🗞️ Decision Intelligence News - July 2025
Recent developments, indices to follow, the future of decision intelligence, and more
Hello friends 👋🏼
July is here, and for many of us, that means good things, such as time spent outdoors by the water, but also some days with heat waves. Please remember to stay hydrated wherever you are, stay informed about the weather forecast (because we love data), and enjoy the summer if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere ☀️.
As always, I’m happy to bring you some of the latest news from the world of decision intelligence.
If you’d like to add anything interesting you’ve read lately, please do so in the comment section.
Let’s get started.
Recent Developments
🏥 UCLA researchers created an AI model that converts hospital records into text for better emergency care decisions
UCLA researchers have developed an AI system that turns fragmented electronic health records (EHR) normally stored in complex tables into readable narratives, allowing artificial intelligence to make sense of complex patient histories and use these narratives to perform clinical decision support with high accuracy. This solution was tested in emergency rooms and outperformed other solutions. Read more about their approach.
🧬 Anne Wojcicki to buy back 23andMe and its data for $305 million
Many of 23andMe’s clients were worried about their genetic data falling into the wrong hands. Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and former CEO of 23andMe, understood the implications and decided to buy back the company and its data for $305M after her new non-profit, TTAM Research Institute, outbid Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. This will continue to benefit 23andMe’s clients, knowing that their data is not going anywhere, and still being able to access the necessary information to understand their DNA.
💸 Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital data
Last month, Brazil announced it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow its citizens to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world. In 2023, Brazil’s Congress drafted a bill that classifies data as personal property. The country’s current data protection law classifies data as a personal, inalienable right.
A bill that’s yet to be passed will enable more efficient data collection for companies while giving users more clarity over how their data will be used, and enabling users to profit from sharing their data. This will be a very interesting development to follow. This was a great read after writing my last articles about the topic (The real value of data in decision intelligence, together with
).📊 Google AI Mode Introduces Data Visualization For Finance Queries
Google launched an experimental feature that generates interactive charts and graphs for financial searches. This could help users find answers to their questions without navigating to other websites, and publishers will have to monitor how this plays out. Read more about this feature in this article.
Interesting Indices to Follow
From time to time, I come across interesting indices and I’d like to share some of them with you.
🏙️ The Global Livability Index (Economist Intelligence Unit - EIU)
The Global Liveability Index is a yearly assessment published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). It ranks 173 global cities for their quality of life based on criteria such as assessments of stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.
This index is interesting because you can easily follow year-on-year trends and see how certain cities stay at the top, and others trend down over time. You can read about it more on the EIU’s website, and easily access results from different years on this Wikipedia page. Take a look and see where your city is located. If you’re planning to move elsewhere, this is a great tool to have at your disposal.
👀 The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index
There’s no doubt we’re living in turbulent times. If you want to see what that looks like overtime on a simple graph, with a focus on different countries, then I’d recommend checking it out. This index was developed by a few leading economists from elite universities in the US.
👩🏻💻 Best cities for startups (StartupBlink)
Interesting resources for the innovators among us. If you’re curious to learn how different startup ecosystems around the world rank relative to others, then this list could be very relevant to you. They also have this cool crowdsourced map that shows where startups are located around the world.
Data Viz
🗺️ Mapping Iran’s nuclear program
The world has become more chaotic during the 12-day conflict between Israel / the USA, and Iran. It was hard to follow and understand the sequence of events and what’s located where, and the Economist did a great job of summarizing it all in a data story.
🎶 Hit songs are getting shorter
If anyone is making data-informed decisions these days, it’s songwriters and composers. The average length of songs that top the Billboard Hot 100 has decreased by around 18%, from four minutes and 22 seconds in 1990 to three minutes and 34 seconds in 2024. If you’re curious to see the visualization and learn more, check it out in this article.
The future of decision intelligence products
Here are a few interesting resources to check out:
Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, has some interesting in-house resources to learn about future trends and signals for those of us following innovation. They have a strategically global presence, and you can apply to fund a speculative design project through them if you have an idea
Take a look at what a sophisticated database of existing building materials that will allow us to reuse them could look like in the future in this design fiction project called Les Materliastes.
Learn how AI could help us better understand the past in the context of archeology and how it was used to assess the age of the biblical Dead Sea scrolls
How Decision Intelligence helps small business leaders regain clarity and confidence (Forbes)
Some Personal Recommendations
✍🏼 Other writers to check out:
- - Using AI Right Now is an article that helps you choose the right tool and model based on your needs in accordance with what’s available right now within ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
- - 5 AI Signals that aren’t on your radar now. I liked signal number 3 because having more tools doesn’t mean making better decisions.
Gill Harrop, Ph.D, A Systems Approach to Decision-Making Under Extreme Stress (Psychology Today) - Interesting short article about decision-making in extreme situations and emergencies using System 1 decision-making
- (Lenny’s Newsletter) - An interesting interview with Maor Shlomo, the solo founder of Base44, who sold his company to Wix for $80M. Tools such as Base44, Lovable, Cursor, and more make you wonder about the future of creating decision intelligence products with AI.
🔐 Protect your data with Incogni from sketchy data brokers. Incogni is a tool that reaches out to these brokers on your behalf and reduces your digital footprint to the minimum necessary. I use this tool to do exactly that.
🦾 Learn more about AI by training models and getting paid for it with Outlier. I’ve been doing it for a few good months now and learned a lot along the way.
👩🏽🎨 Signal to Product is now an official partner of the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF). This month I recommend the master class “Behavioral Design: Create Engaging Products with Behavioral Science“ with Susan Weinschenk and Guthrie Weinschenk. It’ll teach you how to understand decision-making and design around it based on behavioral science and behavioral economics (just a few tips).
Something Fun
🗺️ Open infrastructure map - for decision-makers working in the realm of policy
🏛️ The version museum - learn what the internet used to look like not so long ago
If you know anyone who works on decision intelligence products or is interested in this space, invite them to subscribe to Signal to Product at this link (signaltoproduct.substack.com) or share this post with them.
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Read Previous Editions
🗞️ Decision Intelligence News - June 2025
🗞️ Decision Intelligence News - May 2025
🗞️ Decision Intelligence News - April 2025
©Yaron Cohen - 2025
Amazing collection, thanks for the shoutout Yaron !