On the Prioritization of Electronic Health Records
July 22, 2012
It looks like the medical information revolution is proceeding a little slower than some of us would like, we can see from eWeek’s “U.S. News Tracks ‘Meaningful Use’ in ‘Most Connected Hospital’ Rankings.” The article starts out with good news, quoting U.S. News’ editor Steve Sternberg as stating, “The hospitals on the ‘Most Connected’ list this year lead all others in making the transition to fully integrated EHR’s [electronic health records].” Great!
There were a couple of criteria for facilities to be considered for the “Most Connected” list: First, they had to meet the federal government’s guidelines on “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs) by July 10. So far so good. They also had to appear in either the U.S. News “Best Hospitals” and/or “Best Children’s Hospitals” list or be considered “high-performing” in at least one medical specialty. We have no problem with including that criteria for appearance on the “Most Connected” list.
However, consider the creation of that “Best Hospitals” list itself. Weren’t electronic health records supposed to be a key part of modernizing and improving care? We thought so, but that criteria didn’t even make it into the ranking factors for that particular list. Writer Brian T. Horowitz notes:
“‘Hospitals’ adoptions of EHR’s isn’t a factor in the Best Hospitals 2012-13 rankings,’ U.S. News reported. ‘That’s because EHR usage, while booming, hasn’t been proven to consistently advance patient care.’
“Although they haven’t ‘consistently’ advanced care, EHR’s could make patients safer and care more efficient, U.S. News added.”
Why yes, yes they could. Every hospital should be using them, and we feel it should be a basic qualification for a facility to be named one of the finest on any list. Oh, well, maybe next year.
Cynthia Murrell, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
One Vision of the Future of Enterprise Architecture
July 22, 2012
SYS-Con Media recently published an article detailing the impact of Cloud, big data analytics and mobility on enterprise architecture in the article “The New Enterprise Reference Architecture.”
For those who do not already know, the term Enterprise Architecture refers to the process of moving business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.
This article is based on the assumption that a lot has changed over the past couple of years regarding the ways that enterprises chart their enterprise architecture. It provides readers with a diagram of “the new enterprise reference architecture” along with accompanying text providing a detailed explanation of the role of each layer.
When discussing the enterprise search layer, the article states:
“While the data virtualization layer provides a common layer to access all the disparate data sources, we still needed robust searching capabilities on top of it and hence this layer is important. Some of the attributes of this layer are :
- Keyword based search
- Auto Correction
- Thesaurus expansion
- Relevance Ranking
This layer works closely with the context aware content layer. Products like Microsoft FAST Search Engine, Google Search Engine will fall under this category.”
While the new enterprise architecture is more complex than the old one, it also is filled with more possibilities. Our only question is what happened to enterprise search as a platform?
Jasmine Ashton, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
New Words for Search Experts
July 22, 2012
A happy quack to business Insider. The collection of terms in “20 Hilarious Programming Jargon Phrases You Should Use When Talking To Engineers” will revivify search, analytics, and content marketing. I look forward to search vendors reinventing themselves as predictive analytics, business intelligence, and customer support solutions companies crafting this type of marketing collateral:
- In a PowerPoint, “We use Jenga code to activate our special features for gold status customers.” Translation: You change one thing and the system implodes. You call us and we fix it over the weekend and outside of normal work hours billing at three times the normal support fee.
- On a blog, “Our common law feature activates when a user modifies a report template.” Translation: If you recolor one slice of a pie chart, you will lose your work. Forever.
- In a user forum as an answer to a question: “The hydra operation automatically introduces additional dependencies which may lead to an opportunity to restore the data set.” Translation: fix one thing and break two more.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your marketing engines.
Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
Another Player in the Real Time Operational Intelligence Game
July 21, 2012
A business questing for success in today’s evolving market knows real players play the real time operational intelligence game, and stakes are high. A company has to choose the right pieces to utilize and there are quite a few choices available.
Veteran dashboards may have some competition, as another player just entered the game according to AppGap’s article, “JackBe Extends its Real-Time Operational Intelligence Offering.” Will they play for keeps?
The article threw in lots of interesting screenshots, but the jest was JackBe is offering a dashboard. That doesn’t make them stand out, but what might is Presto.
Presto remote monitoring shows potential for growth, as:
“This can be monitoring turbines, large engines, smart grids, data center storage, Twitter feeds and machine-to-machine monitoring. The goal is to provide more self-service for business users. JackBe Presto allows a tech savvy business person to create and set up dashboards that aggregate data from multiple sources. The goal is to allow the business side to do 80% of the work and leave the 20% of real tough stuff to the IT guys.”
The real gamble is… not much was mentioned about costs and resources (human and machine) for the system. What JackBe is offering sounds good and almost like the Fast Search & Transfer of yesteryear. For now, they are just another player in the Real Time operational intelligence game… but it is their move.
Jennifer Shockley, July 21, 2012
Did Google Clobber Microsoft or Did Microsoft Clobber Microsoft?
July 21, 2012
I am okay with Google becoming the new Microsoft and IBM. What I find interesting is that the dominance of Google is splashing over the neighbors’ lawns. Navigate to “How Google Clobbers Microsoft.” The story explains that Google has productivity software, better email, smartphones, and social media. Microsoft, on the other hand, has none of these gems.
My view is that Google entered the market for search when other search vendors were chasing portals. Now Google is a portal and an advertising company. The virtues of Google can be translated to one simple business proposition: monetizing eyeballs via advertising.
Microsoft is a software company anchored in MS DOS and the 1980 computer revolution. Google is a different animal, anchored in the Wild West of online advertising. The rules are made in gun fights, city slicker.
Microsoft, in my view, has tried to respond. Due to its management, Microsoft has been its own nemesis. We can attribute many things to Google and Google attributes many things to Google as well. The demise of Microsoft, in my opinion, is due to Microsoft. Google may be one factor, and some Googlers may assert that it is the primary factor. I don’t agree. Advertising and Google’s online services are not killing Microsoft. One needs only look at Microsoft to see the cause of the natural decline of a business entity. Exogenous factors exist. But the trick is to isolate the major factor.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
SLI Turns Up the Volume
July 21, 2012
The beat goes on, but there for a moment SoundStage customers were having trouble finding specific beats. According to SLI System’s release “SoundStage Direct Connects Audiophiles to Hard-to-Find Vinyl LPs Using Site Search from SLI Systems” SoundStage switched to SLI and got their search rhythm back in tune.
SoundStageDirect is an online seller of new and reissue vinyl LPs along with LP turntables and other stereo equipment. They have one of the largest selections of vinyl LP’s online and cater to LP enthusiasts on an international level. Making sure their cliental has efficient, user friendly search is a top priority, and non-relevant query results were becoming an issue.
Since the switch to SLI, SoundStage has seen online conversions and revenue increase more than five times per visit. They exclaimed:
“Right away, we could see that search results were much more closely related to keyword terms, and because Learning Search learns from the way our customers search for LPs and applies that information to future searches, results become even more relevant over time. We also now offer search suggestions, which help customers find LPs from similar musicians, which can motivate them to buy more.”
The technology created by SLI Systems provides their clients with a full-service site search, including merchandising, navigation and user-generated SEO. .Music is the universal language of mankind, and SLI just turned up the volume for SoundStage.
Jennifer Shockley, July 21, 2012
Everything is A OK with Larry Page, Google, and Motorola
July 20, 2012
Short honk: I read “Google’s Nikesh Arora: Larry Page Lost His Voice, but Continues to Run the Company.” Reassurances about Mr. Page’s health appeared along with the financial reports. Google up and Motorola. Well, Motorola, a loss, maybe. My thought:
Hamlet:
Madam, how like you this play?Queen:
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Accenture and FinTech Showcase Tech for Wall Street
July 20, 2012
Big Data spread about the New York stage, but the spotlight was on companies that provide data solutions at the FinTech’s Innovation Demo Day. Those in attendance got a first class viewing of the Wall Street supported entrepreneurs who are at the top of the technology class in the financial industry’s innovation and investment solutions.
The FinTech lab is like the annual innovation talent show where the chosen few strut their technology. However, according to Equities article “Banks and Venture Capital Firms Focus on the Digital Frontier at New York’s 2012 FinTech Innovation Lab Demo Day” the companies participate in mentorship programs for 12 weeks with the world’s leading executives beforehand.
We learned:
The six entrepreneurs demonstrated their solutions to dozens of financial industry, venture capital and technology executives, following a 12-week mentorship program with executives from the world’s leading banks and venture firms. The Lab was created by the New York City Investment Fund, the economic development arm of the Partnership for New York City, and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to help sustain and grow New York City’s role as the global leader in financial services and to support job creation in its technology sector. This year’s Demo Day was held at the Credit Suisse headquarters in Manhattan.
The news story highlighted Digital Reasoning:
Digital Reasoning develops and markets solutions that provide ‘automated understanding’ for big data. Their vision is that software should be able to ‘read’ and understand text as humans do, in context. This vision is realized in the flagship solution Synthesys, an application-ready platform for making sense of unstructured data at scale. Digital Reasoning currently serves a number of US Government agencies and is applying its technology in the Financial Services sector to protect banks and their customers.
Will New York become the next hot spot for technology in the US? Accenture embraces this concept.
Jennifer Shockley, July 20, 2012
EntropySoft Offers Resellers Reward Without Risk
July 20, 2012
EntropySoft just added another reseller, and why not, they are easy to sell. If you are unfamiliar, EntropySoft provides connectors that act as standalone libraries, transforming any native content application APIs into a normalized interface for easy interoperability. CMS Wire’s article “Integro to Sell EntropySoft Connectors, Hub as Part of Email Management Offering” explains why so many are drawn towards the convenience of EntropySoft.
Wherever data travels, it cannot hide. These connectors act almost like a universal remote and move data bi-directionally between content repositories. They provide an ease of access system utilizing search capabilities that can locate content wherever it has been stored.
According to the press:
“EntropySoft has been pushing its Content Hub and Content Connector technology so much so that, at this point, it has most of the major content repositories covered. Today, though, it adds another one with a partnership that will see Integro selling both technologies as part of its Email Manager. The combination provides a product that will be able to connect the content of those email messages with the one or more enterprise CMSes that any given company might be using.”
This data duet will have better content organization and be able to offer reduced costs around email management. There will also be limited exposure to legal and compliance issues from unmanaged email messages. EntropySoft rebuked the statement “the higher the risk the greater the reward” by providing rewards without risk. It is no surprise Integro signed on as a reseller.
Jennifer Shockley, July 20, 2012
Microsoft Acquires Yammer to Develop Social Business Features for SharePoint
July 20, 2012
Byron Acohido discusses Microsoft’s recent Yammer acquisition in his USAToday.com article, “Microsoft’s Yammer Deal May Cost Too Much, Come Too Late.”
The author comments on the development:
Microsoft has been trying futilely for years to popularize social networking within SharePoint, its collaboration server that comes bundled with versions of its Office productivity suite sold to large businesses. By acquiring Yammer, the software giant is attempting to ‘fill a gap,’ says Wesley Miller, analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. Similar to Facebook, Yammer connects users and claims more than 200,000 corporate customers, including Ford, Orbitz Worldwide and 7-Eleven.
Yammer will come onto Microsoft as a new division and David Sacks, a former PayPal exec and Yammer founder, will stay on as CEO. Social business is no doubt becoming a ubiquitous topic in the enterprise search world. To tap into new SharePoint possibilities, consider a third party solution to complete your enterprise search system.
We like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Managing director Michael Hadrian explains the Mindbreeze solution:
Fabasoft Folio Cloud enables quick, secure and mobile collaboration both internally and between international companies. Business processes with customers and partners cannot be realized any quicker or more cost effectively…This enables worldwide connected collaboration and secure data exchange in protected team rooms.
For a complete search solution with the power of information pairing, check out the full suite of solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, July 20, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
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