text:
Click here to access this survey.]]>
Google launched a new service on Thursday that lets users pay to browse certain websites devoid of distracting ads -- and the data tracking that often supports them.
Google Contributor is invite-only and uses a crowdfunding-based model in which users pledge $1, $2, or $3 per month to support the program's partner websites. In exchange, Google will block the ads it serves to them.
But unlike traditional ad blockers, Google's Contributor doesn't block revenue to the websites. While it takes a small cut of your monthly fee, it divides the rest among the partner websites you visit -- giving you a cleaner browsing experience while still supporting your favorite websites.
Ten publishers have signed on with Google Contributor at launch, including Mashable, The Onion, Urban Dictionary, WikiHow, ScienceDaily, and Imagur. When subscribers visit these websites, they'll see a pixelated box where an ad would have appeared with a thank-you note that reads, "Thank you for being a Contributor."
Click here to view Figure 1.
[Verizon knows more about your online browsing habits than you think. Read Verizon Wireless Embroiled In Tracking Controversy.]
Contributor works on all current versions of major browsers as well as mobile apps. Advertisers won't be charged for the ads that it blocks, a company spokesperson said.
While Google's business model is almost entirely based on ad revenue -- in Q3 ads accounted for 89% of its $16.5 billion -- the online ad industry isn't as strong as it once was, according to Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with Altimeter Group.
"Clearly, publisher sites are struggling to monetize with advertising, as banner ad rates become increasingly commoditized and fall," she said in an email. "Consumers interact with ads less too, calling their effectiveness very much into question."
Whether or not Google's new approach will succeed depends on a few factors. The first, Lieb said, is whether consumers will participate at scale. While users complain about online advertising and the data ads collect, will they actually be willing to trade a nominal monthly fee for an improved experience?
The second obstacle involves the number and type of partner websites that sign on, said Rob Shavell, CEO of online privacy company Abine.
"The main roadblock for micropayments to replace ads is really around getting so many websites to sign up for the system that would pay them for users who don't want to see ads," Shavell said in an email. "It is likely on browser providers like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft, which have the reach to make anything in micropayments a reality."
This isn't the first time Google has given consumers a choice in how their attention is monetized. In 2012, the company launched Screenwise, a program that users could opt into that tracks the sites they visited and how they used them. In exchange, Google gave participants a $5 Amazon gift card for installing the extension, and another $5 gift card for every three months they stayed in the Screenwise program.
Most recently, Google launched a new YouTube service called Music Key, which lets you stream music ad-free for $8 per month.
Employers see a talent shortage. Job hunters see a broken hiring process. In the rush to complete projects, the industry risks rushing to an IT talent failure. Get the Talent Shortage Debate issue of InformationWeek today.]]>
First, let's discuss what is wrong with the Turing test and other major tests of artificial intelligence.
The Turing test, perhaps the most famous test of artificial intelligence, was conceived in the 1950s -- which itself is a red flag. How could its developers conceive of the revolution that was to come when computers were still using vacuum tubes? Beyond that, the Turing test relies on deception; the computer needs to trick humans. This is problematic for many reasons.
First, the notion of artificial intelligence that's specifically designed to deceive is not only creepy, but also potentially harmful. Even if you don't tell it that it is trying to deceive when it interacts with humans, the programmers have built that idea into the device's thinking.
Just as importantly, human behavior isn't always intelligent. Acting human and being intelligent are two very different things. Tricking a human into thinking you are human is a language exercise as much as it is an intelligence exercise.
[Want a difficult colleague to acknowledge a problem? Here's how: Geekend: Stubborn Deniers Demand Creative Solutions.]
Basically, it comes down to a simple fact: Tricking a human in a chat room doesn't mean your AI is suited to do anything else of value or intelligence.
Other tests have been proposed, based on answering vague language tests that often trick computers, but humans can easily pass or work around reading comprehension or writing.
What we need, according to Georgia Tech's Mark Riedl, is a test that shows a broad base of potential skills and types of intelligence. He suggests that a truly, err… intelligent artificial intelligence "develops a creative artifact from a subset of artistic genres deemed to require and the artifact meets certain creative constraints given by the human evaluator."
Interesting. To be smart, Riedl says, you must be creative and potentially "artistic" -- and that does seem to require more intelligence than a chat bot. But I'm not sure why, for instance, an artificial intelligence designed to drive a self-driving car safely isn't intelligent simply because it can't tell a joke, write a story, or paint a painting.
There are robots that can do these things -- we've seen painting robots, joke-writing software, and even an AI that creates magic tricks. It seems to me that making a magic trick takes some serious intelligence and insight into humans. A harder Turing test might create a magic trick -- rather than a chat bot -- that fools humans.
But does any of this indicate intelligence, or it is simply a sign of adapting to a specific job? Intelligence, to me, means being able to adapt to a demand you haven't been programmed to do. If your joke-writing program can switch to writing poems, for example, that's intelligence. Anything else might be really neat -- but it's specialized.
So what test would I suggest? I have a few ideas that might seem a little out there -- but here goes:
Can it take the latest Cosmo quiz?
If your computer can read, comprehend, and honestly answer a Cosmo quiz, it boasts serious reading comprehension skills, an ability to process casual language, and an ability to answer questions with shades of gray. If your AI can find out what kind of animal it is in bed, for example, it really is intelligent (and possibly a great date).
Can it get across a bridge to find the Holy Grail?
I think the ability to respond to a question with another question might be one of the best signs of intelligence. I also want to see someone ask Watson about its quest.
Can it help Bunny Watson figure out who to marry?
In the classic movie The Desk Set, Katharine Hepburn, playing Bunny Watson, believes her job as a researcher for a TV network is about to be made redundant by a computer that seems to know everything. (Incidentally, her job actually will be made redundant by the Internet decades later.) The computer in the movie can instantly answer questions of facts, but it can't evaluate. Ultimately, Spencer Tracy asks Hepburn to cancel her engagement after asking the computer if she should marry. Watch that scene at the 3:40 mark of the video below, or enjoy the whole clip. (The entire movie is available for free here).
We now have half the technology this movie envisioned in 1957. If we get the other half, we'll have a pretty smart computer.
OK, so none of these are perfect tests. One reason for that is that we've never really been able to come up with an accurate test for intelligence in people. Presumably, if we can't reliably test intelligence in people, we can't test it in a computer.
What do we really mean when we talk about an artificial intelligence? Is it simply something that can do a single task well, or is it something that can reason through any major task? Do you agree with my notion that true intelligence is doing something you've never been programmed to do -- or is that unfair? After all, I have to program myself to learn to play the violin.
What is your test of intelligence? Tell me in the comments.
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Click here to view Figure 1.]]>
See our one-minute wrap-up of tech stories, including tips for cleaner tech devices, a new app that turns financial data into a 3D landscape, threats to holiday shoppers and retailers, and how online games are reshaping network demands.
You can find links to the full stories below. And don't forget to answer our question of the week: What's your worst tech hygiene habit? Let us know in the comments section.
Tech Hygiene: 10 Bad Habits To Break
Fidelity Debuts Oculus Rift-Based Virtual Investment App
Retail Hacking: What To Expect This Holiday Season
Gaming Will Level Up The Network
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Is there anything more aggravating than waiting around all afternoon for a service technician to arrive? Comcast hopes to relieve this pain point with a new tool that lets customers use their smartphone to track technicians. Comcast will first trial the feature in Boston, with hopes to expand it to more markets down the road.
Comcast demonstrated the feature last week at an event in San Francisco. Using the MyAccount app, customers will be able to track technicians' arrival in real time. The idea is to give customers more freedom while awaiting a service appointment.
Most customers who schedule an appointment are given a two-hour window. That's down from four hours previously, but Comcast believes people want even more precise details. The MyAccount app, which is free to download and use for Android and iOS, will alert customers when the technician is about 30 minutes away. Once the alert arrives, they'll be able to see where the technician is and discern more exactly when he or she will ring the doorbell.
[What can social media tell us about economic metrics? Read Tweets Tell Whether You Have A Job.]
"We're hoping this will prevent our customers from just needing to sit at home and wait," explained Comcast in a blog post. "They can check the app from the office, or wherever they are, and head home when they see we're on our way. If we are running late, which can happen if our tech gets tied up at someone else's house, we will let folks know that too, and provide real-time status updates so they can plan accordingly."
Click here to view Figure 1.
It appears that customers will be able to track the technicians only during the 30-minute window prior to their arrival; they won't be able to follow the tech around all day. If you're out running errands, this should give you enough time to zoom home before the tech arrives. It's fair to say Comcast still expects customers to be at -- or very close to -- home during the two-hour service window.
Since the service is in trial status, Comcast is seeking feedback from customers. Once customers' service needs are met, the company hopes they'll rate the experience within the application. Comcast will then use the feedback, both positive and negative, to improve the service. Comcast said it will follow up with unhappy customers via phone calls to make things right.
If the trial proceeds well, Comcast plans to target expansion starting in 2015.
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On Nov. 18, Microsoft rolled out an update to its Azure storage service that contained an unintended infinite loop for a certain operation buried in the code. The triggering of that infinite loop in normal operations caused the service to basically freeze. Third-party cloud service monitoring services show that as the update rolled out, each Azure data center experienced a growing service latency followed by an outage about an hour later.
A chart supplied at the request of InformationWeek by former Compuware application performance management service Dynatrace showed a 241.75-millisecond (about a quarter of a second) latency building up before failure -- a disastrous slowdown in storage operations. Earlier that day it had run at an average 15-16 milliseconds.
Likewise, charts obtained from the Cedexis Radar monitoring service showed a consistent 95%-97% success rate in attempted connections to Azure cloud services throughout most of the day. Shortly after 4 p.m. PST -- 45 minutes prior to the time Microsoft acknowledged the trouble in its Azure Status page -- that response level started to fall off a cliff. Over the next hour, it dropped from 95%-97% to 7%-8% -- a virtual freeze for most users.
Interestingly, the Cedexis data also show that the problem didn't affect all Azure data centers equally. In a chart showing three US and two European data centers (below), Cedexis metrics illustrate that a little after midnight UTC (4 p.m. PST), Microsoft's US East (in northern Virginia) and South Central (in Dallas) are affected more than the other three -- their performance drop is the most precipitous. An hour later, US East is down to a 7%-8% level, while South Central has ground to a halt and is accepting no connections. South Central's complete outage goes on until about 6:45 p.m. PST (my estimate from a graph without fine calibrations).
Click here to view Figure 1.
Azure's US West data center in Northern California shows degraded service but continues to chug along at 55%-60% throughout this period.
In an interview, Cedexis service strategist Pete Mastin said any drop in user connections spells trouble for cloud services, since a failed connection will usually be retried right away. That builds unnecessary traffic and tends to increase the failure rate. In other words, it takes only a small decrease in a service's availability to impact its latency rate. In this case, once the trouble started, Azure's latencies built up rapidly.
[Want to learn more about the Azure storage outage? See Microsoft Azure Storage Service Outage: Postmortem.]
What happened with the two European data centers, however, is even more of an anomaly than the varied outcomes in the US data centers.
Azure's West Europe data center (in Dublin, Ireland) and North Europe center (in Amsterdam) initially showed relatively little impact. North Europe fell off a barely perceptible 1%-2% (my estimate, since graph doesn't show fine detail), while West Europe dropped to 80% effectiveness.
All five data centers then start to recover at about the same time -- about 1 a.m. UTC (Greenwich Mean Time) or 5 p.m. PST, and the recovery continued for two hours. At about 3 a.m. UTC (7 p.m. PST), operations were back to normal at both the US and the European data centers.
Then Azure's North Europe data center in Amsterdam suffered a second precipitous drop. From 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. UTC, its user connection rate plummeted from 96% to 37%. Meanwhile, the Dublin-based West Europe center maintained close-to-normal operations, showing a decline of only a few percentage points over the same period.
The performance drop across all data centers makes sense if the storage service update was rolled out simultaneously around the globe -- but, Mastin wondered, why would [Microsoft] do that? Is it considered a best practice to roll out a cloud service update everywhere at the same time? In a statement, corporate VP for Azure Jason Zander said the update had been tested both in isolation and in a limited live production deployment, a process it calls "flighting." The update had passed all tests.
When it became evident there was a problem with the rollout, why did the Amsterdam data center take a second performance dive just as the business day was getting underway in its time zone? If business activity served as the trigger, why didn't Dublin show a similar drop an hour later? Had troubleshooters implemented a rollback there before the code glitch had time to cause major problems?
It's possible. But then there's the question of the varied responses among the US data centers. Why, at 4 p.m., was the US West data center -- still in the most active part of the business day – less affected than the US South Central and US East data centers?
Asked about these variations, Mastin was guarded in his response. Having served previously as operations staff at an Internap data center, he's aware of the many individual circumstances and anomalies that can occur in the course of a system update. "We measure things," he said. "We don't necessarily understand why it happened."
That said, he added, "I worked at Internap for four years. We knew rolling out an update to all data centers at one time was never a good idea."
To collect data, Cedexis has 500 enterprise clients embed JavaScript in pages downloaded by their customers each day. The JavaScript triggers a query from the user's location back to the site visited, capturing response times and reporting the results to Cedexis. The company collects 2 to 3 billion such user samples daily from 29,000 Internet service providers.
Microsoft's postmortem is still to come. Let's hope it can explain the outage and address solutions to prevent similar events from happening again.
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First, I got one on "the Internet of Things." Yes, the Internet of Things. Yet another IT thing that either won't happen at your IT shop (kind of hard to envision a law firm's IT being super connected like that), or you're already doing it and you don't need some company that just started doing it telling you what to do.
Oh! But wait! A study is being proffered! The study will tell me that "nearly half of IT executives look to the IoT as over-hyped." No? Really? And yet, somehow, someone has connected their crystal ball to the IoT, because they confidently say "connected devices will nearly double within the next two years," and will "reach more than 50 billion by 2020 -- that's 6.3 connected devices per person!"
Click here to view Figure 1.
That gives me a headache. I can barely keep track of my phone, tablet, and laptop as it is. Away this press release goes, with the sweet sound of delete ringing in my ears.
[Will some cool tech toys make the Grumpy IT Guy less grumpy? Look at 10 Smart Tech Toys For Kids.]
Next press release is from perky Mina. She says: "You don't happen to have any relation to Grumpy Cat, do you?" Why, Mina, I've never heard that one before.
"Grumpy Cat and I are well-acquainted, especially on Mondays." Mondays! Chortle! The comedy is almost too much for my grouchy old soul, Mina.
"Anyhoo," she says. Oh Mina. You had me at Anyhoo... "I wanted to see if you'd be open to a contributed post from a vendor about an IT grump."
No. Chortling is over. I hate grumps. Please do not point out the irony, my therapist and I are still working on that one and it hurts my brain to think about it.
Mina, you should also know that I can be grumpy about vendors. Talking about vendors is not guaranteed to stir my juices in a good way.
"This one in particular has to deal with datacenter admins who are being forced to use antiquated storage technology and are hoping their CIOs will finally make it down to the basement and add storage to their upgrade list."
Oooh, not that, anything but the forcing of antiquated storage technology. Dear Lord, I bet they use... hard drives. Fiber channel! Or worse!
Mina, I guarantee you my CIO will never make it down to that basement. She spends her time visiting with customers. She gets out of the basement. Out of the data center. Produces IT reports for the business. Removes roadblocks for business critical projects.
She'd better not make it down to subterranean storage-land. That's another manager's problem, not hers. She just wants it to work and work reliably. If someone around here complains, they'd better use a better word than "antiquated" and it had better have something to do with customers if they want her tight-fisted, progress-oriented, profit-friendly purse strings to loosen.
I can't help it, but I kind of like her that way. (In a grumpy kind of liking way, of course.) And so does the business.
Mina, I had high hopes for you and I, but I am afraid that I hear that delete key calling again.
I am not sure about this gonzo journalism thing. I thought press releases were supposed to lead to gigantic aha moments and Pulitzer-winning stories. No? You say that hard work and integrity and privation and canny sleuthing are needed?
Forget the cross-Americana odyssey. I'm going back to Grumpy IT.
Get the latest information to migrate your systems, services, and applications to the next level at Enterprise Connect. Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, and Oracle will lead the keynote lineup, and thought leaders from enterprises and vendors will cover the full range of platforms, services, and applications that will simplify your migration to next-gen communications and collaboration systems. Register for Enterprise Connect with code DIWKWEB to save $100 off the early-bird rate. It happens in Orlando, Fla., March 16 to 19.]]>
Marketers' efforts to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter aren't working and companies should rethink their strategy to engage with customers.
That's the conclusion of research firm Forrester, which in a new report, "Social Relationship Strategies That Work," argues that companies should build social engagement around their own websites rather than a social network's website.
Noting that major brands' Facebook and Twitter posts reach only about 2% of their fans and followers, and that less than 0.1% of those individuals interact with each post, Forrester VP Nate Elliott contends that leading social media sites aren't actually helping companies build relationships with their customers.
"It's clear that Facebook and Twitter don't offer the relationships that marketing leaders crave," Elliott says in the report. "Yet most brands still use these sites as the centerpiece of their social efforts -- thereby wasting significant financial, technological, and human resources on social networks that don't deliver value."
Click here to view Figure 1.
Facebook is clearly trying to be more engaging for users, but its continued tweaks to its News Feed won't change the basic issue that it reaches only a small portion of the audience companies want to reach. And Elliot argues that organic social marketing -- brand posts that aren't paid ads -- will only get worse following Facebook's plan to show fewer promotional Page posts starting in 2015.
[Twitter is a better option for some things. Read Tweets Tell Whether You Have A Job.]
Elliot's advice to corporate marketers involves building social engagement tools into their own websites -- a challenge for companies without significant Web development experience -- and to focus on smaller social networks like Instagram, which appears to have a significantly higher engagement rate on posts than Facebook. No wonder Facebook bought Instagram.
Elliot says companies should try to create branded communities as a focus for social interaction, as Sony and Analog Devices have done. He notes, "US online adults who want to stay in touch with your company are almost three times as likely to visit your site as to engage you on Facebook."
In October, Elliott published an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which he declared, "Facebook is failing marketers." As evidence he cited an August study of 395 marketers and online business executives at large companies in the US, Canada, and the UK that found Twitter and Facebook had the lowest satisfaction of any digital marketing channel.
The most appreciated digital marketing channels turn out to be the most traditional ones: On-site ratings and reviews, search marketing, and email marketing.
Get the latest information to migrate your systems, services, and applications to the next level at Enterprise Connect. Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, and Oracle will lead the keynote lineup, and thought leaders from enterprises and vendors will cover the full range of platforms, services, and applications that will simplify your migration to next-gen communications and collaboration systems. Register for Enterprise Connect with code DIWKWEB to save $100 off the early-bird rate. It happens in Orlando, Fla., March 16 to 19.]]>
Is there life after information technology leadership? You bet. While some "retired" CIOs immediately dive back into the industry as consultants to those currently serving as CIOs, others decide it's time to do something completely different.
InformationWeek specifically went looking for people who had an interesting "Second Act" story to tell. Of our five examples, one is embarking on a career of voiceover work and acting after years of using funny voices to amuse (and sometimes annoy) his colleagues. Another is working almost as hard as a volunteer civic leader as he did in his former profession (but without the stress of worrying about the next system outage). Several are actively trying to relax but are still active as volunteers. Another retired as a university CIO but immediately went to work as a professor -- a role she plans to return to as soon the current and very different act in her play concludes.
Growing in retirement
Ed Meachen, who retired as CIO of the University of Wisconsin System in 2012, said he knows retired higher education CIOs who now lead symposiums on IT leadership, but that was not for him. "I decided that I would do something completely different that I have a passion for. I was delighted that my time was finally my own -- that I owned my time," he said.
That passion was gardening, something he had invested time in all along on nights and weekends (sometimes coming into the office at 6:00 a.m. so he could get work done when things were quiet and justify cutting out at 4:00 p.m.). This is not a small hobby for him -- he owns 43 acres, including his own vineyard. "I would never trade working outside in the summer for work again," Meachen said. "It's just so incredibly Zen to work outside all summer long."
Not content to simply Zen out, he upped the ante by getting trained as a Master Gardener, a certified volunteer for the state agricultural service. Master Gardeners help educate the public and answer questions on things like recognizing native versus invasive plants or the proper versus harmful uses of pesticides and fertilizers. "I did it partly as a challenge to myself -- to find out whether, at 65 years old, I could learn anything completely new," he said.
Click here to view Figure 1.
The education helped him tend his own garden better, but just as importantly it introduced him to a lot of new friends, people he never would have met otherwise. Because of his history of executive leadership, before long he was drafted as president elect of the Dane County Master Gardener Association. Just recently, the incumbent resigned and he was named president, a volunteer administrative role he expects to require about 10 to 15 hours a week of his time, on average, but one he is enjoying because it gives him an opportunity to meet more people who share his passion for gardening.
Meachen was the university system CIO, coordinating with CIOs at different campuses, from 1997 to June 2012. Before that, he was the first CIO at University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where he had previously been Library Director -- part of a generation of higher education CIOs who learned information technology as an extension of their library science training.
He said he does miss the camaraderie and the experience of leading a team. For about a year after retirement, he would go to bed and dream that he still had his old job and hadn't yet been replaced. "I guess it took me a year to decouple after working 15 years in that job," he said. "I thoroughly enjoyed the job; it was just a great job."
Still, on the occasions when he has been offered opportunities to take on executive or consulting roles, he is happy to turn them down.
"There's nothing more important to me than having ownership of your time. You can waste it, if you want, but it's yours," Meachen said.
Cracking wise
"Effective 8/15/14 I will be retired from Federal service," reads the blurb atop the LinkedIn profile of Ron Bianchi, who until recently was CIO of the Economic Research Service at the US Department of Agriculture. "I will be pursuing part time consulting opportunities as well as my acting and voiceover careers!"
Voiceover career? Listen for yourself. This serious executive is capable of being a very silly man, spouting imitations and accents, little boy and old man voices. Did he ever use funny voices to break the tension at work?
"Are you from the NSA?" he asked in a phone interview, before segueing into a line of patter in an Australian accent. "So, yes, sometimes I would crack wise that way."
Actually, he found it to be a technique better indulged in when he was sure he was among friends. "Not everyone is equally accepting of it," he said. Some people would judge him as someone who didn't take his job very seriously if he went too Mel Blanc on them. At one retirement party, he and some friends put on a whole James Bond-themed skit but not everyone was amused. "I could tell the division director thought it was scene stealing or something," he said.
For as long as he can remember, Bianchi found it easy to pick up accents or do imitations. Yet as a young man, he generally wasn't brave enough to act -- except for one time at William and Mary College when he got to play Ben Franklin in a production of 1776. That was back in 1976, the year he graduated and went on to law school -- putting his theatrical ambitions on ice for a couple of decades. He didn't get back to it until 1992, performing in a community theater production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. "As soon as I got my first laugh, I was hooked," he said.
As his professional life advanced, community theater was hard to fit in, but he carved out time to do about a play a year. He also began to pick up occasional paying gigs in commercials and corporate video. Recently, he has won roles in a couple of TV pilots (which may or may not go anywhere) and has begun approaching acting as a profession -- although still more for fun than for money. "I do it for the enjoyment of it; that's far and away the most important. There's not a lot of money in it, except for the 1%."
Having just moved from the D.C. area to Suffolk, Virginia, he figured voiceover work was something he could do -- and certainly audition for -- from anywhere.
Meanwhile, he has not necessarily sworn off IT work forever. Having formerly been active in IDG's CIO Executive Council, he is currently considering rejoining as an emeritus member as "a way of giving back." Besides, if they ever need an emcee, he knows how to be entertaining.
Civic leader
Before he entered the corporate world as a CIO, Robert Moon was already retired from an IT leadership career in the US Navy, finishing at the rank of Commander back in 1994. His last military posting was at the Office of Naval Research. His most recent commercial CIO roles were at Viewsonic, the educational toy company LeapPad, and virtual school operator K12 Inc. After retiring from K12 in 2011, Moon finally got to spend some time at his "permanent" home in Palm Springs (which for years he had only been able to visit on weekends).
Immediately, he went back to work, albeit as a volunteer and civic leader. After the voters approved Measure J, which provided for a 1% sales tax to fund needed investments in the city's infrastructure, Moon was appointed to serve on the Measure J Commission, which oversees how that money is spent. The other commissioners elected him the commission's first chairman in 2012. This proved to be the first in a series of civic organizations he was invited to join and, before long, invited to lead.
Click here to view Figure 2.
In none of those roles has he made significant use of IT specific skills, and yet his professional experience is very relevant to why he has been successful in these roles, he said. "When you're a CIO, you really have to reach out to customers and end users and understand what do they want, what do they need, and how do they work?" He finds himself doing much the same work in civic life.
"Actually, as a CIO I could not have built a server if my life depended on it," Moon admitted. He was far enough removed from the actual implementation of technology that his real skills involved having "a Ph.D. in PowerPoint" and the speaking skills to convince the board to invest millions in his plans on the basis of a 10-minute presentation. Those skills are equally valuable for making a case for the value of Measure J to the public and other civic organizations.
Thinking of Meachen, I asked if he ever considered puttering around the garden instead. "Working in the garden is not me," he scoffed. "One thing most CIOs share is a Type A personality, almost obsessive-compulsive -- you don't survive as a CIO without a certain amount of obsessive compulsive personality. I knew if I had to go from all ahead flank to full stop, I would go nuts."
He listed so many volunteer activities that I wondered if he was working as hard or harder than when he was collecting a salary. No, not quite: maybe 30 or 40 hours per week, as opposed to the 60- or 70-hour workweeks
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of his former life. Maybe more significantly, there is a big difference in the stress level involved. Even when on vacation, he used to live on his laptop and his BlackBerry, anxious about what might be going on in his absence.
"One of the things as a CIO is you feel such a sense of responsibility and proprietorship of these systems that keep the corporation going. Your entire life as a CIO is dedicated to keeping them up keeping them functioning. Downtime is not acceptable," Moon said. "Today, I'm applying some of the same skill sets but I don't have to worry that because a system goes down a $1.3 billion company can't operate."
He remembers one time at Viewsonic where a database administrator's error shut down a central Oracle system for six hours, during which basic functions like shipping and receiving couldn't operate. "That was the longest six hours of my life," Moon said. "So this is much more fun."
His dilemma is he's been successful enough that now he is being urged to run for office. While he is proud and ambitious enough to be tempted, he also has to think twice, he said. "My life is so perfect now. Do I really want to screw with it?"
Going way, way beyond retirement
When I met Joy Hughes at conference of higher education technology leaders, she was on the verge of retiring from the George Mason University CIO's office, but she had no intention of leaving the university. Instead, she was going to teach in the university's school of engineering. We also recruited her as an occasional InformationWeek contributor.
Turns out her absence from an executive role didn't last. When I looked her up, I was surprised to learn that she was now interim president and provost at a George Mason University in Korea. This outpost is part of the Incheon Global Campus located in Songdo, Incheon, Korea. Songdo promotes itself as the country's high tech "city of the future" and has invited multiple American universities to replicate their programs here. SUNY's computer science program arrived three years ago, Mason launched economics and management in March, the University of Utah just started up in September with public health, psychology, and social services programs. The University of Ghent, from Belgium, has also launched a biosciences program.
"I was asked to take on the role of president because of my long history with China and much shorter history with Korea, my role as founding executive director of 4-VA (a partnership of four Virginia universities supported by the Virginia government and Cisco's CEO), and also because of my involvement in designing the IT facilities for the Songdo campus," Hughes explained via email.
"I am interim because I am way, way past retirement age, at least the age to retire from administration," she added. She is staying for a year while assisting in the search for a permanent president. "Once he or she is hired, you will find me in my Fairfax classroom, marker in hand, drawing equations on the white board for my students."
In other words, she does not plan to start a true rocking chair retirement anytime soon.
Picture perfect
Jerry Johnson gets together with some of his former coworkers about once a month to shoot pool. They tell him about work, and he tells them how happy is not to be doing it anymore. "I have very little passion for that work environment at all anymore," he said.
Johnson retired about a year ago as chief information officer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Prior to that, he often shared his thoughts with InformationWeek and was a member of our advisory board. Johnson said thought he might be one of those people who finds himself drawn back into consulting or some other IT role after retirement, but temptation never struck.
"That's not to say I didn't love my job -- it was a wonderful career," he said. While he was in the job, he was passionate about doing it well, meaning he could work 12 or 14 hours a day and come home still loving his job. "The secret is carrying forward that passion in whatever you do," he said. "You need to be passionate while you're working so you succeed in your job, but you also need to be passionate in retirement and, frankly, in your family life."
One of his longtime passions has been international travel. Although he actually hasn't done any of that in the past year, it was following an adventure travel visit to Manchu Picchu that he stumbled on another enthusiasm. When he realized the best photo he'd taken on the trip was with his iPhone, he decided it was time to get a real camera and learn how to use it.
"I reached out to a friend who was knowledgeable about photography and started buying new cameras, new lenses. I wound up with a digital mirror-less camera that would be good for adventure travel because it's about half the weight of an SLR," Johnson said. He now attends a new photography workshop about once a week and is active in a photography club where he has made many new friends.
"It's rare that someone asks, 'What did you do before you retired?' " he said, but they do care about the photos, and people are impressed by how far he has advanced in about 11 months. On the other hand, some of the people who knew him as an IT guy say they are surprised that he is so creative. The sad thing there is that IT is a creative business but most people don't see that, he said. "They confuse being creative with being artistic."
Johnson is another retiree who devotes a fraction of his energy into volunteer and charitable causes, sitting on the boards of The ARC, a social services organization for people with mental or developmental disabilities, Catholic Family Child Services, and Columbia Basin Dive Rescue, for which he is the board president.
Like others on this list, Johnson finds his CIO experience translates well into volunteer leadership. For example, as The ARC is struggling with cuts in public funding, he has taken on a business development role seeking out new sources of revenue to make up the shortfall and also provide employment for some of the agency's clients who are able to work. He has even been able to make that dovetail with his enthusiasm for photography, working on a video promotion for The ARC.
What's his advice to those CIOs coming up on retirement?
"The best advice is do it," Johnson said. "I've yet to meet anyone who said I wish I had worked longer." Yes, there is a period of adjustment. For the first few months, Johnson found he kept himself working hard at the kind of home improvement chores he used to do over the weekend -- as if retirement was going to be one endless and exhausting weekend. "I had to tell myself, hey, you don't have to get all this stuff done right away. You have to seek some sort of balance," he said.
InformationWeek's new Must Reads is a compendium of our best recent coverage of project management. Learn why enterprises must adapt to the Agile approach, how to handle project members who aren't performing up to expectations, whether project management offices are worthwhile, and more. Get the new Project Management Must Reads issue today. (Free registration required.)]]>
Think about that. In a decade and a half, three-quarters of your co-workers will have been born between 1980 and 2000. At the same time, baby boomers are delaying retirement and working side-by-side with people young enough to be their children, creating a new dynamic in business. Will the imbalance tip the scale and completely change the workplace as we know it?
There's no doubt the generation of millennials is fundamentally different from generations past. According to Deloitte's 2014 Millennial Survey, 63% of millennials believe the success of a business should be measured by more than just its financial performance, with a focus on improving society among the most important goals. And according to various expert reports millennials are the biggest and one of the most culturally diverse age groups in American history at about 80 million people. So they have influence.
[There's no model for building the perfect team, but there are Essentials For Supporting High Performing Employees]
But I don't believe their influence is enough to create revolutionary changes to American businesses in the way we think, and I don't believe they will disrupt the workplace as much as everyone's predicting.
The reality is the workplace is a giant melting pot. Generation after generation of employees bring new technologies and ideas into the workplace, which means we create and adapt to the technology and policies already in place. Millennials are no exception to this previous ecosystem; they are not coming in and completely turning everything on its head. Instead, it is a give-and-take where the baby boomers adapt to millennials' new ways and millennials adapt to the systems in place.
Click here to view Figure 1.
Take mobility, for instance. It has altered and enhanced how employees work. But this new mode of communications did not happen abruptly and it did not create an immediate disruption of policies. Instead, its evolution happened in steps. Millennials will no doubt create and implement new and advanced technologies, but like generations past, these new technologies and business processes will arrive in stages, perhaps at an accelerated pace, but not overnight.
The only thing that remains consistent in the workplace across generations is change. As IT leaders, it's our responsibility to recognize the need for change, determine the best path to take, and communicate the vision to our staff. As part of this change, implementing new technology is not only to be expected but should be accepted as an ongoing process.
So how can you best manage this change of generations in the workplace? Know what makes them tick. Take a step back and look at the benefits your company offers this new workforce. For millennials, work is what they do, not where they go. Millennials sometimes view corporate structures as limiting factors, so create and provide meaningful opportunities for them as employees to do good -- whether it's through a donation match or volunteer days. While opportunities for service may not seem like the most pressing challenge for IT, the business leaders who successfully meet the needs of millennials will be better positioned to attract and retain these dynamic young workers.
The work world is always going to need to embrace the traits of new generations and millennials are just another example of this evolutionary change. Do not think of millennials as a disruption to the office. They don't cause chaos in the workplace; rather they complement the trends already underway.
For example, millennials know first-hand the importance of using smartphones and mobile apps to get work done and bring a "mobile-first" mentality to the enterprise, whereas a team without millennials may have a bias to focus on other interfaces first. Accept and use the strengths of millennials to your company's advantage -- they are the most connected generation in history and companies can greatly benefit from putting their tech-savvy ways of thinking to use.
After all, before you know it the next generation will be entering the workplace with technology skills we've never dreamed of, and the evolutionary cycle will carry on.
Employers see a talent shortage. Job hunters see a broken hiring process. In the rush to complete projects, the industry risks rushing to an IT talent failure. Get the Talent Shortage Debate issue of InformationWeek today.]]>
The 2014 through 2015 OCR audit season is upon us, and many healthcare organizations still have not taken adequate measures to prepare.
The good news is the upcoming audits, originally slated to begin this fall, have been delayed. The OCR is taking additional time to finalize the web portal it will use to gather electronic compliance artifacts from entities the agency selects for audits. But this round of OCR audits will target a significantly larger number of covered entities than were audited in 2012. And when the audits do commence, business associates will be included as well. In other words, there is a much higher likelihood of being audited than there was in 2012.
[Is Twitter's new security scheme dangerous? Read Killing Passwords: Don't Get A-Twitter Over 'Digits.']
If you are an eligible organization, now is the time to learn from past mistakes and get ready for a possible visit, on site or electronically, from the OCR.
Exposing the gaps in healthcare compliance
The 2012 OCR audits revealed the healthcare industry at large had not yet begun to take compliance seriously. An astounding two-thirds of audited entities had not even performed a complete and accurate risk assessment, which is the first step in putting a security strategy in place.
Here are some other unsettling results of the 2012 OCR audits:
Click here to view Figure 1.
Since the enactment of HITECH in 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has cited more than 1,000 serious data breaches of 500-plus records -- compromising more than 33 million patient records -- on its online wall of shame. Sadly, in the 2012 audits, only 13 entities (out of 115) had no findings or observations.
OCR is on your side -- take advantage
Although no one should overlook the penalties for non-compliance, it's important to recognize the OCR is not out to get you. There are a number of resources available from the OCR website as well as the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at HealthIT.gov. OCR audits are a vehicle to monitor the overall healthcare industry for compliance with HIPAA regulations. Aggregate findings inform policies and outreach that will improve the overall privacy and security of patient data.
But the OCR will expect to find a good-faith effort to comply if they audit you. The first step, if you have not done so already, is to conduct a risk assessment that identifies areas of vulnerability in your healthcare data security strategy. As part of that risk assessment, do an inventory of all your confidential patient data. Know where it resides and how it's handled. Don't forget to include all business associates with whom you share PHI. And be sure you maintain an accurate listing of those organizations. Auditors will ask.
Beyond basic network security controls and cataloging data, HIPAA dictates that you take an active role in protecting PHI. It's not enough to simply install network security tools. Go one step further and assign someone to periodically review system logs and events. Check physical security of your data centers and office areas. Situate workstations strategically for maximum privacy. Review your business associate agreements and make sure that the third parties with whom you share data are compliant as well. (This due diligence can be done through your own audit or by using a third-party resource such as a SOC or HITRUST report.) HIPAA also requires that staff is trained on how to handle and store PHI, and that you schedule regular reminders. How prepared you are to recognize and respond to possible breaches also will be a focus of the upcoming audits, so be sure you have documented plans in place.
As you can see, HIPAA regulations affect multiple areas of your organization. But the directives aren't always as prescriptive as some might like. By design, HIPAA rules have built-in flexibility, leaving decisions about compliance up to each organization, based on size, budget, and risks that are unique to your operations. Clearly, a large regional hospital will have more resources to dedicate to healthcare data security than a small-to-midsize physician's office. OCR recognizes this, which is why how you meet standards is ultimately up to you. If you've implemented a compliant strategy to the best of your ability and have justified your decisions in writing, you will likely emerge from an audit relatively unscathed. If not, take these lessons to heart and prepare thoroughly for a potential audit.
The owners of electronic health records aren't necessarily the patients. How much control should they have? Get the new Who Owns Patient Data? issue of InformationWeek Healthcare today.]]>
Think instead about playing Xbox in the cruise ship's game room with your friends back on land. Or watching a Netflix movie while sitting poolside. Or checking Facebook to keep up with your friends, or even better, posting photos of yourself on the ship's water slide. Guests would like all of those digital capabilities, spurring cruise ships to search for new ways to provide affordable high-speed Internet access.
"With the Millennial generation, if you can't provide that kind of connectivity, you could be out of the consideration set," says Bill Martin, CIO of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
But delivering that offshore connectivity has proved to be a daunting technical challenge. The standard cruise ship satellite-based service has been slow and pricey, billed per minute. Royal Caribbean is making a big bet on an emerging satellite technology that orbits more closely to Earth than conventional satellites, while the industry's largest cruise company, Carnival Corporation & plc, recently announced a "hybrid" approach using multiple access technologies and algorithms to switch among in-port WiFi, long-range WiFi, and satellites.
[Is your IT team among the best? Apply today for the InformationWeek Elite 100 and get recognized for your achievement.]
Royal Caribbean is rolling out Internet services via next-generation satellites operated by a company called O3b, whose founding mission is to provide Internet access to the "other 3 billion" people in the world who lack connectivity.
CIO Martin (who is a member of the InformationWeek editorial advisory board) says the O3b satellite system will let Royal Caribbean provide fiber-like Internet speeds to its ships in the middle of the ocean, replacing per-minute Internet pricing with an all-you-can-surf flat rate of $22 a day, based on a weekly package, similar to fancy hotel charges. Guests will be able to access most any apps they want, including streaming video. The service is available on Royal's newest ship, Quantum of the Seas, a 4,180-passenger vessel that began sailing last week and which the company is billing as a "smart ship" for all its on-board technology. The company's Allure of the Seas ship also offers the service, and it will be on Oasis of the Seas in December.
Click here to view Figure 1.
About three-and-a half-years ago, Royal Caribbean studied its onboard environment, and, Martin says, "Everything kept pointing back to, 'You need broadband access. You need high-speed access.' " So a team of communications engineers went to work on the problem, finding various ways to increase access speeds two-fold and even four-fold. Martin got to be the bad guy: "It just wasn't enough," he says. "It wasn't even close."
Then Royal Caribbean and O3b connected. O3b launched its first four satellites in 2013, but a component problem showed up on one of them. In order to make sure the next four satellites didn't have the same problem, O3b delayed the second launch from fall 2013 until July of this year. All eight satellites are now orbiting and working, at about 5,000 miles above the Earth's surface, as opposed to 22,000 miles or more for conventional satellites. O3b plans to launch a third set of four on Dec. 18.
Early tests on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas ship delivered speeds of over 500 Mbit/s, and, even more important, 120- to 130-millisecond response times, meaning that even apps such as Apple Facetime and Netflix work as well as, or better than, guests experience them at home. "That's really the game-changer, the latency," says Martin, because too much latency causes apps to freeze or look sluggish. Latency is tied to the distance data travels and the speed of light. With O3b's satellites one-fourth the distance from Earth of conventional ones, transmissions can make faster round trips.
The other 39 ships in Royal Caribbean's fleet rely on conventional satellite Internet access. Two years ago, Royal Caribbean cut a deal with a new satellite access provider, Harris CapRock, to get more capacity so it at least could offer daily and weekly unlimited access packages. But they cost more than access on the O3b-enabled ships and don't have the same performance. The company is working on ways to share its O3b capacity across more of its ships and expects to be able to do that in about a year.
Martin thinks having broadband out at sea will not only attract guests who might otherwise not consider a cruise, but it will also generate priceless exposure for Royal Caribbean as guests post photos to social sites while on board. "Immediately, family and friends are drawn into the experience that you're having on board the ship," Martin says. "It's an incredible advertising opportunity for us."
New breed of satellites
The company behind the new breed of medium-Earth-orbit satellites, O3b, was founded in 2007 by Greg Wyler, who was a telecom entrepreneur in Rwanda, at the time frustrated with the lack of fiber-caliber connectivity in Africa. Rwanda got connected via ocean-floor cable long before O3b could deliver,
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but telecom companies in the Cook Islands, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and South Sudan are among its early customers. Wyler remains an O3b shareholder but has since moved on to work briefly on Google's satellite ideas and most recently is rumored to be working with SpaceX's Elon Musk. More on that connection a bit later.
Providing cruise ship guests with Netflix and Facebook might fall short of O3b's higher calling, but CEO Steve Collar sees no reason not to serve customers such as cruise ship and energy companies. It's still committed to extended connectivity to people in emerging markets, but "O3b was never intended to be a charity," Collar says.
O3b recently signed its first oil and gas customers, which need Internet access on drilling platforms far offshore. The US and a couple of other governments are testing the company's service for possible naval and other uses. Although no other company offers quite what O3b does today, Collar says, "it's highly likely others will do what we're doing" with smaller, medium-orbit satellites.
Perhaps it will be someone like Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of electric car maker Tesla and CEO and founder of SpaceX, which NASA contracted to shuttle US astronauts to the International Space Station. Musk confirmed via Twitter this month that SpaceX plans to use micro-satellites to deliver "unfettered" Internet access "at very low cost." The Wall Street Journal originally broke the news, citing unnamed sources who described SpaceX as exploring the idea of launching as many as 700 small satellites, weighing less than 250 pounds each, in order to provide Internet access. Musk via Twitter described the effort as "in the early stages," with an announcement coming in two to three months. The Journal said Musk is working with Wyler, O3b's founder, who left Google's satellite project early this fall to start WorldVu Satellites.
Google and Facebook are two other tech companies to watch in this remote Internet access market. Google earlier this year bought Titan Aerospace, a maker of solar-powered drones that might be capable of delivering Internet access. Facebook bought its own solar-powered drone maker, Ascenta, this year. Google also has a high-profile research effort, Google Loon (google.com/loon), to test low-orbiting balloons for providing Internet access.
Carnival's hybrid bet
Carnival Cruise CIO Ramon Millan points to those emerging options as a reason Carnival's hybrid approach makes strategic sense. The company announced this month that it has knitted together a hybrid network of in-port WiFi, long-range Wi-Fi beamed to ships less than 40 miles offshore, and satellite access for ships far at sea.
The difficult part about creating that network was writing algorithms that consider not just technical factors, but also business rules such as knowing which other of the 101 Carnival-operated ships in the area are sharing satellite or other resources. The algorithms also must consider the ship's route so that it's choosing the right access option for the next hour, not just this moment.
By developing algorithms to switch among Internet access modes, Millan says, the company is positioned to bring in new technologies as they emerge. "What is good now is not going to be the best a month from now or two months from now," he says. "Having the flexibility to adopt technologies when they're available is great… as opposed to being stuck with one technology only for many years." Before this hybrid approach, Carnival relied almost entirely on satellites.
Carnival isn't changing its pricing model, as it continues to sell Internet access on a per-minute basis -- around 75 cents a minute, with discounts for bulk minutes. Connectivity quality will vary. Millan says the in-port and near-shore options will provide a better Internet experience for guests than today's satellite option. In mid-ocean, the latency of its satellite-based Internet access will continue to make big downloads like video more choppy. Millan says the company is working to communicate with guests where the ships have their best connectivity and where they might have problems.
Why not tap O3b's lower-orbit satellites? Millan says it had talks with O3b, but O3b couldn't serve all of Carnival's ships across all geographies, and the company wanted a service for its entire fleet. Millan has talked with Google about its Internet access balloon trials, and is in talks with satellite companies about ways that they're investing in software to reduce latency and interference.
This high seas broadband chase reveals something about our always-on world: Even as we become more dependent on Internet connectivity, wireless networks still fail, are sub-par, or don't exist in many places. As companies consider the Internet of Things, connecting everything from railroad switches to gas wells to airplanes to the Internet for continuous monitoring, these network shortcomings become more glaring. Economic development depends on Internet connectivity, a big reason creative companies such as Google, Facebook, and SpaceX are exploring alternative technologies to deliver remote broadband.
If the world weren't changing, we might continue to view IT purely as a service organization, and ITSM might be the most important focus for IT leaders. But it's not, it isn't, and it won't be -- at least not in its present form. Get the Research: Beyond IT Service Management report today. (Free registration required.)]]>
Interoperability may not have gotten enough attention in the early days of Meaningful Use's electronic health records (EHR) gold rush, but it's now taking center stage as healthcare providers, government agencies, vendors, and committees consider how to support the exchange of data easily and securely.
It's about time, industry executives say. Enabling interoperability among disparate systems would have advanced healthcare IT more than any initiative the federal government actually implemented, Dan Haley, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at the cloud-based EHR vendor Athenahealth, told InformationWeek.
"In 2015, the notion you can have 'meaningful use' of information technology that does not enable interoperation is ridiculous. You could strip away all the other requirements and only require interoperation," he said. "The government is not going to mandate interoperability, and the government is not going to subsidize its way to interoperability. We'll get to interoperability when doctors demand the same interoperability as they demand from every other aspect of technology in their lives."
[How to get there? See: A Serious Proposal For Healthcare IT Interoperability.]
Patients and clinicians are starting to demand the same ubiquitous access to their data they receive in other industries. Patients are tired of completing duplicate forms; of unnecessarily repeating expensive, potentially harmful tests; and of ordering CDs or files of medical records -- if they can recall who treated them years ago. Physicians are fed up with getting faxed reports and then trying to locate the pertinent information, and practices must figure out how to communicate with payers.
Government agencies and facilities demand interoperability, too. Lack of standards is expensive: The Statewide Health Information Network of New York is a network of 10 nonprofit regional health information organizations (RHIOs) -- but many providers won't participate, because it costs up to $30,000 to create an interface between their EHR system and the RHIO, New York eHealth Collaborative director David Whitlinger testified in August.
There has been plenty of talk and planning. This year, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) published its 10-year interoperability plan, and recently the eHealth Initiative unveiled its 2020 roadmap, which addresses interoperability. Both separately and within numerous committees, leading EHR developers, startups, health information exchanges, and others focus on ways to improve EHR interoperability, so physicians and patients can seamlessly and easily exchange, search, and access records.
Click here to view Figure 1.
Some blame certain EHR vendors for creating closed systems designed not to play well with others, said Dr. Charles Sawyer, chief health information officer for Geisinger Health System, which uses Epic. But that oversimplifies an extremely complex issue, he said.
"It's very easy to point fingers at folks. People underestimate how challenging this work is," Sawyer told InformationWeek. "I think the vendors are being cautious before spending lots of research and development money before a standard is more clearly defined."
Some EHR systems, like Epic, were designed long before cloud and APIs, executives said. Others leveraged newer technologies like cloud and APIs from the start. But clinicians and patients want them all to exchange files with one another -- just like financial firms, which enable consumers to withdraw funds from any ATM, regardless of bank. Or like Amazon, which lets consumers browse and order items from stores -- both Amazon and other sellers -- via one platform.
"We're often asked the question, 'Why don't these systems talk to each other?' We're long past the point in every other sector of worrying what platform they're on," Haley said. "In healthcare, it's all about what platform you're on. And that is because most of the information technology in healthcare is pre-Internet."
HISP steps
To further interoperability, as part of Meaningful Use Stage 2 and to try to end healthcare's reliance on faxes, beginning Jan. 1, clinicians must use a secure messaging method to file at least 10% of referrals. Called Direct, the protocol enables secure point-to-point messaging -- something "we've been doing in the regular email world since the 1990s," said Dr. Seth Flam, CEO of the cloud-based EHR developer HealthFusion. "But still, [Direct] is not free-flowing, and it's still an issue."
Under Direct, messages go through health information services providers (HISPs), which secure and send information between providers, after confirming senders' and receivers' identities. However, there was no mandate that different HISPs talk to one another, Flam said. As a result, physicians using one HISP might not be able to communicate with those using a different HISP.
"Now everyone is scurrying, but I'm a little skeptical that [on] January 1, the infrastructure will be there for doctors to meet the standard. And it's completely out of their hands," said Flam. Vendors "can't make HISP XYZ connect with another HISP."
Others are more optimistic.
"It was only a few years ago that Direct was a drawing on a whiteboard. Now it's a regulatory requirement in use by tens of thousands of physicians every day," said Dr. David McCallie, Cernersenior vice president for medical informatics, said in an interview. "These things happen, but you keep having to work at it. People underestimate how much good Meaningful Use has done."
Industry alliances
Rather than wait for mandates, stakeholders labor in organizations such as the CommonWell Health Alliance (whose members include Cerner, Allscripts, Athenahealth, Greenway, and McKesson, for example) and Carequality (which includes Epic, Siemens, Greenway, and Kaiser Permanente). They're trying to craft secure standards acceptable to all, hoping industry-driven initiatives will move faster than potential federal mandates.
Alliances, which often work with government agencies, seek voluntary and open standards for interoperability, Judy Faulkner, Epic's founder and CEO, told InformationWeek. But first, participants must agree on the definition of interoperability, a term that can mean many things to many members of the healthcare world.
"It goes from rather restricted -- which I hear used a lot, a Meaningful Use type definition -- to its full interpretation, where you can look at [data] and it's everything," she said. "There are a lot of standards. Reducing the number of standards in interoperability will be nice, too."
Alliances and consumer demand worked in other industries (VHS versus Betamax, for example), and healthcare executives hope their industry follows a similar path.
Extending interoperability
Given their increased financial burden and role in healthcare, consumers will demand more interoperability across the industry, said Lisa Maki, co-founder and CEO of PokitDok, a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based e-commerce platform for healthcare purchases.
"There are patient records [and] patient information, but you also have interoperability about the business areas of health around consumer experiences, around booking and paying for their experiences," she told InformationWeek.
So, while the initial road to interoperability may take far less than the government's 10-year plan suggests, side roads could add to the journey's length and timeframe.
The owners of electronic health records aren't necessarily the patients. How much control should they have? Get the new Who Owns Patient Data? issue of InformationWeek Healthcare today.]]>
Click here to view Figure 1.
Welcome to the office holiday party: that annual perfect storm of co-workers, cocktails, revelry, and awkward moments.
We sincerely hope awkwardness doesn't trump fun at your company events. But if it does, don't make things more awkward by dressing like a fool.
Besides the obvious advice to dress tastefully -- ladies, that means avoiding skimpy dresses, and gentlemen, avoid shirts unbuttoned to the sternum -- we'd also like to warn you about overdoing your holiday attire to the point of being bizarre, or underplaying it to the point of being rude. The important thing is to walk the line of dressing formal without being boring, casual without being unkempt, and merry without being tacky.
Not to stereotype, but IT folks are not known for their fashion radar. Combine that with their independent, creative streak and you might witness some irreverent or over-the-top outfits. But this slideshow isn't only for IT staffers. Any employee can show up in holiday threads that cross the line. So this is for you, antler-and-red-nose-wearing sales guy. And you, overly enthusiastic marketing gal wearing an elaborate Santa hat that jingles when you move your head. But also you, hipster developer who's wearing what he wore to last week's Vampire Weekend show.
You want to dress festively, but avoid being garish or weird. Remember: A company party is a great occasion to unwind and socialize with colleagues, but you don't want to end up chatting with the CIO about digital disruption and data analytics while wearing a snowman sweater adorned with flashing lights. Should he take you seriously?
Remember, this is Christmas, not Halloween, and this is a company event, not Vegas. What happens at the company party does not stay at the company party. So act and dress accordingly.
Do dress up. Wear a red dress mixed with some green flourishes; wear a vibrant Christmas scarf or candy-cane colored tie, or even a Santa hat (no bells or lights please). Pin a sprig of holly on your sports coat. Get into the spirit of the season with your wardrobe; just don't turn yourself into a cartoon.
As a visual guide of "don'ts" we've put together some of the most cringe-worthy Christmas party get-ups we were able to find. Happy holidays!]]>
As part of Silverton Health's transition to a managed care provider for 100,000 people, the organization recognized it needed to do a better job of managing both its clinical and financial risk.
Like many regional hospitals, the Oregon healthcare provider faced financial challenges; in 2012 and 2013, it implemented layoffs, management furloughs, service cutbacks, and other changes to combat unpaid emergency department fees and more bills landing in collections, reported Our Town. In fact, since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals have closed across the nation, USA Today wrote recently.
But Silverton viewed its moves akin to a lifestyle change, president and CEO Rick Cagen told Our Town. "We are not on life support and we are not on the operating table. We are making changes to stay viable and stay in the community," he said. "We are looking at ways to be more efficient and continue to provide great care."
[Steven VanRoekel is now chief innovation officer at USAID agency. Read Former US CIO's New Enemy: Ebola.]
Part of these changes included gaining a better understanding of its patients, Sarah Fronza, senior vice president of care transformation and analytics at Silverton Health, told InformationWeek. And that required an investment in new technology to glean insight from existing data.
"Ultimately, we needed a solution that could provide us a 360-degree view of our patients that included not only their risk factors, but also real-time clinical data, and claims information to complete the partial picture that we had," she said.
Named one of the country's top 100 hospitals, Silverton uses portals to connect patients with its hospitals and clinics, and Meditech's EHR. But the healthcare organization needed to use this data to both view population information and collect usable information on individual patients, especially those with chronic conditions, said Fronza.
Click here to view Figure 2.
After researching its available analytics options, Silverton chose Arcadia Analytics from Arcadia Healthcare Solutions. Via a Web-based portal, the software uses real-time analysis of more than 150 industry standard and custom measures to track performance management so Silverton can identify gaps in care, plan for patient visits, and conduct cost and utilization analysis.
"Arcadia came to us with a proven track record of managing these types of projects, a proven track record of understanding their clients' needs related to patient population management, and a unique ability to translate their insights into something we could take action on," said Fronza. "Ultimately, Arcadia's ability to understand our needs from a clinical and financial perspective, and understand them better than any other company we looked at as we started down this path, was what set Arcadia above the rest."
Organizations already have a wealth of patient data within their EHRs, Nick Stepro, Arcadia's director of analytics, told InformationWeek. Unlocking that information -- then using it to improve care and reduce costs -- can be challenging, especially for providers without data scientists on staff, he said. Boston-based Arcadia offers subscription-based access to its internal team of data experts, or simply provides clients with data. It integrates data from more than 20 EHRs and claims data, uses Google Maps, and incorporates disease registries, a longitudinal patient summary, and population filters to identify high-cost and high-risk patients.
"Arcadia Analytics gives us the ability to better manage our patients with chronic conditions and how we provide preventive services in a global way," said Fronza. "Not only can we look at population-level information, but we can drill down into a user-friendly view of specific patient or encounter information. Further, it lets us target our financial risk with laser accuracy and balance that with utilization information and a care management suite that enables us to stay ahead of healthcare reform by maturing our accountable care model."
The owners of electronic health records aren't necessarily the patients. How much control should they have? Get the new Who Owns Patient Data? issue of InformationWeek Healthcare today.]]>
Researchers at universities in Australia, Spain, and the US, in conjunction with UNICEF, have found that Twitter posts can be mined to measure unemployment.
In a study published through Cornell's arXiv.org, researchers Alejandro Llorente, Manuel Garcia-Herranz, Manuel Cebrian, and Esteban Moro "demonstrate that behavioral features related to unemployment can be recovered from the digital exhaust left by the microblogging network Twitter."
"Digital exhaust" is a curious choice of words, because it implies that social media data is a worthless byproduct of online interaction, something to be cast aside. Yet the researchers' findings suggest the very opposite: Social media exhaust is the primary product. It's gold, rather than garbage, and social media users don't realize the value they're throwing away. The social media realm is a charity to benefit businesses.
Three decades ago, the technologist and writer Stewart Brand famously observed the tension inherent in how we value information.
[Does big data need a social media approach? Read Does Big Data Need A 'LinkedIn For Analytics'?]
"Information wants to be free," Brand said in one of his several variations on this theme. "Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine -- too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away."
Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the rest of the social media and advertising industry want people to believe that their online work -- their posts, pictures, and associated data -- isn't worth anything, in order to capture the full value of this free bounty of insight. Pollute the world with your digital exhaust; we'll clean up, all the way to the bank.
Llorente and his colleagues used a data set of 19.6 million geolocated Twitter messages in Spain from Nov. 29, 2012, to June 30, 2013, and a data set detailing unemployment across various regions of the country to uncover a relationship between economic metrics and social behavior. Interestingly, they noted a correlation between misspellings in tweets, which they take as a proxy for education level, and unemployment.
Click here to view Figure 1.
The researchers consider their success in using Twitter posts to assess employment status to be a "a proof of concept for how a wide range of behavioral features linked to socioeconomic behavior can be inferred from the digital traces that are left by publicly available social media." And they argue that governments might be able to adapt social media surveillance as an alternative to more costly traditional data gathering methods related to public policy.
"The immediacy of social media may also allow governments to better measure and understand the effect of policies, social changes, natural or man-made disasters in the economical status of cities in almost real-time," the researchers state.
Others have already reached this conclusion and are monitoring social media for threats to the powers that be, at home and abroad. Intelligence agencies have been wise to the value of social media exhaust for years, both for the overtly expressed sentiment and for the web of personal relationships exposed through social network links.
In fact, data mining to assess aspects of society has become commonplace. Google began using search queries to assess flu infections in 2008. This year, researchers have demonstrated that Twitter posts can be used to infer whether the person posting is ill. And web pages are laden with tracking scripts to gather data.
Interpreting that data correctly, however, remains a challenge. Google's flu tracking system turned out to be inaccurate. Worse, it would not be difficult to construct a social media study to support a predetermined conclusion for political or economic gain. So Twitter used as a way to measure employment should be assessed with caution.
Twitter has long been wise to the value of its data. In its IPO filing, it disclosed that it had made $47.5 million selling data to other companies in 2012, up from $28.6 million the year before.
Companies want information to be free, so they can sell it at great cost.
Apply now for the 2015 InformationWeek Elite 100, which recognizes the most innovative users of technology to advance a company's business goals. Winners will be recognized at the InformationWeek Conference, April 27-28, 2015, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Application period ends Jan. 16, 2015.]]>
However, as he clearly articulated one afternoon, none of these benefits meant much if app developers chose to write for the BlackBerry after writing for Android. The dynamic, he explained, went like this: Companies coming out with new apps almost always wrote the iOS app first. This was generally a native app because Apple users are finicky enough that they tend not to be satisfied with apps that don't exactly fit their guidelines.
After writing the iPhone/iPad app, there comes the moment of decision. The worst decision for the #3 player is that the vendor chooses to develop for Android next. Android development is a black hole due to the vast number of form factors and OS versions that must be accommodated. Said the fellow from BlackBerry, organizations don't ever truly exit the Android development process. They keep porting and testing the app on an endless list of devices until they finally decide they've covered enough of them to meet their goals. Only then do they stop porting on Android. In other words, the decision to stop is a purely economic one, rather than the naturally occurring end of project when all desired devices have the app.
Read the rest of this article on Dr. Dobb's.]]>
The Department of Health and Human Services is redesigning how government works, through a program designed to foster innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. At the heart of the department's efforts is the concept of breaking down traditional bureaucratic barriers to adopting new technologies and processes.
Moving away from a rigid, risk-averse, and hierarchical organization to a more nimble and flexible one willing to take more risks is the goal of HHS's Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship and Action (IDEA) Lab. Its mission is to "create a more modern and effective government" through innovation, Bryan Sivak, the department's chief technology officer, said at a recent federal technology event.
Click here to view Figure 2.
The IDEA Lab focuses on three areas: investing in the department's internal workforce; bringing new personnel and business perspectives into HHS; and breaking down silos across the department by creating communities and bringing people together. These focus areas are channeled into a number of project types. Some serve as technology incubators to create healthcare-related services rapidly for the department, while other efforts use crowdsourcing techniques or collaboration to increase resource sharing among HHS organizations.
[Are we on the verge of a new era of data-driven healthcare? Read 9 Healthcare Innovations Driven By Open Data.]
Bringing new people with different skills sets into HHS is part of the IDEA Lab's Entrepreneurs-In-Residence program. This project allows experts to work in the department for one-year terms focused on solving a particular problem.
In one recent example, David Cartier, a veteran UPS employee with 25 years of delivery experience, helped solve an organ donation problem. One HHS branch responsible for organ donation and transplants was having problems tracking organs. Researching the problem, Cartier found that operating room surgeons and technicians wrote out 20-70 handwritten labels for organs transplanted that day. The work was time-consuming, and transcription errors were a major challenge, according to Sivak.
Cartier, who has experience with radio frequency tagging and human-centered design, developed a mobile printing and barcode system that can be used in operating rooms. He tested it at several HHS organ procurement operations. Though results are still being tabulated, Sivak said every single organ donation group using the system did not want it to be removed at the end of the trial. "That's as good as you can get. The users of the system want to continue using it."
Another major area for change at HHS is procurement through its HHS Buyers Club. The goal of this group is to fix procurement, Sivak explained. It was developed in the wake of the technical issues faced by the HealthCare.gov site last year.
"Essentially all government projects over $10 million are challenged," he said. Citing a 2013 report by the Standish Group, he noted that 42% of IT projects over $10 million fail by not launching at all, while 52% are challenged by being over time, over budget, or not doing what they're supposed to do. For any government department, the numbers for IT program failures "should be very, very small."
One way to avoid problems later in a contract is by assembling a procurement team at the very beginning of the project. Sivak said other experts are brought in at the start of a contract, and procurement personnel should be no exception to this. "If a procurement official is incentivized to deliver a piece of technology correctly at the end of the process, as opposed to just delivering on the procurement, we're going to get a lot more out of this."
The Buyers Club is also revising how companies bid on technology projects. When one HHS office launched a project to rebuild its website, instead of writing an extensive IT specification, he said, that project's goals were boiled down to six key requirements.
When the RFP was released, instead of having vendors send in a standard contracting form, HHS had them submit an eight-page concept paper. HHS received 24 bids, or concept papers, which were narrowed down to five. These five groups were given $10,000 and told to come back with a prototype in three weeks -- "something that we can actually look at, play with, and evaluate." The winning team was selected for the quality of its prototype and, just as importantly, how well it worked with HHS during this process.
The owners of electronic health records aren't necessarily the patients. How much control should they have? Get the new Who Owns Patient Data? issue of InformationWeek Healthcare today.]]>
The next time you fumble your smartphone onto the street, it just might live to see another day. Corning on Thursday announced Gorilla Glass 4, its strongest-ever glass for protecting smartphone displays. Corning promises the glass is better at surviving the most common breakage scenario: butterfingered people who drop their devices.
Corning loves to demonstrate how tough its Gorilla Glass is. At trade show after trade show, I've stopped by Corning's booth to watch the company smack the glass with a hammer or drop steel balls onto it. The demonstrations are offered as proof of the glass's durability against impact. If it's so strong, then why do our screens seem to break so easily? Out in the real world people aren't hitting their phones with hammers. Smartphone glass most often breaks when the phone slips out of an owner's hand and falls from waist level to the ground. If that ground happens to be asphalt or concrete, the phone's display is probably a goner.
[Want to know about the software behind Apple's upcoming wearable? See Apple WatchKit: 6 Facts.]
Corning decided to go back to the drawing board. Its scientists spent thousands of hours looking at hundreds of broken screens and concluded that 70% of breakage comes from what it calls "sharp contact." Corning's team of big thinkers came up with new ways to drop phones that "simulate real-world break events." Specifically, they researched how glass responds when dropped face-down a distance of one meter onto a hard, rough surface. (Hasn't Corning seen these examples?) The scientists wanted to make sure the glass came into direct contact with the rough surface. With new data to compile, Corning went to work. The result is Gorilla Glass 4.
Corning makes Gorilla Glass using its proprietary fusion draw process. The company says this provides the optical clarity, thinness, and durability demanded by today's device makers. "With Gorilla Glass 4, we have focused on significantly improving protection against sharp contact damage, which is the primary reason that mobile devices break," said James R. Steiner, Corning senior VP and general manager. "Dropping and breaking a phone is a common problem, and one that our customers have asked us to help address." Corning claims that Gorilla Glass 4 is up to two times tougher than competitive glasses and survives 80% of drops. By way of comparison, the soda-lime glass used by many of today's commercial devices breaks in almost 100% of drops.
Gorilla Glass 4 is being sampled by device makers and should reach production devices next year.
Click here to view Figure 1.
Corning isn't alone in its pursuit of tougher glass. Apple was widely expected to use sapphire to protect the display of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Poor yields from its supplier, GT Advanced Technologies, forced it to scrap those plans at the last moment. Sapphire is practically immune to scratches, though it is more brittle than normal glass.
Replacing a cracked screen is the most common -- and most expensive -- phone repair today. Repair bills amount to billions of dollars per year in the US alone. If Corning and others can cut down the number of broken phones by even 20%, it would have a huge impact on consumers' wallets.
Apply now for the 2015 InformationWeek Elite 100, which recognizes the most innovative users of technology to advance a company's business goals. Winners will be recognized at the InformationWeek Conference, April 27-28, 2015, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Application period ends Jan. 16, 2015.]]>


text:
Andre Easter
I am a traditional B&W film photographer when I want to be, and a web producer & product photographer for the scooter parts and mobility products trade. You can see my "day-job" photography at:
or at www.livingmotion.com
Check out my article in the On the Job stories section about the trials and tribulations of being a product photographer for a scooter parts company.
Find me at: http://www.andyeaster.com
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Possible stabbing attack thwarted: Palestinian girl with knife arrested in Hebron
IDF's chief rabbi: Temple Mount is of no religious significance to Islam
Israel slams Ankara: This is no way for a NATO state to act
Israel accuses UN investigators of turning blind eye to terrorism
UNRWA declares state of emergency in Gaza after torrential rains
Majority expected to support bill dispersing Knesset
A graveside battle over Ben Gurion's legacy
With government's fate uncertain, Netanyahu seeks commitment from haredim for next coalition
Widow of slain rabbi blames internal haredi discord for Jerusalem synagogue terror attack
Slight reduction in HIV in Israel in 2013
*RX For Readers: Itchy-eyed in autumn*
Infant mortality rates higher in Arab population
Smartphones are keeping your children awake
Tech Talk: The best keyboard apps available for smartphones
Elbit Systems developing bus with supercapacitator fast-charging system
Zion Tech: Israeli start up Dogiz helps dogs and owners socialize
Zion Tech: Our Israeli start-up of the week aims to make air pollution visible
Grapevine: Remembering Rothschild
The Lion's share
Get your gobble on: Thanksgiving in Tel Aviv
5th annual Hullegeb Festival celebrates Ethiopian culture
Pressure building at Mac TA after setback in Kiryat Shmona
CSKA crushes yellow-and-blue in Tel Aviv
Maccabi Tel Aviv on a roll as unbeaten CSKA comes to town
Another back-breaking loss for Jerusalem
South African Jewish leaders fete Abbas in Pretoria
Birthright Israel cuts ties with New Israel Fund
Iranian Jews gather in Yazd for rituals
Orthodox leaders condemn US rabbi for anti-Arab rhetoric
US haredim seek to share kollels' 'burden'
Turkey establishing industrial zone in West Bank
Analysis: Middle Eastern states struggle to maintain current order and control of territory
Three Egyptian security forces killed in Sinai
Is the price of watermelons relevant to Iran's nuclear crisis?
ISIS says its flag will wave over Jerusalem, even if the Jews don't like it
Parting shot: How Iran doused the romance
Into the fray: The Arabs' war against the Jews (cont.): Root causes & red herrings
There's no need for a 'Jewish state' law
Column one: The storm over the teacup
My word: Keep your eyes on the road
Wishful doing
Cinema of reconciliation
On the volcano's edge
Knowledge, power and abuse
Arrivals: With a twinkle in her eye
Book Review: A gladiator in the study hall
Book Review: Disbelieving of his own survival
Hot off the Arab press
Grapevine: The history of Hansen Hospital
Less rioting, but more transportation delays
This week in Jerusalem
Taking Shape
Blogging sensation
Wading Through Widowhood: A museum by moonlight
Grapevine: Tel Aviv baby boom
Obama: Helping terror go nuclear
On incitement, lots of talk but little action
To finally look behind the news
Recognizing Palestine – anomalies and ambiguities
A song for Kislev: 'Sea of Sheaves'
שְתִיקָתוֹ שֶל בָּרוּך
שָרִים מִקוֹל הַלֵב
Speaking up
An expanding city
Queen Esther's 'hijos'
Meet the ambassador: Flying high
YouTube recycling video goes viral in Israel
Tradition Today: The blessing of daughters
Parshat Vayetze: The power and pain of love
Like a breath of fresh air
Pourquoi une loi sur l'Etat-nation?
Pour ou contre des élections anticipées?
Une horreur injustifiable
Une brèche dans la démocratie
Une petite fille juive du nord de Londres
Rétrospective en noir et blanc pour la ville d'Or
L'unité : notre seule planche de salut
Daniel Oren, maestro d'Israël, d'Italie et d'ailleurs !
Arad n'a pas encore jeté l'éponge
Le pot de chocolat liégeois par qui le scandale arrive
Le dernier kibboutz
La course aux étoiles
De Maxime Hauchard à Abou Abdallah Al-Faransi, itinéraire d'un Français parti faire le Djihad
On n'invite pas un pyromane à éteindre un incendie
Tuer l'EI dans l'œuf
Le mont du Temple et la guerre sainte de l'islam
L'Occident et l'Iran jouent les prolongations
La liste des organisations terroristes qui dérange
Les « Israéliens » de Kampala
Les attentats du lundi 10 novembre vus par la presse française
Netanyahou s'adresse à la communauté francophone
Christian priest speaks out strongly in favor of Jewish state law
Hispanic Evangelicals among Israel's greatest supporters
Christians United for Israel Chairman John Hagee says Obama is anti-Semitic
Temple Mount: Common ground between Jews and Christians
Pope Francis condemns Palestinian violence
Exploring Our Heritage
Holocaust Survivors See the Negev with KKL-JNF
KKL Belgium Donates Portable Bomb Shelter to Kiryat Gat
KKL-JNF Awards 2014 Blumberg Prize
Israel and Finland Connect through the Environment
KKL-JNF Experts Visit China for Future Environmental Collaborations
Mexican Politician and Business Leader Miguel Aleman Velasco Visits KKL-JNF in Jerusalem
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In his Footsteps: Heritage Excursions in Memory of Yitzhak Rabin
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International Cleanup Day: Cleaning Together in Northern Israel
KKL-JNF's Eyes in the Forest - The Horshim Forest Green Patrol
Israel Today and Tomorrow: KKL France Mission Visits Israel
Start-up Israel: KKL Italy November Mission Learns about Israel's Past and Future
KKL-JNF and Desert Agriculture Latin American Diplomats visit the Negev
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Saving the Sabras
11.28.2014 | 6 Kislev, 5775
Pressure building at Mac TA after setback in Kiryat Shmona
CSKA crushes yellow-and-blue in Tel Aviv
Majority expected to support bill dispersing Knesset
Grapevine: Remembering Rothschild
Naked suspected sex offender runs over cop
Central Israel experiences rainiest November in 20 years
Palestinian attacks condemned by foreign parliamentarians
Preserving Ben-Gurion's legacy in the Negev
Supreme Court Judge Salim Jabraun: There is no equality for Arabs in Israel
Housing Minister pushing to allow Gazans to work in Israel
Tel Aviv to launch 200-strong municipal policing force, citing 'special challenges'
Slight reduction in HIV in Israel in 2013
09/04/2014 10:39
Doctors perform surgery [illustrative]..
(photo credit:REUTERS)
Just a week after Hamas terrorists stopped hurling rockets at Israel, a two-week-old Gazan baby girl named Fajar underwent successful open-heart surgery on Tuesday at Holon's Wolfson Medical Center as part of the voluntary Save a Child's Heart (SACH) organization, the lifesaving help to Gazan children continued through Operation Protective Edge.She arrived in Holon during the war, on August 23, accompanied by her father. She is the youngest of three daughters. Her two-year-old sister, Zachra, was treated at the Wolfson last year for a different congenital heart condition. Zachra is due back at the hospital next week for reevaluation for a second surgery. The father, who has a degree in business management, is an officer in the Palestinian Authority, while her mother is a high school graduate. Fajar's heart surgery was performed by Dr. Lior Sasson and his team, together with Palestinian Dr. Addas and Ethiopian Dr. Mekonnen, both doctors taking part in the SACH training program.Fajar was brought to the pediatric intensive care unit after her surgery, and was put in bed near two-week-old Rumaisa, a Palestinian baby who was brought by SACH to Wolfson at the age of nine days. Rumaisa was an urgent case, brought during the fighting in a Red Cross ambulance. Her condition was so serious upon arrival that the doctors needed a few days just to stabilize her. Now, after the surgery, Wolfson pediatric cardiologists are pleased with her recovery.On Tuesday, five other families from Gaza and one from the West Bank arrived at SACH's weekly cardiology clinic. Another child from Gaza arrived later in the evening.Thirty SACH children from the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Iraq, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Romania are currently at Wolfson, along with 12 doctors and nurses from the PA, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Romania who are taking part in the SACH training program.
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