By: Michael Slovak

The Greater Boston Area has been known as a center for medical and healthcare innovation for the past half-century, with some of the nation’s best hospital systems, universities and pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Boston and the surrounding suburbs. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General and Beth Israel Deaconess are oft-mentioned for their groundbreaking therapies and treatments, while BU has lead the study of concussions in the brains of deceased professional athletes. While these institutions have been innovating for decades, technology companies that are focused specifically on healthcare are now becoming more prominent in the area as well.

One trend in particular that is being applied in various ways to healthcare is social networking. Patient-to-patient platforms, such as those built by a Cambridge, MA company PatientsLikeMe, allow individuals from across the globe to share their stories and treatments, and also allow people with rare ailments to connect and find support in each other from thousands of miles apart. Patients are now also able to connect with their doctors in radically different ways that in the past with the development of various doctor-to-patient platforms by companies such as ZocDoc or HealthTap. Patients are now able to access and compare massive amounts of data regarding various doctors, or they can get a medical opinion from one of thousands of registered doctors online, as opposed to waiting to get the family doctor on the phone. Doctors are finding new ways to connect with their peers as well with the advent of companies such as Sermo, developing doctor-to-doctor social networks, allowing knowledge gained through the treatment of a rare disease in Europe to be shared with a local doctor in Idaho facing the same threat.

The tech community in Boston has responded to the massive healthcare establishment already in place in Massachusetts by developing some of the world’s most innovative web-based products. With the introduction of Obamacare and the resulting increase in healthcare-related data, the Boston tech scene has been at the forefront of developing new ways for medical professionals to take advantage of all of this new knowledge.

Strategies, innovation and free resources for recruiters in the tech industry

By: Maria Espada

We have offices all over the US, put our San Francisco office is located in the tech capital…Silicon Valley. So it’s not news that only the most creative, innovative and hardworking make it out here. LinkedIn launched their new recruiter dashboard with more features and add-ons. But is it really enough to use the same tools that our competition uses? In this industry we need to be different, unique, think outside the box, we need to have a game plan that is going to help us stand out.

We need more than creative resources, we need a creative strategy to show to our clients and candidates that we are the best, we build relationships, we are relationship managers. So how do we do this? Well we can use these easy tools…free tools.

1. Dooid.me allows you to create a website to add all your social media information, add a digital copy of your business card, write about your history as a recruiter and all the lasting and trusting relationships we build with our clients.

2. Rapportive.com is an add-on to your email account so you can have all the contact information of your clients and candidates at the tip of your fingers so whenever we need to contact them we have all the information we need to make the connection possible.

We are the leaders of recruiting in the US, we know how to network and how to find the perfect fit between our clients and candidates. With these tools we personalize and leverage our uniqueness in this industry.

What is 3D Printing?

Additive manufacturing, stereolithography, or 3D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. Uses CAD files (computer aided design) and “slices” them into digital cross-sections for the machine to successively use as a guideline for printing.

The Future of 3D Printing

-3D printing becomes industrial strength

Once reserved for prototypes and toys, 3D printing will become industrial strength. You will
take a flight on an airliner that includes 3D-printed components, making it lighter and more fuel
efficient. In fact, there are aircrafts that already contain some 3D-printed components.

-3D printing starts saving lives

3D-printed medical implants will improve the quality of life of someone close to you. Because
3D printing allows products to be custom-matched to an exact body shape, it is being used today for making better titanium bone implants, prosthetic limbs and orthodontic devices.

-Customization becomes the norm

You will buy a product, customized to your exact specifications, which is 3D-printed and
delivered to your doorstep. Innovative companies will use 3D printing technologies to give
themselves a competitive advantage by offering customization at the same price as their
competitor’s standard products.

-Product innovation is faster

Everything from new car models to better home appliances will be designed more rapidly,
bringing innovation to you faster. Because rapid prototyping using 3D printers reduces the time
to turn a concept into a production-ready design, it allows designers to focus on the function of
products.

-New companies develop innovative business models built on 3D printing

You will invest in a 3D printing company’s IPO. Start-up companies will flourish as a generation
of innovators, hackers and “makers” take advantage of the capabilities of 3D printing to create
new products or deliver services to the burgeoning 3D printer market.

-3D print shops open at the mall

3D print shops will begin to appear, at first servicing local markets with high-quality 3D printing
services. Initially designed to service rapid-prototyping and other niche capabilities, these shops
will branch into the consumer marketplace.

-Heated debates on who owns the rights emerge.

As manufacturers and designers start to grapple with the prospect of their copyrighted designs
being replicated easily on 3D printers, there will be high-profile test cases over the intellectual
property of physical object designs. Just like file-sharing sites shook the music industry because
they made it easy to copy and share music, the ability to easily copy, share, modify and print 3D
objects will ignite a new wave of intellectual property issues.

-New products with magical properties will tantalize us.

New products – that can only be created on 3D printers – will combine new materials, nano
scale and printed electronics to exhibit features that seem magical compared to today’s
manufactured products. These printed products will be desirable and have distinct competitive
advantage.

-New machines grace the factory floor.

Expect to see 3D printing machines appearing in factories. Already some niche components
are produced more economically on 3D printers, but this is only on a small scale. Many
manufacturers will begin experimenting with 3D printing for applications outside of
prototyping.

-“Look what I made!”

Your children will bring home 3D printed projects from school. Digital literacy – including
Web and app development, electronics, collaboration and 3D design – will be supported by 3D
printers in schools.

Dreambox: The Redbox of 3D Printing

Dreambox was created by co-founders David Pastewka, Ricard Berwick and Will Drevno,
who all met in a mobile application development class and competition at the University of
California, Berkeley. Frustrated by their lack of accessible, on-campus 3D printing options
and the two- to four-week lead time for online 3D printing services, the trio came up with
the idea for a more ubiquitous option called dream box. Think of red box but for 3d printing.
Users can also upload designs via a USB stick at the machine. If they don’t have their own
3D models, customers can select one from a catalog of designs or use one of the many
apps that help customize a model. Once an item is selected for printing, it’s sent to the
nearest Dreambox and added to the queue. Upon completion, the object is automatically
removed from the build surface and dispensed into a private locker within the machine.
The customer is then alerted via text that their creation is ready for pick-up. The text also
includes a unique code to open the locker.

Stephanie Linman

Gone are the days where people have to go to a library and read books as their sole way to gain knowledge. Today, we live in a world of lifelong learners, with information constantly at their fingertips. The desire for knowledge has given rise to a new phenomenon, mLearning.

Mobile learning, “education you can hold in your hand”, has been named one of the next top 10 technology markets by Business Insider to soon be worth over a billion dollars. Global Industry Analysts projects the market for online and electronic distance learning to reach $107 billion by 2015. Websites like the Khan Academy and Ted have sprung up, providing free educational videos on a wide array of topics, that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Applications are now available that provide real time feedback to help people learn English, that will correct sentence structure for teens writing essays, and that will even help users learn to code. Learning on a mobile device is the next big thing, as people crave real time information.

Bottom line, mLearning is booming, and it’s only going to keep growing.

By: Matthew Morton

As an organization, Talener certainly loves sports. We have season tickets to the Yankees in New York, we are constantly looking to hire ultra-competitive former college athletes as sales reps, and we are always having good natured, sports-themed contests such as the recent March Madness sweepstakes (BOS-OS put up a real good fight!) However, in the technology industry, sports have always been a major component. Whether the subject is large enterprise sports reporting sites such as espn.com, cnnsi.com, cbsportsline.com, fantasy sports, gambling on sports online (illegal in US, but there are loopholes), or the analytics aspect on delving into statistics to improve competitive advantages, sports and technology are linked very heavily. Here are four aspects of how sports and technology are intertwined in the 21st century:

General Advancements:
-The first down marker in football.
-The “strike zone” in baseball: essentially shows whether or not an umpire’s call was actually a strike or a ball.
-Tennis: Computerized high quality view of whether the ball was in or out of bounds.
-Golf: Digital view of the trajectory of the struck golf ball.

Fantasy Sports/Gambling
-Fantasy sports are a billion dollar/year industry. Giants like ESPN, Yahoo and CBS capitalize on ad revenues by providing dynamic fantasy sports applications.
-Gambling online in sports is illegal in the USA, but companies such as Bodog.com are run out of Latin America, and gambling online for sports are also more than a billion dollar industry.

Social Media
-We all know that pro athletes such as Shaquille O’Neal and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson are big into the twitter scene, but at what point is it overkill?
-Buffalo Bills’ Wide Receiver recently tweeted that if “North Korea was to drop a bomb on the US, they should start at Gillette Stadium (where my storied Pats call home).
-What are the consequences for tweets like this? Where do pro teams draw the line? Interesting debates.

What does this all mean for us?
Obviously, the sports industry has been on our radar and will continue to be for many years to come. In New York, we have worked with the Giants, NBC Sports, and according to the legendary Kim Siembieda, we have a signed MSA with ESPN. In Boston, we have set up a target list of companies in the Sports space such as the Red Sox, Celtics, the Athlete Performance, and XOS Digital (build CMS’ for sports.) Groups such as these will continue to hire on the web and software side, and in terms of entry points, it’s always easier to get fired up about calling a company when you’re intrested the field they are in!