Archive from August, 2010
Aug 9, 2010 - Cloud Computing News    Comments Off

Enterprise Cloud Computing for Your Small Business

Friday, August 6, 2010 by Sidney Angelos

Some small business owners mistakenly believe that enterprise cloud computing is something that benefits only large corporations. In fact, the small business often has much more to gain from the cloud.  Since many startups and small businesses are strapped for cash, it makes sense for them to move to the cloud and avoid paying a large upfront investment in hardware and software.

With an enterprise cloud computing platform, the provider from whom you are “renting” the service will typically handle all maintenance and upgrade costs. If additional servers are required, the provider is the one who buys them. Reducing capital expenditures gives you more cash to use for other expenses, such as marketing, that can help your business to grow.

You never have to worry about running out of storage, because you are renting whatever storage space you need from the provider. You can adjust the amount you need as your business expands, and it is more or less instantly available, without the need to purchase hardware and configure it before you can use it. Cloud computing is scalable and flexible, so it can easily accommodate your business’s peak periods or steady growth.

Cloud computing allows small companies to have access to the same applications as the large corporations. Many of these are simply impractical for a smaller operation to purchase, either because of the expense or because they will be outdated long before a significant return on investment can be realized. Cloud-based applications are extremely flexible and can be tailored to your business’s needs, allowing you to get all the valuable the features without the expense.

You will also have access to your data from any location. All you need is an Internet connection. This means that whether you at home or on the road, you are not cut off from your information. The same is true for all of your authorized users, who no longer must be at their desks to log in to the program.

Back ups and disaster recovery are handled by the provider as well. You no longer have to worry about losing your data should your building suffer a fire or flood. Trips to safety deposit boxes to store your offsite back ups are also eliminated.

Qiligo, an Atlanta-based SEO firm, moved from in-house Microsoft Office to a cloud-based platform when CEO Rick Batchelor added a new staff member and realized he would need to shell out several hundred dollars to obtain another license of Office. He lists the advantages as fewer support problems, which translates to lower cost and increased productivity; ease in sharing documents with clients and offsite employees; better organization; and the ability to access data from mobile devices.

If you add up all that you are paying for software and additional licensing fees, the space to store your data, and the cost of an IT staff, you may find that enterprise cloud computing makes sense for your small business. Whether you opt for a completely integrated program that combines accounting functions, customer service, sales data integration and lead management, or a limited application to share spreadsheets and documents, the chances are that you will realize significant savings and be able to grow your business with ease.

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Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; 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.

Aug 5, 2010 - Cloud Computing News    2 Comments

Adoption and Meaningful Use of EHRs – The Journey Begins

 August 5th, 2010

by: David Blumenthal and Don Berwick

Editor’s Note: The post below is by David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and Don Berwick, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

On July 13, with the issuance of two regulations defining and supporting “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs), our nation began in earnest its journey toward ubiquitous and effective use of health information technology. In considering the significance of this moment, it is useful to remember the events and energies that have brought us to this starting point, and to understand the many different elements that will support this initiative. 

The proximate event leading us to the July 13 announcement was the enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, in February 2009. This act makes available unprecedented resources to support the nation’s transition to EHRs. In the months since its enactment, extensive preparations have been made. These constitute the operational supports for a multiyear, multiphase campaign of EHR adoption and use. But behind these preparations lies a longer and deeper history that has prepared us to seize this moment.

It was six years ago that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) was created. The recognition of the need for a federal leadership role reflected a growing professional and bipartisan consensus regarding the potential benefits of health information technology (IT). In the intervening years, we have also seen an increasing understanding of both the opportunities and the barriers to the dissemination of electronic health information systems.

Of even greater importance, it was a decade ago that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published findings regarding safety and quality of health care in America in a pair of groundbreaking studies: To Err Is Human and The Quality Chasm. Those findings altered the nation’s understanding of its health care system and the results it was achieving, as well as highlighting the great potential for improvement. The IOM reports played an important part in illustrating both the need for improved information systems in health care and the potential for electronic data to help fill that need.

Finally, it has been more than 20 years since pioneering health care institutions began developing early digital systems to support clinicians and improve patient care. Some of the successes and the failures along that road are well-known; others made their contribution with less notice. All of them deserve our appreciation. Both of the authors are beneficiaries of those efforts; both of us are able to testify now to the potential of health IT because we benefited in our practice of medicine from the efforts of early adopters and EHR technology developers.

This brief history demonstrates that our nation has undergone a long learning process in preparation for the initiative we are now undertaking. A review of the pages of Health Affairs itself would reveal a layered progression of discovery and understanding. For some years, we have reviewed the evidence and considered the questions: “Is the technology ready for significant national investment?” and “How is such investment to be made?”

HITECH: Answering The Questions

Congress answered those questions in HITECH, not only by providing significant new resources, but equally importantly by creating a multifaceted structure of standards, supports, and protections that reflect the learning of many years. Since enactment of HITECH, the ONC, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), other federal and state agencies, and a myriad of stakeholders have been working to assemble and launch the many elements of a national EHR initiative.

First, Congress found that universal adoption and meaningful use of EHRs can indeed yield unique and substantial benefits that are urgently needed in our health care system—to improve individual and public health, support providers in the delivery of care, empower patients, and improve cost-effectiveness. At the same time, the implementation of health IT must be synergistic with other efforts. A modernized health IT system will be a resource for the innovation, spread of ideas, rewards for excellence, patient empowerment, and transparency that are all envisioned in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

To help achieve those benefits, HITECH authorized significant federal expenditure over a ten-year period: up to an estimated $27 billion in incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to support clinicians and hospitals in the adoption and use of EHRs. This projected federal spending recognizes both the real financial challenges that providers face in acquiring EHR systems, as well as the potential benefits to the nation as a whole from such investment.

Second, Congress made clear that HITECH’s incentive payments are not intended merely to support acquisition of EHR technology for its own sake. Simple digitalization of information does not produce the benefits we seek. Instead, as outlined by the law, it is the “meaningful use” of EHR systems that creates new value—including the capacity to make a patient’s information available when and where it is needed, and the capacity to improve patient safety and quality of care. To achieve those goals for the meaningful use of EHRs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed three companion regulations: 

Third, HHS continues to build the protections necessary for an EHR-based health care system. Privacy and security are the bedrock of building trust, a “must-have” component for the success of health IT. On July 8, the HHS Office for Civil Rights announced a proposed rule strengthening protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The proposed rule would expand individuals’ right to access their information and restrict certain disclosures of protected health information to health plans; extend the application of important privacy and security requirements to the business associates of entities already covered under HIPAA; establish new limitations on the use and disclosure of protected health information for marketing and fund-raising purposes; and prohibit the sale of protected health information without patient authorization.

Finally, Congress provided a variety of supports to assist providers in adopting and using EHRs, and to help enable EHR technology to keep moving forward: 

  • The Health Information Technology Extension Program ($643 million). A nationwide network of Regional Extension Centers (RECs) will provide technical assistance to clinicians, especially those who provide primary care services in smaller practices. Clinicians in such practices deliver the majority of primary care services but have the lowest rates of EHR adoption and the least access to resources to help them implement and use EHRs. The RECs’ goal is to provide outreach and support services to at least 100,000 high-priority primary care providers within two years. A Health IT Research Center will also provide support materials, especially to clinicians serving patient populations with special needs. 
  • The State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program ($564 million). This grant program is helping states to rapidly build capacity for exchanging health information. The ability to exchange information is vital to realizing the benefits of EHRs, and state leadership is essential to achieving this. 
  • The Health IT Workforce Training Program ($118 million). There is a national shortage of health IT professionals who can help clinicians and hospitals achieve meaningful use. The workforce training program will support education of health IT personnel, including curriculum development, funds for community college programs, and competency examinations. 
  • The Beacon Community Program ($235 million). This grant program has identified leading communities where health and IT goals are being combined to demonstrate improved health and care results. They will focus on achieving measurable health and efficiency improvements over a compressed time frame, and they will provide lessons that can be transferred to other communities in the United States. 
  • The Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program ($60 million). This grant program will fund research to address key issues for health IT use that could impede progress in adoption and meaningful use. 

In addition, the ONC continues to develop a National Health Information Network, a secure means for exchanging health information to ensure that the information follows the patient.

Thus, since enactment of HITECH, a constellation of efforts has been assembled and coordinated to carry out a national initiative on EHR adoption. These go well beyond the simple authorization of bonus payments through Medicare and Medicaid. They focus on achieving health results through meaningful use of EHRs. They address the bedrock issues of privacy, security, and public trust in health IT. And they include new programs to support providers in adopting and using EHR systems.

July 13: Beginning The Journey In Earnest  

July 13 marked the beginning of a national EHR initiative. On that day, with the many other elements in place, the final CMS regulation on incentive payments and meaningful use was announced, as was the final ONC regulation on standards and certification.

In the final CMS regulation, significant changes were made from the rule published last January, to better enable providers to meet the requirements of meaningful use and qualify for incentive payments. The total number of objectives to be met in Stage 1 (2011-12), as well as the thresholds associated with those objectives, were reduced.

Other changes were also made in response to the more than 2,000 comments received. We recognize the challenge that providers face in making the transition to EHRs. Our goals for EHR adoption and use remain high, but they must be attainable by the average clinician and hospital. We have sought to make our objectives for meaningful use both ambitious and achievable.

The issuance of these two final rules and the launch of a national incentive campaign affirm and carry out the goals set by Congress and the President. After many years of discussion and learning, the time for action is here. EHR systems will not be perfect as we embark on this transformation. We will learn and adjust as we move through this multiyear process. And for smaller practices and hospitals especially we want to offer assistance. 

But we believe the time for waiting is over. EHR adoption and meaningful use hold the promise of safer, higher-quality care for patients. They will enable health care professionals to serve with greater effectiveness and confidence. They will enhance public health and make more cost-effective use of our nation’s unparalleled health care resources. 

It is our privilege to be able to help our health care colleagues bring about these improvements. It is our pledge to work closely and productively with them to achieve these goals.

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Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; 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.

Aug 4, 2010 - Cloud Computing News    Comments Off

Revolution of exchange of health information

By Steve Tarter (starter@pjstar.com)
Journal Star
Posted Aug 03, 2010 @ 10:30 PM

In the computer age, the ability to share health information would appear to be the least of the reform challenges facing the nation’s medical industry.

“But different hospitals don’t speak to each other. OSF and Methodist don’t talk to one another,” said Dr. Stephen Hippler, a physician at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center who has been part of a group for the past two years that wants to change that.

Hippler is not talking about phone calls between health professionals at the two hospitals but a computer link. “We’re trying to bridge an electronic gap. This is a problem not unique to Peoria, but a national problem. There has to be a way to share information,” he said.

Thanks in part to billions of dollars in federal incentives (and, in a few years, federal penalties), Health Information Exchanges are being set up around the country to accelerate the spread of electronic health records.

Advantages include improving safety and the coordination of care, reducing medical errors and controlling health care costs, said Dr. Gail Amundson, president and CEO of Quality Quest for Health of Illinois, the group trying to establish a health information exchange for a 20-country area in central Illinois.

Although the benefits are numerous, change is never easy – especially in something as complex as the present medical system, noted Amundson.

“In a best case scenario, (the exchange) could be up and running in a year,” she said.

Tackling that organizational challenge has required a group effort involving almost 200 people that helped structure the plan Quality Quest submitted to the state, said Amundson.

Illinois, in turn, applied to the federal government for funding appropriations for HIE plans. A response is expected in another month, said Joy Duling, HIE project director.

Duling is optimistic about the chances for central Illinois efforts to be recognized. “In Peoria, I’m pleasantly surprised at how the concept has been embraced. The mood has been predominantly positive. I couldn’t have said that 12 months ago,” she said.

Huling cites progress being made in health exchange elsewhere. “Other states are doing it. We like what they’re doing in Nebraska,” she said of the Nebraska Health Information Initiative, one of the first statewide HIEs in the country.

Omaha physician Harris Frankel spoke about the development of the Nebraska exchange at an April conference at the Embassy Suites in East Peoria.

“The vast majority of health care information in the United States today exists as paper records that are difficult to share and prone to misinterpretation,” said Frankel, noting Nebraska rolled out its electronic exchange in July 2009.

The move from paper to electronic health records amounts to a paradigm shift, said Dr. David Trachtenbarg, medical director of information technology at Methodist Medical Center. “Overall, electronic is better. That’s the reason people are shifting. It’s easier to analyze (electronic health records) to see what’s going on with the patient,” he said.

“A computer can generate a table or a graph at the touch of a button. Another advantage is in doing reporting. In the case of a recent drug recall, we had a list of every patient that used that drug. There’s no way that would have been done on paper,” said Trachtenbarg.

Although Peoria hospitals like Methodist, OSF and Proctor Hospital have invested heavily in computerization, those systems tend to share with their own kind, said Dr. Robert White, OSF’s chief medical officer of clinical informatics.

“We will soon be able to exchange common records across the OSF system,” he said, referring to the seven hospitals in the OSF group.

No shortage of vendors exist to facilitate the exchange of electronic information by hospitals. While OSF uses an Epic computer system, Methodist and Proctor use systems developed by McKessons.

“Within the year, we will be able to exchange with other Epic users,” said White.

But electronic records have to start somewhere, he said. “If you don’t have a digital record inside, you’re not going to exchange much outside,” said White. “At OSF, we’re focused on getting everybody on the same electronic platform.”

Other hospitals say the same thing. “There needs to be an interchange of information. Eventually, we can expect the same seamless connectivity you see with an ATM machine. But it’s a work in progress,” said Trachtenbarg.

“Each organization needs to make sure they have their own house in order first before opening it up to other people,” said Jenny Clyatt, director of health informatics and technology at Proctor Hospital.

After a six-month evaluation process, Proctor Hospital decided to develop a new computer system, she said. “The new system will take from 18 to 24 months to fully implement. We look to start the process in the third quarter of this year,” said Clyatt, estimating the price tag as “multiple millions.”

As Quality Quest project director, Huling is committed to promoting the exchange concept. But she has another perspective: “As one with health records sprinkled all over central Illinois,” said Huling, adding that her own personal experience – being treated for thyroid cancer – has made her a proponent of electronic files.

“Information should flow through the system like blood through the blood system. It needs to go where the patient needs it to be,” she said.

Although plenty of work lies ahead, Duling cites what is already known. “Lots of organizations across the country are already electronic and engaged in exchange. The biggest barriers center around competitive gains and losses,” she said.

While pushing for greater access to health records on one hand, there’s also a need to assure both consumers and healthcare practitioners that information is private and secure, said Duling.

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News posted by Virtual Global:

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; 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.

Aug 2, 2010 - Cloud Computing News    Comments Off

Free Task Management for Teams on a Budget

Virtual Global Technologies announces the availability of TeamLeader Lite, a free collaboration system for small businesses seeking to improve teamwork on a budget. The limited functionality TeamLeader release includes features for team management, interoffice tasking, project coordination, messaging, e-mail notifications, contact management and more. The Lite edition supports up to 25 users using an Access database.

Today’s teams move so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep track of everything going on,” says Cary Landis, CEO of Virtual Global Technologies. Now anybody can own a team collaboration solution and start building a knowledgebase at the same time.”

TeamLeader Lite includes several unique features. The Team View interface provides a visual representation of the whole team and everything they are working on. The Project View makes it easier to coordinate complex projects. Team members can collaborate with other team members while managing individual workloads and information products.

Managers and team members can begin sending tasks and attaching documents within minutes, following a simple configuration facilitated by the setup wizard. Team members are often surprised by the increased workload when they first install TeamLeader,” says Landis. A heightened awareness is usually one of the first signs of success. People become much more in tune with how they fit into the overall organization and projects.”

Businesses seeking a more advanced collaboration solution can upgrade TeamLeader at a later time. The Small Business Edition supports features for workflow, custom reporting, designing forms, electronic signatures, e-mail notifications, and decision support. Web access and SQL Server scalability are also available for larger organizations. TeamLeader is already used in such industries as manufacturing, engineering, technology, law enforcement and government.

Virtual Global is a full service technology company, offering custom TeamLeader implementations and software integration, including .NET migration. Virtual Global also supports a mature value added reseller program. For more information about TeamLeader or Virtual Global Technologies, visit www.virtualglobal.com.

Aug 2, 2010 - Cloud Computing News    Comments Off

Amazon cloud perfect for building start-ups, says John Seely Brown

By Jon Brodkin, Network World
July 28, 2010 10:51 AM ET

Brown, a former chief scientist at Xerox who now holds roles with the Deloitte Center for the Edge and the University of Southern California, delivered the opening address at the Burton Group Catalyst conference in San Diego Tuesday.

Brown said he’s puzzled by start-ups that take in large sums of money from angel investors, in the process giving away a large portion of their future value, and then spend that initial cash on an IT infrastructure that will be obsolete in five years. Instead of buying physical servers, start-ups today should simply rent virtual servers from the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, he said.

With the Amazon cloud, “I can now build a start-up at a fraction of the cost I used to build start-ups,” he said.

Brown discussed Animoto, a start-up that built an automated system for creating music videos, and was able to scale up incredibly quickly using the Amazon cloud. Animoto’s application went viral after being posted on Facebook, and because the company ran its infrastructure on Amazon it was able to scale from 50 servers to 5,000 servers in about 24 hours. Without that technology, and cloud management tools made by RightScale, Animoto would have had to pay for thousands of servers up front, and perhaps never use the majority of them.

“The sense of infinite speed to scale up made all the difference in the world,” Brown said. “They didn’t have to pay for the stuff they weren’t using.”

Labor productivity has improved remarkably over the past four decades, largely due to improvements in information technology, Brown said. At the same time, U.S. businesses’ return on assets has dropped because of intense global competition, diminishing brand loyalty, and a shift in power from businesses to customers, he said.

Some of the new cloud computing technologies may help restore lost profitability, Brown said, arguing that “cloud is much more disruptive than any of us have ever thought.”

Brown used the example of Skadden, a law firm in New York City, which noticed that a young group of lawyers was resolving cases in “a fraction of the time” needed by older counterparts, simply because they were using Twitter to exchange information when they ran into problems.

The cloud will only become more useful in the future as cloud networks begin to take advantage of powerful graphics processing units, he said.

“Today, on a single chip through Nvidia, we’re getting 512 processors,” Brown said. “I can take a 512-processor box sitting on a cheap Dell server, and I can build this entire thing for $2,000. But why would you want to be satisfied with 512? Why can’t you string 100 of these boxes together? Now I have basically 50,000 processors.”

The Burton Group Catalyst conference will last all week, tackling cloud computing, virtualization, security and many other topics.

Much of the show will focus on what is “the new normal” in IT, as technology pros adjust their role in the wake of a damaging recession. “We’ve made it through the worst of this thing and now is the time we start thinking about where to go next,” Burton Group analyst Chris Howard said.

But while cloud computing seems to offer a less-expensive alternative to many types of business systems, IT has to keep in mind that the cloud carries certain limitations and often increased risk.

“One of the reasons cloud computing seems so appealing to the business side is that it seems to them a silver bullet,” said Burton Group CEO Jamie Lewis. “I can circumvent all these hard problems and integration issues I run into internally. The question is, is that real?”

For the Burton Group’s part, Lewis pledged that the analyst firm will not be changed significantly by Gartner, the much larger analyst firm that acquired Burton Group earlier this year.

“While Gartner has acquired us we have not been devalued,” Lewis said. “Gartner bought us because what we do is very different from what Gartner has traditionally done.”

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News posted by Virtual Global:

Virtual Global, a West Virginia corporation, is a provider of cloud-enabled enterprise IT solutions, including the TeamHost™ cloud platform for creating and deploying SaaS systems without programming; HealthCapsule™, a toolkit for creating secure Health IT solutions; 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.

It’s a rite of passage for tech start-ups to announce their first multi-million dollar rounds of funding, a way to demonstrate viability in a hyper-competitive industry. But taking on funding from outside investors is, to a certain extent, becoming unnecessary and even financially irresponsible because of new opportunities made available by cloud computing, suggests John Seely Brown. 

FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified