• India's COVID Surge Likely to Impact Global IT and Call Center Availability
• TikTok's Role in Creating the Next Workforce
• Global Chip Shortage Will Be Long-Lasting: Ramifications
• As Congress Dithers, States & Companies Step in to Set Rules for the Internet
• Where to Learn the Top Programming Languages

Oculus VR has named AfterNow Prez as one of the grant recipients of the Oculus LaunchPad 2020, a program designed to support promising VR content creators from diverse backgrounds as they iterate on their unique ideas and bring them to market. All Launch Pad participants will participate in a boot camp and receive three months of VR education and development support to continue their app development process. (Philippe Lewicki, WLA)

Profi is the new name for awarenow, reflecting the firm's broader mission to help all professional service providers - solopreneurs and teams - increase their revenue through optimized service delivery, deeper and better client experiences, and activation and automated admin processes. And, the company announced that Adam Miller is now its Executive Chairman, with Alina Trigubenko remaining as Founder and CEO. Whereas awarenow was primarily for coaches and therapists, Profi is laser-focused on streamlining professional service operations from all sectors, including training, accounting, financial services, legal, marketing, HR, wellness, coaching, healthcare and more. (Alina Trigubenko & Adam Miller, WLA)

Delphi Display Systems has signed a partnership agreement with Everbrite, LLC to provide Order Confirmation System Technology as a key component to Everbrite's QSR drive-thru product offering. Delphi's technology and software will be bundled with Everbrite's drive-thru canopy and menu board solutions.
Also, Delphi recently installed a full visual engagement and business optimization platform for the first Havana Savannah coffee concept based in Valencia, California, including powering all digital content, technical consulting and installation services, and more. (Ken Neeld, OC)

Eckert & Ziegler AG (EZ) has acquired a direct majority stake in drug developer Pentixapharm, which is developing a radiopharmaceutical combination product against lymphoma and a number of related tumors. The product will be able to be used both for the diagnosis and the therapy of cancer, and has received the green light for advanced clinical trials from the European Medicines Agency.
Meanwhile, EZ and Sirtex Medical recently executed a long-term supply agreement for the use of EZAG's Yttrium-90 in Sirtex SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres for liver cancer. (Frank Yeager, SGV)

Intellect has launched Intellect QMS 4.1, which includes new apps: Device History Record, for integrating with NetSuite and a foundation for integrating with other ERP software providers; and Incident Management, the company's first app for Environmental, Health and Safety. Version 4.1 also includes redesigned QMS apps for Audit and Feedback Management, as well as modifications to Document Control, Calibration and Maintenance, and Setup. (Romeo Elias, WLA)

LookinLA and CEO Ali Payani are the cover story in the May 2021 issue of Mirror Review for Unified Media Solutions Providers. The article - LookinLA: Transforming Companies into Authorities of their Industries - describes how LookinLA offers cost-effective full-service data-based marketing for clients that lack an in-house team. As more companies pivot to a remote working model, Ali anticipates that more will work with remote digital companies as a way to lower overhead and free up funds to use for marketing initiatives.
Meanwhile, LookinLA is offering an ebook download - The Future Of Work: Embracing The New Normal, which looks at coming market trends and published a blog post, Your Guide To Motion Graphics In Marketing. (Ali Payani, SGV)

myKaarma announced that its TextDirect feature, within the myKaarma app, allows auto dealer service departments to receive all text messages sent to the dealership, even if to the landline - enabling them to capture an additional 50-100 customer interactions per month. TextDirect can be fully integrated with myKaarma's software suite, which runs on mobile phones, desktops, and tablet computers. (Ujj Nath, WLA)

Parasoft recently announced the 2021.1 release of the Parasoft Continuous Quality Suite of API testing tools for enterprise applications, including Parasoft SOAtest, Virtualize, and CTP. This release adds continuous quality to the company's CI/CD framework through enhanced requirements traceability and tighter integrations with current DevOps tools. In addition, teams will get a better service virtualization experience. (Elizabeth Kolawa, Ph.D., SGV)

Pegasus One and Connectria have formed a new referral and reselling partnership for managed services and cloud solutions. As such, Pegasus One leverages its application modernization and SaaS expertise alongside Connectria's team of cloud experts to deliver end-to-end solutions for complex infrastructure challenges.
Also, Pegasus One has published Data Intelligence by Pegasus One: Visualizations, Reporting and Best Practices, which promises to "guide you towards an easier path to adopting data analytics and using it to boost ROI." (Tushar Puri, OC)

On May 26, Siemens will present a virtual event - Realize LIVE + User2User - which will bring together colleagues from across the Siemens Digital Industries Software portfolio, which now includes Siemens EDA, to keep them on the leading edge of digital transformation.
Meanwhile, Siemens Digital Industries Software has acquired Fractal Technologies, a provider of production signoff-quality IP validation solutions. With Fractal, Siemens' EDA customers can more quickly and easily validate internal and external IP and libraries used in their integrated circuit designs to improve overall quality and speed time to market. (Greg Lebsack, WLA)

Xsolla has announced its acquisition of Slemma, which makes web-based tools to create data reports. Slemma's tools will enable Xsolla to offer more complex data reports.
And, Xsolla's new service - Xsolla Exit Strategies - will connect development studios with financial and transaction advisers, guiding them through the process of selling their game property or studio, from due diligence preparation to exiting.
Further, Xsolla is partnering with VCOIN, the first transferable digital currency designed for the metaverse, to expand the usability of VCOIN. (Shurick Agapitov, WLA)

In Hypnotists, Worry and Living Your Life Today, Harrison Barnes, of BCG Attorney Search, describes some of his experiences with hypnotism, and shares an insight a hypnotist offered him: almost all of the people who use [a hypnotist] are doing so because of worries that they have; her role was really to help them stop worrying. Harrison found the same basic theme when he looked into The Sedona Method after a colleague raved about it. (Harrison Barnes, JD, WLA)

Dave Berkus has published an article on Medium - Some great coaches are younger than you are - in which he states that there is nothing wrong with a manager slowing a conversation to ask for more background when speaking to an often-younger and more involved associate.
Meanwhile, on Hospitality Net, Dave took part on a recent panel to produce SHIFT + DEL! Do we need a massive reset?, in which experts discuss how, in the hospitality industry, future managers are going to want their software to behave more like WhatsApp or Snapchat - no training or massive configuration to be done. (Dave Berkus, SGV & WLA)

GetVisible's Always Thinking Blog offers a variety of posts to help us better understand specific aspects of SEO. For example, GV Explains Alt Tags explains that they refer to image-related coding with text that describes what is on the image and its function. GetVisible shares that Google has a built-in section titled "Use Descriptive Alt Text" as part of their ranking metrics. In fact, Google places an extremely high emphasis on alt text - its advanced algorithms not only determine what alt text is in place, but also analyzes how it relates to surrounding content.
Other "GV Explains" posts discuss: Page Loading Speed; Backlinks; Anchor Text; Google My Business Postings; HERO Sections; Advertising in Social Media; and Local SEO Rankings Services and Strategies. (Jason Ciment, WLA)

In Marketing Data Analytics: Can You Trust Your Source Of Truth?, Half Past Nine looks at some best practices to ensure that your marketing data has optimal integrity, to ultimately help turbocharge your business growth. Data integrity is the completeness, accuracy, and consistency of data over its lifecycle, and data hygiene refers to the process of 'cleaning up' data. (Ken Shen, WLA)

In his recent blog post, Why a Culture of Continuous Learning Increases Quality, Intellect's Romeo Elias points to the 1993 book, The Fifth Discipline, known for popularizing the concept of a "learning organization." However, it was also criticized for being too abstract when it came to "team learning," failing to offer a framework for action. Romeo declares that, today, QMS methodologies provide that clear roadmap for fulfilling the vision of a learning organization.
And, in Fundamental Elements of a Quality Management System, Romeo addresses the building blocks upon which a strong quality program and a healthy culture of quality can be built. (Romeo Elias, WLA)

Optimum Info has made a video recording of its recent webinar available on-demand: The road to improve the efficiency of your Field Operations. Given that the success of a manufacturing company's sales and after-sales strategies often rely on the Field Operations team's efficiency to carry out corporate initiatives to the franchise network, this 20-minute webinar discusses the importance of creating quality contact reports; how to facilitate the improvement of dealership operations; and how to manage all levels of field activity effectively. (Arvind Verma, OC)

On May 26, at 11 a.m. PT, PeopleG2 CEO Chris Dyer, and remote work pioneer Kim Shepherd, will present a webinar: Meetings People Love! How to Meet with Remote and Hybrid Work. Participants will learn how to: use brain tricks to help group communication; identify the do's and don'ts of great meeting types; curate meetings employees will want to attend; and more!
ALSO, get Chris and Kim's new book, Remote Work: Redesign Processes, Practices and Strategies to Engage a Remote Workforce, valuable whether your organization is fully remote, hybrid, or you're planning to have just a few remote employees.
Meanwhile, watch PeopleG2's recent webinar on-demand - Remote Work Expert Discussion: Back to Normal or Sliding Into Hybrid? and read Chris's article, Top 3 Reasons the Remote Work Trend Is Here to Stay. (Chris Dyer, SGV)

Oli Thordarson, CEO of Alvaka Networks, adds his expert opinion to a recent article from Threatpost, "Ransomware Demands Spike 320%, Payments Rise." Oli notes "a tremendous increase in ransomware attacks that started during the pandemic and continue to occur daily," and that "paying a ransom should really be the last option on the table; it's all about weighing the risks and rewards. There have been countless cases we've seen where the victim pays the ransom and doesn't receive their data back . . . [Ransom payment] is not a decision that should be made easily and should be thoroughly discussed with professionals before doing so." (Oli Thordarson, ABL-Health OC)

Eliott Jones, CEO of Biospectal, has been named to the Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 team that will represent Switzerland at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Eliott is one of 10 team members, chosen by a jury of professional investors and mobile technology experts who reviewed nearly 100 applications. The team's roadshow will introduce Switzerland's most innovative mobile startups to international investors and telecom industry leaders at the Congress's startup fair, 4YFN. Venture Leaders Mobile is organized by Venturelab and supported by Huawei, Swisscom, and VISCHER. (Eliott Jones, ABL-Health SV)

Elemeno Health won first place in the JHF Healthcare Safety Challenge, awarded by Innovation Works and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. The competition attracted 125 submissions from 15 countries throughout the world, and awarded $25,000 to Elemeno for its customized, on-demand microlearning software solutions to today's crucial healthcare challenges. (Arup Roy-Burman, MD, ABL-Health OAK)

GeBBS Healthcare Solutions reports that denials are a leading source of revenue loss ($262 billion a year) and increased labor costs for healthcare organizations, and so offers The ABCs of Coding Denials: Avoidable, Burdensome, and Costly, its latest white paper with key points and best practices.
And, Mitigate Compliance Risk & Enhance Revenue Integrity explains how GeBBS' iCA technology and services work in conjunction with your EHR and coding platform to improve overall coding quality and compliance while providing the ability to access audited and scored records for education, review, and process improvements to achieve revenue goals. (Gabe Stein, ABL-Health LA)

In FDA Reverses HHS Exemption of Class I and Class II Medical Devices from Section 510(k), King & Spalding (K&S) examines the FDA's recent action to reverse a last-minute Federal Register notice published by the outgoing Trump Administration which sought to exempt 90+ medical device types from premarket notification requirements.
And, in this video, K&S discusses state and international regulatory risks facing pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, while this video covers emerging trends in telemedicine and digital health. (Marcia Augsburger, JD, ABL-Health SF & Travis Jackson, JD)

LigoLab recently announced that its LIS & RCM platform supports an automated real-time solution that reduces the administrative burden that laboratories face when attempting to meet payer prior authorization requirements. The solution helps prevent denials, speeds up prior authorization approval, and closes a coverage gap that could otherwise put the patient at risk.
Also, CEO Suren Avunjian is quoted in a recent industry journal article - Automating denials management for lab reimbursement - which examines the increasing rate of claims denials at labs and health systems, such that managing denials has become an important part of an organization's revenue cycle workflow. (Suren Avunjian, ABL-Health LA )

Startups Geek has named 25 healthcare companies to watch - including MedWand - who are leading innovation in augmented reality. MedWand's handheld telemedicine physical exam device is noted for having won numerous awards, its affordability, portability, and wide range of diagnostic capabilities. (Bob Rose, ABL-Health OC )

In How AI Can Improve Medical Billing Processes, Savi Group suggests that by utilizing both human and artificial intelligence capabilities, healthcare providers can drastically improve their medical billing and coding operations while gleaning key insights to improve future performance.
And, in Why Healthcare Should Embrace Contactless Payments, Savi Group says it will be important for healthcare organizations to embrace new payment methods to satisfy the demands of an increasingly digitally-savvy patient population. (Sumit Mahendru, ABL-Health OC )

India's gigantic IT and call center service industry employs more than 4.5 million people directly and relies on huge numbers of graduates under the age of 30. New strains of the virus have since sent India's case numbers soaring to global records and brought more infections among younger Indians. All 15 of the large companies Reuters spoke to this week said that they now had vaccination [plans] in place. Several outlined COVID-19 "war-rooms" they had launched to support staff and secure oxygen and other supplies. (Reuters)
     Monday was the 12th straight day that more than 300,000 cases were registered. Deaths have also been rising at an alarming rate and the country's health care system has been stretched beyond breaking point. In order to keep their operations online, banks are shifting work to other countries, encouraging staff to work from home and extending project deadlines. Indian companies that provide services to Wall Street are taking additional steps to protect workers in cities such as Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi, in some cases establishing Covid care centers for employees and their families. (CNN Business)
     Fortunately, COVID-19 vaccines that are available in the United States are effective against the deadly variant that was first detected in India last year, top US health officials said. The B.1.617 virus variant has been classified as a 'variant of concern' at the global level by the World Health Organization. (Economic Times)
     Coronavirus in India: TOTAL Cases: 25,496,330; Deaths: 283,248. In the past 24 hours: Cases: 267,334; Deaths: 4,529. (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/newsblogs/covid-india-cases-latest-daily-news-and-updates-may-19/liveblog/82757073.cms)

TikTok, the most downloaded app of 2020, introduced a platform for people around the world to become content creators and engage with a global community. However, beyond being a social media platform, the video content app has also become a global learning and recruitment hub, offering a new way to attract the next-generation workforce. The hashtag #LearnOnTikTok has gained more than seven billion views, with users flocking to quick and engaging educational videos. TikTok has also been cultivating career-related videos, with interview tips, career advice, job openings, and even video-based resumes. Recently, TikTok announced that it's testing a tool that can connect companies and candidates, making it a go-to recruitment tool. (https://www.ces.tech/Articles/2021/May/TikTok%E2%80%99s-Role-in-Creating-the-Next-Workforce.aspx)

Research firm Gartner reports that the global chip shortage isn't set to subside before well into 2022. Severe semiconductor shortages will persist throughout 2021, with recovery only starting towards the end of the year to reach normal levels from the second quarter of 2022 onwards, says Gartner. By that time, new manufacturing capacity will help ease the situation. Meanwhile, the time it takes to produce a chip could increase by six months, and even up to a year for more specific semiconductors. Key devices to be impacted will include power management chips, CMOS image and touch sensors, as well as fingerprint sensors and microcontrollers. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-global-chip-shortage-will-be-a-long-lasting-problem-heres-what-it-means-for-you-and-for-the-world/)

Over the past six months, at least 38 states have introduced 100+ bills to protect people's data privacy, regulate speech policies, and encourage tech competition, according to a tally by The New York Times - a drastic escalation from past years. For online privacy alone, states proposed 27 bills in 2021, up from two in 2018. Only a handful of the bills have been signed into law, but the push signals that states are no longer content to sit on the sidelines of setting the rules for the internet - especially as Washington has moved slowly. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/technology/state-privacy-internet-laws.html )
Meanwhile, the number of companies complaining about Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon has grown dramatically. Some have massive resources available, but other complaints are coming from small developers with fewer resources, or the leaders of companies whose business models seem outdated. They all claim, though, that the biggest companies are behaving like monopolies - squeezing them for unfair profits or squashing them when they dare to compete. And the business - and strategy - of making such a claim has become an industry all its own. (https://www.protocol.com/policy/antitrust-campaign)

The new normal of work will bring a lot of changes, but one enduring theme is going to be upskilling and learning new programming language tricks. ZDNet provides "a look at the top programming languages based on a sampling of surveys from RedMonk, Tiobe, and SlashData, and places where you can hone skills or acquire them new. Most of these courses are available for free or with a subscription." They include: JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, C# and C++, CSS, and SQL. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-programming-language/)

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