Intel Communities : Blog List - United Kingdom

Award winning IT Manager Game launches the animation-light mode

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:45:21 GMT

We have recently released the animation-light mode of the IT Manager III: Unseen Forces for the improved performance, check it out here http://itmanager3.intel.com/en-gb/default.aspx?iid=ENGSHORT+unseenforces&. You will need to select the animation mode from the options menu once you log in the game.

We are planning quite a few updates to the game in 2010 so stay tuned!

And what I mean by award winning? Check this out http://www.bima.co.uk/bima-award/030F131702/bima-awards-2009/awards-winners/

Will keep you posted with all the news about the game.

Keti

Point, Shoot, Listen

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:38:19 GMT

It is difficult for me to imagine the daily challenges faced by people with visual impairments or dyslexia in a world predominantly designed for those without these difficulties. Today in the UK, Intel’s Digital Health Group has announced the launch of the Intel® Reader, a device designed to help transform the printed word into speech.

This mobile and handheld device is about the size of a paperback book and is designed to increase independence for people who have trouble reading standard print. In the UK alone, there are an estimated six million people with dyslexia and two million people with visual impairments such as partial sightedness or blindness, for whom reading printed words is difficult or impossible.

The Intel® Reader works by pointing it at a page of text, for example a book or a news paper, and taking a picture of it. The image is then converted into digital text and is read back aloud to the user. On its own, this is pretty cool but the device is a lot more flexible than that. It can also work in social settings – reading restaurant menus, grocery prices or the sports results, bringing independence and confidence to the user. If you had a lot of text to capture, a portable capture station is also available.

For the techies out there, some of the latest Intel technology is under the hood including an Intel® Atom™ processor, an Intel® Solid-State Drive and software developed on the Moblin Linux platform.

Both the British Dyslexia Association and the Royal National Institute of Blind People have announced their support of the Intel® Reader as an important advance in assistive technology.

More information on the Intel® and information on where to buy it are available at www.intel.co.uk/reader

What's in a name?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:24:44 GMT

Any newcomer to the world of remote health will undoubtedly be challenged by the variety of different names and labels used to describe the technology. These include Telehealth, Telecare, Telemedicine, eHealth and Connected Health and depending on who you talk to, you will get different interpretations of these.

So here’s where I stand on these:

· eHealth (or Connected Health): Health services, information and education delivered or enhanced through the internet and related technologies. This is the broadest of the labels used and eHealth encompasses all of the methods listed below.

· Telecare: The continuous, automatic and remote monitoring of real-time emergencies and lifestyle changes over time in order to manage the risks associated with independent living. Social alarms such door sensors, smoke alarms, flood detectors and personal alarm pendants (PERS) all fall into this category.

· Telehealth: Using communications networks to provide, access, and manage any type of health information or service. This name is commonly used to describe remote chronic disease management, with solutions such as the Intel® Health Guide.

· Telemedicine: This is a type of Telehealth and is often used to describe the activity performed specifically by a doctor, who uses IT and the Internet for the diagnosis of a patient in another location. This term is often applied to a specialist providing a remote consultation or a second opinion to a doctor somewhere else in the country or the world.

To add to the confusion, the European Commission use the term Telemedicine to cover the delivery of and healthcare services at a distance, through the use of Information and Communication Technologies. Additionally, another term – Telehealthcare – is starting to emerge blurring the lines between Telehealth and Telecare. For all of these reasons, it is very important to understand where all parties in a discussion on these topics stand so that some of the confusion is eliminated.

In a recent customer meeting, the fall-out of all of these different labels became blatantly clear to me. This person was interested in deploying a Telehealth solution for the purposes of chronic disease management. Her challenge however, was that she didn’t have a budget line item for Telehealth (or any other tele- or e- activities), and that she was constantly getting frustrated with new labels being applied to solutions that effectively just improved existing service delivery activities. Her recommendation was that industry should stop using new labels to describe these technologies, and rather position them as enhancements to current care delivery, allowing for much easier procurement by healthcare providers.

An interesting argument indeed – but do you agree?

More information on remote health in the UK is available in this White Paper – Chronic Care at the Crossroads

BREAKING NEWS - 'Nehalem' Effect Devastates Data Centers

craig.p.wallace@intel.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:37:45 GMT

Please enjoy this rather humorous video made by a YouTuber call 'ServerWhistleblower'. We don't know who you are but keep them coming!

'Nehalem' Effect Devastates Data Centers

Your IT Galaxy Team.

Irrational decisions in healthcare

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:12:10 GMT

Peter Ubel author of Free Market Madness, was today’s second keynote speaker and challenged the idea that an empowered and education consumer is always a good thing.

Ubel started out by posing the question if the idea of a free market, where increased demand for a product or a service causes costs to fall and the quality levels increase, could be applied to the healthcare industry.

However, one of the challenges is that humans are typically flawed decision makers and prone to poor judgement. He illustrated this with an example of where patients, who were educated about the relatively low risk of developing a particular cancer, were less likely to choose to have the regular tests for early detection. He believes that this is also true of clinicians, who are also likely to make irrational decisions. If something is new, expensive and scarce then doctors will likely choose it as the belief is that it must be better than something already on the market. Could this be one of the reasons for the spiralling cost of healthcare delivery?

All of us, whether patients or doctors, make decisions based not just on available information, but also under the influence of unconscious factors, and this has implications for healthcare policy makers. He made four key points:

- You can’t expect the free market to solve everything as there are lots of unconscious factors influencing outcomes

- We must move beyond comprehension alone – education does not solve the issue

- Persuasion should be used appropriately with honest labelling and through social marketing

- Utilise financial incentives by taxing unhealthy foods and subsidizing healthy food or fitness centres

Ubel concluded by stating that all of this must be done by balancing freedom and well-being, and by helping markets to do what they do best and restrain them from what they do worst.

It was a whirlwind tour through some interesting research but certainly a topic worthy of further reading.

Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare Delivery

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:40:13 GMT

In this morning’s opening keynote at the Partners Connected Health Symposium, Dr Jason Hwang, co-author with Clayton Christensen of the Innovator’s Prescription spoke about the application of disruptive innovation on the healthcare industry.

Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors. This disruption allows new consumers to begin to use the technology whereas in the past it was inaccessible to them. This can be seen in the computing industry where the technology has moved from mainframes to mini-computers to PCs and to smart-phones, which has also moved the location of the technology from a central location to being accessible anywhere it is required. This decentralization through disruption leads to increased accessibility but it is important to note that companies often add functionality through innovation faster than consumer wants or needs the technology

In healthcare this same move to centralize everything, can be seen with the co-location of multiple services and technologies all under the same roof in a big hospital. The emerging trend however is to move this care provision from a central location out into the community and into the home. This also means that different people will be able to deliver the care such as nurses and empowered patients themselves, supported by new technologies.

This in-turn requires us to look at the dominant business model in healthcare where everything is centralized on the general hospital. This implies that many different types of technology and specialities in one location. The business model then has to support all of these resources but with the number of hand-offs that result, it can be prone to error and forces increased costs to maintain profitability.

Hwang asserted that hospitals are expensive conflations of three specific types of business models:

1) Solution shops – typically very dependent on people offering diagnostic and intuitive activities on a fee for service basis

2) Value-added process businesses – typically process dependent where a certain task is repeated enough times to where it becomes possible to accurately predict the outcome, for a fee.

3) Facilitated Networks – where users, both providers and patients, transact and interact with one another on a fee for membership basis.

As disruption occurs in the healthcare industry, Hwang believes that a number of changes will occur to these business models

- Specialist hospitals will emerge to address the solution shops model, bringing together a number of different specialties to reach a diagnosis sooner

- Treatment centers focused on a particular procedure, e.g. heart by-pass, where technicians can be involved in delivering the treatment, rather than doctors, as they have been specifically trained on parts of the procedure and repeat it on a daily basis

- Social networking through sites such as PatientsLikeMe, empowering individuals to do more for their own care delivery

Dr. Hwang concluded however, that each of these new propositions will require new value networks to gain traction in the market and for this to happen, having the right partners will be key to success.

Robonurse - a new member of the family?

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:37:28 GMT

As part of a futurist session today, at the Partners Connected Health Symposium, Tandy Tower from Microsoft Robotics, proposed an idea that assistive care robots could become common place in many homes within the next 3-5 years. These robots would be developed in response the ageing demographics that are evident across the world and to address the shortage of caregivers available to meet the needs of this section of the population.

These robotic nurses or home care assistants, would be able to help with medication reminders, allow medical peripherals to be connected, support video consultations with a clinician and deliver social interaction opportunities with other people in a network. Another idea proposed was that these robots could help with coaching and rehabilitation therapy for patients who have suffered a stroke.

Tower believes that this technology could be available for less than $5000 but I don’t believe that cost will be the main barrier to deployment and adoption. A bigger challenge, in my opinion, will be the acceptance of a robotic humanoid moving around your home and constantly checking up on your actions. Would you have a robonurse in your home?

Will healthcare reform succeed?

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:36:28 GMT

The second keynote this morning was from James Mongan, MD, CEO of Partners Healthcare.

Within a few months there will likely be a bill signed on healthcare reform but Mongan believes that it will not have realised everything that was set out to be achieved. He asserts that the work on reform will continue for a number of years afterwards.

Despite the fact that there are huge numbers of uninsured, most still receive the treatment they need. What doesn’t happen though is that treatment for chronic conditions is not delivered in a preventative manner.

One proposal in the reform legislation is to introduce an Individual Mandate but Mongan asserts that this appears to be a new tax with another name. There may be restrictions on who actually pays this mandate but it doesn’t address the core need for insurance reform.

But what about the issue of controlling healthcare costs? Barriers to cost include the way costs are reimbursed and the lack of integration of the provider systems. With most items that you buy, you benefit immediately, but with healthcare payments you benefit later

It is likely that any new legislation will blend taxes, employer payments and individual payments but the key issue is the fairness of financing – who pays and how much? In Mongan's opinion, it needs to be a balance between individual liberty and justice for all.

US Healthcare Reform Challenges

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:09:49 GMT

Over the next two days, I’ll be blogging from the 2009 Connected Health Symposium, run by Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health, in Boston.

The opening keynote at this year’s symposium was delivered by Stuart Altman, Professor of National Health Policy at Brandeis University, who spoke on the topic of healthcare reform and some of the challenges it brings.

In 1971, US spending on healthcare delivery was $75 billion, or 7.5% of GDP but today this has reached $2.5 trillion or approximately 17% of GDP. Many people have tried to address this for years but 3 clear issues have emerged that need to be addressed:

1) Create a universal healthcare financing system

2) Develop programmes to reduce the rate of growth in healthcare spending

3) Improve the quality of care delivered

The current political discussions in the US try to address these issues and will likely reduce the overall federal spend but spend from other sectors may increase. These would include increased spending by states and increased payments for insurance by younger people.

Professor Altman then introduced what he called Altman’s Law: almost every powerful constituent group favours health reform but, if it is not their plan, they prefer the status quo. In the case of the current reform, the industry to see most negative impact will be the Insurance Companies – all other stakeholder groups will either get additional funding or stay the same, making it easier for the reform to succeed.

In conclusion he stated the need to change the payment and delivery system, through an appropriate but effective comparative effectiveness system that includes clinical and cost effectiveness components.

VM'09 -Death by powerpoint -help needed

webadmin@intel.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:20:04 GMT

I'm currently on a plane to Munich for our annual training event for the team where we will no doubt have some powerpoint fest (personally I prefer October fest!). I shouldn't knock it as the training is excellent, very interactive and well received by the team. However, I think we'll have a sweepstake about the total number of slides. I'm guessing 8 sessions a day * 30 slides each for 4 days is approx 960 slides. Personally, I'd really like to see 10 slides max in a 45 minutes presentation and have people talk to the slides rather than repeat verbatim what's on them. What are people thinking when they do that? That I can't actually read.

Now I'm on my soapbox - well actually I'm still on the plane which is delayed because of the storms - my 2nd gripe is that people cram as much on to the slides as possible. In fact, I've done some analysis of this in the last 30 seconds. The higher up the company structure one goes, the less cluttered the slides are. When you get to CxO level, there's normally some nice pictures and graphics, only 3 bullet points consisting of 3 words and the message is articulated really well - the slides tell a story rather than being a story to read. Others try and get as many words in 8 point font onto the slide as possible. Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan when it's used correctly - it's almost a victim of it's own success.

I don't think Intel is alone in this, and judging by some of the presentations I saw at VM'09 I know it isn't. Perhaps the industry should adopt a 10 slide rule. If it can't be explained in 10 slides, then either it's far too technical for my brain or the audience will fall asleep. Any tips out there on how to make presentations more fun, stimulating, interesting etc. or got any interesting death by powerpoint stories. Any takers for the largest number of slides in a deck?

I mentioned that I went to VM'09 last week at Earls Court. It was good to get out of the office and talk to some customers as well as hear and see what other industry players are doing. One thing that did catch my eye (and not just mine) was the Microsoft Surface demonstration. This looked like one of those table top pub games from yester-year (ok - I'm showing my age here). Totally interactive - no keyboard/mouse - you can resize photos just by making your thumb and index finger closer together. I'm sure it won't be long until this is in a form factor that can hang on the wall. [Caption competition anyone?]

I also went along to some of the presentations - with virtualisation being the theme of the show, I obviously have to write something about it. Paul D'Cruz talked about how Cisco had implemented virtualisation by adopting a unified data centre in their IT group. We've done something similar at Intel, so I was interested in a different perspective. [the Intel whitepaper can be found here: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3489 ]

On the storage side, Paul quoted a $70m cost avoidance over 4 years as a result of better utilisation of the storage. On the server side, there was a $20m cost avoidance with 75% of new servers being virtualised. The unified fabric saved $2m alone. The other topic Paul touched upon was standardising on x86 hardware - something that many IT Managers/CIO's are looking at in order to reduce costs.

Overall, an interesting show….now to write that keynote presentation in under 10 slides….

~iain