Day: September 12, 2023

In a series of interviews leading up to the publication of his biography on Elon Musk on Tuesday, Walter Isaacson discussed the tech mogul’s “demon mode,” erratic mood swings, and traumatic upbringing. During the two years that Isaacson spent following Musk and speaking with more than 100 people in his social and professional circles, he shared memorable incidents and important insights he learnt. It wasn’t difficult, according to Isaacson, to persuade Musk to allow him to write the biography, he said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show on Monday.

According to Isaacson, “He views himself as an epic hero on the global stage.” Therefore, it wasn’t difficult to convince him. I believe he desired a biography.

He continued, adding that Musk frequently upholds the principle of transparency: “I just said I got to be with you at all times, I must monitor you, and you have no authority over the book.” Musk was described by Isaacson as a man who is constantly “looking for some drama” while simultaneously trying to push himself to do more. “I can’t hold back a victory.

Before Musk acquired Twitter, Isaacson remembers Musk telling him, “I’ve always placed chips back on the table. He was the richest man in the world at the time and had achieved great success with Tesla and SpaceX. However, Isaacson remarked that Musk occasionally demonstrates erratic behavior and said that Musk’s emotionally harsh upbringing has left lasting scars.

“Musk was a socially awkward child who was thin and frequently bullied on the playground. However, those wounds paled in comparison to having to watch silently as his father sided with the bullies and others who beat him up while having to stand in front of him for up to an hour at a time, Isaacson said. The danger for Elon is that he grows his father, and Elon can turn dark too and get extremely hard on people, at times, as his mother Maye says, Isaacson said on “Today” and making a similar point in an interview in The Atlantic. “And throughout his life, those demons have been bouncing around in his head,” Isaacson said.

When Musk becomes progressively enraged, Claire Boucher, a musician better known by her stage name Grimes, has been referred to as being in his “demon mode,” according to Isaacson. He has a variety of personas, and sometimes you’re around a really, you know, half-joking guy or a guy who is extremely amazing at engineering. But there are times when he enters what his sporadic girlfriend Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, calls “demon mode,” and that’s when he turns dark, according to Isaacson.

Musk has not received a formal diagnosis, according to Isaacson, but he occasionally “talks about bipolar” when describing his symptoms. He had also been taking a variety of prescription drugs, according to Isaacson. He claims that he hasn’t had an official diagnosis, yet he speaks about being bipolar.

He occasionally consumes a lot of prescription medications. He can have mood swings and occasionally exhibits a Jekyll and Hyde aspect. For example, he might get into a dark, melancholy mood and say things—sometimes things his father said to him—before changing his mind when you ask him about them a few hours later. And he appears to be practically memoryless.

The HealthTech startup intends to build on its achievement in Abu Dhabi and increase its user base in Saudi Arabia and Dubai.
Khaldoon Bushnaq, a software developer, and Tariq Seksek launched Alma Health in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020.

The moment was right to start a business that would benefit those with chronic illnesses.

Through its smartphone application, Alma Health, a direct-to-patient digital healthcare platform, offers direct medical consultations to people with diseases like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and asthma.

The business, headquartered in Abu Dhabi Global Market, offers lab testing that can be completed at home and has a staff of qualified general practitioners on hand.

The technology, which was a part of Hub 71’s initial cohorts, also enables patients to complete their prescriptions without having to travel to a clinic or a hospital, with full coverage by the user’s health insurer.
Both co-founders have degrees in software engineering and have experience working in the UAE’s thriving business community.

Mr. Bushnaq, the head of strategy and business performance at Careem, earned his engineering degree from Carleton University in Canada and his MBA from the University of Cambridge in 2015.

A University of Western Ontario engineering graduate, Mr. Seksek has held product management positions with businesses like Dubizzle and Starzplay in the past.

The two created a strategy based on their corporate expertise and the disruptive impact of technology on various sectors in an effort to differentiate Alma’s solutions.

Their business case for speeding the development of services for persons with chronic diseases in the region was bolstered by the high smartphone penetration rates in the area.

“I realized the effect that technology had on transportation industries in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and in the other parts of the region during my tenure at Careem between 2016 and 2020,” says Mr. Bushnaq, who is also the company’s chief executive.

“I have a very strong core conviction that many technology companies and services will solve a significant problem for the population and will experience a very rapid adoption rate,” the author says.

Although the pandemic was a trying period for everyone, he adds it was also a chance to learn an important lesson: to be ready for the next pandemic or endemic.

According to Mr. Bushnaq, “the two critical trends we have observed and strongly capitalized on to start a digital health care business are: the regulators’ agility to licence digital health care providers, doctors’ rapid adoption of digital health, and patients’ rising expectations from their health care providers.”

Mr. Bushnaq, who has a chorionic problem himself, could see that there were numerous chances for transformation and simplification.

For instance, if the condition is stable, there is no need to visit the hospital to renew and refill a prescription.

Alma offers a substitute, but the platform’s value proposition outweighs that of the other telemedicine providers in the region and the United Arab Emirates.

“Our business model is quite different from that of a normal telemedicine company, where a physician may or may not work for the business. These medical professionals work for Alma Health. This enables us to provide our members a high-quality, customized care plan, he claims.

The Department of Health in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai has granted the company’s workers and physicians a license. Part-time professionals are also registered by their local health authorities.

According to a recent research by Dealroom, an Amsterdam-based provider of data and insight on start-ups and digital ecosystems, health tech start-ups in the Mena region are booming, having garnered more than $400 million in VC funding since 2016.

According to Dealroom, the region’s HealthTech companies currently have an enterprise value of more than $1.7 billion, a growth of 8 times since 2017.

The amount invested in health technology in Mena last year increased to $106 million from $73 million. The UAE got the most venture capital funding in Mena between 2018 and 2022 ($192.7 million).

According to Dealroom, the telemedicine and biotechnology sectors have garnered the most VC funding thus far since 2018.

Alma Health, which is a member of the Department of Health’s Technology Hub in Hub 71, has benefited greatly from the regulator’s advice on how to set up online pharmacies and clinics as well as how to acquire the appropriate licenses to provide consumers with safe and high-quality healthcare.

According to Mr. Bushnaq, “this region of the world has one of the highest prevalence rates of chronic conditions worldwide and it’s time for a serious push to improve access to health care.”

He claims that as many as 120 million people in Mena currently struggle with chronic diseases and frequently rely on a primary care system that is ineffective and has not undergone significant adjustment in more than a century.

There are 15 million people in Saudi Arabia who have at least one chronic disease which is highest in the region.

“There are only 13 general practitioners and one pharmacist for every 10,000 people in Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that persons with chronic conditions see a doctor at least four times a year and need at least eight prescriptions filled. In sharp contrast, the US has eight pharmacists and 26 general practitioners per 10,000 people, he notes. According to Mr. Bushnaq, health care spending will have climbed three times in the United Arab Emirates and 3.5 times in Saudi Arabia between 2004 and 2020 as a result of the annual increases in the prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, asthma, and other ailments.

However, regional authorities pay careful attention and are continually updating legislation to make it easier for people with certain illnesses to get health care.

The business will keep its primary emphasis on chronic care.

Through our coverage of their end-to-end journey guided by our skilled and specialized physicians, “we have clear indications that we are successfully changing the lives of people living with chronic conditions.”

An Indian official stated on Monday that India is eager to collaborate closely with the UAE on smart cities and technologies.

There are many areas for cooperation among the two countries, most notably smart cities, digital traffic systems, and technology integration in healthcare, according to Abhishek Singh, President and CEO of the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India and MD and CEO of the Digital India Corporation (DIC), in a statement to the Emirates News Agency (WAM) on the sidelines of the “Digital India Experience Zone” exhibition.

“We are looking forward to working more with the UAE, particularly as there are many sectors in which it has accomplished great achievements,” he said, pointing out that the country has adopted a cutting-edge digital government policy that many Indian cities look up to.
According to Singh, these cities are working with the UAE to share information and are attempting to emulate some of the UAE’s practices in this area. Singh also noted that India’s technology sector is a significant one, contributing about 10% of the country’s GDP.

Singh continued by stating that India’s internet services are already worth $300 billion and that the country aspires to establish a digital economy worth $1 trillion by 2026. He also stated that India is spending substantially in the electronics sector in order to become the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones.

He emphasized that India has made it a priority over the past ten years to use technology to improve the quality of life of its citizens. As a result, India has developed Aadhaar, the world’s largest platform for identity verification, as well as a digital payment system that processes more digital transactions than any other nation.

The latest G20 conference, according to Singh, covered a variety of technical efforts and solutions built on open standards that can be customized and used by any nation to adhere to their own laws and regulations, permitting their use for local requirements and objectives. The summit’s primary topics were technology, digital infrastructure, and the benefits of technology to humanity.

He concluded by saying that considerable investments led to India’s digital infrastructure and human capital in the technology sector, which allowed millions of people to work in the field directly or indirectly in the commercial and governmental sectors.