Marketplace Tech

Host Molly Wood speaks with Chris Giattina, CEO of the Alabama-based manufacturing and design firm Blox, which specializes in modular medical facility construction. During this time of crisis, when hospitals are reaching their capacity to treat regular patients on top of treating those with COVID-19, Blox is beginning production on its mobile isolation care units, or MICUs, to help alleviate hospital space. With Blox’s technology, these modular medical facilities are built in only weeks, rather than months — and they have everything a doctor needs to keep treating patients. They’re also cheaper than traditional hospital beds.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Jacqueline Linnes, a professor of biomedical engineering who runs a lab at Purdue University, about what sort of tech is needed to produce COVID-19 tests in the face of a shortage. She says production at scale during the pandemic is the biggest challenge. Linnes also says academia may be prompted by the accelerated work during the pandemic to rethink how peer reviews are conducted. A lot of peer reviewers are usually excited to read about the next big thing around biosensors, for example, but pay little attention to more mundane things regarding manufacturing.

Host Molly Wood speaks again with Amy Webb, futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, about the fear-versus-optimism side of tech during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who see this pandemic as an opportunity to pause and really prioritize what sorts of scientific and tech advances should be done, Webb says, will move forward and will be OK at the end. On the other hand, she says, those who oppose the fact that the future will now look different than originally envisioned will have a much more difficult time adapting.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Amy Webb, futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, about the tech we have and wish we had during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are lucky this pandemic didn’t happen even 30 years ago, Webb says, given the many ways we can now connect and communicate with our colleagues, friends and family via video calls. Webb also expects tech companies to accelerate the technology around drones and autonomous vehicles that deliver essential goods to people’s homes.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief information security officer, about disinformation around COVID-19 on social media. A lot of people are working from home, which includes tech employees who are in charge of moderating content on social platforms. At home, they might not be supervised the same way they would at tech company offices, where high security measures might ensure that they are not sharing users’ personal information. So how are social platforms managing disinformation about coronavirus while not compromising users’ personal information? 

Host Molly Wood speaks to Alexander Howard, the director of the Digital Democracy Project at the nonprofit Demand Progress, about the need for transparency regarding the data being collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Collecting certain data — like location, who is interacting with whom, and the last time a person was tested for coronavirus — is helpful to epidemiologists, Howard says. And, he adds, there should be discussions about how, and whether, the data will be used for other purposes.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Christopher Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. Now that people are expected to work from home and students are required to be home-schooled during the COVID-19 pandemic, internet connectivity has become essential. Mitchell says cities and states need to develop a plan to expand broadband connectivity to those without access — especially now that people are being asked to not leave their homes.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Shira Ovide, a tech reporter at the New York Times, about how tech companies, like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, are in collaboration to fight misinformation around the coronavirus. Social giants are pushing official information from other organizations like the CDC and the World Health Organization that inform internet users more about the pandemic.

Host Molly Wood speaks with Michael Seibel, who leads the Y Combinator accelerator program, about whether it is a difficult thing to launch a startup during this global coronavirus pandemic. Some of the most successful startups began before, during and after the 2008 economic crash, he says.

At a moment when we would prefer it stay healthy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was the target of a cyberattack. Reports say the agency’s servers slowed down because they received millions of hits at the same time. Host Molly Wood talks about it with Mark Rasch, who runs a cybersecurity consulting company.