MaSSSoftech

The top federal panel that sets policies for electronic health records so that a national system can be adopted made recommendations on Friday that would allow multiple organizations to certify electronic record products instead of the one certifying body that exists today.

Doctors and hospitals are slated to receive up to $17 billion in stimulus funds to help pay for health information technology systems. But the payments are dependent on doctors using systems that meet "meaningful use" criteria, standards the Health Information Technology Policy Committee is developing.

The stimulus package, included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, required the committee to recommend a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure -- including standards for the exchange of patient medical information and certifications criteria -- to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the Health and Human Services Department.

Currently, only the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) certifies electronic health records systems. Critics have charged that CCHIT has been influenced by health care information technology vendors, which helped form the group in 2004.

Paul Egerman, co-chairman of the policy committee's certification and adoption work group and the founder of IDX Systems Corp., a health IT system vendor acquired by General Electric Co. for $1.2 billion in 2006, recommended forming multiple certification bodies. Marc Probst, the other co-chairman and chief information officer of Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, also supported the recommendation.

Egerman and Probst also suggested the committee expand certification to include a range of software sources, including open source software and open systems based on the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, which the Veterans Affairs Department operates.

The recommendation to establish multiple certification organizations will break the hold health IT vendors have on the certification process and open up new approaches such as Web-based health IT systems, said Brian Klepper, a health care analyst. He co-authored an Aug. 11 letter to David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, criticizing the role CCHIT plays in the certification process.

Earlier in August, Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer at Google, said at a meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that a national health IT system should be based on Web records that patients control.

Egerman and Probst urged the Health Information Technology Policy Committee to put more emphasis on interoperability among health IT systems so patient data could be easily exchanged.

Christine Bechtel, a committee member from the National Partnership for Women & Families, suggested interoperability could be fostered by the exchange of scanned patient records in the Portable Document Format, better known as PDF. "This would facilitate the movement of data ... by getting a piece of paper to go with the patient" in an electronic format, she said.

Roger Baker, chief information officer at VA, told the technology policy committee that PDFs work fairly well for the exchange of patient information. He added that VA and the Defense Department have extensive experience with exchanging patient information among large health care organizations and urged the committee to rely on that experience.

The policy committee advises HHS, which signs off on recommendations after collecting public comments.

There’s a new berry on the block, and this one’s supposed to be “designed for India.” No, that thankfully doesn’t mean it has a torch which can double up as the headlamp of a truck. It’s cheaper, is available on prepaid connections for the first time and is a bit more rugged. It was officially supposed to be in stores from last Friday, which means you should, by now be able to pick it up from Airtel outlets in most metros.

If you already use a Blackberry Curve 8900 (Javelin) or a Bold 9000, then there’s not much point “downgrading” to the new Curve 8520 “Gemini”. If you’re looking to switch from a Curve 8300 series phone or are interested in buying your first Blackberry, then the 8520 is a very interesting proposition. (Btw, if you use a Storm (the touchberry) or Flip (the clamshell berry), then you need to get your head examined!) Here’s the lightning quick review:

Federal court documents are currently made available to the public through a crufty system called PACER. For eight cents per page, users can download filings and other relevant documents associated with individual cases. PACER is intended to open case law and court activity to broad public scrutiny, but the system's obfuscated design and its paywall significantly undermine its efficacy.

The content hosted on PACER can be freely redistributed by third parties because copyright is not applicable to court documents, but the access fees make it costly and difficult for data archivers to assemble their own comprehensive mirrors that would offload the hosting burden and make the content more easily accessible to the general public. Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is launching a new project to tackle this problem.

A team led by CITP director Ed Felten has devised a novel means of boosting the availability of PACER documents outside of the paywall. They have created a new Firefox extension called RECAP that seamlessly replicates PACER content and uploads it to a mirror hosted by the Internet Archive. When RECAP users browse the PACER site, the content that they pay to view will be uploaded to the mirror by the Firefox extension. Users will get free access to the documents that are already hosted by the mirror.

Over time, free PACER content will accumulate at the Internet Archive's mirror, making it unnecessary for additional users to pay PACER for access to those files. The unrestricted availability of the mirrored legal documents will empower legal researchers and members of the public who can't simply pass the access costs along to clients as most lawyers do.

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts contends that access fees are needed in order to fund the bandwidth requirements and ongoing maintenance of the system. Crowdsourcing distribution and offloading the data to public mirrors like the Internet Archive presents a practical way to alleviate the strain on PACER while making the data more broadly available.

The RECAP project could also illuminate potential solutions to the problems that are blocking a more complete PACER overhaul. Despite growing pressure from Congress to reform the PACER system and make data available at no cost, the courts are still reluctant to make major changes to the system because of uncertainty about the cost and the technical challenges of hosting and distributing the data. The RECAP project's effort to mirror a portion of PACER could help answer those questions and provide a real-world model that demonstrates the viability of open access.

Our own Tim Lee, who wrote about the problems with PACER in article earlier this year, is one of the developers behind the RECAP project. Lee participated in the creation of the Firefox extension and some related backend infrastructure in collaboration with Harlan Yu and Steve Schultze. The Firefox extension is open source software and is distributed under the terms of GNU's General Public License. The extension is available for download from the RECAP website, which launched today. The website also has an introductory video and additional details about the project's goals and philosophy.

Yu offers additional commentary about RECAP at the CITP's Freedom to Tinker blog. He envisions a future where court documents are freely available to everyone and are annotated with software-friendly metadata that makes the information easy to process, index, and programmatically analyze.

"With today's technologies, government transparency means much more than the chance to read one document at a time. Citizens today expect to be able to download comprehensive government datasets that are machine-processable, open, and free," he wrote. "Today, we are excited to announce the public beta release of RECAP, a tool that will help bring an unprecedented level of transparency to the US federal court system. RECAP is a plug-in for the Firefox web browser that makes it easier for users to share documents they have purchased from PACER, the court's pay-to-play access system."

As Lee explained in his previous article, the revenue generated by PACER's paywall far exceeds the amount of money needed to run the system. The operating costs could be further reduced through much-needed consolidation and other changes. The RECAP system is an important vehicle for encouraging open access and moving the system forward. It also reflects the growth of an emerging movement that seeks to boost government transparency through data availability.

A number of similar projects have popped up recently with the goal of making the inner workings of the government visible to regular citizens via the Internet. An example is OpenRegs.com, a website established in June by Mercatus Center researcher Jerry Brito and programmer Peter Snyder to help people navigate federal regulations. The government itself is also pushing a number of important data transparency projects, such as the new Data.gov website that was launched in may by Federal CIO Vivek Kundra to aggregate government data sets in machine-readable formats.

BANGALORE, INDIA: India's third largest PC brand Acer today announced the launch of its special "Independence Day Offer".

On the occasion of the 62nd Independence Day, Acer, offers its customers cash backs on purchase of Aspire Notebooks and select models of netbooks across India, said a press release.

Customers can avail a discount of Rs. 1000 on all Aspire series of Notebooks (not vaild for Aspire One D250 netbook) and the Aspire One 751h Netbook.

Customers also get a discount of Rs. 1500 on all Timelines series of Notebooks.

S. Rajendran, CMO Acer India said, "The cash back offer, is Acer's salute to the spirit of freedom and in keeping with the company's long standing initiative of offering cutting edge technology at mainstream prices. In keeping with that philosophy, it gives us great joy to announce this offer to all our end customers to avail better price with superior technology."

This limited period offer, valid from the 13th to the 16th of August, 2009, is available on the above mentioned product lines across all Acer brand stores and LFRs, which may in select cases run alternative offers which would equal the present offers during the time period, said the release.

By: Andrew B. Busch
CNBC Contributor

Andrew Busch

Andrew Busch
Global Finance Strategist
BMO Financial Group

According to China Daily, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is currently drafting a guide to mergers and acquisitions in the iron and steel industry, and to curb overcapacity will disallow expansion projects in the steel industry for the next three years. Here's what I've been worried about: "annual production capacity is currently 660 million tons, while demand is only 470 million tons, indicating a surplus of 190 million tons, said Li Yizhong, minister of MIIT. Furthermore, projects that will add 58 million tons of capacity are under construction."

From rice hoarding to stockpiling copper, China's merchants have a long history of commodity speculation and today appears to be no different. With Chinese exports and US consumption down, the bet is that things rebound soon and the Chinese will have locked in cheap iron ore, copper, and other commodities. (As an example of the speculation, copper has risen 4.6% this week alone and might break $3.0) So far, demand has not rebounded to match the significant rise in commodity prices.

* US Trade Gap Widens in June on Oil Prices

From yesterday's retail sales disappointment to today's lower than expected University of Michigan's sentiment index, we see that the US is not consuming like it has in the past. Since China's economy is 40% exports, you have to wonder how long domestic growth can spur GDP.

What's worrisome for the United States is that inventory rebuilding and CAPEX is expected to lead growth in Q3 and Q4. Granted we've fallen so far, everything looks up from here. Yes, the economy has stabilized, but stabilized at extremely low levels. It looks like the Chinese are building things that no one is buying and their inventories are going up.

This has major implications for the Pacific Rim and for global commodities. Something has to give and give soon. We need to have a rebound in global demand or we'll see bad things happen to commodity prices.

In her new role at CGI Federal , Inc. as vice-president and federal energy and environmental industry lead, Molly O’Neill plans to draw on her past experience with technologies such as data sharing and Web 2.0 to help government agencies begin new ways of doing business.

For years, government agencies have relied on the private sector to help support traditional information technology systems, O’Neill said. With the advent of services-based information technology, government and contractors have to figure out new ways to work together.

“The question now is how can the government leverage the private sector into some of these newer areas,” O’Neill said. At CGI, O’Neill will lead the Federal Energy and Environmental practice and its related IT programs initiatives.

Web 2.0, for example, is more than just wikis and blogs, O’Neill said. The technology offers new ways to deliver services to the public. Agencies and their contractor partners need to examine how they are engaging with the public and evaluate how technology can improve that relationship.

In some cases, the ways private companies interact with customers may provide a model for how government agencies can communicate with the public, she said.

Many challenges exist in realizing that dream, she said. The government’s current ban of Web tracking tools on agency Web sites is an example of how government is different than private companies. O’Neill is not advocating for a change in the policy, but said it is wise to examine it.

“Some of the older regulations and laws that are on the books, from an IT perspective, have been on the books for 50 years, and they don’t address that technology could help change some of these businesses processes,” O’Neill said. “I think it is incumbent that the private sector understand that those challenges are there, and try and work through the challenges together.”

O’Neill is the former assistant administrator and chief information officer of the Environmental Protection Agency. Before joining EPA , O’Neill served as the state director of the National Environmental Information Exchange Network for the Environmental Council of the States.

“As CIO at the EPA, Molly was a recognized innovator and leader in the federal CIO community,” said George Schindler, president, CGI Federal. “Molly’s strong expertise and creativity, combined with her State and Local experience, will help CGI’s clients effectively manage their technology initiatives while balancing the increasing demands they face around transparency and information access.”

BOB LEWIS
The Associated Press

(AP) — RICHMOND, Va. - A state attorney general's opinion says Virginia's technology secretary, Leonard Pomata, can't double as the chief of the state's troubled information technology superagency.

Attorney General William C. Mims' opinion, made public late Friday, said the 2003 law that created the Virginia Information Technologies Agency deliberately separated the two positions.

The Information Technology Investment Board made Pomata the interim replacement for dismissed Chief Information Officer Lemuel Stewart in June, just days after Kaine had appointed Pomata to the cabinet post overseeing technology.

That put Pomata in charge of VITA as the agency came under legislative and media scrutiny for complaints of slow, unresponsive service and missed major deadlines for updating and consolidating state government's disparate and far-flung computer systems.

Two legislative panels have also raised questions about VITA's $2.4 billion, 10-year contract with Northrop Grumman, the largest in state history. The General Assembly's investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, is expected to wrap up its two-year examination of VITA, its effect on state agencies from its Northrop Grumman partnership and its relationship with the ITIB by October.

Kaine's press secretary, Gordon Hickey, said the office "has just now seen the opinion and will take the weekend to digest it."

Mims' opinion is advisory only, rendered at the request of Del. Samuel Nixon, who sponsored the legislation creating VITA but has become one of the legislature's most knowledgeable critics of its performance.

The opinion is likely to have little practical effect. Kaine said last week the search for a permanent CIO is in its final stages, and Hickey said Friday that the position would likely be filled in less than a month.

VITA was proposed by former Gov. Mark R. Warner to streamline the communications, information technology and computer systems in dozens of state agencies that had developed independently from one another for decades. Many of them were unable to communicate or share data with systems in other state agencies.

Many of the ideas for integrating the state's computing functions and saving money were contained in a 2002 JLARC report. The report found that having the technology secretary double as the CIO was "a limiting factor" because the CIO was not insulated from the political process. It recommended making the CIO a separate position, Mims noted in his five-page opinion.

The opinion also noted that Pomata had served as a member of the board which appointed him the interim CIO.

"Should the Secretary also serve as CIO, this dual service would require the Board to have a contractual relationship with one of its members," Mims wrote. He added that the state law "prohibits board members, who are state officers, from having personal interest in a contract with their own board."