#3 Technology Trends Transforming Health care By Mahek Shah, MDTHE health care industry has always been changing,
but what is different about our industry now is that the pace of change has sped up.
Keeping up with those changes is almost impossible. More so when day-to-day activity prevents leaders from strategic planning the next three to five year direction of their organization.
Here then are three technology trends underlying much of the change happening in healthcare right now:
Cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHR) There is a growing demand from consumers towards greater access to and portability of their health information.
Initiatives such as Blue Button are a reaction to this demand. Expect to see a continued trend of cloud-based EHR adoption
For example, athenahealth was able to push Ebola-related patient travel history questions to its EHR athenaclinicals within an hour of the media frenzy over a Dallas hospitals inability to treat Ebola patient Thomas Duncan.
as a result of the hospital sending him home first. Traditional software implementations are just not capable of pushing seamless updates in near real-time like cloud-based EHRS can.
Further, some cloud-based EHR providers also wrap ancillary business-and information-services around the software,
enabling doctors to concentrate more on what they do best: practice medicine and improve the quality of life for patients.
These other services create a better experience for both patient and provider. The cloud-based EHR field is crowded;
Epic and Cerner, two of the largest client-server based EHRS, should take note or they will become less relevant (remember Blackberry circa 2007?).
and attention to ongoing quantifiable personal data, such as fitness, diet, and sleep-quality. Imagine a diabetics biochip detecting blood glucose levels within personalized parameters,
and then initiating appropriate, immediate, remedial and automatic action such as insulin-dosing. We are in the early innings of the wearable game in health care as the Apple Apple Watch demonstrated;
but even the two data points of sleep and physical activity have augmented my own reflections on personal health, energy, and mood.
When I dont get the right amount of quality sleep, it affects my performance the following day.
within the next five years, they will not only become incorporated into clothing (Athos, Under Armour Under Armour, etc.
Imagine a diabetics biochip detecting blood glucose levels within personalized parameters, and then initiating appropriate, immediate,
Sensors will soon provide doctors valuable feedback for a range of chronic conditions: a pacemakers use in heart arrhythmias, efficacy (or side effects) of prescribed medications,
and dosing compliance, including chemotherapy. These devices represent the possibility of consumerization within health care. Patient-centric devices beyond just smartphones or even watches will help not only awarenes,
but more importantly personal control of health. They will create a progressive model of care, in which health care institutional involvement whether hospital, clinic,
or doctors office occurs at later stages when most needed. This will lead to both financial and time savings for consumers and providers,
as well as a better health care experience. Big data analytics & Patient Access Analytics will provide valuable insights in operations and more importantly
at the point of care. But analytics alone won't be a panacea unless organizations and providers must also have more robust patient access tools.
Analytics become important when organizations act on those insights. Currently, many of the big data analytics and insights revolve just around operations.
For providers, the Holy grail of big data analytics will be at the point of care through data-enrichment,
whereby algorithms and other powerful digital technologies become an essential tool in the doctor's toolkit.
#Nokia Buys Alcatel-lucent For $16. 6 Billion Nokia has pushed boldly ahead with its ambition to become one of the world leading network equipment makers after buying French peer Alcatel-lucent for $16. 6 billion (15.6 billion euros),
The combined company will be called Nokia Corporation and be headquartered in Finland, maintaining research and development centers in the U s.,France, Germany and China.
Nokia offer price represents a fully-diluted premium of 34%on Alcatel share price. The two companies expect the deal to close in the first half of 2016
though the deal is still subject to approval by shareholders and regulators. Having sold its mobile handset division to Microsoft last year for $7. 2 billion,
Nokia has focused since primarily itself on network equipment manufacturing, mapping-and-location services and patent licensing.
By picking up Alcatel-lucent, with its 52,000-strong workforce, Nokia said its new addressable market was 50%larger,
increasing to 130 billion euros from 84 billion euros. ith more than 40 000 R&d employees and spend of 4. 7 billion euros in R&d in 2014,
the combined company will be in a position to accelerate development of future technologies including 5g,
IP and software-defined networking, cloud, analytics as well as sensors and imaging, Nokia said in a press release Wednesday. lcatel-Lucent
and Nokia have highly complementary portfolios and geographies, with particular strength in the United states, China, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
In addition to using some of the proceeds from its mobile-handset business sale for the deal,
it may also raise money by selling its location and mapping business, HERE. Nokia confirmed today that it was reviewing strategic options including the divestment of its HERE business, worth 2 billion euros according to Bloomberg B
#EU Formally Accuses Google Of Market Abuse, Opens Probe Into Android The European union competition chief formally laid down the gauntlet to Google on Wednesday,
accusing it of market dominance in web searches, particularly around online shopping. It also opened a formal investigation into
whether its Android operating system unfairly favored its own apps. would like to hear what Google has to say for itself,
said Margarethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner at a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday. he Statement of Objection is not the end.
Wel take in the response of Google and decide how to proceed. Wee not here to take the side of rivals.
Wee here to take the side of competition. Google wrangle with the EU over search results has been going on for five years,
but the formal Statement of Objections is a landmark step. The company has tried and failed three times to settle the matter of product search results by altering the design of how results are presented,
negotiating with Vestager predecessor, Joaquin Almunia, who was criticized by some for not taking a stronger stance with Google.
Almunia was replaced by Vestager late last year. Having been at her post for six months she said today that it was important to e-think how this can be solvedwe can meet like this every six months.
The design of the screen that meets you is an innovative process. I think it would be better to find something based on principle.
The next step is for Google to formally answer the EU Statement of Objection, which at its core accuses Google of favoring its own shopping services over those of third parties like Tripadvisor, Microsoft and Streetmap,
who filed their complaints with the EU back in 2010. If Google and the Commission cannot reach a settlement
and the case reaches the European High court, it could not only drag on for several more years
but see Google fined 10%of its annual revenues. At 2014 levels that would be $6. 6 billion.
Some might argue that Google as a private company should have the freedom to organize search results how it wants
and consumers can vote with their feet if they don agree. It not a state-run agency after all.
to favor it in your algorithm by not giving it the same treatment as other services,
who added that she considered Google to be lose to a monopoly. Google sent a memo to its employees yesterday showing charts from Comscore and its own internet analytics
saying the Statement of Objections was isappointing news. But, it added, e have a very strong case. t
#EU v. Google: What Each Side Is Saying The European union on Wednesday formally accused Google of abusing its dominant power in web search in violation of antitrust laws.
The action is potentially the most significant antitrust case in the tech industry since regulators on both sides of the Atlantic tangled with Microsoft beginning in the late 1990s
and could lead to years of legal wrangling. It could force Google to pay billions in fines
or to alter the way it presents search results. Specifically, the European commission said that Google's GOOGL+0. 35%promotion of its own comparison shopping search function may rtificially divert traffic from rival comparison shopping services
and hinder their ability to compete on the market. The commission which has been investigating Google search practices for about 5 years, detailed its concerns, known as a Statement of Objections,
on Google comparison shopping service here. The accusations did not extend to other areas of search,
like reviews and travel that Google rivals like Yelp YELP+3. 14 %and Tripadvisor TRIP+0. 57%had complained about.
But the EU antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, also opened a formal investigation into whether Google has violated European antitrust laws with its Android operating system and related mobile services.
The commission said it is concerned that Google may have hindered market access to rival mobile apps by pushing Android phone makers to pre-install its suite of mobile services
which include search, maps, Google Drive and the Play store. It also said it is concerned Google may have hindered market access to makers of modified versions of Android.
The commission full concerns on Android are detailed here. Google put out a vigorous defense. In a blog post, Google search chief Amit Singhal said that people have more search choices today than ever before,
and that competition among shopping search engines is thriving. ndeed if you look at shoppingn area where we have seen a lot of complaints
and where the European commission has focused in its Statement of Objectionst clear that (a) there a ton of competition (including from Amazon and ebay EBAY+0. 58%,
%two of the biggest shopping sites in the world) and (b) Google shopping results have not the harmed the competition,
Singhal wrote. In a separate blog post, Hiroshi Lockheimer, an engineering vice president for Android, rebutted the commission concerns regarding Google mobile operating system. ndroid has been a key player in spurring this competition and choice, lowering
prices and increasing choice for everyone, Lockheimer wrote. Google will now has 10 weeks to respond to the commissions charges.
The commission will then evaluate those responses and potentially recommend remedies e
#Tencent Scores#1 On China Brand Ranking, Next Global? Chinese tech companies are becoming more adept at marketing
and brand image, and will become better known in the West as their products and services go global.
An annual survey of brand value has Chinese companies outpacing global counterparts when it comes to improvements in getting their messages out into the marketplace
and creating a positive buzz. Social messaging company Tencent takes the lead in this year survey of top 100 most valuable Chinese brands by ad agency WPP
and marketing research outfit Millward Brown. Alibaba places second in the scoring. What interesting is to see Tencent and Alibaba overtaking long-time leader and state-owned China Mobile.
This shift underscores a trends by market-driven companies to dominate the rankings. Fives years ago the top five brands were all state-owned enterprises.
This year, three of this year top five are oriented consumer Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu. The brand rankings are compiled by analysis of financial data of publicly traded companies and interviews with consumers.
How long will it be before Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi makes this list? As Chinese companies improve their marketing strategies,
the gap between Chinese brands and multinational brands in China is also narrowing. The survey finds that consumers increasingly see little difference between the two,
Two brands in the top 100 Lenovo and ZTE derived over half of their revenue from outside China in 2014 i
#IKEA Releases New Furniture Collection, Promises Better Living Through Wireless Power It tempting to dismiss IKEA new embrace of furniture that will charge your phone as a gimmick.
In fact, thousands of hours of observational research argues that it will. e know that people are attached at the hip to their smartphones,
The hallmark of the Wireless Charging Collection is built-in wireless charging. The line includes a bed-loft combo
a desk, two bedside tables and floor, table and work lamps with embedded transmitters. The collection will arrive in U s. stores later this spring.
Simonsen said the tables and lamps were chosen because they are adaptable, transitional and streamlined. In colors of white or birch, they are meant to blend into the home. hey look like they belong there,
IKEA transmitters will work with the Samsung galaxy S6, and are compatible with any phone that includes Qi wireless charging technology.
You may need to activate it in the settings. iphones can be used with a special case that IKEA sells.
And if IKEA furniture doesn appeal to you, but the idea of embedded wireless charging does,
IKEA sells both an embeddable charger ($29. 99) and a special circular saw ($4. 99) you need to install it yourself.
while her smartphone lies cradled on a small shelf attached to a reading lamp in easy reach.
functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
Kamprad discovered that offering low prices wasn had enough, he to win over customers with truly beautiful designs.
six hundred and twenty-six million people became environmentalists. IKEA may be wrong about the benefits of wireless charging,
and its new furniture line could be a flop. But if IKEA is right, the retailer is positioned uniquely to bring wireless charging to as many people as possible at the lowest possible price.
The global entanglement with charging cords may be about to end e
#With Reliability And Security At Stake, Microgrids Are Going Mainstream In what is becoming a harbinger of things to come,
a regulated utility has created self-styled electric grid to service its remote campus outside Dallas . While Oncor Electric is still sending electrons to its 7. 5 million customers throughout Texas using high-voltage transmission lines,
it decided to construct its own icrogridto bolster reliability. Centralized networks were designed a century ago as the most efficient way to generate
and deliver electricity to the masses. While they will remain paramount to the distribution of electricity,
the reality is that it is politically difficult to expand them. Even more significantly businesses that cannot afford even a momentary disruption in power must look to new technologies that include distributed generation
and off the grid, says David Chiesa, director of microgrids at S&c Electric, which along with Schneider Electric Schneider Electric, built the Oncor project. ncor microgrid is showing the world how utilities can help their communities in the future.
other industrial campuses can choose to stay connected to such utility-provided electricity all the time or until the lights flicker out.
hospitals and chip makers, to name two, and even the U s. Department of defense. Central to the concept of onsite generation that links with microgrids is energy storage,
which can harness electricity and release it on to the localized microgrid when it is needed.
but it can also help spur green energy development. Oncor is using a small battery developed by Tesla motors.
Microgrids are getting the attention of utilities, not as potential threats but as a possible complement to their business models.
It all part of their smart grid layout which seeks to beef up cyber security, reduce emissions and cut costs s
#Can Apple And IBM Change Health care? Five Big Questions Today, at a glitzy press conference at IBM new Watson headquarters in Manhattan swank Silicon Alley, IBM IBM and Apple Apple announced that they are partnering with Japan Post,
which is among other things the largest health-and life-insurance company in Japan, to start a project that will provide ipads to millions of senior citizens with the aim of improving their health and their lives.
The project will help Japan Post, which already has a massive Big data-style collection of health care information,
to both know more about its customers and to improve the health and wellness of its seniors,
also improve the financial health of its insurance businesses by allowing customers to live longer, healthier and more independent lives.
and convenience that come with iphone and ipad. It my vision to enrich their lives. Apple and IBM chief executives Tim cook and Ginni Rometty were both present at the press conference,
emphasizing its importance to both firms. ombined with Japan post we are going to build a service that not only can all be proud of
said Cook, looking down occasionally at an ipad on his lap. Added Rometty: oday is about re-imagining life for what is the largest generation that has been in human history.
How, exactly, will this work? For this, there a clear answer. Japan Post already has a service through
which it sends employees directly to the homes of its elderly customers to check up on them
including medical appointments. These workers will bring the senior citizen an ipad, and sit with them
and teach them how to use a suite of IBM-designed applications focused around the areas of health, family, and community.
The app will remind patients to take their medicines (the fictional anecdote used by IBM executives to explain that used a woman who kept forgetting her blood pressure medicine
which would put her at risk for a stroke), but also allow them to Facetime with family
The idea, the executives said, is to make it easier for seniors who may be getting more forgetful
but the Japan Post effort differs in its scale Nishimuro said that the plan was to roll this out to millions and in its reliance on Apple and IBM technology.
The executives didn mention any telemedicine component where patients could directly connect with doctors or nurses,
but it easy to imagine one. The customers won pay for the ipad, although there may be a nominal fee for the service,
an IBM spokesman said. There will be a limited roll out, and testing for functionality, before the project can move full tilt.
Can you protect people privacy? Japan Post is one of the most trusted companies in the world,
But can you imagine letting a U s. health insurance company know every piece of information being collected here?
That depends on whether patients can really be sure that a company they trust (like Apple) can protect their data from one they probably don (any company in U s. health care.
The data will be in a secure cloud. Rometty said that customers will opt in or out of having their personal details known,
or providing data in an anonymized fashion. believe that discussion of privacy and convenience is a tradeoff individuals make all the time,
Can you prove that ipads actually help people stay healthy? The idea behind this project is that it will help senior citizens remain independent and healthy for longer,
In the fictional case study IBM used to explain this effort to the press, the patient high blood pressure would mean that getting her to take her medicine more often would improve her life.
Obviously, Japan Post will be collecting huge amounts of data that, with IBM analytics, it will use to try to learn about how to keep people healthy.
But will these companies be able to prove that giving a grandmother an ipad can save her life?
It wasn clear what kind of data collection IBM, Apple, and Japan Post will be doing to prove that this works.
Studies taken from insurance databases are considered generally less reliable than experiments where people are randomly getting an invention,
or not getting it. Hopefully, Japan Post will be able to compare people who got ipads at different times to see
if these apps actually help people be healthier, instead of just making them happy that they got a new toy.
Could this be rolled out in America? Obviously, trust issues about giving information to insurers are a bigger hurdle in the U s. than in many other countries.
But there are other issues, too. As Cook noted, the U s. health care market is fragmented. No insurance company here has the reach that Japan Post does.
Apple and IBM say they are trying out a huge number of pilot studies, including one related to home health care that is being done by Express Scripts Express Scripts.
Will this work? IBM and Apple deserve huge congratulations for the way they are taking on the problem of improving health care for seniors especially
since it is a problem health care companies are failing to solve. This is a big deal.
But I also saw something I didn like at the press conference: a tendency to talk a lot about how great the gadgets
and apps they were developing are without much data about whether or not they actually improve health.
It very possible, maybe even likely, that an ipad giveaway program, paired with the right apps, could make senior citizens with chronic health problems healthier and more independent.
But it not a foregone conclusion, and it deserves a more reasoned approach. Apple and IBM are moving into new territory here,
and theye going to have to do something that is always hard for anyone, but that both companies have excelled at over the years.
Theye going to have to think different y
#Long term Investors Should Prefer Facebook to Google Last week saw another slew of quarterly earnings releases.
For long-term investors, who hold stocks for years rather than months, these provide the opportunity to look at trends,
then compare and contrast companies to determine what should be in their portfolio. It is worthwhile to compare the market trends
which support owning Google or Facebook. Google prices keep dropping, even as growth slows in oremarket Google once again reported higher sales and profits.
And that is a good thing. But, once again, the price of Google primary product declined. Revenues increased because volume gains exceeded the price decline
which indicates that the market for internet ads keeps growing. But this makes 15 straight quarters of price declines for Google.
Due to this long series of small declines, the average price of Google ads (cost per click) has declined 70%*since Q3 2011!
While this is a miraculous example of what economists call demand elasticity, one has to wonder how long growth will continue to outpace price degradation.
At some point the marginal growth in demand may not equal the marginal decline in pricing. Should that happen, revenues will start going down rather than up.
Part of what drives this price/growth effect has been the creation of programmatic ad buying, which allows Google to place more ads in more specific locations for advertisers via such automated products as Admob, Adexchange and Doubleclick Bid Manager.
But such computerized ad buying relies on ever more content going onto the web as well as ever more consumption by internet users.
Further, Google revenues are almost entirely search-based advertising, a category Google dominates. But this is largely a PC-related sale.
Today 67.5%of Google ad revenue is from PC searches, while only 32.5%is from mobile searches.
Due to this revenue skew, and the fact that people do more mobile interaction via apps, messaging apps and social media than browser,
search ad growth has fallen considerably. What was a 24%year over year growth rate in Q1 2012 has dropped to more like 15%for the last 8 quarters.
So while the market today is growing and Google is making more money, it is possible to see that growth is slowing.
And Google efforts to create mobile ad sales outside of search have failed largely, as witnessed by the recent death of Google+as competition for Twitter or Facebook.
It is the market shift to mobile which creates the greatest threat to Google ability to grow;
certainly at historical rates. Simultaneously, Facebook announcements showed just how strongly it is continuing to dominate both social media and mobile,
and thus generate higher revenues and profits with outstanding growth. The#1 site for social media and messenger apps is Facebook, by quite a large margin.
But, Facebook 2014 acquisition of Whatapp is now#2. Whatsapp has doubled its monthly active users (MAUS) just since the acquisition,
and now reaches 800million. Growth is clearly accelerating, as this is from a standing start in 2011.
Facebook Messenger is#3, just behind Whatsapp. And#5 is Instagram another Facebook acquisition. Altogether 4 of the top 5 sites,
and the ones with greatest growth on mobile, are Facebook. And they total over 3billion MAUS,
growing at over 300million new MAUS/month. Thus Facebook has emerged already as the dominant force, with the most users, in the fast-growing, accelerating, mobile and app sectors.
Just as Google did in internet search a decade ago, beating out companies like Yahoo, Ask jeeves, etc.
Facebook is monetizing its market leadership position Google is moving rapidly to monetize this user base.
From nothing in early 2012, Facebook mobile revenue is now $2. 5b/quarter and represents 67%of global revenue (the inverse of Google revenues.)
Further, Facebook is now taking its own programmatic ad buying tool, Atlas, to advertisers in direct competition with Google.
Only Atlas places ads on both social media and internet browser pages a one-two marketing punch Google has cracked not yet.
Google $17. 3b Q1 2015 revenue is 30 times the revenue of Facebook. There is no doubt Google is growing,
and generating enormous profits. But, for long-term investors, growth is slowing and there is reason to be concerned about the long term growth prospects of Google as the market shifts toward both social and mobile.
Google has failed to build any substantial revenues outside of search and has had some notable failures recently outside its core markets (Google+and Google glass.
Just how long Google will continue growing, and just how fast the market will shift is unclear.
Technology markets have shown the ability to shift a lot faster than many people expected, leaving some painful losers in their wake (Dell, HP, Sun microsystems, Yahoo, etc.
Meanwhile, Facebook is positioned squarely as the leader, without much competition, in the next wave of market growth.
Facebook is monetizing all things social and mobile at a rapid clip, and wisely using acquisitions to increase its strength.
As these markets continue on their well established trends it is hard to be anything other than significantly optimistic for Facebook long-term.*
*1x. 93 x. 88 x. 84 x. 85 x. 94 x. 96 x. 94 x. 93 x. 89 x. 91
x. 94 x. 98 x. 97 x. 95 x. 93=.295
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