Page 10 - Occupational Health & Safety, February 2017

INDUSTRY UPDATE
without steering wheels, pedals, or needed human control; automotive and technol- ogy companies to operate self-driving ve- hicle ride-sharing services; and self-driving vehicles to be sold for public use once the technology has been tested and certified.
According to the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, companies involved in creating the final legislation included Fiat Chrysler Automobiles U.S., Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Toyota Motor Corp., Google Inc., Uber, and Lyft. Snyderalsosignedintolawabilloutlining specific parameters for entities that wish to offer on-demand autonomous vehicle net- works to the public.
Smoking’s Cost Dwarfs Tobacco
Tax Revenue, Study Shows
A report from the World Health Organiza- tion and the U.S. National Cancer Institute recommends boosting efforts and policies to control tobacco use, saying those mea- sures can greatly reduce smoking and pro- tect people’s health. The 700-page report indicates if left unchecked, the tobacco in- dustry and its products will cost the world’s economies more than $1 trillion annually in health expenditures and lost produc- tivity, with around 6 million people dying annually as a result of tobacco use. Most of them live in developing countries.
Globally, there are 1.1 billion tobacco smokers age 15 or older, with around 80 percent living in low- and middle-income countries.
The $1 trillion cost dwarfs the govern- ment revenues from tobacco excise taxes, which totaled nearly $269 billion in 2013- 2014—less than $1 billion of which was invested in tobacco control, the agencies reported.
The report examines the economics of tobacco control, including tobacco use and growing, manufacturing and trade, taxes and prices, and control policies and other interventions to reduce tobacco use and its consequences; and economic implications of global tobacco control ef- forts. “The economic impact of tobacco on countries, and the general public, is huge, as this new report shows,” said Dr. Oleg Chestnov, WHO’s assistant director- general for Noncommunicable Diseases and mental health. “The tobacco industry produces and markets products that kill millions of people prematurely, rob house- holds of finances that could have been
used for food and education, and impose immense health care costs on families, communities, and countries.”
If all countries raised excise taxes by about 80 cents per pack, annual revenues from cigarettes globally could increase by $140 billion and lead to a 9 percent decline in smoking rates, the report said. “The re- search summarized in this monograph confirms that evidence-based tobacco control interventions make sense from an economic as well as a public health stand- point,” said a co-editor, Distinguished Professor Frank Chaloupka of the Depart- ment of Economics at the University of Il- linois at Chicago.
Dr. Douglas Bettcher, WHO’s director for the prevention of noncommunicable diseases, said the report gives governments a powerful tool to combat tobacco industry claims that controls on tobacco products harm economies.
Microsoft Unveils Connected Vehicle Platform
Microsoft announced its Connected Vehi- cle Platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with Peggy Johnson, the company’s executive vice president for Business Development, explaining in a blog post that the platform is a set of ser- vices built on the Microsoft Azure cloud and is “designed to empower auto manu- facturers to create custom connected driv- ing experiences.”
It is not an in-car operating system, she wrote, but a “living, agile platform that starts with the cloud as the foundation and aims to address five core scenarios that our partners have told us are key priorities: pre- dictive maintenance, improved in-car pro- ductivity, advanced navigation, customer insights and help building autonomous driving capabilities.” Renault-Nissan is the first auto manufacturer to commit to the platform to build connected cars.
Johnson explained that traditional au- tomakers face disruption from connected, autonomous, shared, and electric cars. “The infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated, expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it’s a software challenge, and a chief obstacle for these brands is integrating the complex cloud technology required to de- liver next-generation driving experiences,” she wrote, adding that “Microsoft’s cloud will do the heavy lifting by ingesting huge
volumes of sensor and usage data from connected vehicles, and then helping auto- makers apply that data in powerful ways.”
A public preview will be available later this year. The company intends to partner with automakers and does not plan to build its own connected car, she added.
The U.S. Department of Transporta- tion proposed a rule on Dec. 13, 2016, that would advance the deployment of connect- ed vehicle technologies across the country. The agency’s Notice of Proposed Rulemak- ingwouldenablevehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) communication technology, which would allow vehicles to “talk” to each other to avoid crashes.
“We are carrying the ball as far as we can to realize the potential of transporta- tion technology to save lives,” then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx explained. “This long-promised V2V rule is the next step in that progression. Once deployed, V2V will provide 360-degree situational awareness on the road and will help us enhance vehicle safety.”
The rule would require automakers to include V2V technologies in all new light- duty vehicles that would allow them to speak the same language through standard- ized messaging. NHTSA estimates these applications could eliminate or mitigate the harm caused by up to 80 percent of non- impaired crashes.
HHS Takes First Enforcement Action Over Reporting of
HIPAA Breach
The U.S. Department of Health and Hu- man Services’ Office for Civil Rights on Jan. 9 announced the department’s first Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) settlement based on the un- timely reporting of a breach of unsecured protected health information (PHI), say- ing Presence Health has agreed to settle potential violations of the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule by paying $475,000 and implementing a corrective action plan. The agency described Chicago-based Presence Health as one of the largest health care networks serving Illinois, with about 150 locations, including 11 hospitals and 27 long-term care and senior living facilities, as well as physicians’ offices and health care centers, home care, hospice care, and be- havioral health services.
“With this settlement amount, OCR balanced the need to emphasize the im-
10 Occupational Health & Safety | FEBRUARY 2017
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