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GARRISON, NY--(Marketwire - October 13, 2009) - Aurora Information Technology, Inc., a medical website design and medical marketing company based in Garrison, NY, believes in the concept of personal branding, especially when it comes to healthcare. In this age of healthcare consumerism, patients are increasingly taking control of their choices in doctors and treatments. There is a huge demand for healthcare providers, but the supply is equally as large. Patients can afford to be selective, because it is no longer a case of a big fish in a little pond. Healthcare has become a big pond with an abundance of big fish.

In a recent BusinessWeek article ("Authentic personal branding starts with the real you" by Marshall Goldsmith, September 29, 2009), Dr. Hubert Rampersad, an authority on authentic personal branding, stated that personal branding should be done in an "organic, authentic, and holistic way," to make yourself "strong, distinctive, relevant, meaningful, and memorable."

So what can doctors, healthcare providers and hospitals do to brand themselves? Aurora provides these simple tips to doctors and healthcare providers to incorporate into their website and Internet marketing to promote themselves as personal brands.

Be the expert

Devote a section on your website to your successes and press mentions. Get the word out about how long you have been practicing in your particular field, and your experience with certain procedures. Numbers literally speak volumes with patients. In your website, promote the awards, certifications or distinctions you've earned.

Trust me

Experience means everything to patients so make sure your website clearly lists your training, board certification, experience, professional memberships in respected associations, safety records and hospital affiliations.

Manage yourself

What you don't know can definitely hurt you. With social media platforms, you can manage what patients are saying about you, and be able to respond accordingly. This can be done with a well-written, informative blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Link these directly from your website.

Optimization is optimal

A high search engine optimization (SEO) ranking is extremely important and helps build trust. Since patients start with word of mouth or the Internet, if you're at the top, they will find you and believe in you. Your website or blog must contain the appropriate keywords that are reviewed and updated regularly for freshness, credibility and visibility.

Get out there

Find events and venues where you can market yourself. We are talking medical conventions or panel discussions, or even keynote speaker opportunities. Media appearances are hard to come by, but if you have the right representation, you can garner a prime spot to promote yourself. Incorporate video feeds on your website from these events and appearances, or upload them to YouTube.com for added exposure.

Those who know, teach

Imparting your medical knowledge can help educate future doctors and providers. And your learning continues as well, because it increases your skill set and helps keep you up-to-date and current with what's new in the medical field.

About Aurora Information Technology, Inc.

Aurora Information Technology is a New York-based medical website design, content management, public relations, and healthcare marketing firm. A majority of Aurora IT's healthcare clients have experienced patient caseload growth of 20% or more, with some as high as 50%, after the creation and maintenance of an Aurora website. For more information about Aurora's medical logo, website design, and healthcare marketing services, call 1-914-591-7236, or visit them online at www.aurora-it.us.

Francis Marion University’s Information Technology Team was recently awarded the 2009 Innovation in Technology Award by the South Carolina Information Technology Directors Association (SCITDA).

Howard Brown, director of user services; Matthew Cantrell, director of network operations and services; Teresa McDuffie, network specialist; Robin Moore, director of campus applications and data services; and Kevin Torgersen, network administrator were presented the award during SCITDA’s Annual Conference in Columbia.

The Team award is designed to recognize excellence in collaborative and innovative technology-based projects. From e-mail to server enhancements to partnering with Google to provide students with FMU-branded Google Applications, the IT team has worked to establish a technology environment that challenges innovation, growth and service to its computing community while laying a foundation that can support emerging technologies and encourage pursuit of the same, said John Dixon, FMU’s chief information officer.

· Brown began his career at FMU in 1998, immediately after earning a bachelor’s degree from FMU.

· Cantrell joined the FMU staff in 2007. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Clemson University. He completed his undergraduate work in architectural design in 1999 and his graduate work in computer science in 2002.

· McDuffie joined the FMU staff in 1998. She is a 1988 graduate of South Carolina State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering technology.

· Moore began working at FMU in 1987 and is a 1981 graduate of Francis Marion University.

· Torgersen came to FMU in 2007. He earned an associate’s degree in computer science from Spartanburg Methodist College and a bachelor’s degree in information management and systems from the University of South Carolina Upstate in 2005.

Francis Marion University, founded in 1970, is one of South Carolina’s 13 state-supported universities. As one of the state’s six comprehensive institutions, FMU prides itself on providing a strong liberal arts education.

The university enrolls nearly 4,200 students and offers a broad range of undergraduate degrees and a select number of graduate programs serving the needs of communities, businesses and industries of the Pee Dee. Francis Marion is the only state university serving the Pee Dee, and many of its students are the first in their families to attend college.

SCITDA, originally formed in 1978 as the South Carolina Association of Data Processing Directors (SCADPD), serves as a forum for the exchange of information pertinent to the management of State IT facilities while also providing a consolidation of experience, knowledge and interest in improvement of IT administration and management. Since its inception, the Association has grown from a handful of people to an organization that includes most State agencies, colleges and universities.

It wasn't long ago that universities were considered the poor cousins of big corporations when it came to information technology. Students learned how to program, got jobs at big companies and breathed a sigh of relief at just how quickly and efficiently technology was modernized and upgraded.

Fast forward a few years. Data center managers are now struggling to clean up layers of old servers and applications, and become more responsive to their business units. Universities, meanwhile, have rekindled their experimentation with technology, using it in ways that would likely make their corporate counterparts shudder.
Forbes caught up with Gerry McCartney, CIO at Purdue University, to talk about the changes under way in academia.

Forbes: What does the CIO job involve at a university?

Gerry McCartney: In theory, it's anything that's a production service. We support technology in the classroom, run administrative systems--administrative support and payroll--and we have all the teaching systems. We also support research computing.

Do universities make use of cloud computing like many companies?
Absolutely. We've been making very aggressive use of cycle sweeping, which is an earlier form of cloud computing, and grid computing. We have a virtual grid of 28,000 CPUs (central processing units), which draws waste cycles from five other institutions as well as Purdue. A repackaged version of that is what we think of as commercial cloud computing. With that you're not using specific machines. You're using a service that makes those cycles available to you.

How do you allocate that compute power?

If you think about payroll, you may run that every week or two, but you don't need to run it all the time. You can predict your demand and model that. What researchers want is as much capacity as possible. They'll consume whatever is available, so our research machines run at 95% capacity all the time. There is such demand that we start processing research jobs even as we're building new machines. But with research computing there's less demand to do it today. Payroll is a time-critical service. Research is not. So if I can't offer cycles on Friday, I might be able to offer them on Sunday, and for most jobs that's acceptable.

That's way above the highest utilization inside corporations.
If they have research departments, it's probably that high. But there's a lot of technology that's just sitting around waiting inside companies. What we do is stack up the demand in a queue and have them manage that queue. We tell researchers to buy the compute nodes, and we pay for everything else--the inter-networking fabric, storage and backup--but when they're not using their nodes, we want to be able to use them. If you bought 16 nodes on a big machine, you get to use them anytime. But you also can grab 32 nodes on a neighbor's machine. And when you're not using your 16 nodes, they're available to others.

Does this work on a global basis for companies, as well?

It can. The problem is if you're moving around large blocks of data. That can cause latency problems. If you have to move terabytes of data to Hong Kong, it can take hours and hours to get it there. Or worse, you send a couple gigabytes, and when you're done you have terabytes of output. That's hard to get back. The compute capacity is still somewhat ahead of the networking capacity. You still want storage near your compute environment.

Are there other technologies in use in universities that might apply in the corporate world?

At the retail end, we don't understand how to use social-networking technologies like Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia in a productive way. They're still toys, and corporations have danced around the edges. But a lot of their employees are using these things, whether they like it or not. We've been experimenting with ways to take advantage of these new technologies and engage students in a whole new way of learning. The students are actually driving us in that direction.

It's a different baseline, right?

Yes. Try explaining to a student today what a phone booth is. They don't get it. We're going to see the same in education soon. The old one-to-many model, which is the traditional educational or broadcasting model of a talking head with no ability to interact, is being transformed. The best analogy is television news. You've still got the talking head in the middle of the screen, but you've got all this other action on the screen. You've got scroll bars on the side, you've got a ticker on the bottom. People can watch three or four different things simultaneously. The talking head is delivering information at one speed, and the banners and scrolling information at the bottom are being delivered at a different speed. Your brain can actually absorb that quite easily once you get used to it.

How does that apply in education?

I can be listening to a professor and at the same time have the equivalent of a Twitter line open to the teaching assistant where I can ask him a question about what the professor is talking about. The teaching assistant can answer the question in real time. The teaching assistants are being used to supplement education, and the faculty is watching these background conversations to see what's going on. If a whole group of students is asking a question about what is an internal rate of return, for example, the professor can stop and address that and then move on. We also have an algorithmic filter that removes all the noise on Twitter like, "Me, too" or, "I agree with that."

Are grades going up because of this?

We're not sure yet, but the old idea of, "Look left, look right and one of you won't be here next year," is an incredibly wasteful process at the institutional level and at the individual level. No one is thanking us if their kid lasts two years and then drops out. This allows us to say, "If we admit you and you're willing to work, you're going to graduate with a degree in a timely way." We're not going to try to make it hard for you. We're going to keep you focused and on task. We also use technology that allows us to detect in the first two weeks, based on the way you interact with online course material, whether you're at risk or not. We run intervention. The professor can say, "Come visit me after class, go visit the teaching assistant, or do this assignment over again." Students love this stuff.

When did you begin using this technology?

Just about two years ago. We have 8,000 students using it this semester. So we can't tell the ongoing impact yet. But we're watching it very closely.

TheDepartment of Post (DoP) has awarded a 45-month information technology (IT)
modernization contract to Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to design a new enterprise IT
architecture and migrate the DoP to a more efficient, reliable and user-friendly
IT system.

Accenture also will advise DoP on the development of a wide-area network
environment that helps connect all post offices on which various online services
can run, and will study the feasibility of implementing an enterprise solution
for the department`s core banking and advanced financial services.

"The technology enablers will help DoP transform itself by increasing
operational performance and achieving efficiencies through "last mile"
connectivity," said Krishna G.V. Giri, who leads Accenture's Management
Consulting practice within its Health & Public Service operating group in the
Asia Pacific region. "Armed with greater speed, efficiency, and flexibility at
DoP, the government will be much better positioned to share various social
schemes, such as the Mahatma National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, with
even the most remote citizens."

Accenture`s work began in September with a business process re-engineering (BPR)
exercise across key departments and core operations, such as mail operations,
banking and advanced financial systems. Following the BPR exercise, Accenture
will help select and monitor a vendor to enable the DoP to consolidate its
technology infrastructure and applications.

The project is designed to help the DoP drive greater revenue and regain market
share in different services and products, including bill payment, e-posts, life
insurance, money transfer and banking.

According to Giri, DoP expects that the technology upgrade also will benefit
citizens via speedier and more efficient banking and insurance services, track
and trace abilities, and retail services. In addition, DoP will be able to
compete effectively against local and international courier companies and
increase revenue in the mail and logistics business.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing
company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across
all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world`s
most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them
become high-performance businesses and governments. With approximately 177,000
people serving clients in more than 120 countries, the company generated net
revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home
page is www.accenture.com.

Accenture
Puja Gupta, +91 98 1888 3851
puja.x.gupta@accenture.com
or
Lisa Meyer, +1703-947-3846
lisa.m.meyer@accenture.com

NEW YORK - Accenture PLC, a consulting and outsourcing firm, said Monday that it received a 45-month information technology modernization contract from India's Department of Post.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Under the contract, Accenture will design a new enterprise IT architecture and move the Department of Post to a more efficient and reliable information technology system.

Accenture also will advise the Department of Post on the development of a network to help connect all post offices and study the feasibility of putting in place a system for the department's core banking and financial services.

Accenture shares rose 1 cent to $39.08 in morning trading.

To give a chance to the voters to have a closer watch on the election scene, the state Government launched a new service by integrating the election database with the recently started SMS-gateway service.

Voters can access information about their names on the voter list and their polling booth by sending their voter ID card number to 56300 from their mobile phones, using the SMS service. “In reply, they will be sent the desired information about name and number of the constituency, the polling station number, voter serial number and the polling station address,” said Principal Secretary, Information Technology, B K Aggarwal.

The codes to access the information will also be launched shortly so that voters of Rohru and Jawali constituencies can use the service. The SMS service will be put to test for the first time during the Rohru and Jawali byelections to be held on November 7.
The new service will also enable the public to get instant information updates on their mobiles through SMS about voter turnout at booth level on the polling day, the male-female voter ratio and overall voting percentage.

He said a format for giving more information such as hourly polling percentage on the voting day was also being worked out. “We have the infrastructure ready. It depends on the election observers and other officials that at what frequency they want to release this information. The information will be updated in the state election department’s database on the website so that the voters can access it through SMS any time,” said Aggarwal.
“BSNL users will be charged Rs 2 per message and others at the rate of Rs 3. The service provider will charge the Government for the replies sent,” said Aggarwal.

He said the service will also have utility during the counting of votes, where voters could get round-wise updates.

College students interested in computers and information technology are encouraged to apply by Oct. 22 for a new scholarship program at Chipola College.

Chipola is the recipient of a $50,000 grant to promote and fund "WIRED for Technology" scholarships for students enrolled in several computer-related programs.

The scholarships were awarded 13 students during the fall 2009 semester. Applications for the spring 2010 semester will be accepted through October 22.

Scholarships are available for Associate in Arts (AA) degrees in Computer Science and Information Technology. AA students typically take classes for two years and then transfer to a university to complete the junior and senior years of a bachelor’s degree.

Associate in Science (AS) degrees in Computer Engineering Technology, Computer Information Technology, and Networking Services Technology are also included among the eligible programs. AS degrees are designed to prepare students for careers after taking one to two years of coursework.

Scholarships are also available for Workforce Certificate program in Computer Systems Technology which can be completed in as little as one year.

The new Scholarships may fund all or part of costs for tuition, fees, textbooks and software for students in technology or computer-related majors or programs of study. The scholarships may be awarded in addition to other scholarships or grants; however, the selection panel will also consider other funds available to students through the Foundation or Financial Aid Office. The scholarships will be available only for the 2009-10 school year.

The WIRED for Technology project is being funded by the U.S. Department of Labor through a consortium of panhandle colleges in partnership with the University of West Florida and Florida's Great Northwest.

For information about the scholarships at Chipola, contact Gail Hartzog or Pat Barfield at 850-718-2342 or email: hartzogg@chipola.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Nancy Burns at 850-526-2761 or email: burnsn@chipola.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .