For this month’s piece we look to Time magazine’s annual review of the best inventions of the past year. They reviewed 200 inventions, and we picked out a handful of the ones that illustrate our overriding theme that innovation, technology and ingenuity will continue to move us forward.

AI Explains It All (Google NotebookLM)

Google Labs released the AI-powered NotebookLM in July 2023. It helps users make sense of complex information by digesting up to 50 sources—documents, YouTube videos, even entire books—and summarizing them, suggesting follow-up questions, or creating a study guide. A feature released in September that converts such source information into an eerily realistic podcast, complete with AI-generated hosts, went viral.

Hearing Help (Apple AirPods Pro 2)

It might have seemed an inevitable development, but your AirPods can now double as hearing aids. The FDA has cleared Apple’s software update that uses iPhones for clinical-grade hearing tests—similar to the ones audiologists perform—and turns AirPods Pro 2 into hearing aids if they determine you have mild to moderate hearing loss. With the software and Apple Health app, users can adjust to their specific needs without having to invest in costly hearing aids. It’s Apple’s latest foray into optimizing the potential health uses of its devices, which their chief operating officer says the company views as “a moral responsibility to do more in this space, since so many people have our devices with them”.

Retail Delivery by Drone (Wing)

Google sister company Wing has built one of the world’s largest residential drone-delivery operations, pushing aerial product drops past proof of concept into shopping neighborhoods. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Wing and Walmart have already reached 60,000 households as of last May and have their sights set on serving the entire population of 8 million. Shoppers mark a delivery location on their property, a store employee packs the shipment, and Wing’s software calculates the flight route. A hovering drone lowers a tether to pick up and release packages, then returns to the store for docking. They recently expanded their Door-Dash partnership in Virginia—and in Europe, their drones are making urgent hospital deliveries.

Beaming the Internet (X Taara)

Worldwide, 2.6 billion people lack an internet connection. The mission of Taara, which sits within X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, bridges that gap. Taara uses beams of light to transmit data between small terminals, offering an alternative to traditional fibre-optic cables in places where installing ground-based systems is tricky. “Think of it like fibre, but without having to run any fibre– it’s just over air”, says project manager Mahesh Krishnaswamy. Taara has been installed in 13 countries, including India, Kenya, Fiji, and even in the United States (in rural areas). Most recently, in Ghana, 20,000 new users and 320 businesses have come online thanks to Taara.

Catching Cancer Early (Northwell HealthiNav)

The five-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is just 13%, largely because it’s often not detected until it’s too late. That’s why Northwell Health, New York State’s largest health care system, hospitals use the AI-powered iNav (developed in-house) to proactively analyze images of patients’ MRI and CT scans—taken for unrelated health issues—searching for evidence of cancerous masses or lesions. Northwell says the system has slashed time to treatment, the period from diagnosis to the beginning of addressing the disease, by 50%. Dr. Danial King, a developer of iNav, says, “It has totally revolutionized our ability to get these people connected to care”.  Northwell is exploring licensing iNav in other hospitals.

Speedier Space Transmissions (NASA Deep Space Optical Communications)

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment—currently aboard the Psyche spacecraft en route to a distant asteroid—includes a laser transmitter that works like a radio, but with more data-carrying oomph.  Last year, 19 million miles from Earth, the system sent a 15-second transmission home at a speed equivalent to internet broadband. The tech portends big things for future missions. “If you look at Mars rovers, you get several images per day”, says Abi Biswas, NASA’s project manager. “With this optical communications link, we expect to be able to deliver ultra-high-definition video and stream it”.

At-home Nasal Vaccine (AstraZeneca)

For the first time, you can vaccinate yourself against the flu.  The FDA recently approved the first at-home vaccine to prevent influenza, the nasal FluMist, originally approved in 2003 but only to be administered by doctors. FluMist works just like a regular vaccine, sans needle—it contains a weakened form of influenza that can activate the immune system to fight the virus, but won’t cause infection. Beginning next year, doctors can write prescriptions for anyone under age 50, and users can pick up the spray from the pharmacy to give to themselves. The drug’s maker, MedImmune, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca, expects to have doses ready for the fall 2025 flu season.

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