The Google Assistant can now alert you of potential flight delays

If you’re an experienced traveler, you know that plenty of your delays are due to your plane being stuck somewhere else or because the weather at your local or arrival airport isn’t ideal (I’m looking at you, fogged-in SFO in the morning). So you also know to check on your incoming flight, even when the airline tells you everything is fine, and the FAA’s airspace status pages.

But maybe you are not a frequent flier (be glad and rejoice) or don’t care to go through that process. In that case, you’ll be happy to hear that Google today announced that its Assistant will soon proactively notify you on your phone when its algorithms predict that your flight will be late. This feature is rolling out now and should be available to all users in the next few weeks.

It’s worth noting that flight delay predictions from Google aren’t new. It introduced its first iteration of this in January. At the time, it didn’t proactively alert you of those delays, though. You first had to search for your flight. So unless you knew this feature existed, you probably never saw it in action.

Google says it mostly uses machine learning algorithms trained on historic flight data to predict delays. In addition, though, the company also clearly looks at some other information, given that it knows about delays of incoming flights, too.

The airlines aren’t kidding when they tell you that you should still be at the gate at the original time, by the way. If you’re flying through a hub, they could still swap in another plane, after all. If you’re like me, though, instead of taking to the friendly skies, you will likely have to sit in Newark until well after midnight before the plane finally arrives. That’ll be right as your crew times out and with the next available reserve crew hours away. Chances are Google wouldn’t have been able to alert me of those delays, though, given that incompetence isn’t something it can predict yet, after all.

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Google is spending $1 billion to build a massive new campus in New York

Days after Apple announced a major expansion to its operations in the U.S. — including a new $1 billion campus in Austin — fellow tech giant Google has announced that it too will invest $1 billion as it sets up a new campus at Hudson Square in New York.

Google already has 7,000 staff located in New York, and this strategy is aimed at doubling that headcount over the next 10 years. Hudson Square will be a 1.7 million-square-foot campus that’ll serve as “the primary location” for Google’s Global Business Organization.

Google expects two Hudson Square buildings to be operational for staff by 2020, with a building on 550 Washington Street coming online two years later. That’s in addition to Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, which it bought for $2.4 billion in March, and additional space at Pier 57, which it is planning to take.

All this adds up to a major hiring push outside of the Bay Area.

“Our investment in New York is a huge part of our commitment to grow and invest in U.S. facilities, offices and jobs. In fact, we’re growing faster outside the Bay Area than within it, and this year opened new offices and data centers in locations like Detroit, Boulder, Los Angeles, Tennessee and Alabama,” wrote Google CFO Ruth Porat.

Google and Apple’s commitments come after Amazon announced that New York would be the location for its much-anticipated “HQ2” following a long search that pulled in authorities from cities and states across the U.S.

The great Amazon swindle

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B-Social raises £3.2M seed round to begin building a ‘social’ bank

B-Social, a London fintech that currently offers a ‘social finance’ app and beta debit Mastercard, has raised £3.2 million in Seed round funding from undisclosed high-net-worth individuals. However, the fundraise is just the first step in a journey in which B-Social want to eventually become a fully licensed bank that reimagines banking around everyday social interactions.

As it exists today, the B-Social app and accompanying card enables users to have control over everyday spending, track expenditure, and create groups between friends to split bills and record settlements. It’s currently in the hands of a limited number of beta testers, spanning employees, investors, friends and family, with plans for a wider U.K. launch in February next year.

“We recognise that almost all financial transactions are inherently social,” B-Social co-founder and CEO Nazim Valimahomed tells me. “We want to change the relationship people have with money by helping them overcome the anxiety, awkwardness and wasted time when they engage with their social finances. We are doing that by building a digital bank that truly accommodates the way people live their lives and is dedicated to connecting a person’s finances to their social world”.

The idea was born in part out of Valimahomed’s own frustrations and is informed by his belief that individuals are often a bank themselves, lending and borrowing to friends and family by making shared purchases and then getting paid back.

“A simple example might be that you pay for flights for two or more people and then get paid back individually,” he says. “For multiple transactions, this becomes complex often resulting in the trip organiser having to create a spreadsheet to work out what people owe across multiple transactions”.

To simplify this problem, B-Social wants to let you to make purchases with your card, which are flagged as an expense on behalf of a group of individuals. From here the bank to be will enable all members of a group — and where groups can be ad hoc and temporary or more long-term — to continuously see who is owed how much and to get paid back easily within the app and record settlements.

Dubbing this future proposition as the seeds of a “social bank,” the B-Social CEO cites competitors as traditional high street banks that currently dominate the U.K. consumer market (the so-called big 5 have around 87 percent market share in the U.K.).

“We are aiming at winning a part of their market share by targeting customers looking for a bank as social as they are that offers a unique digital experience in order to help change the banking ecosystem forever,” Valimahomed tells me, although he also concedes that challengers such as Monzo, N26, Starling and Revolut have also built some basic social features into their apps.

“Our entire technology and product focus is to build a bank from scratch through a social lens,” he says.

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Why Kinsta’s Managed WordPress Hosting Is Great For Everyone

Running a WordPress site with more than a few hundred visitors is tough. Get the hosting plan wrong, and you could end up spending money for a site that doesn’t respond to your needs, and those of your readers.

Common issues with bad hosting include slow speeds, bottlenecks, and the possibility of knocking other websites on the same server offline. Managed WordPress hosting is a better idea.

This is what Kinsta offers. The company promises “premium WordPress hosting for everyone, small or large.” Let’s take a look.

What’s Different About Kinsta Hosting?

Used to a web host that offers slow shared hosting? Or a poorly configured expensive VPS?

Unless the host’s system admin knows how to correctly configure the hardware, and manage the virtual server, your WordPress site will never meet its potential.

To reach your goals, you need to move.

Kinsta hosting is one of the best destinations for your blog or store. Its managed WordPress hosting relies on the Google Cloud Platform, using Google’s premium tier global network to ensure sites load fast. Kinsta also offers 18 data centers around the globe, allowing you to situate your website on the server nearest your audience.

Every WordPress site on Kinsta is housed in its own isolated LXC container, with all resources dedicated to your site. The LXC is managed using the LXD lightweight container hypervisor. While not a precise comparison, you can think of an LXC container as a virtual server.

Each LXC container includes Linux, Nginx, PHP (versions 7 to 7.3 are available), and MySQL, as well as the WordPress software. This gives you everything you need to run your website.

To keep your website running 24/7, support is available around the clock all 365 days of the year from Kinsta’s support engineers. They’re all WordPress developers, capable of writing themes and plugins and contributing to the core code of the software.

Thus, you can be confident that they know what you need.

The independent testers at Review Signal have rated Kinsta among the top WordPress hosts. In fact, Kinsta has held the award for Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance for four years in a row.

Features You Get With Kinsta Hosting

That’s how the service works. But what features should you expect from Kinsta’s hosting?

To start off, free content delivery network (CDN) ensures your site loads media as quickly as possible, thanks to KeyCDN integration. Meanwhile, page caching delivers content rapidly. This pairs with Kinsta’s own cache plugin to improve speed and control over caching.

You can also make sure your site offers the necessary security to your readers and customers by enabling HTTPS. Kinsta offers Let’s Encrypt integration for creating SSL certificates for free, and you can also add custom certificates.

Kinsta considers your site security a priority. The company offers a daily backup service, and a free hack fix if your site becomes compromised.

For testing new features, Kinsta offers a staging environment, enabling you to try new themes and plugins before rolling them out. There’s also SSH support for sysadmin tasks, and if needed, you can use tools such as Git, npm, WP-CLI, and other package managers to add software.

You’ll manage your hosting package via a custom-designed dashboard. This not only gives you instant access to your WordPress installation, plugins, data, and backups, but also holds analytics reports for performance analysis.

Enhanced Hosting Options

Kinsta will accommodate the peculiarities of your website. In addition to some advanced options, this WordPress host offers optimizations and server-level rules for WooCommerce stores. The same is available for Easy Digital Download stores.

So whatever type of website you run on WordPress, whether it’s a blog, news site, or something else, Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting can accommodate you.

Kinsta Hosting Plans: What’s Best For You?

Reckon you’re ready to sign up with Kinsta? We recommend you try the Starter plan. This is ideal for single WordPress installs, for sites with up to 20,000 visits. With 5GB of disk space and free SSL and CDN, this package also comes with a 30-day money back guarantee.

It costs just $30 per month. Alternatively, you might pay $300 for 12 months, thereby saving $60.

For bigger sites, larger packages are available. For $60 a month, the Pro package includes two installs, 40,000 visits, and 10GB of storage. $100 per month will upgrade you to the Business 1 package for five installs, 15GB of storage, and 100,000 visits.

Check out the Kinsta Plans page to see which one is right for you.

What happens if your plan isn’t quite large enough to satisfy your site or visitor numbers? Kinsta charges overage rates; you can receive notifications when your site is at 80% and 100% capacity. Overage is charged at $1 per 1,000 visitors.

Free Migrations Make Moving Your Site Easy

Moving your website between hosts can be time-consuming, fraught with risk, and difficult.

Fortunately, Kinsta offers a migration service for new accounts. This means you can provide the company with the necessary information, and support staff will migrate your data from the existing host to your managed WordPress hosting.

If your focus is on creating and editing content rather than on the technicality of web hosting, this could be beneficial. It lets you concentrate on your strengths and site continuity, without the distraction of moving data yourself.

Setting Up Your WordPress Site With Kinsta

Once you’ve signed up with Kinsta, it takes just a few minutes to set up your hosting. If you’re using the free migration service for an existing site, you’ll receive a notification when everything is ready. Otherwise, you’ll need to set up a new WordPress blog.

Begin by opening the my.kinsta.com admin dashboard and entering your Kinsta username and password. Then head to Sites > Add site, and input your preferred server location, name of the site, domain details, and select Add a brand new WordPress install, then Add.

Make a note of your username and password, and wait as the WordPress software installs. To access your site, go to Sites > Domains and look for the Open WordPress Admin button. Click this to sign into your site’s admin account.

From here, you’re ready to select a theme, add plugins, and write content.

If you’re familiar WordPress, you’ll know how easy it is to use. Just get your site configured as required, confirm you’ve enabled the Yoast SEO plugin, and you’re all set!

What If You Need More From Kinsta Hosting?

Setting up a Kinsta account is easy, getting your hosting primed is fast, and setting up WordPress is simple. You should be up and running in minutes, but what if you want more?

Kinsta offers a selection of add-ons for sites with special requirements. You’ll find support for Nginx reverse proxy, Redis, Elasticsearch, Cloudflare Railgun, and can even opt for hourly backups.

Why You Need Kinsta Managed Hosting

By now, you should least be interested in taking advantage of Kinsta’s easy migration service. If your site needs a performance boost that you won’t get from shared virtual hosting and you can’t afford a premium VPS, then Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting is surely your best bet.

To recap, Kinsta offers:

• The full LAMP experience with WordPress pre-installed
• Easy migration to bring your site from another host
• Fast web page delivery thanks to integration with KeyCDN and Google Cloud Platform
• HTTPS and SSL from Let’s Encrypt integration
• Free hack fix service, and daily backups that you can restore for up to 30 days
• 24/7 support, 365 days a year, from WordPress developers
• A range of affordable packages, depending on your requirements
• Upgrades to customize your package, a detailed dashboard, advanced features like Cloudflare support, and even hourly backups

(Some of these features are only available with multi-site subscriptions.)

Kinsta’s managed WordPress hosting is a great opportunity for you to level up and take your existing website to the next level. At just $30 a month for the basic package, it’s an opportunity you should seriously consider.

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The 7 Best iPhone GIF Apps to Create, Collect, Save, and Share

The Best Features in elementaryOS You May Have Overlooked

I’m a long-time desktop Linux user, and elementaryOS is one of my favorite options. I love the work the team has done to make free and open source software feel vibrant and welcoming in the era of intuitive smartphone interfaces.

elementaryOS 5.0 “Juno” is the most refined version of the desktop to date. Here are some of the best parts of the experience that you may have missed. Some of these features are specific to Juno, while others also apply to elementaryOS in general.

1. Built-In Night Light

The light that radiates from electronic devices into our eyeballs isn’t great for us. It causes eyestrain, makes it harder to fall asleep, and reduces the quality of that sleep.

While it’s best to avoid screens at night time, there are times when you need to get work done to meet a deadline. In that case, it’s better to replace the blue light with red light. There are third-party apps that do this, but elementaryOS Juno now comes with the functionality out of the box.

Look for the Night Light tab under System Settings > Displays.

2. Picture-in-Picture Mode

Do you regularly watch video while working? Whether it’s clicking back and forth, or lining two apps side-by-side, managing windows is probably a regular part of your routine.

In elementaryOS Juno, you can say goodbye to this struggle with Picture-in-Picture mode. Just press Super + F and select the window you want to keep visible. (The “Super” key is either the Windows key on PCs or the Command key on Macs.) To exit, click the X that appears when you hover your mouse over the floating preview.

A few things to keep in mind about Picture-in-Picture mode:

• The floating preview provides an ongoing look at the window you selected.
• Click on the preview to drag it around.
• You can resize the preview by clicking the button that appears in its bottom-right corner.
• If you minimize the window you selected, the preview freezes, so you must leave the window open in the background.
• If you want to stream video while looking at other tabs, move the video out into a separate window.

3. Easy Image Resizing

Resizing an image isn’t particularly fun or exciting (you might even call it tedious). You often need to resize an image before sending an email or uploading a photo to a website.

This usual process involves opening an image viewer or photo editor and clicking a “resize” button. Thanks to the Resizer app, you can do this task in elementaryOS from the right-click context menu. Right-click > Resize images opens up a window that lets you designate a size and name. Boom. Done.

4. Easier App Funding

When elementary introduced AppCenter, it also rolled out a new funding model for Linux apps that lets you pay what you want for software. Some apps recommend a default price, but there’s always the option to change that number to $0.

Thing is, you often don’t know if you want to toss a developer a few bucks until you’ve first tried out their app. In the past, you could only pay money when first installing an app. This meant you had to reinstall an app if you decided to make a contribution.

With Juno, “paid” apps that you downloaded for free will prompt you to pay whenever an update is available to download (you can still change the number to $0). You can also find a Fund button at the bottom of a paid app’s AppCenter page, allowing you to make donations whenever you like.

5. Simple App Launcher Edits

The app launcher is a part of the computer interface that we may not stare at for long, but we see it often. Occasionally you will come across an app that doesn’t fit in with the others. Either the name is off or the icon is big and fuzzy.

On elementaryOS, you can address the issue using AppEditor. It will let you edit icons, change names or descriptions, alter categories, and more. This is one of the most straightforward tools for the job you can find on any system.

If you’re on the lookout for alternate icons for apps like LibreOffice and VirtualBox, I recommend downloading the elementary add or elementaryPlus icon packs.

In both cases, you can extract the icon folder without having to deal with any pesky installation instructions!

6. A Panel That Adapts to Your Wallpaper

The panel along the top of the screen provides a few essentials. You have your app launcher, the time, and system indicators. These elements change color depending on your desktop wallpaper.

How the elementaryOS panel adapts to wallpapers:

• On dark backgrounds, icons are white.
• On bright wallpapers, the icons turn black.
• On relatively clear images, the panel’s background is transparent.
• If a wallpaper is busy toward the top of the screen, the panel becomes translucent.

When it comes to translucent panels, Juno is more adaptable than previous versions. There’s now a light translucent option for bright and busy wallpapers (pictured above).

7. Keyboard Shortcut Cheatsheat

elementaryOS may be a relatively simple desktop interface, but it still comes with a fair amount of keyboard shortcuts. Discovering and memorizing them all can take time and effort.

Juno makes your job easier by including a Shortcut Overlay that appears when you tap the Super key. Many of these shortcuts use the Super key and are not the standardized ones you see on other desktops.

But don’t fret! Common shortcuts like Ctrl + B (to bold text) or Alt + F4 (to close windows) still work on elementaryOS.

8. Bold Use of Color

The elementary project began as a desktop theme, so it makes sense that color would play a role in elementaryOS. While the overwhelming majority of apps are gray, some have HeaderBars (the name for the toolbar with core app buttons) in various colors.

Consider the Vocal podcast client, which is purple. The Aesop PDF reader is brown. The Eddy DEB installer is red (what is a DEB, you ask?).

While colorful HeaderBars were around in the previous version of elementaryOS, Juno continues the trend. The elementaryOS Music app may have a gray interface, but it has adopted orange highlights. More apps may make this sort of change in the future.

9. Easy Web Integration

I love how easy it is to view and share elementaryOS software online. The team has provided a way to browse AppCenter in your browser. If you’re currently running elementaryOS, the apps compatible with your version will appear at the top, with others listed below.

Click on the app to get to a page you can share with others. If they’re using elementaryOS, the browser will attempt to open the app in AppCenter directly. To share an app with someone from the desktop version of AppCenter, just click the Share button at the bottom of an app’s page to get a link you can copy and paste.

10. Transparent and Readable Updates

Want to know what recent changes have come down the pipeline? The elementary team provides semi-monthly updates that summarize what’s new.

To get this information, check out the elementary Medium page. There you will find write ups and screenshots about major app changes and background system improvements. Transparency is hardly new to the Linux world, but it’s a treat to see this information presented in such a readable and digestible format.

Do You Use elementaryOS?

elementaryOS isn’t quite like other Linux-based operating systems. While, technically, it isn’t all that different under the hood, it feels like a polished and distinct alternative. The elementary team regularly states that most downloads come from people using Windows or macOS.

On the fence? Here are several reasons to start using elementaryOS.

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7 Reasons Why PC Gaming Is Better Than Console Gaming

7 Reasons Why Console Gaming Is Better Than PC Gaming

The console vs. PC gaming debate is a perennial battle we don’t expect to end anytime soon. But if you’re just starting out or looking to switch your gaming rig, a console might be the way to go. Here are seven reasons why console gaming is better than PC gaming.

1. Console Games Just Work

With console gaming, there’s essentially no installation process. You simply insert the disc or download the game and in a couple of minutes, you’re all set. There are no pesky drivers to worry about, nor you will have to download a separate, proprietary installation tool for a particular game.

Sure, you may have to download updates if there are any, but this is a simple process. In addition, on a PC, you might also have to make a few adjustments specific to your machine’s specifications, like the games graphics settings in order to avoid framerate drops.

The bottom line is that on a console, you won’t have to face the majority of the common nuances of configuring a new game on a PC. It just works.

2. You Don’t Need to Check the Specs

Another burden you can avoid by opting for a console is hardware specifications. There are thousands of options you will have to go through to find the right PC to suits your needs. You have to ensure the mouse is comfortable and the graphics card can handle the games you want to play, and check how high is the display refresh rate, and more besides.

With consoles, you only have to worry about your budget and desire to play 4K games. In addition, unlike PCs, consoles continue to perform smoothly and run the latest games even after a couple of years of use. PC rigs generally wear out quicker and you will be forced to upgrade two or three years down the line (especially if you want to try out the most recent games).

3. There Are More AAA Games to Choose From

With studios such as Sony and Microsoft backing them, consoles have benefited from a wide collection of AAA games. Just look at the best PS4 exclusives for proof.

For instance, some of the most highly rated titles, such as The Last of Us, the Uncharted series, God of War (2018), and Red Dead Redemption 2 are not even available on PC. On the contrary, most popular PC games will be ported to consoles.

4. Console Gaming Is Generally Cheaper

Console gaming is more affordable than PC gaming. You can buy one for as little as $250 and still play each and every available game at 1080p. That package will even include the controller, one or two games, and possibly more. New gaming PCs, however, start at about $700 and that will only enable you to play the mid-tier games.

Plus, you will be spending hundreds of dollars extra for other accessories, like the keyboard and mouse. In addition, on consoles, you can share game discs with your friends and split the cost. On PCs, licenses are locked to a specific account and are non-transferrable.

5. You Can Play Console Games From Your Sofa

Since consoles are compatible with televisions, you can operate and play games on them from the comfort of your sofa. Their controllers are also designed in a way that you won’t have to fiddle around to find the right spot.

PCs, in addition to being incompatible with television displays, are not suited for non-desk setups and you will end up spending most of your time trying to make it work somehow. Make the sensible choice and play a console from the comfort of your sofa.

6. It’s Easier to Play With Friends

PCs also fall short in scenarios like parties or when your friends come over to hang out. Your desk probably doesn’t have the space for more than one keyboard and mouse, your laptop might not have enough ports, and more issues plague a PC’s ability to handle local multiplayer.

On a console, you can simply plug more consoles in to play with your friends. In addition, consoles have slots for USBs too, so if you have a keyboard lying around, you can plug that in as well.

What’s more, the aforementioned fifth argument supplements this advantage even further. If your monitor is a little small or there’s not room for more than two or three people in your study, you can quickly move to the living room where there is a larger television and more seating available.

7. Controllers Are Better Than Keyboard and Mouse

Controller preferences are certainly a subjective topic. But if you’re new and still exploring video games, the controller is the way to go. It’s built with a design that more naturally sits in your hands, unlike the keyboard and mouse combo which has a steeper learning curve.

With a controller, the fingers you’re not using can easily rest on the rear triggers and can come into play as soon as you want them.

In addition, apart from FPS (first-person shooters) and RTS (real-time strategy) games, the joysticks are a more ergonomic fit for most titles. PlayStation 4’s controller also has a touchpad so that you can navigate around the interface easily.

Are You Ready to Start Gaming on Consoles?

While PC gaming certainly has its advantages, consoles are definitely superior. As outlined in this article, they offer a hassle-free experience, a cheaper point of entry, and a wider selection of games.

If, after reading this article, you have made up your mind to buy a console, here is our Xbox One X review and our PlayStation Pro review to help you choose.

You might also be interested in hearing the other side: reasons why PC gaming is better than console gaming!

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Careem launches delivery service as it nears closing a massive round

The ride-hailing giant Careem is now in the delivery business as the company seeks new verticals in its ever-increasing fight against other services in the Middle East including Uber. Starting with food delivery in Dhabi and Jeddah, the company sees the delivery service expanding to pharmaceuticals according to a report by Reuters. Careem is investing over $150m into the service.

“We believe the opportunity for deliveries in the region is even bigger than ride-hailing,” Chief Executive and Co-Founder Mudassir Sheikha told Reuters. “It is going to become a very significant part of Careem over time.”

Called Careem Now, the service will operate independently from its ride-hailing business. It will have its own app and Careem is building the service a dedicated call center.

This comes as the company is trying to close a $500m funding round. Back in October, the company announced it had already raised $200m from existing investors. Prior to this announcement, rumors were swirling around the company that several companies including Didi Chuxing could acquire the company.

 

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K Health raises $25m for its AI-powered primary care platform

K Health, the startup providing consumers with an AI-powered primary care platform, has raised $25 million in series B funding. The round was led by 14W, Comcast Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners, with participation from Lerer Hippeau, Primary Ventures, BoxGroup, Bessemer Venture Partners and Max Ventures – all previous investors from the company’s seed or Series A rounds.

Co-founded and led by former Vroom CEO and Wix co-CEO, Allon Bloch, K Health (previously Kang Health) looks to equip consumers with a free and easy-to-use application that can provide accurate, personalized, data-driven information about their symptoms and health.

“When your child says their head hurts, you can play doctor for the first two questions or so – where does it hurt? How does it hurt?” Bloch explained in a conversation with TechCrunch. “Then it gets complex really quickly. Are they nauseous or vomiting? Did anything unusual happen? Did you come back from a trip somewhere? Doctors then use differential diagnosis to prove that it’s a tension headache vs other things by ruling out a whole list of chronic or unusual conditions based on their deep knowledge sets.”

K Health’s platform, which currently focuses on primary care, effectively looks to perform a simulation and data-driven version of the differential diagnosis process. On the company’s free mobile app, users spend three-to-four minutes answering an average of 21 questions about their background and the symptoms they’re experiencing.

Using a data set of two billion historical health events over the past 20 years – compiled from doctors notes, lab results, hospitalizations, drug statistics and outcome data – K Health is able to compare users to those with similar symptoms and medical histories before zeroing in on a diagnosis. 

With its expansive comparative approach, the platform hopes to offer vastly more thorough, precise and user-specific diagnostic information relative to existing consumer alternatives, like WebMD or – what Bloch calls – “Dr. Google”, which often produce broad, downright frightening, and inaccurate diagnoses. 

Ease and efficiency for both consumers and physicians

Users are able to see cases and diagnoses that had symptoms similar to their own, with K Health notifying users with serious conditions when to consider seeking immediate care. (K Health Press Image / K Health / https://www.khealth.ai)

In addition to pure peace of mind, the utility provided to consumers is clear. With more accurate at-home diagnostic information, users are able to make better preventative health decisions, avoid costly and unnecessary trips to in-person care centers or appointments with telehealth providers, and engage in constructive conversations with physicians when they do opt for in-person consultations.

K Health isn’t looking to replace doctors, and in fact, believes its platform can unlock tremendous value for physicians and the broader healthcare system by enabling better resource allocation. 

Without access to quality, personalized medical information at home, many defer to in-person doctor visits even when it may not be necessary. And with around one primary care physician per 1000 in the US, primary care practitioners are subsequently faced with an overwhelming number of patients and are unable to focus on more complex cases that may require more time and resources. The high volume of patients also forces physicians to allocate budgets for support staff to help interact with patients, collect initial background information and perform less-demanding tasks.

K Health believes that by providing an accurate alternative for those with lighter or more trivial symptoms, it can help lower unnecessary in-person visits, reduce costs for practices and allow physicians to focus on complicated, rare or resource-intensive cases where their expertise can be most useful and where brute machine processing power is less valuable.

The startup is looking to enhance the platform’s symbiotic patient-doctor benefits further in early-2019, when it plans to launch in-app capabilities that allow users to share their AI-driven health conversations directly with physicians, hopefully reducing time spent on information gathering and enabling more-informed treatment.

With K Health’s AI and machine learning capabilities, the platform also gets smarter with every conversation as it captures more outcomes, hopefully enriching the system and becoming more valuable to all parties over time. Initial results seem promising with K Health currently boasting around 500,000 users, most having joined since this past July.

Using access and affordability to improve global health outcomes

With the latest round, the company has raised a total of $37.5 million since its late-2016 founding. K Health plans to use the capital to ramp up marketing efforts, further refine its product and technology, and perform additional research to identify methods for earlier detection and areas outside of primary care where the platform may be valuable.

Longer term, the platform has much broader aspirations of driving better health outcomes, normalizing better preventative health behavior, and creating more efficient and affordable global healthcare systems.

The high costs of the American healthcare system and the impacts they have on health behavior has been well-documented. With heavy copays, premiums and treatment cost, many avoid primary care altogether or opt for more reactionary treatment, leading to worse health outcomes overall.

Issues seen in the American healthcare system are also observable in many emerging market countries with less medical infrastructure. According to the World Health Organization, the international standard for the number of citizens per primary care physician is one for every 1,500 to 2,000 people, with some countries facing much steeper gaps – such as China, where there is only one primary care doctor for every 6,666.

The startup hopes it can help limit the immense costs associated with emerging countries educating millions of doctors for eight-to-ten years and help provide more efficient and accessible healthcare systems much more quickly.

By reducing primary care costs for consumers and operating costs for medical practices, while creating a more convenient diagnostic experience, K Health believes it can improve access to information, ultimately driving earlier detection and better health outcomes for consumers everywhere.

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