What does Nervana do for you? It seems like there’s a wide variety of answers to that question.

From what I’ve been reading, it sounds like my experiences are similar to a lot of new Nervana users. One difference, though: I was able to document the changes I thought I was feeling.

A few weeks before I received my Nervana, I got a wearable called Spire. About the size of the knob on the Nervana generator, Spire clips in along the belt line of your pants. It monitors your breathing, and senses whether you’re stressed, calm, focused or (d) none of the above. It’s supposed to help you be more mindful of your stress.

The weeks leading up to Nervana, Spire was telling me that about 80 percent of the time it characterized was tense, and that I was calm for most or all of the rest.

Nothing changed during the first few days after I got my Nervana, which isn’t surprising. Like many, it took me a couple of days to dial it in, choose the right size earbuds and spray the right amount of saline for a good connection. I found that I tolerated the stimulation well, and switched to formula mode after only a couple of days.

What I did notice was that, over time, I had a better handle on my stress. It’s not magic. I still get stressed. But it’s for much shorter periods. And it’s markedly easier to control.

Spire seems to agree. About five days after I got Nervana, it started to report noticeably more calm – at the expense of tension. And about a week later, Spire reported that my calm kicked into another gear. That trend continued for another week.

by Julie McClure

Can researchers shock us out of our drug habit? It’s an intriguing question that has been drawing more investment lately. Google and GlaxoSmithKline is one of the growing number of ventures cropping up in the exciting new frontier of biolectronic medicine. Mike Feibus recently wrote about it in his latest column in USA TODAY.

Much of the biolectronics efforts focus on vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS. It has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Researchers are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies.

We’ve also just released a new FeibusTech research brief on the bioelectronics in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal. Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. 

by Julie McClure

Can researchers shock us out of our drug habit? It’s an intriguing question that has been drawing more investment lately. Google and GlaxoSmithKline is one of the growing number of ventures cropping up in the exciting new frontier of biolectronic medicine. Mike Feibus recently wrote about it in his latest column in USA TODAY. Much of the biolectronics efforts focus on vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS. It has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Researchers are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies. We’ve also just released a new FeibusTech research brief on the bioelectronics in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal. Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. Qualcomm Life Connect16: Balancing Data Security & Data Fluidity

Balancing fluidity and security in digital health is a Catch-22. You need the data to be fluid. The more fluid the data, the more valuable. Unfortunately, the more fluid the data, the more exposed it becomes. So how to balance the two?

Learn more. Watch my security keynote and panel from Qualcomm Life’s Connect16, held Sept 30-31 in San Diego, CA.

Will your doctor ever be able to prescribe a Fitbit to help monitor your condition? Thanks to a couple of recent policy moves by the Food and Drug Administration, that’s a little closer to reality. But it’s still a long way off.

Find out more – read my column in the Tech section of USA TODAY.

Vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS, has been used for decades to treat seizures and depression. Today, researchers in the exciting field of bioelectronic medicine are looking at VNS to help people recover from injury and illness as well as prevent a growing list of mental and physiological maladies.

We produced a new research brief on this promising technology in association with Nervana, a startup that makes a wellness VNS device that uses electrical signals to stimulate the vagus nerve where it passes by the ear canal.

Download Vagus Nerve Stimulation: The Secret to Nervana HERE. 

If there was a wearable that could alert you and your doctor if you were in danger of having a heart attack, would you want it?

I sure would. But apparently, not everyone feels the same way.

Take Dr. James Madara, CEO of the American Medical Association, for example. Last weekend, he took time to rant about how technology is overrunning healthcare in his speech at the AMA annual meeting in Chicago.

“From ineffective electronic health records (EHR), to an explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products, to apps of mixed quality,” Madara said, according to his prepared remarks. “This is the digital snake oil of the early 21st century.”

Did he really just say that?

Read what I have to say about that in my column in USA TODAY Tech HERE.

I love the basic features of the new Nox Smart Sleep Light. It lulls you to sleep with calming tones and serotonin-inducing hues, and gently wake you up in the morning. I haven’t gotten my arms around many of the smart features. And maybe I never will. In that way, it’s like the Microsoft Word of Sleep.

I originally wrote the review for Xberts.com. Read it in its entirety on LinkedIn Here.

Many people buy fitness bands to offload the burden of tracking their activity. But when they load the device’s app onto their smart phone, they find activity is only one piece of the health-and-wellness equation. They still have to find a way to track their daily calorie intake, and their resulting weight.

Fortunately, there are apps to help simplify the calorie-counting task. And if you’re willing to step on a connected scale every morning, it will take care of the rest.

I’ve been testing an innovative new scale that’s coming to the US from China, as an Xberts Pioneer. Check out my review at xbert.com HERE:

Good morning! I sat down with CBS Overnight America’s Jon Grayson to share my take on the latest news. If you are a trucker or insomniac, you probably already knew that. But if you’re the kind of person who likes to sleep when it’s dark, you probably missed it. Fortunately for you, you can listen to the replay here.

We chatted about NetFlix’ prospects in the wake of its earnings release; the rise and fall of the once high-flying Theranos; Microsoft’s quest for real intelligence from its artificial intelligence projects; and wearables fatigue. Enjoy!

Financial difficulties for wearable vendors like Fitbit and Pebble are a sign of the times. Their businesses are sagging because we’re tired of so much data and so little insight.

The diagnosis: wearables fatigue. Want the prognosis? Read my latest column in Fortune HERE.

Apple, a company forever relegated to the fringe of big business, holds onto the misguided belief that it can forge into the core of business computing with a new tablet, and supplant hundreds of millions of aging PCs in the process.

It’s can’t. Like Apple, tablets were never able to break into the heart of enterprise computing. And the iPad Pro brings too little too late to change that. If the iPad Pro is going to replace any business computers at all, it will be Apple’s own MacBooks deployed in traditional Apple beachheads like content creation and point-of-sale applications in retail settings.

Read my entire column in the Tech section of USA Today HERE.

LAS VEGAS – The greatest, most game-changing product I saw earlier this month at the country’s largest health-tech event was a little black activity tracker perched on a small stand in a big booth.

This non-descript little tracker is the too-rare device developed in the true spirit of the healthcare system overhaul: that is, keeping healthy people healthy. It’s called Trio Motion, from UnitedHealthcare.

You can’t buy Trio Motion. The custom-designed device is free for employees at companies that UnitedHealthcare insures. Further, the companion wellness program, called Motion, is paying those employees for meeting daily activity goals. Up to $1,460 per person per year. Depending on the program, the funds might be designated to pay for healthcare. Or employees might just get a check.

Read why the little Trio Motion is such a groundbreaking device in my Fortune column HERE.

The glitzy new phones, VR headsets and drones grabbed the headlines at Mobile World Congress 2016. But it was IoT for business that made the show.

Indeed, the home market continues to struggle to forge a path to a connected future, wading through pervasive privacy concerns and a limited selection of high-priced thermostats, light bulbs and refrigerators.

But the business of IoT for business, meanwhile, is already good business. Cities like Los Angeles and San Antonio are deploying connected street lighting to cut down on waste and make streets safer for drivers. And companies like GE and Harley-Davidson are connecting factory equipment to decrease downtime by predicting equipment failure, and to anticipate heating and cooling needs to cut costs and improve comfort.

Read my entire column in the Tech section of USA TODAY here:

And while we’re on the subject of Mobile World, I had a few choice words for smartphone suppliers as well. Read that USA TODAY column here:

With just-announced business PCs built around Skylake, Intel’s sixth-generation Core processor, PC makers believe they can help IT professionals overcome the most glaring weakness in their cyber-security defenses: you and me.

That’s right: we the weakest link. We have a bad habit of handing over our passwords to cyber criminals. Not intentionally. But every time we click on a link in an email or open an attachment, we give bad guys an opportunity to install stealthy malware that nabs our employee logon credentials and rides them into corporate servers.

It’s a huge problem. Last year, organizations spent $75 billion on cyber security – and a big chunk of that was dedicated to thwarting cyber thieves’ attempts to pinch our digital identities. But bandits are crafty. They’re always coming up with new ways to convince us that their ploys are genuine.

And they’re impressively successful. According to Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report, 50.7 percent of cyber-attacks through web apps used stolen user credentials to gain access.

So what to do? Read my entire column on LinkedIn to find out!

I’ll be busy this week at CES. Here are the sessions in which I’ll be participating:

First, I’ll be moderating a panel at CES on what’s next for wearable UIs. (Hint: They’re getting smarter.)

The panel is called Wearables and Smart Sensors Advancing User Interface, and it’s scheduled for 11:30am Thursday, Jan 7 at Venetian Level 4, Marcello 4404.

That afternoon, I’ll be chatting on-stage with Deepak Chopra and his co-author, Dr. Rudy Tanzi. We’ll be talking about the power to harness your own genetic code to promote wellness and longevity.

The session is called Nature vs. Nurture Debunked: The Power of our Genes. It’s scheduled for Thursday at 1:45pm at Venetian Level 4, Lando 4304.

Hope to see you there!

Internet-of-Things visionaries see possibility. And so do cyber thieves. Because the more connected systems, the more potential pathways there are to the valuable data they’re chasing.

Fortunately, system(s)-on-chip designers have a new and promising set of technologies to tackle this escalating problem. It’s called OmniShield from Imagination Technologies. OmniShield is an on-chip security architecture comprised of hardware and software technologies from Imagination. It gives engineers the power to isolate systems, assign resources, and also to police communications between systems using a pool of hardware-enforced firewall features.

Read all about OmniShield, and what it can do for your chip designs in a new white paper produced by TechKnowledge Strategies in association with Imagination Technologies.

What if I told you I had inside information that could make you happier, healthier and live longer? What would that be worth to you?

Quite a lot, no doubt. But the truth is, I don’t have that inside information. You do.

Don’t worry. It’s not some clandestine, Wall Street-style piece of insider information. Everyone knows you have it. And it’s perfectly legal to exploit it for your own benefit.

I’m talking about your genome sequence. Your genetic makeup. It’s located inside your body’s cells. And it holds a treasure trove of answers crucial to your well-being.

“I can give you guidance on things you should be doing, things you should avoid, drugs that may be effective,” Dr. Nick van Terheyden, Dell’s chief medical officer, told me. “I can extend your life by eight years and I can make the quality of those years better. And that’s just based on what we know from genome sequences today.”

Read my entire USA TODAY Tech column HERE: