At Dogtown Media, we specialize in mobile app development, grounded with expert knowledge in the internet of things, fintech, medical tech and user interface design. We are determined to take on your next project and create an app that will help your business grow.

Clutch, a company that publishes unbiased reviews of B2B companies, has featured us once again in a recent press release of top California mobile app development companies.  We’re excited to share that we have been featured highly in their directory list of the top mobile app developers in California. This honor adds to our previous recognition as a top California Mobile App Development Company on DesignRush.

Clutch’s ranking algorithm takes many pieces of information into account when displaying companies on their directory pages; the most important part of Clutch’s ranking algorithm is client reviews. To date, we have received over 20 positive reviews. Our clients aren’t shy to share their successes with Clutch:

“Dogtown Media developed a solution for a project considered impossible to do in the tech world.”

“They were extremely responsive and supportive and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

“Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

In addition to our feature on Clutch, we were also mentioned on their sister-site, The Manifest.  We are pleased to announce that we were listed as one of the top mobile app development companies in the world on The Manifest.

Here at Dogtown Media, we are ready to improve your business by creating vital apps that will allow your business to access your consumers at all times.  Our team will work directly with your business to assess how to stand apart from competitors as well. We look forward to taking on your next project!

Each year, Clutch publishes a press release naming the top service providers within certain industries. We’re proud to announce that Clutch has named Dogtown Media among the world’s leading mobile app developers this year.

We’ve also been listed on Clutch’s sister website, The Manifest, a B2B news website that helps buyers through the process of selecting a vendor. Manifest also ranked Dogtown as one of the top app development companies in the world.

Founded in 2011, Clutch is a Washington, D.C.-based research firm that leverages unparalleled market insight to determine the leaders across numerous industries. With unbiased case studies, industry trend analysis, and business market comparisons, Clutch’s data-driven platform allows clients to find and connect with top-tier companies who can solve difficult challenges.

Clutch’s directories adhere to this meticulous, data-centric approach; it’s organized to list the most credible firms first. Credibility is gained by attaining client testimonials and market presence. Essentially, the directories allow potential buyers and clients in need of partnerships to visualize their different options with a holistic perspective of each company.

Check out some of the reviews we’ve received so far below!

Webdam is a digital asset management software company. We re-developed their platform from the ground up. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s work was a massive improvement from the previous app version and received high praise from customers… They were extremely responsive and supportive, and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

We also got the opportunity to help the University of Oklahoma improve its app with more student-centric functionalities and geolocation capabilities. Here’s their feedback:

Another client required an app for the University of Oklahoma. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s expert team inspires confidence throughout the project by communicating clearly from the start. They bring creative ideas to the table at a reasonable value… Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

The past few weeks have been surreal for Dogtown Media. Recently, we made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the United States for the second year in a row. Not long after, we were honored again by being included on Clutch’s list!

Both are incredible awards we couldn’t have imagined attaining when we first started developing in L.A. in 2011. We’d like to give a big thanks to Clutch, Inc., our team, clients, and community — none of this would be possible without you.

From humble beginnings as a mobile app developer in Los Angeles, we’re extremely proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far and we’re also very excited to see where the future takes us. We can’t wait to create more amazing mobile experiences for the world to enjoy.

If you have an idea but don’t know where to begin, reach out anytime — if you can dream it, we can build it!

Many industry experts believe Microsoft bought GitHub to create a better foothold of cloud computing against its number one competitor, Amazon’s Amazon Web Services platform. And this buy may just push Microsoft ahead of Amazon.

Why Microsoft?

Microsoft’s other cloud computing competitors, such as Google, IBM, and Salesforce, among many others, are in a race with Microsoft and Amazon to get software engineers to use their cloud tools. The idea behind this is simple: the more programmers using a cloud tool, the more likely they are to bring their entire department with them, leading the whole company to enact the cloud services. This attracts even more developers, as competitors of these companies try to match their development environments.

Frank Gens is the chief analyst for research firm IDC. He says, “The strategic battle in the tech world is for developers. For Microsoft, the GitHub deal is about strengthening and widening its relationships with developers.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agrees. “Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.” Nadella also says the business deal will advance Microsoft’s cloud computing ambitions and bring smarter and better code to every industry, on every device. It will certainly be easier for Microsoft to sell its Azure cloud services to large enterprise clients on GitHub.

GitHub’s Unknown Revenues

Microsoft isn’t buying GitHub for its proven business model; it’s because, as Nadella says, “Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub, we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness, and innovation.”

GitHub hosts over 85 million repositories, which are digital storage spaces for code. Some repositories are private (if you pay for the feature), but many are hosted on free developer accounts as public repositories. Web, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and mobile app developers, among many other programmers, can share their code, make comments, create issues, contribute to others’ code, and buy software tools all from GitHub’s interface.

GitHub’s exact revenue is unknown, as are its profits, but analysts estimate a ballpark annual revenue of $200 million. Its biggest source of income is corporate projects hosted on its platform for a fee. The enterprise level of membership allows companies to keep code open-source while creating private repositories for more proprietary programming.

The $7.5 billion payday means GitHub’s venture capital investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, will see a huge return on investment this year. Chris Wanstrath, GitHub’s CEO and co-founder, says he could’ve “never imagined” being bought by Microsoft when he created GitHub in 2008. “Git was a powerful but niche tool, clouds were just things in the sky, and Microsoft was a very different company.”

Microsoft’s Shift to Open-Source

Microsoft was an adamant supporter of closed-source proprietary software staying within the company at a time when Google was very publicly open-source and proud of it. In fact, Microsoft’s former CEO, Steven A. Ballmer, once called Linux (an open-source operating system) a “cancer” in tech.

In recent years, however, the company has completely switched philosophies. Microsoft is GitHub’s most active enterprise client, with over two million public contributions to code. The company open-sourced PowerShell configuration management frameworks and .NET development.

It also developed Azure Sphere, which is a Linux-based operating system geared for Internet of Things devices. Azure Cloud can also now run on Linux, making the transition easier for developers who are used to running Terminal commands in a Linux environment.

Ed Anderson is an analyst at research firm Gartner. He says, “Developers by their nature are often suspicious of corporate ambitions. Microsoft will have to demonstrate its willingness to put the interests of developers ahead of any Microsoft-specific agenda.”

Microsoft Takes A Sure Bet

Experts say to take a holistic look at Microsoft’s acquisitions and current offerings to see how GitHub fits into Microsoft’s big picture. Nat Friedman is corporate vice president for developer services at Microsoft, and he’ll be taking over GitHub as CEO when the deal goes through. Wanstrath will join Microsoft as a technical fellow.

Friedman says owning GitHub gives Microsoft confidence to “go all-in on GitHub.” He mentions that Microsoft will prove itself to be a reliable owner of GitHub by giving GitHub everything it needs to continue growing. “It’s a matter of building trust with developers. You earn the right to be considered for other things,” says Friedman.

Dissenting Developers’ Opinions

Some developers have a strong opinion on Microsoft’s biggest recent news. In the days after the announcement, Gitlab, one of GitHub’s biggest competitors, says, “We’re seeing 10x the normal daily amount of repositories.”

A Reddit user said this was no surprise, and that GitHub’s “real future is a buggy and monetized site.” A Google+ user wrote, “What does M$ have to gain from this, other than by either shutting it down in the long term, monetizing it further or by data mining folks? In just a matter of hours, they made GitHub a completely toxic entity.”

Many developers are worried about the privacy and copyright implications of the acquisition. Programmer Matt Van Horn asserts, “It’s gonna be so cool that Microsoft will be able to peek into the private repos of people trying to compete with them, won’t it?”

Embracing Change

But other developers are welcoming the announcement with open arms.

Jon Masters is the chief ARM architect at Red Hat. He says, “If you’re needlessly hating on Microsoft for buying GitHub, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but the world changed. It’s time to move forward with life and accept that in 2018, MSFT isn’t the Great Satan out to destroy all Open Source.”

James Bottomley is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research, as well as a leading Linux developer. He adds, “Companies with well established open-source business models and motivations that don’t depend on the whims of VCs are much more trustworthy in open source in the long term. Although it’s a fairly recent convert, Microsoft is now among these because it’s clearly visible how its conversion from desktop to cloud both requires open source and requires Microsoft to play nicely with open source.”

And maybe it’s not just about GitHub’s user base. Microsoft developer Miguel de Icaza, has programmed several well-known open-source programs. He says, “Satya looked at Microsoft’s bill from all the code we host on GitHub and figured it would be cheaper to buy the company.”

Far-Reaching Implications

What will be the true implications for tech with Microsoft’s recent announcement? Only time, Microsoft’s actions, and GitHub’s user base data will tell. We hope that GitHub remains the open-source, free, and public code host it is today. Collaboration has accelerated many technologies in recent years, and it would be a shame to see this stifled by this recent acquisition.

One thing’s for sure, though: this deal will go down in history as one of the biggest acquisitions of all time, not just monetarily, but for the tech community at large.

One unique result of this controversy is Facebook’s utilization of facial recognition to delete fake accounts.

It’s Facebook, not Fakebook

The company plans to use the technology to catch users who are using other profiles’ photos, but the facial recognition is limited in some substantial ways; it doesn’t scan photos against all of the photos uploaded to the site, and that would be the best way to accomplish this tedious task.

The San Francisco-based developer, says it deleted 583 million fake accounts Q1 of 2018. In 2017’s Q4, the company reported that it deleted 694 million accounts.

A Safe Space for Everyone

Facebook is also tackling spam, hate speech, and other reported content. To help create more transparency for its users, the company also recently published its first Community Standards Enforcement Report. The post detailed the actions Facebook took on reported content in the areas of nudity, sexual activity, graphic violence, terrorist propaganda, and more.

In 2018’s Q1, Facebook deleted 21 million posts containing adult nudity and sexual activity. 96% of those reported posts were flagged automatically by the company’s computer vision tools. The tools also caught 86% of 3.5 million violent posts and 38% of 2.5 million posts containing hate speech.

Some Tough Problems to Tackle

Regardless of these initiatives, experts still worry that Facebook continues to over-rely on user-reported posts. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his company in the past, saying it’s difficult to develop artificial intelligence (AI) that can determine hate speech, whereas detecting a graphic image is easier. In fact, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s VP of product management, says AI is still years away from being an effective and reliable detector of hate speech and other bad content.

Fighting fake news is another big priority for the company, which was found to be a big factor in helping Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Hate speech on Facebook has also been found to promote violence against Myanmar Muslims.

The company plans to continue releasing updated numbers on reported content and fake account deletion every six months. Whether this is an effort to appease users or to get ahead of the next possible scandal, Facebook is undeniably trying to be more transparent after its shortcomings were recently revealed. In this case, does the end justify the means? What do you think?

Called the Common Reference Model (CRM), the new product, revealed at Uber’s Elevate Summit in Los Angeles to nearly 700 industry leaders, is expected to be an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle.

Cutting Down Commute Time

The airborne taxi would seat four people, back-to-back. The company hopes a two-hour ride will shorten down to 15 minutes, which would be a godsend for commuters in Los Angeles, New York City, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, and other large U.S. metropolitan cities.

Uber won’t manufacture the taxis themselves; because of this endeavor, they’ll need more than just mobile app developers to pull it off. Partnering companies will assemble the taxis. Calculations predict that the vehicle’s range is only 60 miles because of the battery, but the taxi can get up to 2,000 feet above the ground (about twice the height of the Empire State Building).

A Blueprint for Success

Uber contracted former NASA engineer Mark Moore to design and develop the flying taxi concept. Moore has extensive experience working on electric propulsion aircraft. The CRM has a series of propellers, some of which are backups that only deploy during emergency failures of the other propellers. You can only enter and exit on one side, which adds an additional layer of safety for passengers.

Uber doesn’t expect to build the CRM according to the current specifications; it intends to create this design as a master blueprint for other manufacturers and other car companies to build upon. By creating a blueprint that other companies can use, the designs of flying taxis in the future will be more consistent and thus easier to regulate and inspect. They’ll hopefully all use the same infrastructure, like landing pads, airspace, and maintenance mechanics.

It Takes a Team to Take Off

Several companies are aiding Uber in its effort to create one of the world’s most popular flying taxis. Among the team members is Embraer, an aircraft manufacturer from Brazil; the company has almost five decades of experience in commercial, military, and agricultural industries, making it one of the most knowledgeable companies out of the group.

Pipistrel Aircraft is another partner in the endeavor. The Slovenia-based aircraft manufacturer produces small, electric-powered aircraft. Another member, Karem is a smaller aircraft manufacturer based in California and founded by esteemed drone expert Abe Karem, called “the dronefather.”

Aurora Flight Sciences, another company partnering with Uber, is a Boeing subsidiary. The company’s flown more than 30 unpiloted flights since 1989, including a military helicopter. CEO John Langford believes autonomy is the key to creating innovation in on-demand transportation and reversing the downward trend of pilot jobs.

The last company, Bell Helicopter, is working on vertical flight alongside its usual bread-and-butter of commercial and military helicopters. The company recently revealed a VR experience inside its air taxi cabin prototype.

If you were thinking of getting into the game, Uber’s still looking for more partners that can meet a few requirements in experience and knowledge of aircraft designing, namely for these features: minimal noise, electric-powered, and VTOL capabilities.

Uber’s Contribution

The photo we presented above may not be the end result of the CRM when all is said and done. We expect more companies to join in the effort to add features and request changes too. The company hopes to start testing the UberAir service at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport within the next two years.

Uber has been under intense scrutiny in recent years due to controversies surrounding sexual harassment allegations and a tumultuous ousting of their previous CEO. Of course, it’s also impossible to forget its recent-self driving car tragedy that ended up with a pedestrian losing her life.

If Uber succeeds in making this flying taxi project a reality, it could not only help their reputation immensely, but set the company up for a future expanded outside of its usual scope of ridesharing.

This year’s Google developer festival, the I/O conference, showed that the shift to ‘AI-first’ for the company was in full swing. Held each year in Mountain View right outside of San Francisco, the event has served as an opportunity for the tech titan to demonstrate why it’s still leading in innovation.

2018’s I/O showcased the recent fruitions of Google’s AI ambitions. As the company revealed the plans for its products in the coming year, it became readily apparent that integrating AI into everything was the name of the game.

Making Google Assistant More Human

Google’s AI-powered voice assistant is getting a small internal makeover to better fit into household dynamics. For example, the product received a “continued conversation” update, which eliminates the need to keep saying “OK, Google” before every interaction you have with the Assistant. This will hopefully create a more seamless conversational-style experience for families.

Another feature the company plans to roll out is the ability to ask multiple queries in one sentence like a person would naturally do. The Assistant will also remember past questions and answers for faster retrieval. Google will offer six new voices, including that of famous songwriter John Legend.

Google took a page out of Amazon’s plans for their Echo Dot Kids Edition; the company plans to add a “Pretty Please” feature, which kids can use to improve their manners. When you say “please” with your question, the Assistant will compliment you and respond back politely.

The scariest feature being released for the Assistant is the Duplex — it makes calls on your behalf, and it sounds extremely human, to the point where Google added “umm”s and “uhh”s into the robot AI’s speech pattern. This has caught quite a bit of negative press, and Google is taking the criticism in stride to make a product more palatable to the public.

Google Photos and Google Lens

Google Photos and Google Lens are receiving new built-in editing tools, like greyscale photo colorization, brightness correction, rotation suggestions, and other quick-fix recommendations. Make no mistake, Google is using our photos to improve its visual search and AI algorithms, but it also works in the background to edit your photos, create movies and collages, and organize albums automatically.

Photos will also offer to spot your friends in images, convert images into PDFs, and spot color or spot greyscale any of your photos. The company developed this mobile app to entice new users to use their photo-editing services over other competitors.

Google Lens will offer a new feature where you can highlight and select text from an image, whether it’s in a book or a street sign. Another new addition is “Style Match”, where Google uses object recognition and machine learning to find styles and accessories that are similar to a photo you have taken.

A Deep Focus on AI

The company is rebranding its Google Research Division into Google AI. Google is prioritizing research and development on the fields of neural networks, natural language processing, and computer vision. As customized hardware for AI takes off, the company is also hard at work on their third-generation TPU (tensor processing unit). CEO Sundar Pichai says the newest TPU is eight times more powerful than the last version.

Google is also focusing on continuously improving its TensorFlow software in addition to optimizing the TPU hardware. It released a new machine learning software development kit for iOS and Android developers. The models support face recognition, text detection, barcode scanning, image labeling, and recognition of landmarks and prominent buildings.

Google Maps

Google plans to add AI, in the form of its Google Assistant, into its Maps app. Assistant will give better recommendations to users. Google combined the phone’s camera with computer vision to incorporate augmented reality (AR) into street-view maps. The AR will add arrows to street view to show you where to turn left or right, and the camera integration gives Maps an edge over Apple Maps or Waze.

Google News

The tech titan’s news platform will integrate with other Google services to create a more cohesive subscription experience for users who follow free and paid RSS feeds. Leveraging AI could give Facebook a run for its money.

Android P

The newest version of Android, dubbed “Android P”, wants you to spend more time outside and with your loved ones. The updates to the mobile operating system will let you set controls for limited screen time, information on how to use your phone, and turn on “shush” mode to silence your phone during quality time.

The company is also beginning to transition Android to become usable on phones that have no buttons. Multitasking will be easier because virtual buttons can understand multiple gestures.

Google’s Game Plan

Google’s making a lot of changes, and most of them center around improving user experience with AI. This coming year is shaping up to be a busy one for the search engine giant. It will be exciting to see the end result from all of these endeavors.

The company is on a mission to make its name synonymous with ‘AI.’ If all goes well this year, it may achieve exactly that.

As tech companies integrate new developments in artificial intelligence (AI) into their products and voice assistants, public backlash is to be expected. Often, these large companies don’t consult with “regular consumers” before proceeding to build out nearly the whole product.

This can result in missteps during the release that could have easily been avoided if approached from the perspective of an actual user. One such new product is Google’s Duplex.

Is AI Too Human Already?

The Duplex is an AI assistant that can make calls for you. It was the big reveal of this year’s Google’s I/O developer conference held in Mountain View, right outside of San Francisco. It uses DeepMind’s new WaveNet audio-generation technique, amongst other technologies, to create a very realistic, human-sounding voice. The company went as far as to add “umm” and “uhh” into the flow of speech like a normal human would during a conversation.

The technology gives a new meaning to “robocalls”; without regulation, AI can and will evolve rapidly to become something out of a dystopian scifi movie. In a blog post written by two Google engineers working on the Duplex, Yaniv Leviathan and Yossi Matias emphasize, “It’s important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that. We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context.”

The Duplex isn’t ready to be released just yet, and after the conference, Google may have a few other aspects to iron out. The demo has caused the general public to feel more uncomfortable than impressed. Mainstream consumers were disturbed that the Duplex didn’t identify itself as a robot before proceeding to have a conversation with a human. This type of deception and trickery definitely needs to be kept in check.

Treading the Uncanny Valley

After the public outcry, Google released a statement that clarified that they “understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex—as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”

The company hopes to use Duplex to lower language barriers, promote time away from our devices, and safeguard against spam calls. But to do that, Google will have to strike the right balance between human and machine with their new innovation.

Taking Advantage of Edge Computing and AI

The app uses Wikipedia and Amazon, along with a local image and description database that Royzen scraped himself. It can identify more than 17,000 objects. Although it’s not perfect, the app is already better than what Google and Apple have attempted to release (or not attempted at all).

Named “SmartLens”, the app does its job well in most cases. Sometimes, it can trip itself up, but it does arrive to the correct conclusion quite often. The app takes advantage of recent smartphone and computing advancements. Royzen, a Seattle-based developer, says, “With the several past generations of smartphones containing desktop-class processors and the advent of native machine learning APIs that can harness them (and GPUs), the hardware exists for a blazing-fast visual search engine.”

Since the database is stored locally, everything happens offline. It doesn’t need a cell network or Internet connection to analyze an object, so it happens on the device itself (called “edge computing”), within a couple of seconds. Royzen trained several neural networks using entire days of AWS’s EC2 computing engine. The app also reads text on books, labels, and a host of other things. It takes the identified text to Amazon to return a URL and description. If you’re connected to the Internet, Wikipedia links are added into the mix.

A Taste of What’s to Come

The idea of the app is natural, given how search engines and search bars operate these days. Incorporating the implementation into your phone’s camera for everyday, every-object use would further improve its performance, since the app trains itself to learn and re-learn. Some UI updates, like adding a confidence indicator or related objects section, would boost the app’s value and quality more.

Royzen says, “Visual search is still a niche, but my goal is to give people the taste of a future where one app can deliver useful information about anything around them — today. Still, it’s inevitable that big companies will launch their competing offerings eventually.”

But that doesn’t intimidate Royzen: “My strategy is to beat them to market as the first universal visual search app and amass as many users as possible so I can stay ahead (or be acquired).” SmartLens is on the way to becoming the foremost AI-enhanced visual recognition app, and Google and Apple have a long way to go to compete.

But even in the face of these figures, Google isn’t going down without a fight.

A Strategic Shift

The smart home system is expected to grow leaps and bounds as the Internet of Things develops. But as Amazon entrenches itself as the name synonymous with “smart home,” Google’s window to establish the same reputation is closing. Without a change in their marketing approach, AI assistant, and product quality, Google will irreversibly fall behind the Seattle-based developer.

In February, Nest changed its strategic position within Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Alphabet removed Nest as a separate business and integrated it into Google’s hardware department. Nest employees work alongside the Google Home and Google Assistant teams, striving to create a much more cohesive, well-rounded product.

Realizing Potential Takes Patience

Rick Osterloh leads Google’s hardware division. He says, “All of Google’s investments in machine learning and AI, they can very clearly benefit Nest products. It just makes sense to be developing them together. It’s the natural thing to evolve to.”

In Q1 of 2018, Nest brought in $726 million in revenue. But with its expenses totaling $621 million, Alphabet only earned a little over $100 million from its investment in Nest. For the time being, Google can afford to continue investing in Nest; its advertising model is generating more income than ever. But Google won’t stay patient for much longer, especially with Amazon’s continued increase in sales.

The Battle for Your Home

Although Google’s spending time, effort, and money on other products, like the Google Pixel, which is pitted against Apple, no one expects the Pixel to overtake the iPhone in sales. The Pixel simply came into the game way too late to make any sort of large impact on consumers. In the arena of smart home speakers combined with machine learning, AI, and the Internet of Things, the player who can seamlessly connect all of these features will be the toughest to beat.

Amazon hasn’t fully taken over the market yet, and most consumers don’t utilize a smart home speaker or system in their current living situation. So if Google (or any startup) wants to take the reins, it’s now or never.

CRISPR is a medical technology used to manipulate and change DNA, an activity also known as genome editing. The technology is the basis for what Mammoth Biosciences does; the San Francisco-based developer created a CRISPR kit and mobile app to help track down what might be the underlying cause of your digestion problems, for example.

CEO Trevor Martin says, “When I think of CRISPR, I really think of biology’s search engine.” Since CRISPR can precisely target which DNA bases to add, replace, or delete, it’s a versatile and flexible technology for MedTech applications.

Limitless Potential That Can Fit in Your Pocket

CRISPR can be used to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and cancer as well as detect viruses like Zika, dengue, and HPV. The technology can tell you if you’ve contracted a sexually-transmitted disease or a combination of viruses or diseases. It will change how hospitals test for diseases and viruses, and now, it’ll change how we genetically test ourselves in our own homes. CRISPR’s technology was pioneered by Jennifer Doudna, who also co-founded Mammoth Biosciences.

The new CRISPR kit is a credit card-sized paper test, similar to another CRISPR paper test out of MIT, called SHERLOCK. MIT’s team leader, Feng Zhang, is another pioneer of CRISPR, and he and Doudna are involved in a legal dispute right now regarding CRISPR. Martin says he can’t comment on MIT’s work. But he did say, “We’re just always excited when the potential of CRISPR is further reinforced.”

The idea is that the app would analyze the fluorescent signal or color change on the paper test by taking a photo of the results. The app then returns what you tested positive for. And although the company hasn’t fully created the process yet, they’ve got some “working prototypes” that are being refined and optimized for peak performance.

Making MedTech More Affordable

Martin says, “We’re moving to commercialize it quickly and have it available in the next few years.” He plans to release the test at an “accessible and affordable” cost, but exactly how much is unknown at the moment.

“We’ve come so far in terms of technology, but still, there are all these barriers in between us and having real access to understanding our health and our bodies and the environment around us more generally. This is the type of technology that really breaks down those barriers and democratizes access to this type of molecular information about the world around us,” he says.

With better access to diagnosing tools, patients lacking healthcare or the funds to bankroll their increasingly-expensive medicine will have a revolutionized MedTech experience. By keeping the cost of the test affordable and ensuring the results are reliable, this tool has unlimited possibilities. We can’t wait to see how others apply CRISPR, and how well the CRISPR paper test works when it’s released to the public.