially around big releases, but we can fortify our efforts to prevent malicious attackers from successfully gaining access to sensitive and private data.

The Current State of Security

It’s crucial for media and entertainment companies to figure out what their customers want, and the data generated and collected in the search for answers to these problems are highly sought-after. Data usage is prominent in the industry, and success depends upon relationships between partners, the company and the customer, and the customers and the content. Thus, it’s imperative that a company’s reputation is known to be secure, trustworthy, and friendly.

When a company in the industry is developing and distributing a creative product, it uses outside vendors often to achieve various goals. For this purpose, IoT is a great tool. But because this creates more complexity in workflows and processes, it can become complicated to secure assets and information.

According to research by Hiscox, more than half of surveyed media and entertainment companies had three or more cyber attacks over a 12-month period. This is no small number, especially because these companies are managing extremely sensitive data like financial, consumer, and personal information. What’s worse is that outside vendors hired in the past are also being targeted, which could compromise the entire supply chain.

Strengthening Security

To reinforce a media and entertainment company’s security procedures and protocols, there are three key areas to concentrate on. First, the prevention of attacks and successful hacks is paramount. This can be accomplished by accurately assessing any and all risks and vulnerabilities to the company and its data. Cybersecurity should be prioritized from the start of any project that involves IoT technology and devices or sensors. Staff must be trained to adequately recognize when a malicious attack is occurring.

Second, detection is an important area to focus on. Track all attempted hacks and attacks and analyze the time of day, day of the week, country of origin, and other dimensions to find a pattern that you can act upon. Develop a coordinated response plan to enact if an attack is discovered. And set up a secure portal that employees can use to report any issues or intrusions.

Lastly, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. Implementing IoT technology is no small or inexpensive feat. After you’ve worked hard to develop a plan, train employees, and analyze past attack attempts, don’t let your efforts fall to the wayside. Mitigation involves prevention, detection, containment, and assessment of cyberattacks. It also includes a continuous review of security upgrades and updates to devices and software.

Many industries, including the media and entertainment industry, overestimate security and underestimate their risk. In almost all cases, your company could always be doing more to protect your assets and information.

IoT Innovation in Entertainment Is Just Starting

Don’t delay in implementing IoT technology if it’s the right tool to take your company and profits to the next level. Cybersecurity is a major concern, but it mustn’t scare you from utilizing IoT in your business operations — the benefits far outweigh the negatives. To be safe, keep your assets well-guarded with a strong security plan and solution from the get-go.

How have you experienced IoT in entertainment? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked unfathomable damage on the lives of Americans and the country’s economy. To move forward in the right direction, we must take new and drastic action to address this crisis. This includes employing cutting-edge developments in medical technology to the best of our abilities.

Dogtown Media fully supports the Connected Health Initiative’s request for the Biden-Harris administration to extend the existing declaration of a public health emergency (PHE) so that the use of connected health technology is available to all U.S. citizens during this time of need.

Innovation Can Help Flatten the Infection Curve

It has become painfully clear that we must leverage connected medical technologies such as telehealth if we are to ever beat COVID-19. But antiquated regulations will stand in the way unless the declaration of PHE is extended. The Connected Health Initiative (CHI) aims to make that happen.

An initiative of ACT | The App Association, CHI is a coalition of healthcare industry stakeholders and partners that strives to lead efforts to effect policy changes that allow medical providers to harness the power of technology in order to improve patient engagement and outcomes. Its steering committee consists of the American Medical Association, Apple, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Dogtown Media, and many other notable figures in the tech and healthcare space.

CHI recently sent a letter to the Biden-Harris administration that not only congratulates them on their victory in the 2020 Presidential Election but also urges them to continue to use digital health technologies such as telemedicine, remote patient monitoring (RPM), artificial intelligence (AI), and other modalities to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Each of these innovative modalities allow us to implement effective and necessary measures to flatten the infection curve in the United States.

Telehealth Technology Is Key to Managing The COVID-19 Crisis

Alongside CHI, we believe that congressional action focused on permanent telehealth policy changes can help provide immense relief from the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Such changes would play an integral role in defeating this crisis. Not only this, but permanent policy changes for connected healthcare tools can also help to modernize American medical laws so that they correctly reflect the value that these paradigms offer. We also think that Congress should prioritize providing all Americans with the high-speed broadband infrastructure needed to use these digital health tools.

Of course, we know that pursuing these congressional efforts can take time. So it’s critical that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) continues to extend the existing declaration of PHE. This provides millions of Americans with the allowance to use connected health technology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth and RPM have been invaluable in preventing, diagnosing, and treating American citizens as we all adhere to social distancing guidelines. These must not only be maintained throughout the entirety of the pandemic but also built upon so that this country is better equipped to handle future health crises.

Should the PHE expire before the Biden-Harris administration is in place, the new HHS Secretary under them should immediately reinstate it.

Actions That Can Help Us Fully Leverage Digital Health Tools

CHI’s letter to the Biden-Harris administration is meticulous in detail and spans several suggestions. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most crucial ones:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should ensure that Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) and rural health clinics (RHC) can provide RPM services.

Both FQHCs and RHCs are key actors on the frontlines of America’s medical ecosystem. Thus, they should be able to monitor key patient-generated health data (PGHD) metrics for the populations they are serving on a permanent basis. This includes those receiving treatment for COVID-19.

CMS should provide Anti-Kickback Statute relief for digital health.

Many clinicians are remotely monitoring COVID-19 patients. This has raised concerns that any equipment or access to software platforms provided free of charge could inadvertently trigger Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) liability. The CHI has requested that HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provide clarity that access to software platforms for PGHD or telehealth at low or no cost doesn’t violate the AKS.

HHS should provide certainty with regard to HIPAA’s application to various remote technologies during the PHE.

The HHS’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced enforcement discretion for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that clarifies that the use of private, secure telehealth tools which aren’t part of the provider’s official offerings will not draw a penalty as long as the provider makes their patients aware of the risks. CHI is urging OCR to issue guidance that certain telehealth tools are merely “conduits” and thus don’t require business associate agreements (BAAs). The guidance should also clarify that the providers of these telehealth services should only store electronic protected health information (ePHI) temporarily.

HHS should leverage AI-enabled technology to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

There’s no doubt that AI has incredible technology to augment healthcare by preventing hospitalizations, reducing complications, and improving patient engagement. Unsurprisingly, public health experts and providers are already using AI to combat COVID-19. This has given rise to a variety of opportunities and challenges for U.S. policymakers to consider (e.g., bias, inclusion, and transparency). As a coalition with many leading developers of AI, CHI urges for the design of healthcare AI systems to be informed by human-centered design, real-world workflow, and end-user needs.

Unrecognizable woman doctor using tablet in office with double exposure of creative ncov coronavirus covid 19 treatment and vaccine search icons. Toned blurry image

COVID-19 Will Come To an End

From New York City to our hometown of Los Angeles, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented tragedy and hardships to many of our lives. The Biden-Harris administration represents an opportunity for America to tackle this problem in a new and better way.

We stand by CHI’s request of the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect to fully leverage telehealth and other emerging technologies to mitigate this crisis. With time, proper guidance, and unity, this too shall pass.