By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of mid-morning here on Columbus Day, and here’s
hoping you’re having a relaxing day off. Hey, we never rest here at First
CoffeeSM. The music is a nice five-CD sampler of Miles Davis, with Birth of The Cool and Kind Of Blue, among others:
There’s not a whole lot of happenin’ news, but here’s what’s
going on:
There goes the Washington Redskins’ undefeated season.
...
LightPointe, a designer and manufacturer of
high-speed outdoor wireless products, is announcing that Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the famed hospital and
cancer institute, has deployed the
company’s Gigabit Ethernet FlightStrata optical wireless product to extend
high-speed network connectivity to a new office while providing access to
bandwidth-intensive digital imaging, research data and a wireless IP telephony
system.
Much of the technology used in Sloan-Kettering, The largest private cancer
institution in the world, is state-of-the-art, of course. “Wireless
technologies are a critical component of our New York City facilities,” says
Patricia C. Skarulis, vice president of information systems and chief
information officer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “The center’s
advanced network includes VoIP, mobile wireless workstations, widespread WiFi
coverage, PDA scanners and high-speed optical wireless links that connect
buildings and facilities located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.”
The new FlightStrata integrates with the institute’s
existing LightPointe FlightSpectrum optical wireless links that connect other
campus buildings, including one housing a high-speed network between Sloan-Kettering’s
research scientists and peers at nearby Rockefeller University.
In all cases, the optical wireless network extensions carry
high-speed voice, data and digital imaging to the remote locations for campus-wide
access to its IP telephony system, all-digital Picture Archiving Communications
System and other leading-edge technologies without incurring additional
significant capital expenditures.
…
Might as well keep the medical theme going: TheraDoc
Inc., a medical informatics company, is installing its clinical decision-support software at Jewish Hospital in
Louisville, Kentucky. TheraDoc will integrate its software with the
hospital’s existing information systems to enable real-time monitoring of
electronic medical records and automated delivery of actionable patient
information and therapeutic recommendations.
Jewish Hospital is the first in Kentucky to implement
TheraDoc’s software. This implementation is part of the hospital’s efforts to
improve patient outcomes (nice euphemism there – “Nuss, the paddles, quick, we
needta improve this patient’s outcome!”), enhance infection control and ensure
appropriate antibiotic stewardship.
…
In non-medical news Aderant,
a provider of business and financial management software for professional
services organizations, is announcing at its Momentum 2005 User Conference the introduction of Aderant Expert,
what company officials are billing as “a new, unified brand identity for the
company’s existing solution suites.”
It’s an integrated
practice management system based on Microsoft .NET that provides, Aderant
officials say, “professional services firms with functionality for financial
management, client relationship management, practice automation, business
intelligence, and mobility.”
The stereotype of professional services organizations, such
a law offices and medical practices, is that they’re not exactly on the cutting
edge of business technology, using multiple, disconnected products that only
address specific needs or business processes. Hence they frequently end up with
a patchwork of products, silos of information which don’t really help execs get
the clear grasp the technology sales rep promised of what’s happening to their
business and using that information to improve their operations and increase
profits.
Of course at any firm using multiple applications from different vendors makes
your IT staff maintain custom integrations and manually extract and input data
from system to system, and forces your users to learn and use different
applications for normal business usage.
Michael J. Simmons, Chief Executive Officer for Aderant says Aderant Expert is
engineered specifically for professional services firms caught in such
technological backwaters, touting it as a single product “from a single vendor,
that addresses their most pressing business needs, helping them increase
responsiveness, improve productivity, and maximize profitability while
significantly reducing risk and complexity.”
…
A tip of the coffee pot to Dr. Sophie Vandebroek, named to
the position of chief technology officer
and president of the Xerox Innovation Group, effective Jan. 1. Len Parker will succeed Vandebroek as
chief engineer.
According to Xerox officials Vandebroek will drive Xerox’s long-term research
and development strategy. Xerox laboratories have turned out such innovations
as the laser printer, copier and fax and a varied selection of digital color
printers, multifunction devices and document-intensive workflow products.
She succeeds Dr. Herve Gallaire, who will retire at the end of this year after
a 13-year career with Xerox. Vandebroek has been the company’s chief engineer
and vice president of the Xerox Engineering Center. In her new role, she will
oversee the company’s worldwide research and technology centers and teams of
scientists and engineers with expertise in areas like color marking systems,
materials, digital imaging, and document management services.
…
And kudos to Centurion Wireless Technologies, a unit of
Laird Technologies, and designer and manufacturer of antennas and batteries for
wireless communications, who are announcing having shipped their billionth handset antenna.
Centurion’s been supplying handset antennas to handset manufacturers,
ODMs/OEMs, contract manufacturers and design houses since 1991. The explosive
growth in mobile phones has been a great wave for Centurion to ride.
…
Non-Americans, naturally, are busy today. Israeli firm ECI Telecom
is announcing an agreement with Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, a
government-owned utility company in Costa Rica, to provide it with an advanced backbone network across Costa Rica,
enabling telecommunication traffic routing throughout the country.
This turnkey project calls for ECI to deploy a complete
optical transmission network and the entire infrastructure installation, based
on its XDM Multi-Service Provisioning Platform. The network will provide ICE
with the needed capacity to deliver voice and data services to fixed and mobile
subscribers.
The project is worth $59 million. Deployment is expected to
start in approximately 3 months and be completed over a 21-month period. The
contract is subject to final approval by the General Comptroller of Costa-Rica.
Under the terms of the contract, ECI will provide all aspects of the fiber
installation and design, supply the fiber optic cables, digging of the fiber
canals and ducting the fiber installation works of over 1000 km across the
urban and rural areas of Costa Rica.
…
CSR plc is confirming that Samsung
has selected its BlueCore silicon and
software stack to bring advanced Bluetooth connectivity to the first
Samsung GSM handsets to offer stereo streaming capability.
The SGH-E750 and SGH-E760 use CSR’s BlueCore3-ROM and
proprietary BlueCore Host Software to offer wireless connectivity with other
Bluetooth devices. Both handsets also wirelessly stream MP3 music via Bluetooth
to the new generation of Bluetooth stereo headsets, such as Samsung’s own SBH100.
The SBH100 headset also uses CSR’s BlueCore and, as with
standard mono Bluetooth headsets, also enables hands-free voice calls. The
SGH-E750 and SGH-E760 are expected to be available on GSM networks worldwide in
Q4 2005.
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