Cloudipedia – Cloud News

 New HealthCapsule^TM platform increases patient privacy by an order of magnitude 

MORGANTOWN, WV, JUNE 7, 2010: Virtual Global, a leading provider of enterprise cloud solutions, has released HealthCapsule™, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for Health IT that incorporates “Role-based Workflow,” an invention exclusively licensed from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for improving patient privacy.

Healthcare is undergoing a major shift in the United States, as healthcare organizations from coast to coast are implementing electronic health record (EHR) solutions to reduce risks and medical errors, while providing better access to vital patient information.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is rapidly accelerating the adoption of EHRs, and prompting new concerns about patient privacy and interoperability. Healthcare organizations of all types are affected. Mark Sheppard serves as the Director of Information Systems for LIFE Pittsburgh, a community-based alternative to nursing home care in Pittsburgh, PA. “We’re taking privacy very seriously as we grow, and we see this as an important way to improve efficiencies while ensuring the continued privacy of our program’s participants,” says Sheppard.

“The problem is a lot bigger than many people think,” said Cary Landis, Virtual Global CEO. “Most EHR systems today still allow hospital workers to look up any patient’s records, whether they’re involved in that patient’s case or not. They may look up their family members, friends, acquaintances, or even records of public figures.” John Barkley, a former NIST employee who invented the technology, added, “We see patient privacy as a rapidly growing concern as more healthcare organizations adopt EHR software.”

HealthCapsule™ uses “Role-based Workflow,” which Barkley invented and patented when he worked at NIST.  The platform restricts access to patient information based on a situational need. Instead of giving a healthcare worker 24×7 access to thousands of records under the assumption that they have broad authorization, this system gives that same healthcare worker momentary access to a single record or set of records that are relevant only to the case at hand. “We see potential for order-of-magnitude improvements,” said Landis. The privacy imposed by Role-based Workflow is a big win for patient privacy. It preserves the productivity and time-saving enhancements of other EHR systems, while also protecting against unnecessary abuse.

The HealthCapsule™ platform is based on the underlying TeamHost™ enterprise architecture, which was largely engineered under a 2006-2007 NASA grant at Glenn Research Center. The NASA-sponsored TeamHost™ architecture provides a common security model and online toolkit for rapidly deploying enterprise software systems on the cloud.

Since 2008, Virtual Global has received funding from the NIST Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phases I (a feasibility study) and II (the principal R&D study) to integrate Role-based Workflow into the HealthCapsule™ platform, and to commercialize the resulting special-purpose platform for applications in Health IT. The announcement comes as Virtual Global finalizes an exclusive license agreement for use of NIST’s “Role-based Workflow” patent for applications in Health IT. Virtual Global is now submitting proposals for Phase III support, which is a non-SBIR-funded commercialization phase that would facilitate efforts for federal organizations to access Role-based Workflow.

For more information about HealthCapsule™, visit http://www.ehealthcapsule.com

About Virtual Global:

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for building SaaS applications without programming; TeamLeader™, a project management 2.0 software for tracking and reporting on virtual teams in real-time; and cloudipedia.com, a website that brings cloud computing information to the masses. Since 1995, Virtual Global’s platform technologies have served commercial and federal customers worldwide with enterprise-class IT needs.

Life Science Leader, June 2010
Written by: Vijay Koduri

We’ve all heard considerable talk about the positive impact of the life sciences revolution — in terms of health, well-being, and even business. Yet, what may not be entirely visible is the revolution occurring inside life sciences companies. Many of these companies are evaluating their innovation and R&D processes with a critical eye to how the latest technologies can make them more efficient. And, quite a few are discovering that two specific technologies — cloud-based collaboration and enterprise search — can have a significant impact on research efficiency.

In many ways, this focus comes as no surprise. Life sciences companies work within some of business’ longest product development cycles. According to Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), developing a new drug takes between 12 and 15 years and can cost over $800 million. With a patent protection cycle of 20 years, each year matters — months and even days can affect the bottom line. In fact, Specialty Pharma conducted a detailed ROI analysis and concluded, “Time is worth about $4 million per business day in lost profits and $6 million in lost sales for a product with peak sales of $700 million.”

Furthermore, research professionals work in environments that have changed vastly over the last 20 years. Globalization and consolidation have shifted workflows, often bringing researchers and scientists from around the world together to work on shared projects. To facilitate productivity across various time zones, researchers need to be wired around the clock, from any location — their home, office, or even an airport lounge — and from any device, including their mobile phone. What’s more, researchers need good search tools so that they can easily find and leverage the work already conducted by fellow researchers around the world. The last thing a researcher would want is to spend three weeks repeating an experiment simply because they didn’t know that someone in their organization had already done that, but that they couldn’t find the results.

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR R&D DEPARTMENTS
From an IT standpoint, this changing work environment creates new requirements that IT systems designed one or two decades ago simply can’t support. For instance, most enterprise applications are still based on client/server technology, which requires a piece of software for that specific application to be housed on the access device, like a PC or a handheld. Client/server models carry inherent security risks since they require company data to be stored on the client device. If this device is lost or stolen (as 10% of corporate laptops are), corporate data can be compromised. In fact, 1,200 laptops are lost each week at LAX airport alone.

Fortunately, technology has advanced considerably in the past decade. Cloud computing and associated technologies now present a unique opportunity for R&D departments to leverage IT innovations designed for the modern workplace. Specifically, two technology categories can help increase the pace of R&D innovation — cloud-based collaboration and enterprise search. Both of these technologies, if implemented correctly, focus squarely on the user and provide researchers the ability to find information and collaborate much more effectively, without leaving any footprint whatsoever on the access device.

Many leading life sciences organizations are starting to discover the benefits of cloud-based collaboration. One example is Mind Research Network (MRN), a private nonprofit research foundation dedicated to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and brain injury. Nearly two years ago, MRN moved its entire staff to a cloud-based email and collaboration solution. A driving factor for this shift was the fact that its workforce was becoming increasingly mobile, with nearly all of its employees using laptops as their primary computers.

This increased mobility has opened up new opportunities for innovation and process improvement. In one project, for example, researchers needed to conduct research in remote locations using a mobile MRI. Being able to access cloud-based documents and update their research wherever they worked ensured that information was kept current and that all researchers had access to the latest information.

In another MRN project, researchers made extensive use of cloud-based video collaboration to observe a range of therapy sessions and evaluate the effectiveness of each. Because therapists and researchers were located across the country, project leads were concerned about the costs of setting up videoconferencing equipment for each session.

A breakthough occurred when they decided to leverage their cloud-based email system, which included free video chat capabilities, allowing researchers to remotely view the therapists’ sessions. Next, researchers provided input to the sessions into Web-based forms, instantly aggregating rankings and comments into a single, securely viewable spreadsheet. This simple solution not only minimized costs, it sped the time from concept to launch and significantly streamlined internal collaboration and result sharing.

Larger organizations are also realizing the benefits. A large California biotech company chose a cloud-based email and collaboration system two years ago. Since then, grassroots adoption among researchers collaborating on documents in the cloud has been strong, driven by the ability of multiple authors to work simultaneously on the same document. In fact, as they are starting to work more closely with third-party research firms, they look to their cloud-based collaboration system to further improve communications and to allow secure sharing within approved domains. Compared to a traditional IT solution, which would have required complex security integration with identity servers, proxy servers, and so forth, the cloud offers a secure workspace allowing safe collaboration with each third-party research firm.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEARCH TECHNOLOGY TO LIFE SCIENCES
Search is another evolving technology that is increasingly critical in the life sciences. According to IDC, knowledge workers can spend up to 25% of their time looking for information. Research scientists are no exception. Enterprise search tools can serve as a “one stop shop” for researchers, helping them find what’s needed across diverse information repositories without having to move between applications or content management systems. Since lab results, demographic data, and documents of all kind are often “siloed” in dedicated content repositories, old models had researchers interrupting their workflow to seek out different kinds of information through separate dashboards or interfaces.

Today, the right search solution allows seamless navigation across these repositories, giving researchers the information they need on-demand — regardless of format or storage system. As Essilor, a company in the opthalmic industry, learned, deploying the right search solution raised the levels of access — and performance — delivered by its vast knowledge bases. According to an Essilor project lead, “With our legacy content management system, we could easily create content but could not effectively find, share, or manage it. With our enterprise search solution, we were able to search across our entire knowledge base quickly and effectively.”

Ultimately, researchers are the lifeblood of life sciences companies. By deploying search and collaboration tools that focus on the researcher, companies can go a long way toward fostering a more open, knowledge-sharing culture. And in turn, a heightened level of knowledge sharing can increase not only the flow of ideas, but also the pace of bringing new innovations to market. No wonder the real life sciences revolution is occurring inside the company.

About The Author
Vijay Koduri is a senior product marketing manager for Google Enterprise, heading up the marketing for Google’s enterprise search product line. He has 15 years of seasoned experience in product marketing, strategic thinking, entrepreneurship, and business development.

About Virtual Global
Virtual Global is a provider enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. Since 1995, our technologies have helped commercial and federal customers worldwide with their enterprise IT needs.

By J. Nicholas Hoover – InformationWeek – May 13, 2010 04:14 PM

The federal government hopes moving the stimulus-tracking Web site to Amazon EC2 will allow the recovery board to save money and refocus on its core mission.

The federal government has moved Recovery.gov, the Web site people can use to track spending under last year’s $787 million economic stimulus package, to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platform, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board announced Thursday.

The move marks a milestone for the Obama administration’s cloud computing initiative. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said in a conference call with reporters it is the first government-wide system to move to a cloud computing infrastructure. It’s also the first federal government production system to run on Amazon EC2, Kundra said.

Cloud computing has been one of Kundra’s top priorities since becoming federal CIO in March 2009. In next year’s IT budget requests, for example, federal agencies will have to discuss whether they’ve considered cloud computing as an alternative to investing in on-premises IT systems.

The recovery board expects to save about $750,000 over the next two years — $334,000 this year and $420,000 in 2011 — by running Recovery.gov on EC2. This represents about 10% of the total $7.5 million the board has spent overall on the site so far, including development costs. “Significantly” more savings are expected over the long term, according to the recovery board.

Those savings will allow the recovery board to place more emphasis on uncovering and preventing waste, fraud, and abuse, recovery board chairman Earl Devaney said on the conference call. In addition, they will free up resources to allow Recovery.gov’s prime contractor, Smartronix, to focus on features and functionality instead of having to worry about keeping servers up and running.

“As the world’s largest consumer of information technology and as stewards of taxpayer dollars, the federal government has a duty to be a leader in pioneering the use of new technologies that are more efficient and economical,” Kundra said in a blog post aimed squarely at federal agencies. “By using cloud services, the federal government will gain access to powerful technology resources faster and at lower costs. This frees us to focus on mission-critical tasks instead of purchasing, configuring, and maintaining redundant infrastructure.”

Devaney said that the decision to go with Amazon EC2 to host the site was one made Smartronix, but that the decision to move to the cloud for Web hosting was made by the recovery board. “We had been having conversations with Smartronix about this for a while,” he said.

Security has been and remains one of the primary concerns holding federal agencies back from considering cloud computing. Before moving Recovery.gov to Amazon EC2, the recovery board sought and received assurances from Amazon that none of the Recovery.gov data would be stored in foreign countries, and went through the certification and accreditation required to be compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act, which regulates federal cybersecurity.

In fact, the recovery board’s press release says that by running the site on EC2, Recovery.gov’s security has actually improved by adding “greater protection against network attacks and real-time detection of system tampering.”

While NASA and other agencies have been testing EC2, Kundra said that Recovery.gov is the first production system running on Amazon Web Services.

“Building on AWS enables Recovery.gov to reap the benefits of the cloud — including the ability to add or shed resources as needed, paying only for resources used and freeing up scarce engineering resources from running technology infrastructure — without sacrificing operational performance, reliability, or security,” Adam Selipsky, VP of Amazon Web Services, said in a statement.

Other agencies have begun moving some IT systems to the cloud as well. For example, in April, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to use Salesforce.com for CRM in support of the implementation of electronic health records systems. The Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and General Services Administration are all considering moving to cloud-based e-mail.

However, the cloud transition remains in early stages. “This shift is not going to happen overnight, but this move represents one of the first bricks in the foundation,” Kundra said.

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Virtual Global is a provider enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. Since 1995, our technologies have helped commercial and federal customers worldwide with their enterprise IT needs.

May 10, 2010 — 12:09pm ET | By Neil Versel

As the Department of Veterans Affairs modernizes its successful but aging Veterans Health Information System and Technology Architecture (VistA) clinical system, an IT industry group is recommending that the department continue on its open-source track and offer the next version as an international standard for hospital EMRs.

The Industry Advisory Council, a group of 550 Washington-area technology companies that keeps an open dialogue with federal agencies, says the VA should stabilize the current version of VistA while the department develops a modernized system, following open-source and open-standards principles. The so-called VistA 2.0 should be managed by a not-for-profit foundation, the group suggests in a report to VA CIO Roger Baker.

“Through many hours of debate, compromise and collaboration, we not only produced a viable set of recommendations, but were unanimous in those recommendations,” Ed Meagher, chairman of the IAC VistA Modernization Working Group, said at a press conference last week, NextGov reports. “That we recommended an open-source solution is a real game changer from the business-as-usual approach to systems development,” added Meagher, a former VA deputy CIO.

The report calls for the VA to replicate the current VistA screen-by-screen and interface-by-interface, but on a more modern architecture, ans says the department should “harvest everything of value” from its proven system. The VA also should sponsor an open-source community to continue developing the software, the group says.
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Virtual Global is a provider enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. Since 1995, our technologies have helped commercial and federal customers worldwide with their enterprise IT needs.

MAY 10, 2010, 11:15 A.M. ET – By Benjamin Pimentel – WSJ

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Server sales related to cloud computing are expected to jump to $12.6 billion in the next five years as more businesses embrace the era of automated and virtualized data centers.

Server revenue for cloud computing in the public sector is projected to rise to $718 million in 2014 from $582 million in 2009, International Data Corp. (IDC) said in a Monday report. Meanwhile, server revenue for private-sector cloud market is expected to increase to $11.8 billion from $7.3 billion in the same period, IDC said.

Cloud computing enables companies to access computing power through a network instead of in-house data centers that have become increasingly more expensive and complex to set up and maintain.

Another emerging trend in the corporate IT market is virtualization, in which businesses tap disparate computer systems on their premises or in hosted data centers as one network and use that computing capacity based on needs.

“Now is a great time for many IT organizations to begin seriously considering this technology and employing public and private clouds in order to simplify sprawling IT environments,” IDC analyst Katherine Broderick said in a statement.

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Virtual Global is a provider enterprise-class cloud computing solutions. Since 1995, our technologies have helped commercial and federal customers worldwide with their enterprise IT needs.