February 2008 Archives

Google Gets Into Healthcare

February 29, 2008 8:10 AM

I was down in Orlando this week for the annual HIMMS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference and exhibition, a show dedicated to transforming healthcare through IT.

This is a new space for me, so I attended with the view of taking in as much as I possibly could in the short time I had at the show. I’d also like to send a great big thank you out to Michael Carr of IgeaCare, who took the time to shepherd me around the event.

I’ll be writing more about my experience in an upcoming issue of Internet Telephony and of course here on TMCnet, but I wanted to get a quick post in about something Google is doing on the healthcare front.

Last week Google announced a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic, a large academic medical center centered around giving patients access to their own medical records.

The pilot is open to just a few thousand patients to start, but Google is collaborating with a number of insurance plans, medical groups, pharmacies and hospitals to see the project through.

Writing on the Official Google Blog, Alan Newberger, Engineering Manager, expressed his view that the pilot was a key initiative. “I see it as an important first step to show how Google can help users get access to their medical records and take charge of their health information,” he wrote.

CEO Eric Schmidt gave the closing keynote at HIMMS, and he spoke publicly for the first time about Google’s overall health strategy.

According to Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP, Search & User Products, “Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online.”

Here's what Mayer sees as the key differentiators that set Google Health apart from other solutions offering personal health records:

Privacy and Security — Google Health will protect the privacy of your health information by giving you complete control over your data. We won't sell or share your data without your explicit permission. Our privacy policy and practices have been developed in thoughtful collaboration with experts from the Google Health Advisory Council.
Platform — We're assembling a directory of third-party services that interoperate with Google Health. Right now, this means you'll be able to automatically import information such as your doctors' records, your prescription history, and your test results into Google Health in order to easily access and and control your data. Later, this platform strategy will mean that you will be able to interact with services and tools easily, and will be able to do things like schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and start using new wellness tools.
Portability — Our Internet presence ultimately means that through Google Health, you will be able to have access and control over your health data from anywhere. Through the Cleveland Clinic pilot, we have already found great use-cases in which, for example, people spend 6 months of the year in Ohio, and 6 months of the year in Florida or Arizona, and will now be able to move their health data between their various health providers seamlessly and with total control. Previously, this would have required carrying paper records back and forth. With Google Health, the user can simply import the data from each medical facility and then choose to share it with the other facilities. It's advances in data portability like this that we think can really make a difference in the quality of healthcare. The clearer and more comprehensive the information regarding your health becomes, the better your care will be.
User focus — We aren't doctors or healthcare experts, but one thing Google can create is a clean, easy-to-use user experience that makes managing your health information straightforward and easy.

As you would have assumed by now, Microsoft too has a horse in this particular race, with their HealthVault solution. Announced last October, the Microsoft offering is designed to allow users to store and share health records online, to collect and manage health data on a variety of home devices, and to search for health information.

The overall eHealth market is poised for tremendous growth. In fact a recent report from INPUT positions the market for Federal government healthcare IT spending a poised to grow by 7.1% (CAGR), from $3.2 billion this year to over $4.5 billion in 2013.

Google Targets Microsoft Collaboration Suite

February 28, 2008 11:38 AM

Google is taking aim at Microsoft’s SharePoint.

Google announced Wednesday it will begin offering an easy to use Web site creation and publishing tool for office workers to set up and run collaboration sites, for quickly sharing information among project teams and co workers.

Google Sites, as the new site publishing service is known, is based on the acquisition 16 months ago of hosted wiki provider JotSpot.

The new service is designed to allow teams of users to organize and share digital information such as Web links, calendars, photos, videos, presentations, attachments and other documents in an easy-to-maintain site, with the goal of increasing productivity among the team members.

Of course, Microsoft’s dominance in this market (some pundits see SharePoint as a billion-dollar business for Microsoft) is not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to contenders, Google is no slouch, and is in fact the biggest thorn in Microsoft’s side on so many other fronts it almost comes as no surprise that they would be launching a would-be competitor to SharePoint now.

Aside from functionality, the key difference between the offerings is cost, with Google offering their Google Sites free of charge to users of Google Apps, which in turn is less expensive than many Microsoft tools.

As usual in any battle between companies of this scale, it remains to be seen what the impact will be on the other players (think zoho) in the market and in the end, we need to ask ourselves this: Will today’s announcement help businesses maximize their productivity in the long run?

Juvenile Diabetes Research - Please Help if You Can

February 27, 2008 1:49 PM

Every so often we are reminded that for at least some part of each day, work is not — or more to the point should not be — the single most important activity in our lives.

I just received word that a colleague in the VoIP industry who I had the fortune to work with several years ago is undergoing a serious family challenge, and I thought I would push his story along here, in the hopes that perhaps someone might be inspired to pitch in and help out a bit.

John Wind, who some of you may remember from VoIP Inc., or Volo Communications, or even SIPstorm, sent me a note detailing a frightening experience that he and his family had to endure over the recent holiday season. Here’s his story:

Friends, You may or not be aware that during the Christmas holiday, my 13 year old son became very ill and what we would soon come to find out, deathly ill… Over a one-week period, he literally began to melt away in front of our eyes. Although he’s always been thin (5’ 7” – 120 pounds) he was drinking water and eating excessively. He dropped in that time to 89 pounds and could hardly get out of bed.

Although his symptoms were that of an extreme flu, I finally got him to the doctor where he was immediately diagnosed with Type-1 (also known as Juvenile) diabetes. He was in a severe DKA crash (diabetic ketoacidosis). The non medical meaning is that his body was eating itself to survive! He was immediately rushed to St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital in West Palm Beach and spent the next several days in ICU where they brought him back from the brink.

To keep this short, Alex skirted death right under our noses and even though we have diabetes in our family (3 of 4 of his grandparents) we didn’t “get it”. The good news is that he has recovered and is a whole new person, putting on all of his weight and is able to focus much better. The bad news is that this is happening all over the world, not just with obese children. Well, as you may imagine, we are now supporting the efforts to increase awareness of Juvenile Diabetes. We will be producing videos for education into the schools, churches, etc. I am donating these services given the business that I am in.

[Ed. Note: John’s latest venture is a Web-based Business Broadcasting Network called HotWave TV.]

The organization that we have aligned with is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Int’l http://www.jdrf.org/ , a wonderfully dedicated organization. We are working with the local chapter in Palm Beach.

My wife Sherri is also contributing with a fund raiser “Walk to Cure Juvenile Diabetes” in the next few weeks. We have a goal of raising them at least $1,000 (but I think we can do a lot better). Your help and support, even if just a few dollars (tax deductible) would be enormously appreciated. Every penny counts and one day when they do find a cure, your nominal contribution would have gone to saving children from a life threatening disease.

She will be walking on March 8th for the Walk to Cure Diabetes along with a half-million other people! Please visit www.jdrf.org to make your donation and select Walk Central, then Donate, then Support Walker and select Sherri Wind from the walker list.

*Here’s the shortcut to the page you need: http://walk.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=extranet.personalpage&confirmid=86975021.

So please, if you can, support Sherri’s walk for a cure. Every penny helps!

Thank you very much!

Oceans In Sorry Shape

February 15, 2008 2:11 PM

I’m not feeling well.

I’m sick and I’m grumpy.

And I’m especially rankled by the news today that the Earth’s oceans are in worse shape than originally thought.

Just once, I’d appreciate a bit of good environmental news. Maybe something like “Experts announced today that Global Warming is actually increasing the range of the Amur Tiger, and in fact the big cats have responded by tripling in population…”

Unfortunately it’s more bad news for the environment.

The AP reports that at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston:

Researchers studying 17 different activities ranging from fishing to pollution compiled a new map showing how and where people have impacted the seas.

The map was released and published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The areas most affected include the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, Caribbean Sea, the east coast of North America, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea and parts of the western Pacific, the study found. It said the least affected areas are near the poles.

Not so fast.

However, the researchers said it is likely that human activities will affect polar regions more and more as climate change warms those areas.

Damage includes reductions in fish and sea animals as well as problems for coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, rocky reefs and shelves and seamounts.

However, Ben Halpern, an assistant research scientist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara deserves a hearty hand shake and a week’s worth of “attaboys” for trying desperately to put a hopeful spin on the truly depressing situation:

"There are some areas in fairly good condition. They are small and scattered, but have fairly low impact," he said. "That suggests that with effort from all of us, we can try to protect these patches and use them as a guideline for what we'd like the rest of the ocean to start looking like."

Small and scattered…

Fairly good condition…

Right…

I think the bright spot on the horizon is really the headlamp of a Japanese fishing trawler headed there right now.

Fool Me Once...

February 13, 2008 4:30 PM

Greg Spector is head of corporate communications at Rebtel. And he feels like he’s been had.

Writing on the Rebtel blog a few days ago, Spector is angry with himself for believing Goliath's (Verizon's) promises.

Stupid Rebtel. We should have known better.

I’m reposting the rest of Spector’s complaint below. But first a comment: I love a good “David versus Goliath” brawl as much as the next guy, but in the spirit of open-mindedness, let’s assume that the good business folks at Verizon simply got too busy to close the loop with Rebtel. Maybe they were too busy chasing down a loose patent or something? In any event, I’m sure that once the good people at Verizon get wind of the fact that Rebtel is once again turning up the volume to be heard, they’ll remember, and they’ll discover that the order enabling the free exchange of SMS got stuck to the bottom of some file folder on someone’s desk in Marketing. Or Legal. Or maybe even in the Executive Suite.

After all, if Verizon promised Rebtel they would allow it, they wouldn’t just go back on their word, would they?

Would they?

And now, (as promised…) the rest of Greg Spector’s blog:

Soon after Public Knowledge, Free Press and others filed a petition asking the FCC to rule that text messaging and related short codes are protected from “unjust and unreasonable discrimination,” Rebtel – which was named in the petition – received some attention in the press, and Verizon was none too happy about it.

I’m talking about the Verizon that reported $1 billion in earning last quarter while adding 2 million wireless customers to bring its total to 65.7 million.

The Verizon that went to Capitol Hill recently as part of the CTIA to ask that they be spared from the indignities of “burdensome regulation” on their text-messaging services and short-code offerings.

The same Verizon that told BusinessWeek that Rebtel can “still text-message our customers to offer their service.”

And the very same Verizon that is now preventing its customers from sending standard SMS – text messages – to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel.

Goliath didn’t like the negative attention it received in the press regarding its treatment of little David. It doesn’t want people — especially people at the FCC — to know that Verizon violates their customers’ freedom of speech every day.

So they contacted Rebtel just before the New Year and told us that they would stop blocking their customers’ SMS — IF — Rebtel would shut down all PR on the short code issue and send a letter to the FCC in praise of Verizon and its new openness and cooperation with Rebtel.

Being the trusting souls that we are, we complied. We stopped talking to the press. And when the press called during January we explained that Verizon had seen the light — that we were talking with Verizon and expected to have an announcement from the two companies shortly.

At first Verizon complained because there were some straggler stories appearing on the Web. And then there was silence. No response to our mail. Return phone calls came to a halt. Nothing.

It took as a week or two but we finally realized that we had been tricked. Verizon had tricked us into silence. Well, shame on us! We should have known better. And now we do.

But the true shame — the real crime — is that Verizon customers are being prevented from sending SMS messages to themselves and their friends from the Rebtel Web site.

We’re not asking for special access or treatment. We just want Verizon customers to be able to send standard text messages to themselves and their friends regardless of the content. That’s what free speech is all about. But Verizon thinks differently.

Because it doesn’t like what’s in those SMS — local phone numbers that will connect Verizon customers to their friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the highway robbery charged by Verizon for the same call — and because they don’t like the viral nature of the Rebtel service, Verizon shuts them down. It turns off their customers’ right to send SMS.

Well, live and learn, as they say. But I promise, this one ain’t over! This David, for one, is pissed.

Android Prototypes Abound in Barcelona

February 11, 2008 11:02 AM

Those folks at Gizmodo have all the fun.

Right now they’re in Barcelona going ga-ga over the working demos of a variety of Android prototypes.

They had this to say about ARM’s offering:

ARM had theirs running on one of their lower-end processors. No fancy graphics demos, no iPhone-style multimedia fizzbang, just a humble ARM9 processor in a plain white prototype "to demonstrate the scalability of Android" and serve as a "development platform."

As for a prototype from Qualcomm, they called it a “real beast,” showing off better speed and wireless connectivity, but still a long way off from anything we’re likely to see in any upcoming handset.

Digium Unveils Guarantee Program

February 11, 2008 7:58 AM

This morning, Huntsville, AL-based Digium, Inc., announced a guarantee program, which is designed to essentially back up the quality of its Asterisk-based hardware and software products.

The move underscores Digium’s commitment to and faith in the reliability and sustainability of open source technology.

Labeled “ESP” for Exceptional Satisfaction Program, the program is designed as a “comprehensive and aggressive” product guarantee program, to give confidence to resellers and partners selling Digium Asterisk-based commercial solutions across the globe.

The new Digium ESP guarantee includes the following:

A new five-year warranty on all new Digium PCI and PCIExpress telephony cards;
A one-year warranty on all Digium Appliances that can be extended via subscription renewal;
All Commercial Asterisk Software will come with a one-year subscription standard and can be extended via subscription renewal;
A money-back guarantee should Digium products fail to perform as advertised.

Jon Arnold ITEXPO Interviews

February 1, 2008 11:57 AM

At the recently concluded Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO, Jon Arnold, this time wearing the hat of portal editor for IP Convergence TV, conducted a number of video interviews. I was happy to participate in the project, and enjoyed speaking with Jon regarding some industry trends currently driving IP Communications.

Jon also interviews Matt Lukens of Comverse.

The results of Jon’s efforts, a co-production between TMC and IP Convergence TV, can be found online here.

Jon Arnold ITEXPO Interviews

February 1, 2008 11:57 AM

Jon also interviews Matt Lukens of Comverse.

The results of Jon’s efforts, a co-production between TMC and IP Convergence TV, can be found online here.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo for $45B?

February 1, 2008 7:36 AM |

1 Comment

I got stuck in traffic this morning, so I was already feeling a bit rushed when I logged in, but I didn’t expect to see this news pop up on my screen today.

Microsoft Corp. has apparently made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! Inc. in a bid to challenge Google Inc.'s dominance in all things Internet, specifically search and advertising.

The offer of $31 a share in cash or Microsoft stock constitutes a greater than 60% premium over Yahoo's closing price January 31.

Back in May I reported on the possibility. At the time, speculation called for a nearly $50 B price tag.

Obviously we will have more on this as the story develops.

Stay tuned…

« January 2008 | Main Index | Archives | March 2008 »

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February 2008 Archives

Google Gets Into Healthcare

Google Targets Microsoft Collaboration Suite

Juvenile Diabetes Research - Please Help if You Can

Oceans In Sorry Shape

Fool Me Once...

Android Prototypes Abound in Barcelona

Digium Unveils Guarantee Program

Jon Arnold ITEXPO Interviews

Jon Arnold ITEXPO Interviews

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo for $45B?

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