Health-related Technology poised for a big boost

Recent spending bills have authorized $19 billion to accelerate the use of computerized medical records in doctors' offices. The legislation calls for incentive payments of more than $40,000 -- spread over the next few years -- to physicians who buy and use Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.

Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine found -- in a government-sponsored survey -- that about 17% of the country's physicians are using computerized patient records. The incentives, then, are a significant part of the government's effort to expand their use to the other 83%. Market leaders in EHR technology, such as GE Healthcare, Health MedX, and eClinicalWorks are no doubt ramping up efforts to take advantage in this change in the technology landscape. Professional services providers should follow suit, primarily by preparing small-market solutions to serve the 1-10 physician doctors' office.

Why?
Because over 75% of the country's doctors practice medicine in offices with 10 or fewer physicians. These small practices have been hit hard by a number of economic factors, not least the increases in insurance costs over the past 15 years. Yet, they will still want to take advantage of EHR systems, especially now with this incentive in place.

An EHR provider who can offer this capability in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, while successfully addressing security and performance concerns, will have a distinct advantage in the overall market. Can a cloud-based EHR work? I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.

New SAN technology - faster response time

A new technology is on the horizon that could provide a significant boost to the Storage Area Network (SAN) market. It's called Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and it is expected to hit the streets later this year. All of the major players are developing the necessary infrastructure, including chipsets, network adapters and switches capable of handling 10 gigabits per second of data transfer.

According to an article published today at InformationWeek, Cisco has developed 10-Gpbs capable switches in 20- and 40-port models, and is expanding the product line with chassis/blade versions for delivery later in 2009. Intel, Emulex and QLogic are already shipping 10-Gpbs network interface cards designed to work with these Cisco devices. And other manufacturers are building new lines of products to support these developments.

The significance of this is found in the way today's businesses are exploiting their data. Contemporary business applications, both internal and customer-facing, require rapid access to ever-increasing amounts of data. Think about the predictive modeling that goes into Amazon's "recommendations" and expand it exponentially. That kind of analytical power will create unacceptable response times using conventional data access technology. It's why fiber channel SAN devices were originally developed. By enhancing the capability of Ethernet to transport data more speedily from the SAN to the application server (that's doing all the work), we can make more sophisticated analysis available to all types of users. This will improve decision-making, enhance customer experiences, and make SAN technology more flexible and adaptable to changing business requirements.

InformationWeek Reports: Tech Strategy (Link requires registration)

Microsoft continues its pursuit of Google

The current standings in Internet search are ...

1. Google -- 58.8%
2. Yahoo! -- 22.2%
3. Microsoft - 9.8%

Based on my years' of observing the Redmond, WA company, they don't like to be second place at all, much less in third place. Once they set their sites on a competitive target, they normally catch up within 2 years. For instance, Lotus 1-2-3 was the de facto spreadsheet standard for almost a decade. Then Excel rendered it irrelevant. The same can be said for WordPerfect. For years, SQL Server was not even part of the enterprise database engine conversation. It was Oracle, IBM, or nothing. But Microsoft rolled up their sleeves and turned MS SQL Server into a robust and scalable platform.

For whatever reason, they just haven't been able to translate that track record into search engine supremacy. Even as the various installations of Internet Explorer come pre-configured to use Microsoft's search engine, Google still dominates the market. Certainly, it's no accident that "Google" is now virtually a verb in the English language.

So it makes me wonder about a recent lead from Microsoft that internal staff are being encouraged to test out Kumos, their next search engine. One of the bloggers at the Wall Street Journal recounts an internal memo that states:

In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes. These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today.

I don't know about you, but I find these numbers to be unrealistic. If search queries were that unsuccessful, then they would not be the most common method of finding information on the web. And "Google" would definitely NOT have reached the status of Kleenex, Xerox and Band-aid in the American lexicon.

Obviously, Microsoft believes there is real value in being the search engine of choice. But I'm not so sure it's worth the development, marketing and support costs. Google has become a habit for nearly 60% of users. And they earned that position by being the first to market, and by producing consistently good results.

Articles from the Wall Street Journal Online (links may require registration):

• Digits blog @ WSJ
• Microsoft begins search engine testing

Microsoft Internal Memo: All Things D

Microsoft Corp.: MSFT (NASDAQ)
Google, Inc.: GOOG (NASDAQ)
Yahoo! Inc. YHOO (NASDAQ)

Broadband nears saturation in US

There are clear signs that broadband adoption is nearing its saturation point in the United States. According to Steve Rago, an analyst with iSuppli, new subscriber additions amounted to 3.1 million in 2008 million, down 56.1 percent from 6.5 million in 2007. Since economic conditions worsened so dramatically in the 3rd and 4th quarters, it's tempting to attribute such a slowdown to the recession. But remember two things. First, the early part of the year was fairly robust, with no talk of layoffs, credit crises, or even skyrocketing oil prices. Secondly, the bundling of service offerings by cable and phone companies, which made broadband very consumer-friendly, really took off in 2005. Nowadays, the coupling of cable and internet is -- almost -- a foregone conclusion. And that type of mindset is normally indicative of a highly mature product.

So, over the next 18 months I think we can expect that internet access fees for consumers will become more competitive... especially with fiber offerings from the phone companies (like FiOS) expanding into more and more neighborhoods. We can expect to see more information-oriented content being delivered to end-users directly from their web sites, bypassing -- to a limited extent -- traditional media ... especially television. This is different from marketing content, and I suspect consumers will reject over-the-top marketing pitches that show up on their computer screens.

And finally, information content that is truly interactive will gain tremendous traction very quickly. Contrast your computer-use posture with your television viewing posture. We even use different vocabulary: We watch TV... but we use the computer.

So we need to focus some creative energy on building applications that our customers can use to actually do business. Doing so will do more for customer loyalty than all the promotions, call centers, and CRM applications combined.

More information about broadband adoption: The Broadband S Curve