Millions of photos taken by Theta camera owners — some private and unlisted — were left exposed after security researchers found an open database without a password.

Noam Rotem and Ran Locar found the leaky database and reported the exposure to Ricoh, which secured the database within a day. The printing tech giant has sold thousands of the 360-degree camera since the device’s debut in 2014. Users can upload and share their photos and videos to the cloud using the camera.

But that cloud database that was left wide open, said Rotem and Locar, who also wrote up their findings. Anyone with access to the database could have easily accessed any of the 11 million photos stored online.

The researchers shared a sample of the data with TechCrunch to verify. We were able to easily access private and unlisted photos uploaded to Ricoh’s website by transplanting the unique file identifier found in the database into the cloud storage server’s web address.

In some cases the user’s name and captions were also viewable.

When asked, Ricoh spokesperson John Greco did not dispute the researchers’ 11 million figure, but confirmed the exposure: “Ricoh was recently notified of this configuration issue and corrected it within hours.”

“We take the security of customer information extremely seriously. It’s important to note that before the resolution, further steps beyond accessing the records would have been necessary and would require a deeper level of expertise to ultimately view the images. Today, private photos are only accessible to those with a direct link, a design feature that is intended to allow customers to share their images,” said Greco.

Although the database is inaccessible, the photos can still be accessed — including private and unlisted photos — if the web address is known.

Rotem and Locar called the exposure a “major privacy breach.”

Ricoh didn’t say for how long the database was exposed. The build date of the database suggests it was created on April 1. But Shodan, a database for exposed devices and databases, first spotted the database on May 9.

The researchers discovered the exposure over a month later on May 14, but praised the company for its quick remediation.

Read more:

• Flipboard hacks prompt password resets for millions of users
• After breach, Stack Overflow says some user data exposed
• An unsecured SMS spam operation doxxed its owners
• Samsung spilled SmartThings app source code and secret keys
• Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system
• A leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes
• Chipotle customers are saying their accounts have been hacked

If you haven’t noticed, security companies are a pretty hot commodity these days. Just yesterday, Palo Alto Networks bought two security startups. Earlier this week, FireEye bought Verodin for $250 million, and today, private equity firm Insight Partners announced it was buying threat intelligence vendor Recorded Future for $780 million.

What Insight is buying is a company that generates information to help customers better understand the external cyber threats they are facing. It’s easy to see where a company like that could have value in today’s world. It boasts 400 customers including GlaxoSmithKline, Morgan Stanley, The Gap and Verizon (the owner of this publication).

As you might expect, Recorded Future sees the deal as a way to continue growing. “This evolution of our relationship [with Insight] will allow Recorded Future to better serve its current and future clients as we tap into the full potential of our technical roadmap and position our software to truly answer some of the most difficult and unique intelligence challenges faced by our community,” company CEO Christopher Ahlberg said in a statement.

The company was founded in 2009 and has raised almost $58 million, according to Crunchbase data. The most recent round for $25 million in 2017 was led by none other than Insight Partners . They apparently liked what they saw and wanted the entire company.

The deal essentially buys out earlier investors, which included GV (Google’s venture arm), In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture arm), IA Ventures, Balderton Capital, Mass Mutual Ventures and others — and gives them a healthy return in the process.

The pace of malicious hacks and security breaches is showing no signs of slowing down, and spend among enterprises to guard against that is set to reach $124 billion this year. That’s also having a knock-on effect on the most innovative cybersecurity startups, which continue to raise big money to grow and meet that demand.

In the latest development, a New York startup called BlueVoyant — which provides managed security, professional services and most recently threat intelligence — has picked up $82.5 million in a Series B round of funding at a valuation in excess of $430 million.

The funding is coming from a range of new and existing investors that includes Fiserv, the fintech giant that’s acquiring First Data for $22 billion. (The startup is not disclosing any other names at this time, it said.) It has raised $207.5 million to date.

BlueVoyant has a notable pedigree that goes some way also to explaining how the idea for the startup first germinated.

Co-founder and CEO Jim Rosenthal met his co-founder Tom Glocer (the former CEO of Thomson Reuters) when Rosenthal was COO of Morgan Stanley and Glocer was a director at the financial services giant (Glocer is still on the board). Glocer said that in 2012 and 2013, a fair amount of Rosenthal’s work involved cyber defense, and he came into close contact there with Glocer, who was chairing the operations and technology committee at the time.

“Here was an incredibly strategic, smart fellow in charge of operations,” he said of Rosenthal. “When it came time for him to retire, he told me he wanted to do one more big thing, but in a more entrepreneurial fashion. I suggested to him that the next step could be to work on [cybersecurity], which we were focusing on at Morgan Stanley.”

Glocer noted that the bank was spending some $300 million annually on cybersecurity at the time. It effectively had all the resources of the world at its disposal to invest in tackling the risks, but the two were all too aware of how even that could prove not to be enough — and of course for any company with fewer resources, or that wasn’t build as a tech company or with technology as part of its DNA.

BlueVoyant was built with those kinds of challenges in mind.

The startup has amassed talent from the world of private enterprise, but also a number of government organizations such as the NSA, FBI, GCHQ and Unit 8200 — which are alternately renowned and somewhat notorious for their work in cybersecurity and hacking. Its offices span a multitude of geographies that speaks to the customers that it has picked up in its quiet growth to date (which also gives some color to its valuation, too). In addition to the US, it has operatoins in Israel, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Philippines.

Tapping that talent pool, the company focuses on three areas of service for its customers: threat intelligence, managed security and professional services (with the latter focused specifically on those related to security implementations and operations).

Within these, Rosenthal said in an interview that it both builds its own IP, and also brings in software from a range of trusted partners (which include many of the biggest security software companies around today). Key to the proposition, though, is also the implementation of that technology. The theory is that technology will only get a company so far: you need a multi-level strategy when it comes to cybersecurity, and part of that will involve people able to identify vulnerabilities and figuring out how to fix or defend around them.

BlueVoyant believes the opportunity for it is twofold: targeting small and medium enterprises — the pitch being that it can provide the same kind of software and level of services that large enterprises enjoy; and targeting larger enterprises that may already have large IT budgets and teams tasked with cybersecurity, but could still use supplementary work from a world-class team of experts that would be a challenge to amass directly.

“My view is that for firms with very good cyber defenses, external cyber intelligence is important because you can’t defend everything equally,” Rosenthal said. “Having good actionable defense makes it better.

“Then for firms that are unable to afford an excellent cyber defense instructed by themselves and may not be able to attract the talent necessary, a managed security service is the right and important answer,” he continued. “That kind of managed security now needs to be available to companies of all sizes, not just the big ones but small and medium organizations, too. We have created a tech stack and level of talent capable of providing those.”

The formula appears to be working. Since launching the first tranche of its offering, managed services, in 2018, BlueVoyant has picked up some 150 customers in verticals like financial services, manufacturing, municipal government and education.

Working with partners is one way that BlueVoyant plans to expand that customer base over time. Fiserv is backing the startup as a strategic investment and the two will collaborate on providing respective services to each other’s clients. Specifically, Glocer noted that many of the banks that Fiserv currently works with are typical targets: businesses that have a lot to lose in a breach, but may lack the size to ever adequately secure its infrastructure and other assets.

“The strategic alliance between Fiserv and BlueVoyant brings advanced cyber defense capabilities to banks and credit unions of all sizes,” said Byron Vielehr, Chief Administrative Officer of Fiserv. “Our continued investment in BlueVoyant underscores the value these capabilities can bring to our clients.”

BlueVoyant is not the only big security startup to raise at a high valuation in recent times. Auth0 raised $103 million at a $1 billion valuation last week. In April, Bitglass closed a $70 million round. 2018 had seen a high water mark for security funding, with startups raking in a record $5.3 billion in the year: it will be worth watching to see whether the ongoing march of breaches will see those figures rise again this year.

For the past nineteen years, Ioannis Tarnanas, the founder and chief scientific officer at Altoida, has been developing virtual and augmented reality tools to offer predictions about the onset of mental illness in older patients.

The company, whose tools have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for predicting Alzheimer’s, claims that it can determine whether someone will present with the disease six-to-ten years before the onset of mild cognitive impairment symptoms with a 94% accuracy.

In 2019, Alzheimer’s and other dementias will cost the U.S. nearly $290 billion and that figure could rise as high as $1.1 trillion by 2050, according to Altoida.

The number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease is rapidly growing. In 2019 alone, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will cost the nation $290 billion. By 2050, these costs could rise as high as $1.1 trillion, but Altoida says that these costs can be prevented if the disease is caught early enough.

Altoida uses an iPad or a tablet accelerometer, a gyroscope, and touch screen sensors to detect what the company calls “micro-errors” as patients complete a series of AR and VR challenges. It’s basically a game of hide-and-seek where patients put virtual objects in different physical spaces in a clinical environment and then try to collect them.

Right now, the company’s technology is only available as a clinically supervised test in a doctor’s office, but the company is beginning to look at bringing its diagnostic tools into the home.

“In this field there are two major waves. Passive digital biomarkers and active digital biomarkers. With passive biomarkers you collect data from sensors,” says Tarnanas. “To give you an example of what this means in real life. [With passive digital biomarkers] you wind up collecting huge amounts of data and you see spikes and associate that with more everyday function or not… you are never sure whether this is due to day to day activity.”

Tarnanas started conducting longitudinal clinical trials around cognitive testing in the early 2000s while he was working on his Masters at the University of Sussex. He then moved to San Diego and worked in the Virtual Reality Medical Center before moving on to Bern Switzerland to conduct additional research. Tarnanas finally settled in Houston, where Altoida is now based.

“Developing enhanced methods to objectively evaluate cognitive function is a critical component of the next generation digital medicine — a component that is required to not only advance the basic research in neurodegenerative disease, but also one that is required for the development of improved clinical interventions,” said Dr. Walter Greenleaf, PhD, a neuroscientist and Distinguished Visiting Scholar working at the Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab, in a statement. “Understanding neurodegenerative biotypes will dramatically improve our ability to conduct a differential diagnosis at the primary care level.  Improved diagnostics will provide healthcare professionals with the key information necessary to precisely adapt clinical interventions to personalize the patient’s cognitive care. This will ultimately lead to improved outcomes of care and to reduced healthcare costs.”

Some influential healthcare investors are already on board. Altoida has raised $6.3 million in a new round of financing from investors led by M Ventures, the corporate investment arm of the pharmaceutical company Merck, with additional participation from Grey Sky Venture Partners, VI Partners AG, Alpana Ventures, and FYRFLY Venture Partners.

“The beauty of active digital biomarkers is that they can actually expand to more conditions,” says Tarnanas. The company is looking at expanding its prognostic toolkits to determining lasting impacts from traumatic brain injuries, and post-operative cognitive disorder, he says.

“As the world’s effort to introduce meaningful therapies for Alzheimer’s disease inches closer and closer to success, it is clear that the greatest benefit will come to those whose disease is detected at a very early stage,” said Jonathan L. Liss, MD, Director at Columbus Memory Center and Founder of Columbus Memory Project, who has been using Altoida’s technology since September 2018. “The Altoida Neuro-Motor Index (NMI) device offers an ingenious way in which to detect early disease and track progression without prolonged cognitive testing, tissue sampling, or radiologic intervention. The Altoida NMI device is a welcome advancement to the field of cognitive health.”

Altoida isn’t alone in trying to find a way to diagnose Alzheimer’s earlier. Recently, MyndYou, a New York-based company announced a partnership with Mizuho to bring its passive prognostic toolkit to Japan. That company recently secured roughly $2 million to build out its own solution.

 

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the first lunar landing is approaching, and there will be no shortage of fanfare — so why shouldn’t LEGO get in on the fun? This Lunar Lander set looks like a great way to celebrate the missions of the space program’s past, while the space station and launch sets celebrate its present and future.

The Apollo 11 set looks like a real treat for both space-loving kids and parents — and grandparents — who remember or otherwise venerate the historic missions. LEGO worked with NASA to put together a replica Eagle lander that’s a lot like the original, though slightly smaller, of course.

There are two astronauts, a crater, and a flag — just like the real landing. And the detailed ascender module actually detaches and fits two minifigs inside. And, inquiring LEGO enthusiasts will want to know, there are some cool new gold-colored bricks that will surely make for lovely additions to your other brick-based space projects.

Apollo is what we’re celebrating, but Artemis is what’s ahead of us. The next moon mission will involve quite a few interesting pieces of hardware, though nothing is finalized yet — so you can excuse LEGO for improvising a bit. (I feel sure the Shuttle design has been ruled out, though.)

The launch control set looks great: an actual mission control area, an astronaut-delivery rail car, and a convincing rocket that could be the Space Launch System. There’s also a fairly realistic space station setup with segments you can connect in various ways and a cool airlock I would have loved to have when I was an avid builder.

I like that these aren’t huge — kids shouldn’t get the wrong idea about space travel. It’s like crawling into a hot can and being rolled down a hill, then you live in the can for months constantly smelling the other astronauts’ breath. At the end of it, you’re at Mars, sure — but it’s not exactly first class.

Making spaceships out of LEGO is a highlight of my childhood, and one in which I still indulge now and then, but I never felt particularly constrained by reality. I think it’s great that these sets provide that option — even if they’re fantasy, they’re definitely quasi-realistic and when kids see the Lunar Gateway in a few years they’ll think, huh, looks a lot like what I built a while back. So far that hasn’t happened with any of my ships.

Head over to the LEGO Shop to grab your own set.

Abacus Insights, an early stage startup that wants to help coordinate healthcare information across systems, announced a $12.7 million Series A investment today led by CRV. Existing investors 406 Ventures and Echo Health Ventures also participated in the round.

The company is trying to make it easier for health insurance companies to share data with various parties in the healthcare system with the ultimate goal of lowering costs and helping participants across the system from doctors to pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners have a better understanding of the overall patient record.

Company founder and CEO Dr. Minal Patel says they chose insurance companies as the target customer for their solution because they have a greater understanding of a person’s overall healthcare as everything flows through them for payment.

“We launched in 2017 with the purpose of helping our clients, who are typically large health insurance companies, liberate all the data they sit on so that they can help their members become healthier and have better experience with the overall health care system,” he said.

The platform is essentially a data integration play tuned specifically for the healthcare industry. Trying to pull data from the variety of legacy systems in place across the different players in healthcare is challenging, and that’s the problem the company is trying to solve.

“Abacus makes gathering a patient’s healthcare history simpler for insurance companies by using a data management platform that houses their complete medical history in one place. Making it easier for both insurance companies and healthcare providers to look at a patient’s data in real-time and make better medical decisions to treat the patient in the best way possible,” a company spokesperson explained.

The startup has offices in Boston and New York and currently has 40 employees. Using some of the money from this round, it hopes to double that by the end of the year, particularly adding engineering talent to build out the product further.

When it arrived in 2016, the Moto Z felt revolutionary — or, at the very least, novel. Motorola soon announced it was making the Moto Z its flagship device. In the intervening three years, the line has yet to set the world on fire.

It’s seemingly been a decent seller for the company, but with rare exceptions (as it happens, today is the second anniversary of the Essential announcement) the rest of the smartphone industry has yet to embrace the modular handset revolution.

It’s not for lack of trying, of course. Motorola’s released a wide range of Mods, including, most notably, a 5G unit, marking the first time that technology was widely available in North America. This morning the Lenovo-owned brand just announced the availability of the Moto Z4 (though not before the product accidentally went on sale at at least one retail location).

As ever, the latest version of the line points to one of the peculiarities of the modular phone concept, with upgraded base specs on a phone whose features rely largely on peripherals. Of course, the reasonable $499 starting price certainly cushions the blow a bit.

The base specs are a mixed bag. It’s got a 6.39-inch display, coupled with a middling Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 and a beefy 3,600mAh battery that the company rates at two days. The phone also adds a night-vision mode to the rear-facing 48 megapixel sensor.

The gray version of the handset starts shipping June 13, with a white model arriving over the summer. The unlocked version ships with a free Moto 360. Verizon’s also making the 5G Mod available for $200 (down from $350) for a limited time.

I’ll be spending more time with the phone in the near future — for now, however, it feels like Motorola’s most intriguing and promising handset is beginning to feel more and more like a middle of the road device.

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published a new joint report and stat-fest on Internet attitudes and usage with the national data protection watchdog, the ICO — a quantitative study to be published annually which they’re calling the Online Nation report.

The new structure hints at the direction of travel for online regulation in the UK, following government plans set out in a recent whitepaper to regulate online harms — which will include creating a new independent regulator to ensure Internet companies meet their responsibilities.

Ministers are still consulting on whether this should be a new or existing body. But both Ofcom and the ICO have relevant interests in being involved — so it’s fitting to see joint working going into this report.

“As most of us spend more time than ever online, we’re increasingly worried about harmful content — and also more likely to come across it,” writes Yih-Choung Teh, group director of strategy and research at Ofcom, in a statement. “ For most people, those risks are still outweighed by the huge benefits of the internet. And while most internet users favour tighter rules in some areas, particularly social media, people also recognise the importance of protecting free speech – which is one of the internet’s great strengths.”

While it’s not yet clear exactly what form the UK’s future Internet regulator will take, the Online Nation report does suggest a flavor of the planned focus.

The report, which is based on responses from 2,057 adult internet users and 1,001 children, flags as a top-line finding that eight in ten adults have concerns about some aspects of Internet use and further suggests the proportion of adults concerned about going online has risen from 59% to 78% since last year (though its small-print notes this result is not directly comparable with last year’s survey so “can only be interpreted as indicative”).

Another stat being highlighted is a finding that 61% of adults have had a potentially harmful online experience in the past year — rising to 79% among children (aged 12-15). (Albeit with the caveat that it’s using a “broad definition”, with experiences ranging from “mildly annoying to seriously harmful”.)

At the same time the report found that most adults (59%) agree that the benefits of going online outweigh the risks, and 61% of children think the internet makes their lives better.

While Ofcom’s annual Internet reports of years past often had a fairly dry flavor, tracking usage such as time spent online on different devices and particular services, the new joint study puts more of an emphasis on attitudes to online content and how people understand (or don’t) the commercial workings of the Internet — delving into more nuanced questions, such as by asking web users whether they understand how and why their data is collected, and assessing their understanding of ad-supported business models, as well as registering relative trust in different online services’ use of personal data.

The report also assesses public support for Internet regulation — and on that front it suggests there is increased support for greater online regulation in a range of areas. Specifically it found that most adults favour tighter rules for social media sites (70% in 2019, up from 52% in 2018); video-sharing sites (64% v. 46%); and instant-messaging services (61% v. 40%).

At the same time it says nearly half (47%) of adult internet users expressed recognition that websites and social media platforms play an important role in supporting free speech — “even where some people might find content offensive”. So the subtext there is that future regulation of harmful Internet content needs to strike the right balance.

On managing personal data, the report found most Internet users (74%) say they feel confident to do so. A majority of UK adults are also happy for companies to collect their information under certain conditions — vs over a third (39%) saying they are not happy for companies to collect and use their personal information.

Those conditions look to be key, though — with only small minorities reporting they are happy for their personal data to be used to program content (17% of adult Internet users were okay with this); and to target them with ads (only 18% didn’t mind that, so most do).

And while the report records relatively high awareness that personal data collection is happening online — finding that 71% of adults were aware of cookies being used to collect information through websites they’re browsing (falling to 60% for social media accounts; and 49% for smartphone apps) — most (69%) also reported accepting terms and conditions without reading them.

So, again, mainstream public awareness of how personal data is being used looks questionable.

The report also flags limited understanding of how search engines are funded — despite the bald fact that around half of UK online advertising revenue comes from paid-for search (£6.7BN in 2018). “[T]here is still widespread lack of understanding about how search engines are funded,” it writes. “Fifty-four per cent of adult internet users correctly said they are funded by advertising, with 18% giving an incorrect response and 28% saying they did not know.”

Synthesia is a London-based startup which recently achieved notoriety after powering the technology behind the recent global campaign showing Malaria survivors speaking through David Beckham to help raise awareness around the Malaria Must Die initiative.

That is, at least now, well known. What was less well known until today was that to achieve this, Synthesia was backed by the (also) London-based VC MMC Ventures, via its new fund, announced today by the Mayor of London. The new £100m Greater London Investment Fund — of which MMC Ventures has been appointed to manage £52m ($65.6M) — is aimed at enabling investment into high-potential tech companies in London.

As well as investing in 170 companies, the fund will seek to secure at least another £103 million in private sector investment, with the aim of creating 3,500 new jobs in the capital.

The bulk of the money for the new fund comes from European Union sources, which the Government is yet to give any assurances about replacing post-Brexit: £35 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) programme, overseen by City Hall and the London Economic Action Partnership (LEAP); and £50 million is from the European Investment Bank (EIB). But the ERDF cash has long since been banked by the city, prior to the UK’s moves towards Brexit, and the fund has already started drawing down funds from the EIB.

MMC will invest from the GLF at Seed and Series A, creating a portfolio in which MMC can deploy capital, utilising MMC Ventures’ other funds, over multiple rounds as they scale.

The new fund has to be seen partly thought the optics of Brexit. Not only is Mayor Sadiq Khan a staunch opponent of Brexit, and a potential Prime Ministerial candidate, but the new fund will boost his image as a business-friendly politician in an era where most politicians seem to have replaced their business credentials with ‘Brexit credentials’. Furthermore — and somewhat ironically — London is finally having to shout about itself, having rested on the laurels of being the EU’s financial heart for 40+ years.

The new fund will primarily back companies already based in London, but will also seek investments in businesses either relocating to London or opening or expanding an office in London, providing local support to the business and any co-investors. Clearly this may be tempting to some European startups which were previously put off by the UK’s strange Brexit optics.

What’s to be welcomed is that it will also target investments in businesses founded or run by individuals from under-represented groups – including female entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of minority ethnic groups, and those with disabilities, in partnership with the Mayor’s team.

Plus, it will invest in sectors that align with the Mayor’s Economic Development Strategy including; Advanced Urban Services, Cultural and Creative Industries, Financial and Business and the Circular Economy.

Simon Menashy, partner, MMC Ventures said: “MMC has been investing in London’s start-ups and scale-ups for the past twenty years, supporting some of Europe’s most successful growth stories. Over that time, we’ve proven that you can generate growth and financial value while creating well-paying jobs and supporting sustainable business – something close to our hearts.”

MMC has already made its first investments through the fund – backing the afore-mentioned AI video synthesis platform, Synthesia, as part of a $3.1 million funding round, and yulife – the life insurance business – in a $12.6m Series A.

MMC has also created a pre-seed programme – the MMC Greater London Lab – that will write cheques alongside angels, seed funds, incubators and programmes of different types.

MMC has a bit of a track-record in this respect, The MMC London Fund, launched in 2013, managed in partnership with City Hall, that is now entering its 8th year. That leveraged £14m of initial investment to raise more than £120m of co-investment from private partners, and invested in startups like Gousto, Appear Here, Love Home Swap, and Masabi.

Augmented reality is coming to the operating room theater sooner than anyone may have predicted.

Medivis, which launched its product suite earlier this year, has now received approvals from the Food and Drug Administration and will begin rolling out its service in hospitals around the country.

The SurgicalAR platform is a visualization tool that guides surgical navigation, which the company claims can decrease complications and improve patient outcomes, while lowering surgical costs.

The New York-based company, which was founded by Osamah Choudhry and Christopher Morley who met as senior residents at NYU Medical Center, raised $2.3 million in financing led by Initialized Capital  and has secured partnerships with Dell and Microsoft to supply its hardware.

“Holographic visualization is the final frontier of surgical imaging and navigation,” said Osamah Choudhry, a trained neurosurgeon who serves as the chief executive at Medivis, in a statement. “The surgical world continues to primarily rely on two-dimensional imaging technology to understand and operate on incredibly complex patient pathology. Medivis introduces advancements in holographic visualization and navigation to fundamentally advance surgical intervention, and revolutionize how surgeons safely operate on their patients.”

In addition to its hardware partnership with Microsoft, Medivis has also lined up Verizon (whose media group owns TechCrunch) as a partner for its much ballyhooed 5G network.

The company has also launched a toolkit for educational training in augmented reality. The AnatomyX platform for medical training is available on Hololens and Magic Leap’s devices and is already in use at West Coast University.

Medivis is one of a number of companies that are looking to bring new technologies like AR and VR into the OR.

Vicarious Surgical is another upstart that’s got a vision for medicine’s future that includes augmented or extended reality. That company is combining visualization tools with robotics to enable remote surgeries that could, one day, happen across the country or across globe.

What these technologies have in common, and the reason why Verizon is likely very happy to partner with a company like Medivis, is the huge amounts of bandwidth that are going to be required to make their visions of the future come true.

As high speed networks begin cropping up, the attendant use cases haven’t kept pace. And new visualization tools that hoover up data are just the thing to keep money flowing into my corporate overlord’s pockets.

Not that it’s a bad thing. As Medivis’ chief operating officer, Dr. Christopher Morley said in a statement. “We are achieving this by rethinking core limitations in current medical visualization pipelines, and continuously pushing the limits of what’s possible.”