COVID-19 vaccines have demonstrated efficacy in reducing the prevalence of serious illnesses. The relative risk of hospitalization and mortality for patients who get breakthrough infections after immunization versus those who develop reinfections after a prior spontaneous infection is examined in this correspondence. Based on a study on U.S. Veterans who were not vaccinated and experienced reinfections had a much higher risk of experiencing severe illness outcomes compared to those who had received immunizations and experienced breakthrough infections, even if the rates of reinfection and breakthrough infection were similar. Our findings highlight the value of immunization in reducing severe COVID-19 outcomes, even in the presence of reinfections.

There is a growing body of evidence that the number of individuals suffering from chronic and acute pain is under-reported and the burden of the veteran, aging, athletic, and working populations is rising. Current pain management is limited by our capacity to collaborate with individuals continuing normal daily functions and self-administration of pain treatments outside of traditional healthcare appointments and hospital settings. In this review, the current gap in clinical care for real-time feedback and guidance with pain management decision-making for chronic and post-operative pain treatment is defined. We examine the recent and future applications for predictive analytics of opioid use after surgery and implementing real-time neural networks for personalized pain management goal setting for particular individuals on the path to discharge to normal function. Integration of personalized neural networks with longitudinal data may enable the development of future treatment personalizations paired with electrical simulations.

Innovations in computing and communication technologies are reshaping finance. The seismic changes are casting uncertainty about the future of financial services. On one hand, fintech evangelists project a rosy future, asserting that the fast-moving algorithms can deliver low-cost financial services intuitively, customized to meet robust consumer expectations. On the other hand, many finance veterans fret that the traditional banking model could disintermediate, bleeding banks via a ‘death by a thousand cuts’, reducing them to passive portfolio holders with no direct customer relationship, eclipsed by digital giants which use their enormous treasure troves of customer data to offer banking as an added service with nearly free cost. Amidst the upbeat technological promises and apocalyptic forebodings, there are two constant, mostly agreed-upon, truths. The first is the vital importance of data. Advances in the internet, cloud computing, and record-keeping technologies are producing an ‘exponential growth in the volume and detail of data’. Some of this big data are personal information. Smartphones are deployed in almost all developed and emerging economies, serving as little spies; tracking, recording location histories, social networks, and app usage of their unsuspecting owners; often with a great degree of precision. ‘People are walking data-factories’ in this ‘mobile digital society’. Data are the fermentation of these global exchanges, electronic commerce and communication, and financial transactions. To just take Facebook as an example, it shares 30 million people a day through updates and posts, hosting personal information on 2.23 billion users. To the alarm of the uninformed public, much of this information is available for commercial harvest. The second constant is the rise of intelligent solutions. Consumers today—be it disclosed or not—are fed tailored clothes, music, film, holiday packages—almost anything you like, notably dynamic pricing, varying in accordance with individual profiles, or personalized search results. The availability of powerful computers has enabled comparable applications that are intended to make the system more responsive to their customer profiles and desires, or to capitalize competitive business possibilities. Such changes will transform the financial industry and occupy a prominent position among the mechanisms of policy competition, reshaping the way in which financial services are bestowed and led on the demand side.