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Mobile Health Apps, Part 2: Making Life Safer and Sweeter April 21, 2011 
For years, industry leaders have predicted the Year of Mobile -- but that was back when those in the know thought of mobile in terms of a trend. Trends have peaks. Those crests are marked by a "Year Of" label that largely heralds a forthcoming decline. Mobile will have no peak, despite its growing presence in our daily lives, because it is not a trend.
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Why Cloud Computing Changes the Game for HIPAA Security April 19, 2011 
Information security pros working in the healthcare sector quite often experience a high degree of frustration and anxiety when it comes to the Security Rule's "addressable" implementation specifications. As any healthcare provider will tell you, the addressable requirements of the security rule tend to be among the more difficult to meet and more technically focused of the mandates with the Security Rule.
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There's No Sense Stressing About the End of Privacy April 15, 2011 
After a long period of unfulfilled hype, there finally appears to be some real momentum behind a nationwide movement to electronic medical records -- and that's just one of a series of recent developments that have caused me to change my attitude about online privacy. In this digital age, there really is no way to maintain any real semblance of anonymity.
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Mobile Health Apps, Part 1: Taking Your Life Into Your Own Handhelds April 14, 2011 
With every passing day, smartphones are melding into our personal lives -- almost without our notice. One of the most striking changes in how the ever-tinier handhelds are augmenting our lives is through mobile apps -- most especially healthcare apps. At first, healthcare apps seemed mainly a novelty.
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Cellphones and the Brain: Faith, Hope and Calamity March 29, 2011 
It's now official: Everything that the Federal Communications Commission has ever told us about the safety of cellphones is almost certainly wrong. When the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse recently reported that simply holding a turned-on cellphone next to the ear for 50 minutes caused significant changes to brain chemistry, many stalwarts in the scientific community were stunned.
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Steve Jobs Waves Off Radiation-Detecting App March 25, 2011 
An app that detects non-ionizing radiation and could answer questions about mobile phones and cancer risk is caught between a curt two-word rejection from Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Japan's ongoing nuclear radiation crisis. "No interest," Jobs told Tawkon founder and CEO Gil Friedlander in an email. Despite his dismissal, however, Tawkon just released the app for jailbroken iPhones on Cydia.
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Beyond Mobile: A Computer the Size of a Grain of Sand March 23, 2011 
When so-called "minicomputers" first appeared in the 1970s, they supplanted mainframes on a scale of size and cost expressed by Bell's Law, which holds that a new class of smaller, cheaper computers comes along roughly every 10 years. Personal computers, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets followed, and the latest entry was displayed last month at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.
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'Smart Bed' Could Give Patients a Lift When They Need It March 16, 2011 
"Smart" computerized hospital beds may become a standard of care if negotiations between John LaCourse -- professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Hampshire -- and hospital bed manufacturers bear fruit. An algorithm LaCourse invented programs the smart bed to communicate with and respond to medical devices that monitor a patient's condition, permitting fast, automatic responses.
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Multitasking and the Brain: The War on Productivity March 08, 2011 
As tasks continue to pile up in my already hectic schedule, I have little choice but to jam more and more activities into the same crowded time spans. The morning commute, a once luxurious gap in time, seems to be increasingly plugged by business calls, urgent text messages and, in some cases, even the morning shave. Mounting evidence suggests, however, that multitasking places a significant damper on productivity.
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Newest Computer Controller: Your Eyes March 02, 2011 
Aptly named Tobii Technology -- spelled with not one, but two "i's" -- unveiled the world's first eye-controlled laptop at CeBIT Tuesday.Developed with computer manufacturer Lenovo, the laptop uses Tobii's eye-tracking technology to enhance interaction at a glance. Eyeing points on the screen releases information from icons and gadgets, zooms pictures and maps, switches between open windows, and browses email and documents.
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Apple's March Madness: In Like a Lion February 26, 2011 
If you nauseate easily at the prospect of non-stop Apple announcements, right now might be a good time to take a long hike in the woods, weather permitting. Apple's given developers a brand-new preview of OS X Lion; next week we'll see an announcement that's almost certainly going to be all about iPad 2; and there are rumors that iOS 4.3 is just around the corner.
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Avaya Helps Hospitals Keep Closer Tabs on Patients February 25, 2011 
Avaya has made enhancements to several Avaya Healthcare Solutions products -- adding tools to automate patient outreach for chronic disease management and follow-up. Built on Avaya's workplace collaboration and patient care lines, the new products were unveiled this week at the 2011 Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition. "Avaya has been selling into the healthcare space for a while," said Sanjeev Gupta, head of the Avaya Healthcare Practice.
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Your Brain on Cellphones: Effects Present, Consequences Unknown February 24, 2011 
An issue that periodically makes its way into public discourse -- the impact and possible dangers to brain development and health posed by the ubiquitous use of cellphones -- is being revisited thanks to a newly published scientific study in JAMA. However, rather than offering any definitive answers, the new research, led by Nora D. Volkow of the National Institutes of Health, raises more questions.
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The Anti-Laser's Light-Swallowing Act February 24, 2011 
Lasers amplify light. The name itself is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." It's only natural then that the world's first anti-laser cancels light, and could spark applications in optical supercomputing and radiation oncology. "Our device is a laser that works backwards, absorbing light at specific frequencies rather than emitting it," said Yale University physics professor Hui Cao.
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Watson Graduates From Game Contestant to Physician Assistant February 18, 2011 
Fresh from a super-sized "Jeopardy" victory where it looked suspiciously like President Obama's ubiquitous teleprompter, IBM supercomputer Watson is about to become Dr. Watson, M.D. assistant.
A joint venture will combine IBM's question-answering, language-processing, and machine-learning capabilities with Nuance Healthcare's speech-recognition and clinical-language understanding solutions to assist physicians in patient diagnosis and treatment.
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SmartWatch Could Serve as 'Seismograph' for Seizure Detection February 01, 2011 
Caregivers of people with epilepsy and related disorders harbor a major fear: that a seizure could occur without their knowledge. Now, a wristwatch-style device aptly named the "SmartWatch" can detect seizures and alert caregivers within seven to 10 seconds, explained Stanford University pediatric neurology professor Donald Olson, M.D., one of the technology's developers.
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How IT Is Changing Healthcare for Better and for Worse January 27, 2011 
Healthcare technology has really made incredible advances over the last several years. However, while there is an app for almost everything, much still seems to be stuck in the Fred Flintstone era. Doctors still carry around thick folders with years of patient history. Yesterday, this was the only way to capture all of a patient's information.
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Scientists Crack Genetic Code for Rare Cancer That Beset Steve Jobs January 20, 2011 
Johns Hopkins University scientists have deciphered the genetic code for a rare type of pancreatic cancer -- neuroendocrine or islet cell tumor -- that Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the world he'd been diagnosed with back in 2004. The discovery explains many of the cancer's troubling, highly variable properties and suggests new treatment approaches.
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Study: One in 10 Young Gamers Could Become Pathological Addicts January 18, 2011 
Frantic parents concerned about their children's digital habits have found a new ally in the form of a study published in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics. Roughly 10 percent of young video gamers suffer a pathological addiction to their games, the researchers found.
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Clouds Go Vertical January 14, 2011 
I'd like to take this space to elaborate on one of the predictions for 2011 I made last month. I suggested that community clouds aimed at specific vertical markets and supply chain relationships would become more prevalent, as various organizations recognized the value of sharing cloud resources and services with their peers.
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