MaSSSoftech

PARIS — The opening of a fiber-optic cable providing broadband to millions of people in Southern and Eastern Africa is part of an ambitious plan to expand Internet access and help spur the continent’s economy and its technology industry.

The cable, built by Seacom, a consortium 75 percent controlled by African investors, is the first of about 10 new undersea connections expected to serve Africa before the middle of next year. The expansion will cost about $2.4 billion and will help connect Africa with Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East at higher speeds and at lower cost.

Right now, Africa has only one submarine fiber-optic cable: the less efficient SAT-3 cable in Western Africa, owned primarily by Telkom, the South African telecom company, and last updated in 2002. Those with no access to that cable are forced to use expensive and slow satellite links.

Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research company, said Africa was the last major area where broadband access was not widespread.

“It’s completing this international Web of undersea cable,” Mr. Mauldin said. “From that point of view, it roots high-end countries like Kenya and Uganda into the Western world better than just satellite capacity.”

A World Bank report released in June said that access to better information and communication technology corresponded with economic growth. The report said that for every 10 percentage points of increase in high-speed Internet access, economic growth rose 1.3 percentage points.

The technology sector should benefit greatly, analysts said. Outsourcing services like call centers will be able to offer more competitive rates because of lower operating costs, and technology companies will be able to better communicate with clients and partners overseas.

Lindsay McDonald, a telecommunications analyst at Frost & Sullivan in South Africa, said that Africans were stymied by the lack of broadband and that better Internet service was an important platform for new businesses.

The Seacom cable will provide Internet service that is about 10 times faster than any existing service in Africa, said David Lerche, a communications analyst at Avior Research in South Africa.

The 17,000-kilometer, or 10,500-mile, cable, which became operational July 23, cost $650 million and links Eastern and Southern Africa with Europe and Asia.

Within the next year, four more submarine fiber systems are expected to be added in East Africa. The Teams cable, expected to be completed in September, will connect Mombasa to the United Arab Emirates, while the East African Submarine Cable System should be in use by the middle of next year.

Mike Bean, a software developer for IDXonline, a small industrial information technology company in South Africa, said his company paid between $2,000 and $5,000 a month for Internet access. He said the Seacom cable would allow his company to teleconference with partners overseas at a much lower price.

“Unless you’re a very wealthy business, you can’t really participate in things like that,” Mr. Bean said.

Demand is high for better communication technology in Africa, analysts say. A report released in May by Delta Partners, an advisory and investment firm for media and technology in the Middle East and Africa, said there was potential for the number of broadband users in Africa to expand to 24 million by 2011 from 2.5 million at present. The estimate was based on the percentage of mobile phone users who could afford technology with Internet access.

In West Africa next year, the Glo-1 Cable will link Nigeria and Ghana to Europe, and the Main One cable will link Nigeria and Ghana to Portugal.

However, it could still be several years before access to less expensive broadband connections becomes widely available to individual consumers, said Étienne Lafougère, the general manager for submarine network activity for Alcatel-Lucent, which has been contracted to build the majority of the submarine cables in Africa, including those for the East Africa Submarine Cable System and Teams. He said access depended on local Internet service providers updating technology and adding cables to the main system to reach more isolated areas.

“We are building the highways, then you have to build roads and secondary roads, and that usually takes more time,” Mr. Lafougère said.

Local cities have cyber security at the forefront of their minds, as institutions and homeowners become increasingly dependent on ditigal technology.

Security experts in Inland Valley cities and San Bernardino County said social security and personal privacy remain important issues since computer technology continually evolves.

"It requires constant vigilance and making sure that you are prepared," said Elliott Ellsworth, information technology director for the city of Ontario.

Several local government agencies already have made steps to tackle cyber security threats such as viruses, botnets and denial of service attacks, which could limit public access to Web sites or shut down sites entirely.

Many cities including Ontario, Claremont, Pomona and Fontana have information technology or services departments, which often provide technical support and network security.

Ellsworth said Ontario established his department over a decade ago and now operates with several network security specialists.

Dale Wishner, systems manager in Ontario's information technology department, said the best security model is often patterned after an onion.

"You try to build up as many layers as you can and slow down the hacker from getting into your network," Wishner said.

To protect private information and repeal attacks, Ontario has installed anti-virus software, spam and e-mail filters, firewalls, a specialized payroll system, application security and also routinely brings in third-party technology consultants to find cracks or holes in its system.

Novacoast, Inc., an information technology and services company, works with Ontario and other Southern California cities, state and national clients to better secure their systems from general nuisance hacking to more malicious attacks.

"Almost without exception today, the idea of hackers or attackers coming after any agency is not anymore about bragging rights at all," said Al Maslowski-Yerges, national security practice manager of Novacoast. "Their main goal is to be silent and under the radar as possible."

Maslowski-Yerges said his organization had clients that experienced a variety of attacks from Web site defacement to private information theft.

Sometimes attacks can come internally within the organization being attacked.

He added that the best way to protect an organization is to be proactive and create multiple layers of external and internal defenses as well as actively protect and maintain those defensive measures.

Cal Poly Pomona professor Dan Manson said any connection to the internet has a level of risk.

"The internet was not designed with security in mind, so security is always what we put in after the fact," Manson said.

Manson, a professor of computer information systems in Cal Poly Pomona's College of Business Administration, said a city probably would not be at the top of any hacker's list but could become a potential attack target.

He said one of the many reasons organizations go under attack is because many compromised private computers were used to launch attacks without owners knowing it.

"What I have learned about security in all my years of experience, people are the weakest link," Manson said.

Like Manson, Mt. SAC professor Robert Loya believes in security awareness as the initial step to effective protection.

Together Manson and Loya helped establish the Regional Information Systems Security Center at Mt. SAC and other partnering campuses, which focuses on raising computer security awareness within surrounding communities.

Loya, director of the center at Mt. SAC, said many people could be involved in a cyber attack.

"They usually want to be reactive and wait for something to happen to protect themselves," Loya said.

Once a hacker compromises private machines with malicious software like "bots," information can be bounced off from one computer to another, eventually crippling service Web sites with denial of service attacks. Services generally offered to the public would suddenly become unavailable.

Recent targets of such denial of service attacks included the National Security Agency, State Department and Homeland Security Department as well as South Korean government agencies.

San Bernardino County information technology officials said the region has not experienced similar attacks but they have determined that the cyber protection in place is adequate.

Tyrone Smith, assistant chief information officer and chief technology officer for the county, said his staff in the information services department compare publicized threats to their systems and determine if further action is needed to add to their security measures.

"We take security very seriously," said Steve Hall, chief information officer for San Bernardino. "We have standards to prevent Web sites from being compromised."

Information technology groups will continue to protect and upgrade local security because a cyber assault can come at any moment and cause considerable damage.

"(A cyber attack) is a serious concern," Hall said. "Any outages or any major attacks could cripple us for a period of time."

HIGH POINT – Craig Chadwell in High Point University’s Office of Information Technology has received a promotion from auxiliary service technician to network administrator.

In his new and more senior role, Chadwell is responsible for the design, engineering and implementation of HPU’s IT networks, which include the LAN, WAN, telephone system and cable TV networks. He looks after the functionality and suitability of these pervasive networks continually and will be their chief architect into the future. Beyond ensuring their general usability, he will have to keep up with the exponential growth in Internet consumption and service delivery over the networks while balancing on-demand performance with long-term environmental sustainability and cost efficiency.

“In his previous role, Craig instantly gathered the respect of his peers and was constantly praised for his quality work and customer service focus,” says Matt Brown, infrastructure services manager. “He delivers results in the face of complications and brings order and sustainability to every system he manages. His performance combined with his embodiment of High Point University’s core values made him the natural choice for this promotion.”

“It was great being a student here and it’s a great place to work,” adds Chadwell. “I really enjoy being a part of the HPU family and appreciate the trust and faith that has been placed in me with this promotion.”

At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in a fun environment with caring people. HPU, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a liberal arts institution with 3,700 undergraduate and graduate students from 50 countries and 44 states at campuses in High Point and Winston-Salem. It is ranked by US News and World Report No. 5 among comprehensive universities in the South and No. 1 in its category among up-and-coming schools. Forbes.com ranks HPU in the top 6 percent among “America’s Best Colleges.” HPU was included in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Great Colleges to Work For” 2009 listings. The university offers 68 undergraduate majors, 40 undergraduate minors and seven graduate degree programs. It is accredited by the Commission of Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is a member of the NCAA, Division I and the Big South Conference. Visit High Point University on the Web at www.highpoint.edu.

(Times Union (Albany, NY) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) CORRECTION: Read the entire Dead by Mistake special report, with additional stories, photos, videos, maps and database of hospital errors, at Aug. 9--Read the entire Dead by Mistake special report, with additional stories, photos, videos, maps and database of hospital errors, at http://www.deadbymistake.com.

Stopping only to check the caller ID every few seconds on his incessantly ringing cellphone, Dr. Randy Panther types in an order at the nurses' station for an antibiotic to treat a patient's infection.

A pop-up window on the screen warns that the patient has a drug allergy. The computer suggests a more appropriate choice.



Down the hall on the same floor at Metropolitan Methodist Hospital in San Antonio, nurse Esther Garcia pushes a medication cart topped with a laptop computer and a hand-held bar code scanner -- the kind used by supermarket checkout clerks on bulky items like 20-pound bags of dog food.

She scans the bar code label on a prepackaged dose of medicine prepared by the pharmacy overnight, then scans the bar code on the patient's hospital bracelet. The laptop informs her she's giving the right patient the right dose.

Both of these systems were designed to fix the two places where medication errors commonly occur in a hospital -- the doctor's prescription pad and the nurse's morning medication rounds. Some research suggests that hospitals using both systems could catch most medication errors.

But few hospitals use them. A survey of 3,049 hospitals published in March found that only 17 percent of U.S. hospitals used the electronic prescription pad, known as computerized provider order entry, or CPOE. Other surveys have found even fewer hospitals use bar coding.

The Institute of Medicine report "To Err is Human" recommended 10 years ago that hospitals take a number of steps that would prevent mistakes in the operating room, in giving patients their medicines -- and in changing the overall culture in hospitals to make safety a priority rather than an afterthought.

Progress has been uneven at best, and expensive investments in electronic medical records, bar coding and CPOE for prescribing medicines have been particularly slow to occur. Although cost is a major factor, experts say hospitals have had other reasons to drag their feet.

The Hospital Corporation of America, the largest private health care system in the country, uses bar coding in all of its 163 hospitals. It has CPOE, the more expensive technology, only in about 20. Metropolitan Methodist is one of those 20. But the CPOE system is still voluntary for physicians -- making it mandatory would require agreement by the medical staff -- and only about 5 percent of the hospital's doctors currently are using it. The rest continue to scribble on paper, putting patients at risk of misread prescriptions.

"I think we're looking at a very steep curve of adoption of CPOE," said Dr. Jonathan Perlin, who became chief medical officer of HCA in 2006 after leading the Veterans Affairs hospital system -- the undisputed leader in such technology.

"When one looks historically at the software technologies that were available, they really weren't built with a professional friendliness," said Perlin, who was named to head a federal advisory committee on health information technology standards.

Disrupting the routine "Most doctors have their routine, the way they practice medicine," said Dr. Ashish Jha, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, who conducted the hospital survey. "What electronic records do is disrupt that routine. And there's pretty good evidence that for about six months after you implement one of those things, you tend to be less efficient." After doctors become familiar with the systems, however, they become as efficient as before and rarely want to go back, Jha said.

Dr. Kimberly Rask, director of the Emory University Center on Health Outcomes and Quality, said the evidence of CPOE performance hasn't been overwhelming. When Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh launched its CPOE system in 2001, the death rate actually rose for five months. Critics blamed poorly designed software.

"In the last several years, we've seen a literature emerge of medical errors caused by computer systems," said Dr. Robert Wachter, professor of hospital medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. "The systems as they stand now are still fairly clunky and user unfriendly." Although there's been far less research done on the benefits of bar coding, Wachter thinks it might have a significant safety impact in the short run, eliminating many of the high-profile errors that make the news -- such as the overdose of blood thinner that almost killed the newborn twins of actor Dennis Quaid.

The federal stimulus package includes billions to help hospitals and physicians buy health information systems. Without that help, struggling hospitals will be hard-pressed to move forward, said Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety with the American Hospital Association.

"Over half the hospitals in the country right now are reporting a loss from operations," Foster said. "It means hospitals may be delaying or curtailing some of their investments in new things that might lead to additional safety improvements." Underestimating results Catholic-affiliated Ascension Health is the nation's largest not-for-profit hospital chain, with 67 acute care hospitals in 20 states.

In 2002, three years after "To Err is Human" was published, Ascension officials laid out an ambitious goal to eliminate all preventable deaths in its hospitals. They estimated it would be about 900 a year, or three per day -- roughly 15 percent of deaths involving patients who weren't hospitalized for end-of-life care.

They underestimated. A year after the program began, the system saw a 21 percent drop in overall mortality -- about 1,200 deaths. Not all of them were from errors, but they all were preventable, said Dr. David Pryor, Ascension's chief medical officer.

"We believe that our financial performance has been improved by the work we've done in safety," Pryor said, adding that malpractice costs have declined 35 percent since 2005.

What did they do? They focused on seven quality goals -- preventable deaths, drug errors, falls, pressure ulcers, surgical complications, hospital-acquired infections and newborn safety -- in addition to a collection of safety and quality guidelines contained in national accreditation standards. Programs were developed in a handful of hospitals, tested in others and then implemented widely.

The strategies were intended not to burden staff excessively. And they didn't necessarily include expensive technology such as electronic medical records and CPOE -- although Ascension hospitals gradually are acquiring those systems.

"The way I look at it is to say automation and technology can be very important and helpful," Pryor said. "But if what you do is automate a bad process, you've now got a very expensive bad process." One investment they did make was in simulation training, where medical teams from obstetrics to surgery practice on robotic mannequins -- one of the recommendations in "To Err is Human." The practice sessions are designed to be stressful, with malfunctioning equipment and volunteers pretending to be frantic parents making a sudden entrance.

Afterward, the teams study their mistakes on video -- the way NBA teams do after a game.

The Joint Commission, the national accreditation agency for hospitals, grades them in part on patient safety standards such as nurses reading back verbal orders from doctors, marking the correct surgical site with a pen and special handling of look-alike and sound-alike medications.

That's one reason why Wachter, who has written two books on patient safety, sees an improvement.

"If I were judging patient safety (10 years ago), I would have given us a D-minus. Not an F, because doctors and nurses and hospital administrators didn't want to harm people." Today, he'd give "maybe a B-minus. My sense is we're better than we were." "Some things have improved," said Mary Stefl, dean of health care administration at Trinity University in San Antonio. "Some of the low-hanging fruit has been removed. Now, you have checklists prior to surgery; you mark the spot on which limb you were going to operate on. And afterwards, they count the surgical sponges and instruments so they presumably don't leave anything inside. But it still happens. Somebody assumes someone else did it, or a surgeon refused to go through it and it still happens." Mistakes happen As the sedatives course through the veins of the elderly patient lying on his side at the Audie Murphy Veterans Hospital in San Antonio, nurse Truthann Rivas calls a timeout -- bringing the busy doctor and staff in the procedure room to a halt.

"This is Mr. Everette. He's here for a colonoscopy. Are we all in agreement?" Rivas calls out over the moan and hiss of medical equipment. "Yes," comes the muted response from everyone but the sleeping patient -- a medical liturgy repeated in some form countless times a day throughout the hospital, and in hospitals across the country.

It's the fifth colonoscopy of the morning for Dr. Lawrence Siegel and his team. Each time a new patient is wheeled in, VA rules and Joint Commission standards require a similar timeout to prevent the wrong patient from undergoing the wrong procedure.

"For us it's pretty foolproof, as far as where we're going," said Siegel, a gastrointestinal specialist. "There's only two orifices we go into. The main thing is to be sure the patient is the correct patient." Of course, other things can go wrong. In December, a similar team at the VA hospital in Murfreesboro, Tenn., discovered a problem with an irrigation pump used in colonoscopies. The hospital and the VA's National Center for Patient Safety launched an investigation and found a small but very real risk that fluid flowing back into patients could expose them to infections.

Investigators found the problem extended to at least three VA hospitals. Hospitals throughout the VA system were alerted so they could train staff in the correct procedure. Patients were notified and offered testing for HIV and hepatitis. Congress, as it has in the past when similar VA scandals arose, is holding hearings.

The VA is the largest health care system in the nation with 153 hospitals and 919 clinics scattered across the country. It's been praised by patient safety groups and experts for its efforts to reduce errors. Hospitals use a nonpunitive system for employees to report errors and close calls modeled after NASA's. A team meets within 45 days of a report to identify and fix the cause of that error. Alerts describing the problem and the fix are sent out to all VA hospitals.

It leads the country in the use of electronic medical records, CPOE and bar coding. It pioneered the idea of quickly and honestly disclosing errors to patients.

And still, mistakes happen.

"It's just been a culture thing that if an error happens, it's somebody's fault," said Dr. Jan Patterson, chief of staff at Audie Murphy Veterans Hospital. "We really think that 85 percent of the time it is a system issue. That means that we need to make things foolproof, just like in the aviation industry and the nuclear industry, where there's all these different safeguards and checklists that you go through. We need to make it easier to do the right thing and make it harder to make an error." To see more of the Albany Times Union, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesunion.com.

Surrounded by computers, gadgets and video game consoles, dozens of girls gathered in groups to demonstrate their grasp of today's technology. There was excitement and a buzz of productivity at Microsoft's DigiGirlz High Tech Camp as the high schoolers collaborated with one another and proudly displayed the video games they designed.

For some Washington-area youngsters, summer is not just about hanging out at the local pool or watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Instead, it's an opportunity to explore less familiar career paths through camps focused on science and technology.

More of these camps are making girls their target audience, as research shows girls tend to stray away from technology-related activities by the time they are teenagers.

The number of women earning undergraduate degrees in computer science has plunged nearly 50 percent since 1985, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. In 1985, women represented 37 percent of computer science undergraduate degree recipients. By 2008, women represented a mere 18 percent of computer and information sciences undergraduate degree recipients, representing a significant drop in degrees awarded.

A 2007 report by the same group revealed that women held more than half of professional positions in the overall U.S. work force but fewer than 22 percent of software engineering jobs.

Tweens in technology

Similar to the DigiGirlz High Tech Camp held in Washington last month, Digital Media Academy holds technology camps across the country, including a three-week stint this month at George Washington University for students ages 8 to 17 who are interested in learning more about opportunities in technology.

Margaret Lim, director of DMA's youth programs, has witnessed a decline in interest among girls in technology as they mature. Many girls see it as a male-dominated industry, she said.

"It's interesting that at younger ages, around 7 and 8, more girls are involved. … Developmentally they haven't started asking, 'Who's doing what?' and instead they're just naturally curious," Ms. Lim said.

"That's why I think it's important to encourage teachers and parents to get these girls engaged early on, because of the stigma attached to programming being a boys' thing. But if [girls] get hooked early on, they grow in confidence and can bypass the social stigma that technology's supposed to be a certain way,"

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that computer science students with the entrepreneurial spirit may want to look for a different major, because if Thomas M. Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, is right, IT is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the...
Slashdot.

MCLEAN, Va., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has contracted Science Applications International Corp. to lead a team providing technical and management support services.

U.S. company SAIC was awarded the deal as part of the Information Technology Enterprise Solutions-Two Services contract vehicle.

As part of the $55 million award, SAIC will team with SNVC to provide the Army's Chief Information Officer/G-6 with command, control, communications, computers and information technology support among other technical and management service requirements.

"We look forward to providing these critical services to the Army Chief Information Officer /G-6 organization, enabling this important customer to provide the warfighter with the technology they need to achieve decision superiority," Peter Dube, SAIC senior vice president and business unit general manager, said in a statement.

By JOSELYN KING

by The Times-Picayune

Friday August 07, 2009, 11:29 AM

Two Baton Rouge information technology firms have completed a merger, according to the Baton Rouge Business Report.

Interactive E-Solutions has acquired SimplifyIT, a move that is expected to double the staff of hte IT company. Ned Fasullo, president of SimplifyIT, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of IES, says the move is a "perfect marriage." "We were doing the exact same stuff and running on the same systems," he said.

Prior to their merger, SimpifyIT had concentrated on small business customers, while IES worked with government agencies and finance companies.

By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, August 7, 2009 – The technology revolution will fundamentally change and improve the way that citizens and government interact, but that change must embrace everyone to accomplish its goals, public officials and policy experts agreed Thursday.

The revolution is enabling people to access government services in a way that allows them to see how their government is operating, said Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra during the workshop hosted by the Federal Communications Commission.

Since federal money is being used to develop information technology, the government wants to engage the American people to help shape the way the money is used, he said, noting that the government is not the only source of technological innovation.

Broadband technology “enables us to create the most participatory democracy of our time” by providing better services and creating more open ways of working and policy making, said Beth Noveck, federal deputy chief technology officer for open government.

“We very much turn the policy-making process inside out,” she said.

Broadband has been used to “foster civic engagement in local communities” by getting citizens to communicate about problem in their local communities and collaborate about how to solve them, she said.

Graham Richard, former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., praised broadband technology for making his city easier to run more efficiently.

For example, Fort Wayne has been able to use broadband to determine how to locate and fill potholes more quickly. It also has been aided by real-time monitoring technologies allowing it to find out the amount of time a street-sweeping truck spends sweeping the street versus how much time it spends going to where it has to sweep, he said.

Broadband has helped to reduce crime rates in Fort Wayne by facilitating police communication and their deployment along with services that allow law enforcers to track a criminal’s every move, he said.

“None of us are as smart as all of us,” he said.

Kundra also touted the benefits of e-government, saying it saves money for government employees and is a “mechanism to drive productivity. For example, 50 percent of Patent and Trademark Office employees telecommute, which saves travel costs and aids the environment, he said. Additionally, when Government Accountability Office employees were forced to evacuate their building after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they were able to continue agency operations by telecommuting.

However, it’s important to ensure that employees have the proper tools and understanding of how to use technology, said Kundra. “So much of what we do online actually requires training” but “many companies have made it so difficult to interact with technologies,” he said.

Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, spoke on the second panel on civil engagement.

Because most political discourse and commerce today will conducted through broadband, “we don’t want a society of haves and have nots,” he said.

The Internet is the new “public square,” where people can learn about the government, communicate with the government, and share their ideas, and “if citizens don’t have that access they will be shut out of the public debate,” he said.

One problem, said Ornstein, is that many Internet users are “cocooning” themselves by only reading the blogs that reinforce their own ideas, and “we are losing the common set of facts around which debate can be formed.”

Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum, highlighted the importance of broadband in keeping average people involved in the political process.

Most videos of political candidates on YouTube during the 2008 election were created by average citizens, and this has had a tremendous impact on the political landscape, he said.

Rasiej shared the story of his elderly parents who were able to send e-mails with links to a video of then-presidential candidate Obama on YouTube to more than 50 friends at a time.

This technology can be used to protect free speech by enabling citizens to communicate with each other discreetly, and may ultimately redefine international politics by creating a “citizen to citizen diplomacy,” he said.

“If working-class people cannot access these sights,” he said, “they are being excluded from 21^st century technology.”

Citizenship can only be transformed when the government is willing to make information public and in real time, said John Wunderlich, program director for the Sunlight Foundation.

(Canadian Press DataFile Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) MONTREAL _ Canadians are increasingly adopting high-tech smartphones with the BlackBerry and iPhone taking the top spots, IDC Canada says.

Research In Motion's BlackBerry (TSX:RIM) was by far the smartphone leader in the quarter ended June 30, IDC Canada said Friday.

But Apple's iPhone has created a lasting buzz.

"Apple with the iPhone has been really the one that has shaken up the market over the last year and really entered the top tier of smartphone players very quickly," said analyst Kevin Restivo.

The iPhone became available in Canada just over a year ago. Apple recently introduced a new, faster version that has a better camera and video capabilities.

"It's gaining ground on all players," he said from Toronto.

But the BlackBerry, valued for its secure messaging and with many of the same features as the iPhone, had almost a 62 per cent share of smartphone shipments domestically in the quarter.

Restivo said other smartphones such as the Palm Pre and the HTC Touch which runs Google's Android operating system should also attract the attention of consumers, he said.

"Canadians are migrating toward smartphones," said Restivo, senior analyst in mobility at the Toronto-based technology research firm.

Smartphones allow consumers to do things like surf the web, check email, watch TV and listen to music.

The phones also run applications developed by independent software developers that include stock trading platforms, maps and weather forecasts.But IDC said Samsung was the overall cellphone market leader in Canada in the second quarter.

Mobile phones with QWERTY keyboards were also popular with Canadians in the quarter, Restivo said.

IDC said its preliminary estimates show that cellphone shipments in Canada slipped to just more than 2.3 million, a drop of one per cent from the same quarter a year ago.

Globally, IDC says cellphone shipments were down almost 11 per cent in the quarter to 269.6 million.

Restivo said Canada's cellphone market wasn't hit as hard because of consumers' interest in smartphones. But overall, the industry isn't looking at a recovery until next year, he added.



IDC said that worldwide in the second quarter that Nokia, Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola and Sony Ericsson were the top five mobile phone vendors.

New advanced wireless networks are expected to further spur the growth of smartphones and make them operate more like mobile computers.

Restivo said the new faster networks, called Long Term Evolution, will allow consumers to do even more with their smartphones.

"I think over the next three to give years, you are going to see people doing things with their smartphones that you wouldn't even have imagined right now." He said he doesn't expect LTE networks to make their debut in Canada until likely between 2013 and 2015.

In the United States, Verizon is expected to have its LTE network, which promises to give users the equivalent of a high-speed Internet experience like they have at home, up and running late next year.

California-based research firm iSuppli the No. 1 player Nokia has been defending its dominant position since the third quarter of last year due to rising pressure from Samsung and smartphones.

"The company has also faced rising competition from smartphone players including Research In Motion and Apple Inc," iSuppli said in a news release.

BENNINGTON -- State government officials from across the country will focus on improving information technology in the health sector this Friday at the State Alliance for e-Health’s semi-annual meeting in Burlington.

Meanwhile, local health officials are already working to implement new technology to improve safety and lower the cost of care.

The State Alliance for e-Health, created by the National Governors Association and composed of governors, state legislators, attorney generals and state commissioners, maintains that improving health information technology (IT) and health information exchange is critical to ensuring a health care system that is "affordable, effective, safe and transparent."

"States already have taken the lead in modernizing the health care system by advancing the use of health IT, electronic health records, e-prescribing and electronic exchange of health information," said Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the NGA and co-chairman of the State Alliance. "We now have an opportunity to accelerate adoption of health IT across the states and create a truly comprehensive health care system that is effective, affordable and accountable."

Douglas said Friday’s meeting will focus on a new report published by the State Alliance that aims to help states begin instituting the federal Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.

The report recommends that states begin implementing

the HITECH Act, by:

* Engaging stakeholders

* Establishing a state leadership office to manage the different phases of HIE implementation

* Preparing state agencies to participate and implement privacy strategies and reforms

* Determining the HIE business model

* Creating a communications strategy

* Establishing opportunities for health IT training and education

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, co-chairman of the State Alliance, said states can have a large impact on improving the country’s health system.

"Governors understand that swift and thoughtful action is needed at the state level to plan and implement a national system of health information exchange," Bredesen said in a prepared statement. "Widespread adoption and use of electronic health records provide a critical foundation for improving health outcomes and cost-effectiveness."

The State Alliance was created by the NGA Center for Best Practices in 2006 to address the unique role states can play in facilitating adoption of health IT and HIE. The HITECH Act, enacted as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, expands the role of states in fostering health information exchange and adoption of electronic health records over the next five years.

Technology is already playing a role at Southwest Vermont Health Care, according to spokesman Kevin Robinson. "If you come into the hospital and you’re treated here ... that stuff is all documented and retained electronically," he said.

Doctors within the SVHC system can read patient charts electronically, and medication is being administered electronically, Robinson said.

And some private medical practices are beginning to implement a system administered by Vermont Information Technology Leaders, or VITL, that allows them to exchange data with SVHC electronically.

"We’re working with the physicians in our community to set up ways for their internal computer systems to talk to the hospital’s computer system," Robinson said. "It’s a challenge. You have to develop a lot of specially designed interfaces to make sure that the data transfer is accurate."

One local medical practice, Bennington Family Practice, is already using the system. Two others are currently in "test mode," according to Robinson.

The health corporation is also working to implement other safety and cost saving measures. The Northshire Medical Center in Manchester, which is operated by SVHC, will soon begin delivering prescriptions directly to pharmacies electronically, eliminating paper scripts. Doctors are using a voice recognition system when they dictate reports and orders, making them immediately available. And nurses now use a biometric identification system at workstations to access computer systems.

Most community hospitals are working on implementing such systems, Robinson said, but often struggle with initial costs.

"We all know that electronic data is much easier to use and it’s much more efficient from a caregiver’s standpoint. The question is how to get from point A to point B," he said.

Contact Neal P. Goswami at ngoswami@benningtonbanner.com

By Scott Campbell,
4:08 PM EDT Fri. Aug. 07, 2009

Group working to help states with information technology

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) Grand Forks state Representative Ken Svedjan is among the members of a multi-state group working on the issue of electronic health records.

Svedjan says one question is how states will share the records of patients who move around.

Svedjan was in Vermont this week for a meeting of the State Alliance for e-Health.

The group is co-chaired by the governors of Vermont and Tennessee, and is working to help states adapt technology in health care. It's made up governors, state legislators, insurance commissioners and other experts.

The Obama administration is offering 17 billion dollars in stimulus funding to help health care providers replace paper records with electronic systems.

As an example Dr. David Sundwall, who works in Maine, called in a prescription to a Vermont pharmacy for a patient across in New York. He says technology is needed to help reduce health care costs.

But others say the government needs to have standards for IT systems and design a national network.

IF Thomas M. Siebel can accurately see the future, computer science students with the entrepreneurial gene may want to look for a different major. And investors who think that information technology is a sector that will produce outsized returns should wake up.

In Mr. Siebel’s view, I.T. is a mature industry that will grow no faster than the larger economy. He contends that its glory days are past — long past, having ended in 2000.

I believe that Mr. Siebel may well be wrong. But his own illustrious career in I.T. makes his opinions a matter of uncommon interest.

Earning both a master’s degree in computer science and an M.B.A. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he was an executive at Oracle from 1984 to 1990. In 1993, he founded Siebel Systems, which sells software for tracking customers and sales prospects; the company was acquired in 2006 by Oracle, which paid almost $6 billion. In Mr. Siebel’s self-deprecating narrative, he was simply standing in the right place at the right time.

Addressing Stanford students in February as a guest of the engineering school, Mr. Siebel called attention to 20 sweet years, from 1980 to 2000, when, he said, worldwide I.T. spending grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17 percent. “All you had to do was show up and not goof it up,” he said. “All ships were rising.”

Since 2000, however, that rate has averaged only 3 percent, he said. His explanation for the sharp decline is that “the promise of the post-industrial society has been realized.”

No new technological advances, he believes, would impel I.T. customers to replace the computer technology they already had: “I would suggest to you that most of what’s going on today is not very exciting.”

In his view, far larger opportunities are to be found in businesses that address needs in food, water, health care and energy. Though Silicon Valley was “where the action was” when he finished graduate school, he says, “if I were graduating today, I would get on a boat and I would get off in Shanghai.”

When I called him last month to discuss his provocative arguments, he was disarmingly modest. “I’m just an old has-been, I don’t present myself as an expert in this or any other area,” he said.

The huge difference in growth rates, pre- and post-2000, may seem so stark as to leave no room for an alternative view of I.T.’s prospects.

But the recent drop is not as steep as it seems at first. I asked Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management who has written extensively about the computer industry, to take a look at the raw data upon which those numbers were supposedly based: the annual I.T. spending estimates published by IDC.

Mr. Greenstein’s calculations produced a more moderate compounded annual growth rate of 11.6 percent for 1980 to 2000, instead of 17 percent. (Mr. Siebel’s personal assistant said last week that the 17 percent in the Stanford talk came from a staff member who calculated from a reading of a chart, not from precise figures.)

When Mr. Greenstein looked at the full IDC data set, which goes back to 1961, and used other breakpoints to compare growth in earlier and later periods, he found that the most golden years of I.T. were in the 1960s, when use of mainframe computers spread widely. From 1961 to 1971, the compounded annual growth rate was 35.7 percent, more than three times the rate in the 1980-2000 period celebrated by Mr. Siebel.

Declining growth rates over time are to be expected, Mr. Greenstein said. After all, it doesn’t take many sales to show huge percentage gains when the base is small.

TIMOTHY BRESNAHAN, a Stanford economist, similarly does not accept Mr. Siebel’s contention that the decline in growth rates this decade, which encompasses two recessions, signals a permanent end to I.T.’s record of growing faster than the larger economy. “It is early days to say the game is over,” he said.

When the economy recovers, there is no dearth of unfinished projects for I.T., he said, like “automating white-collar work and automating buying and selling in markets.”

And when one company dominates a certain area of technology, it can be a bottleneck along the road to innovation — an obstacle to the technology of others. Mr. Bresnahan says that this has happened with Microsoft in the PC side of corporate information technology, and in earlier times with I.B.M. in computers and AT&T in telecommunications. But he said that entrepreneurial companies of those earlier days — like Siebel Systems — ultimately invented around bottlenecks and “innovation-led growth picked up again.”

The biggest decline in I.T.’s growth came at the end of the 1960s, well before Mr. Siebel’s own I.T. career. A fortune or two could still be made, it turns out. Siebel Systems, which its founder says attained $2 billion in revenue annually in only seven years, was founded after the growth rate of I.T. spending dropped precipitously.

Entrepreneurial engineers in the United States should take heart. There’s no cause for mass flight to Shanghai.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

SOUTH BURLINGTON -- Expanding the use of electronic health records and creating connections so the records move securely between health care providers are critical steps in reforming health care, according to Gov. Jim Douglas.
"It is going to facilitate the delivery of care substantially," he said Friday during a break in day-long conference he hosted on health technology. "And I think it is going to help cut costs."

Douglas is co-chairman of the State Alliance for E-Health, a group organized by the National Governors Association to help states promote the use of health information technology even before Congress and the Obama administration decided to invest billions of dollars to speed up the switch.

The federal economic stimulus legislation enacted last winter set aside $19.5 billion to accelerate the use of electronic records in doctors offices and hospitals and to spur development of a national exchange network for patients' health records.

Douglas and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen jointly ran the semi-annual meeting of the Alliance Friday at the Sheraton Burlington Hotel and Conference Center where Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health information technology, opened the session.

Blumenthal is overseeing the development of rules for the distribution of the health information technology funding. One of the pending decisions is a definition for "meaningful use" of technology -- a criteria that will determine whether physicians qualify for receive extra payments from Medicare because they have installed electronic record-keeping.

"Adoption isn't an end in itself," Blumenthal reminded the Alliance. "If we don't focus on the purpose, we could waste a lot of resources getting computers into physician offices."

Blumenthal praised the Alliance for the work it had done already to promote electronic prescribing, but said there was much more to do. For example, states need to work out ways that regional information exchange networks can talk across state borders -- since patients crisscross borders to access their medical care.

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 9, 2009

If U.S. stocks have been hot recently, technology shares have been blistering. And news out of the technology sector last month only reassured some investors that the worst of the recession is over, with initial signs pointing to an economic recovery.

Soaring iPhone sales helped fuel a 15 percent increase in Apple's quarterly profit, while increased chip demand boosted unexpectedly strong results at Intel. Even Corning reported more buyers for its flat-screen television glass, reflecting more hope in the consumer electronics market.

But for investors, questions remain. Is it too late to claim a share of technology gains after prices have ballooned in the last several months? And will the economy continue to show progress, persuading companies to start retooling for growth with new computers and network upgrades?

"To me the biggest question mark is are we going to see a recovery in the economy in 2010?" said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of the Jacob Internet Fund, which, as of June 30, held shares of Apple, Google, Yahoo and eBay, among others. "If we do, I think tech prices will still look very cheap and I think we'll see a strong finish to the year. If that becomes more suspect, then I think it's going to be hard for valuations to expand further."

Perhaps the broadest measure of technology stocks' performance, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index is up 26.8 percent for the year and closed above 2000 last week for the first time since last October. Since reaching this year's low of 1268.64 on March 9, the Nasdaq has improved 58 percent, though the index would still need to gain another 43 percent to reach its recent peak of 2859.12 on Oct. 31, 2007.

Technology stocks are the top-performing industry sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, a broader market measure that is up nearly 12 percent this year. An index of information technology companies in the S&P 500 is up 36 percent. Without technology shares, the S&P 500's year-to-date returns would shrink to 7.9 percent.

Behind the gains, analysts say, are a number of factors: Few firms have kept as much cash on hand as Apple, Google and other tech giants, making them seem like better bets during a credit crunch.

Signs of improvement in the broader economy have also lifted the tech market. The annual rate of decline in gross domestic product was smaller in the second quarter than had been anticipated, the fragile housing market has shown some signs of recovery, and the labor market appears to be stabilizing, albeit at a low level by historical standards.

Non-farm payrolls fell by 247,000 in July, the Labor Department reported Friday, a far smaller drop than many economists had been expecting. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent.

Investors have been speculating that as the economy shows signs of recovery, companies may begin dusting off technology investments that have been shelved during the uncertainty of the downturn. "Eventually that business cycle has to come back in. The PCs on the desk eventually have to be changed," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's.

Then there's the smartphone. Demand for the mobile devices has swelled despite a recession that's crippled consumer spending. That's benefited not only the companies who make the devices -- Apple, with its iPhone, Research in Motion, with the BlackBerry -- but also companies such as Juniper Networks and Cisco Systems that sell equipment to connect networks and transfer data across the Web.

Shares of Apple and Research in Motion have surged more than 80 percent this year. Juniper is up 38 percent. Shares of Cisco, the world's largest network equipment maker, are up 31 percent since the beginning of the year and 63 percent since its low on March 9. Cisco reported Wednesday that its fourth-quarter profit fell 46 percent, to $1.1 billion, along with sales, dampening the market the next day. But chief executive John Chambers said Cisco was beginning to see ordering pick up and may have reached a "tipping point."

"If we continue to see these positive order trends for the next one to two quarters, we believe there is a good chance we will look back and see that the tipping point occurred in our business in" the fourth quarter, Chambers said in a statement.

Elsewhere, Internet portal Yahoo's stock is up nearly 14 percent this year, though it has slumped recently with investors reacting less than favorably to the company's new search and advertising partnership with Microsoft.

Despite the positive signs, stock prices still have considerable ground to make up to climb back to pre-recession levels. And risk remains for investors.

For investors seeking long-term returns, shares of technology companies should perform well, simply because technology is central to the U.S. and global economies, market analysts said. The demand for devices that allow consumers to browse the Web while riding on a train or waiting in a doctor's office is hardly expected to be subdued, they said.

Short-term investment bets on technology can be trickier. Any turbulence in the recovery process, for example, could affect technology stocks disproportionately, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago.

"Any stall, any air pocket we hit, any big disappointment on the credit side, the risk is tech could bear the biggest brunt because it is so pro-cyclical," Ablin said. "With tech, it's almost a leveraged bet on recovery and that's why it's done so well. If recovery stalls, it's going to be a leveraged bet on the downside, too. But I don't foresee that."

Washington, DC, August 08, 2009 --(PR.com)-- FINCA International, a nonprofit providing financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs, has become the 27th member of NetHope, an information technology collaboration of leading nongovernmental organizations specializing in humanitarian development, emergency response, and conservation.

NetHope enables members to extend their communications infrastructure and Internet-based applications in developing countries around the world. Members share knowledge and collaborate on information and communications technology (ICT) solutions, leveraging their power for capacity-building and creating best practices in the field.

FINCA International President and CEO Rupert Scofield said, “Every day, technology is providing the tools necessary to more cost-effectively and efficiently fight the war on global poverty. NetHope provides the opportunity for NGOs to work together to solve problems, explore and share best practices in an open and collaborative environment, and develop technological tools and applications that will make it easier to alleviate poverty on a massive scale. We are pleased to become the newest member of NetHope.”

NetHope CEO Bill Brindley said, “We are pleased to welcome FINCA International into the NetHope family of ICT professionals – particularly with their focus on providing financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs. Their addition increases our members’ collective capacity, which will serve to enhance NetHope’s unique ability to deliver value to make the humanitarian sector more effective and productive as it serves those in greatest need.”

For more information about NetHope or FINCA International visit www.nethope.org or http://www.villagebanking.org

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About NetHope
NetHope, Inc., which started in 2001, is a new-generation collaboration of ICT professionals from 27 of the international community’s leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representing over $33 billion (USD) of emergency relief, human development and conservation programs in more than 150 countries. Through member collaboration and by facilitating public-private partnerships with major technology companies, NetHope enables members to leverage their technology investments to better serve their end beneficiaries. For more information, visit www.nethope.org.

About FINCA International
FINCA is a leading international micro-finance organization that provides financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living. For more than twenty years, FINCA has been committed to breaking the cycle of poverty by providing community-based credit and savings opportunities. Currently, FINCA operates with a distinctive, integrated business model that accepts donations and investment dollars, an approach that leverages available capital and promotes greater transparency, sustainability and higher standards of business practices. This has allowed FINCA to achieve balanced financial and social performance unmatched in its industry while opening the path to socio-economic development for the lowest-income citizens of the world. Based in Washington DC with local operations across 21 countries, serving more than 735,000 clients, FINCA's outreach is among the broadest and most comprehensive of today's microfinance networks. For more information, visit www.villagebanking.org.