Amazon Alexa HIPAA Skills Come to the Device

Amazon announced six Alexa HIPAA-compliant skills are coming today. They will be for patients and caregivers.

Now Atrium Health patients in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia can ask Alexa to schedule same-day appointments, while Express Scripts members can check the status of a home delivery prescription and can request Alexa notifications when their prescription orders are shipped. Meanwhile, the Livongo Alexa skill lets people check recent blood sugar readings and monitor their blood sugar levels. Other developers or healthcare companies that are interested in adding skills to Alexa must apply to an invite-only Alexa program to participate.

Nothing will go wrong, right?

Amazon Preparing to Launch Over 3,000 Satellites to Help Provide Broadband

Amazon is working to launch thousands of satellites into space as part of a bid to offer global internet access.  CNBC found details of the project, known as Project Kuiper, contained within some of Amazon’s federal findings. A company spokesperson confirmed the project, saying it “will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.”

Amazon’s proposal is for a network of 3,236 satellites. Building, launching and operating the satellites will require intensive capital, likely billions of dollars. But Bezos has already been funding Blue Origin with upwards of $1 billion a year and Amazon itself remains one of the world’s most valuable companies. GeekWire first reported the filings on Thursday. Kuiper is the name of a belt of objects that include asteroids and dwarf planets. It was named for the late Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kuiper.

BBEdit Returns to Mac App Store after Four Years

Popular productivity app BBEdit left the Mac App Store in October 2014. Today it’s back. As the “go to” tool for web site designers, web application developers, writers, and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text, code, and HTML/XML markup. An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best-of-class features, including: grep pattern matching; search and replace across multiple files; project definition tools; function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages; code folding; FTP and SFTP open and save; AppleScript and Automator support; Unix scripting support; text and code completion; a complete set of robust HTML tools; and more. Mac App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)