Electronic Health Care

One significant initiative presently being carried out by the governments of Canada is the implementation of electronic health care. Despite extensive advertising over the past two years, many Canadians are not aware of what is being done in this area and what progress has been made.

The advent of electronic health care has been a reality in some other countries for several years, particularly those with socialized medicine. It has enabled health care people to gain access to a patient's medical records quickly when needed. Without it, when a person is in an accident and their next of kin cannot be found, the emergency responders have to initiate treatment without knowing what other medication the victim takes, and therefore run the risk of giving medication that conflicts and causes further problems, perhaps seizures, illness or even death.

Access to medical records electronically can reduce the likelihood of this happening.

Or suppose you live in a rural community 200 kilometers from the nearest significant medical center. Suppose you go to the local doctor with pains in your legs. Your doctor suspects blood clots, which can be the harbinger of numerous serious conditions. To confirm this and determine the root cause, however, the doctor needs access to a specialist. So you need to travel that 200 kilometers to get the tests and have them analyzed by a specialist.

An electronic system can enable the local doctor to connect with the specialist, have tests conducted, transmitted and analyzed, all online. The result is a faster and more convenient and also constitutes a cost effective resolution of the issue.

The introduction of all aspects of electronic medicine has been in progess in Canada under the umbrella of Canada Health Infoway, a not for profit organization created by the federal and provincial governments to initiate electronic health care in Canada. Many projects have been underway in the various jurisdictions. Canada Health Infoway has an excellent website which provides detailed information on the progress being made across the country in this important area.

Electronic Health Care is not the panacea for fixing all the issues around health care in Canada. it will, however, result in better and safer health care for everyone, not to mention reduced wait times. Interestingly, it also is showing itself to be generating millions of dollars in savings, because health care can be delivered so much more efficiently and effectively.

Better health care at less cost. Who can say no to that?

Check out the Infoway Website for more information.

Use of Social Media in Business Rising

A recent survey released by Constant Contact provides some data from 1500 companies on their use of social media. Not unexpectedly, and like other surveys, it shows usage rising. But its the data that's important.
some of the findings are:

"- - a greater number of small businesses are adding social media to their marketing arsenal. Of the 1,500-plus respondents to the survey, 73% are currently using this form of marketing, and among that group, 80% reported that their usage of social media marketing has increased in the past 12 months. Of the 27% not already using social media for marketing purposes, 62% said they will be using it at some point in the next year."

That means in the next year, we should see usage percentages  rising into the high 90's. But a good deal more research is needed into how it is being used and how effective it is in bringing in business. Bottom line - is it creating greater cash flows?  Here's a summary of the survey.

Collaborative Consumption - A Trend With Legs

The idea of monetizing your assets, especially those that you don't use very much, has a good deal of financial appeal. In a time of recession, it makes sense to bring in some more cash to help pay the bills.

Some sites have been around for a while, like Airbnb and others, that serve to facilitate the rental of assets like homes, cars, cottages, lawn mowers, etc. You name it. Airbnb has taken off globally, and others are following.

One of the issues with renting out personal assets is, of course, security. Many people have rented their homes, for example, only to have them trashed by the occupants. The same can happen with any asset.

Security is an issue, that's clear. However, there are measures the industry can take to mitigate such risks. Some lessons can be learned from eBay, which faces some of the same risks. For example, eBay started a rating system several years ago , where people who have used eBay are rated by those they dealt with according to their behaviour and comportment. In effect, what a rating system does is to create a virtual community, where the participants become "known" to each other and therefore merit greater trust.

Collaborative Consumption is a trend that will continue to grow. But it will require a focus on the creation of reliable and secure virtual communities in which they can function. For more on Airbnb, check this reference.  

Too Busy at Work? Get Your Own Avatar

Cisco Research says that we will soon will be able to buy a robot that essentially acts as an extension of our selves. An avatar. They've developed prototypes that can do administrative tasks for us, even doctor's rounds.

It seems inevitable since smart robots have been a dream of technologists since technology was conceived. it appears we are getting closer. We already have robots working on assembly lines. Avatars add a personal touch by enabling a direct interaction with us personally.

It's interesting to speculate on the impact this will have on the workforce, even on our daily lives outside of work. Will we be able to replace people with avatars? Will it create unemployment? Maybe these electronic wizards will be able to do our commuting for us. Go to different meetings simultaneously. Hold several jobs.

Within the next five years, we will begin to see some of the answers. Here's a write-up on Cisco's research.

The Millennials Have Gotten a Bad Rap

Finally, a decent and sensible article on the Millennial generation! Common folklore depicts the entire generation as disrespectful of authority, disdainful of rules and process, texting all day and refusing to work when they don't feel like it. This stereotype never did line up with my experience with them during my years as a University Professor.

Drawing on recent research, Rob Preston of Informationweek, dispells some of these misconceptions. The research focused primarily on the relationship between the Millenials and IT departments but extends beyond that. The expectation was that this would be a highly contentious relationship, given the high level of the new generation's technology skills, not to mention their expectations. Not so, says the research. The young people give the IT departments high marks, except for the slowness of response times (which frustrates most of us). They do tend to resolve more issues themselves. But since when has this been a bad thing?

The research also indicates that the 20 somethings generation entering the workforce has a greater respect for their elders than previous generations did. In particular they mention their elders' moral values and work ethic as being good.

We all know that we need to watch ourselves when forming stereotypes. As Mr Preston points out, a generation consists of many different types of people, with different values and skills and personalities. We know this, but often it gets lost in the writings about a whole generation.

The Preston article is worth a moment of your time and some reflection.

Boards Need to Learn From Social Media

The power of social media has been seen clearly in the recent rash of rebellions against established governments, in the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots and of course in the more recent London riots.

But the power of social media extends far beyond such activities. It's reach is wide and always potentially disruptive. A tweet or two on a particular company about any issue, particular one having social ramifications, can spread like lightning, leaving management and the board with a problem at 8:00 AM they didn't know they had when they went to bed.

How to deal with this is an issue that many boards are grappling with. Some are forming policies that enable them to monitor the mainstream media for mentions of the company and then analyze them for potential action.

Monitoring them is easy. The social media all have search and key word functions that can be activated easily and quickly, For example, Twitter searches can pick up tweets about a company that were issued only moments ago. Tools like Tweetdeck enable all mentions to be scrolled on an ongoing basis.

Acting on the mentions is not so easy. It takes people to scan them and determine whether they represent a threat or not. Companies could dedicate a person or a team to watch and analyze the social media 24/7. But this would be expensive. And most mentions are harmless or even positive. It's when they gain traction and have negative connotations that they become a problem. So there is a need for guidelines for determining when social media releases should be considered for action.

Then there needs to be a referral system to the people in the organization who can deal with an emerging issue. The referees need to be ready to act on a moments notice, since the word can spread so fast.

And then there is the question of appropriate responses and who needs to authorize them. This is the toughest part of a policy. But it is policy that is needed. Social media has grown to the point that it not only cannot be ignored, it requires proactive action.

All Boards should heed the call. For the experience of one Board member, check out this blog entry.

Social Media Data Mining Can be Brutal

Some companies are starting to use data from Facebook and others to gather information about prospective employees and others they might deal with. Through personal profiles, postings they place and postings about them from friends, a great deal can be learned. But how accurate is such information? How long should young people, or anyone for that matter, be penalized for past indiscretions, mistakes or bad behaviour? How can companies and others control their use of social media data? Should controls be imposed through legislation?

These are emerging issues that provide a strong indication of the way of the future. There seems little doubt that social media data will be used more and more in future, for everything from employment to credit applications to criminal investigations. Serious errors of identity in any of these areas could be devastating for the victim.

At the recent Blackhat conference, held in Las Vegas, one presenter showed how facial recognition could be used for finding such information as Facebook profiles and pictures of individuals on the internet. He also showed how misleading this information could be. A write-up is found on the Technology Review site.

As pointed out in that same article, other researchers have conducted tests to determine the correlation between a persons character traits as determined through interviews and questionnaires as opposed to the findings from Facebook profiles. They found the correlations to be weak.

While this is an emerging area, it is one of paramount importance.  One can only imagine the horror stories that are bound to emerge as social media data mining gains more prevalence.

New Research Centre for Cloud Data

There is an abundance of data on the cloud, as we all know. Intel has established a new research centre at Carnegie Mellon University to study the potential for use of these data to provide consumer services. It's a concept that has been studied before, but what sets this initiative apart is the scale of the operation, the timeliness in terms of the growth of the cloud, and the focus on all types of innovative services.

One intriguing idea is to provide glasses that can receive data about whatever the glasses are viewing and transmit that information to the wearer. A automated tour guide, if you like. Another idea is to provide a translation service that draws upon materials that have already been translated by professional translators.

With a little imagination, one can envisage all sorts of uses for cloud data in everyday activities. Whether driving, doing housework, cooking, or just relaxing.

For years since the advent of the internet, people have been predicting the use of the internet for purposes of driving such ordinary appliances as refrigerators and oven ranges. That was before the advent of the cloud but the cloud with its proliferation of data changes everything. The new Intel Centre is a natural and timely progression in the evolution of the internet and its uses.  

Customer Designed Products

In a natural extension of online shopping, companies are now offering customers the opportunity to design their own products before ordering them. It has been possible, of course, to order customised products for years. But the extent of customization has always been limited to a few menu items, and customers didn't necessarily see their product before ordering it.

The big difference now is that customers can use imaging software to do the design, enabling them to see their product online as the add or delete features. There is often a broad range of features that can be modified as well. It's been referred to as me-shopping.

One recent article describes self design in three types of consumer product - Bicycles, wedding dresses and skateboards. It's an option that could easily be offered for other products such as automobiles, furniture and appliances. chances are we'll see more of that happening in the near future.

Social Media Takes Time

More and more small businesses are taking up social media, but many of them are less than successful with it. One reason for their difficulty is that they often see social media as just another marketing channel. However, social media is designed for interaction, and to be successful with its use, it be viewed as an interactive device. That takes a change in thinking. Instead of simply pushing out advertisements, a business must take the time to post regularly and to respond to the comments and reactions of constituents.This will take a lot more time than simply posting ads.

In order to succeed with social media, even a small business needs to have a social media strategy. As with other important strategies, it needs to be carefully thought out and properly resourced.That's the view in this article, and one that makes good sense.

Challenges of Social CRM

Social CRM has become a major trend in the world of customer relations. True, there are lots of advantages of engaging customers through social media and then feeding the interactions or the results of them into CRM data that can be useful.

The reality, however, is that using social media does result if engaging customers in a leveling, interactive environment, which can raise expectations. If the company's internal processes and support are not well placed and effective, these higher expectations can lead to a big fall, perhaps even loss of a customer.

It's a fact, too, that properly using social media takes time, which means a requirement for resources. If those resources are not fully committed to the Social CRM, then it runs the risk of failing.

For more info on how to fail at Social CRM, check out this article.

An Extensible Memory

A recent research study suggests that we are relying more on computers to supplement our memory. It indicates that when we know that some facts can be quickly accessed on a computer, we are less likely to remember those facts. But we are more likely to remember the folder in which they are stored.

Computers may be changing the way we use our brains, and therefore initiating a slow change in the very structure of the brain. Some microphysicists are suggesting that ultimately we may have brain implants to supplement the brain's activity - perhaps beyond memory and into behaviourial patterns. Seems a logical evolution, if not a natural one.

Exit the Telephone

Long the mainstay of communications, the internet is finally pushing the telephone to the periphery. Yes, it's still used, but less and less. And it's being replaced not by cell phones, but by email and texting. email has assumed a general application and people of all generations use it frequently, often when a phone call would have taken place. Younger people like texting, as do some older folk. See this article for more.

For many young people, a cell phone is not for talking but for texting. That may change with the coming explosion in smart phone video calling - hard to say.

The internet has displaced lots of technologies that once were seen as fundamental to the world. Television is another technology that is on the way out. But the cycle is incomplete. The internet is simply an enabling technology, not the ultimate user. Laptops and tablets are simply tools that have sprung up to most expeditiously employ the internet. However, the long term prospect is that the internet will underlie other things we use, like refrigerators, ovens and cars. We see some of this already, particularly with cars. Ultimately, the internet will ultimately underlie the telephone and televisions and these end user devices, which after all are quite suited to their purpose, will cycle back to something like they were before the internet, only driven by the internet. Smarter and wireless, but still fundamentally the same as the old.

Data Analytics and Custom Reporting

There has been a trend for several years now for data consumers (for lack of a better term0 to develop their own reports. In years past, this was not always the way it worked. Reports, especially financial reports, were carefully crafted by the reporters and sent out to the consumers for consumption. Some forward looking companies have made data available in data tools (see Potash Corp's Investor Relations website, for example), which make it possible for consumers to retrieve data elements and then massage them into custom reports.

Generally, however, good tools for consumers have been hard to come by. But this is changing. Data analytics tools, specifically designed for data consumers without necessarily high end IT skills, have been coming onto the market, and changing the way consumers use their data. One writer recently characterized this movement as a move towards information democracy. Others have forecast a trend towards information democracy, indeed since the spread of low cost computing. But it has been slow in coming, until the tools started to become available, some of them open source and cloud based.

Examples of the new consumer oriented analytics include Qlik Tech and Tableau.

Information democracy will have a huge impact on the field of reporting to investors, something that has been slow to evolve and is still centered on tightly formatted reports. More openness of the data will be good for all involved.

Android and The Future

One of Blackberry's strengths for its Playbook is that the device is designed to accommodate the Android system. Google's Android has become the most widely used operating system for smart phones. One aspect of Android is that its plans extend well beyond the applications that have traditionally been used in North America. In Europe and Asia, the use of smart phones for such apps as payments is old hat. In North America, these apps are in their infancy.

That is soon to change. Numerous organizations are gearing themselves for payment systems using smart phones, and the Android system will be front and center in these apps.

But Android is going beyond that into the control of a number of devices, such as home appliances, stereos, wireless speakers, cars, alarm systems, etc. The possibilities are endless. Smart phones will become the ultimate remote, connecting the virtual world with the non-virtual world, as one writer puts it.

The implications for eBusiness are huge. Easy methods of payment are just one area that will streamline transactions. The access to outside devices will have the potential to streamline building security, and a variety of home services. Whole new lines of products will ensue.

The Personal Cloud

When Steve Jobs introduced the iCloud last week, he brought new attention to the idea of the personal cloud. Apple is not the first to introduce a personal cloud system, and certainly won;t be the last. Google has been in the space for a couple of years. But people are waiting to see what Microsoft is going to do, and it will take another year to find that out.

The iCloud fills a need that is growing and that most people by now are familiar with. We have more than one computing device. They all create and store content. As smart phones in particular have grown in capability, more duplication of content has occurred. Tablets also lead to the same thing. In addition, when people are using one of their devices, they often want to access some content that is on one of the other devices. If it is handy, they can do that with through a USB port, although that is a bit bothersome. But the other device may not be handy, meaning they simply cannot access the content they want.

The answer is often has been to synchronize the devices, but that can also be a bother, since it has usually required a periodic manual process, so the devices are not always synchronized.

The cloud offers a solution to all this. Have some key apps on the cloud and store the data there. Then it can be accessed from anywhere there is internet access and on any device capable of accessing the internet. Then the users can gain access to their apps and data more easily. In addition, the cloud is more secure because if the device is lost, the related data is not - or need not be.

The personal cloud is a technique that has legs.

Mobile CRM

While mobile CRM has been slow in coming, there are very strong reasons why it should be expected now, as explained in a recent article in E-Commerce News. For one, mobile units are now ubiquitous. They outnumber laptops and the like. In addition, people are getting more used to living in a mobile wireless world and younger people have grown up in and thrive in it. Also, going mobile with CRM takes the application closer to the customer, the purpose of it all. There seems little doubt that the climate is ripe for implementation of mobile CRM. Look for a serious growth in it over the next year or two.

E-Reading Grows; Paper Declines

The amount of time people spend reading on screen has now grown to be equal to the amount of time spent reading on paper. That's milestone that surely marks the way to the future. Ultimately we can rest assured that the reading of anything on paper will become a curiosity.

E-readers like Kindle really got the ball rolling, when it introduced the use of e-Ink, which replicates the paper experience - or attempts to. It is still a hard and inflexible tool, and the industry recognizes that newer flexible media are needed to advance the replication. Prototypes of such devices are being developed.

The advent of tablet computers is probably the biggest event to advance e-reading. These small devices are ideally suited to reading  not just books, but any kind of document. That makes them ideal for containing meeting agendas, course materials and innumerable other documents that people need to read while not necessarily having access to a traditional computer.

For an article on this new trend, check this link.

E-Book Sales Overcome Print Books

Amazon has announced that sales of its Kindle e-Books has outstripped sales of all its print books, including hardcover and softcover. During 2010, it announced that e-Book sales had exceeded sales of hardcover books.

IT clearly marks the course of the future. People are getting used to reading on a screen and the convenience of carrying a small device rather than a pile of heavy books is making its mark.

Sales of eBooks will also be spurred on by the sales of tablet computers as well. Although their screens are not as good as those of the e-readers, nevertheless, they tend to be very good, except in direct sunlight, and have the same level of convenience as their e-reader counterparts. In fact they might have some more convenience, since the tablets also include other conventional computer apps as well within the same device and people don't want to be burdened with carrying around a bunch of different devices.

Expect e-Books to remain as the dominant form of books in future and print books to become collectors items. Read more on the announcement here.

Google Interior Views

Google is doing it again. The company is bringing out a new service under Google Earth in which you can go beyond street view to enter buildings and tour around inside. Want to visit the Louvre? Or check out that great looking restaurant on Fifth Avenue?

Google is not the first to make this happen. However, the fact that the capability will be integrated into its popular Google Earth will seriously ramp up the importance of interior views. Businesses will be able to make use of this feature for advertising purposes. Customers will be able to do virtual shopping, check out the ambience of interiors or perhaps eventually window shop, or heck, even actually shop.

The possibilities are incredible. Further explanation is in this article.