The Conference Circuit

Attending conferences is a good way to renew acquaintances, meet new people, gain new perspectives, and collaborate on new ideas. Some conferences I attend to give a talk about "The Future Of The Internet" (40 talks in 2003) and some I attend just to listen. The January calendar has included four interesting conferences — two in Atlanta and two in New York City. I met a lot of very interesting people but most special was to see and hear Brewster Kahle from The Internet Archive. He made everyone in the audience think. (read more)

Tags: alexa, ati, brewster kahle, genesys, georgia state, georgia tech, himalaya, siaa, trustworthy computing

Remote Monitoring

It is a privilege to be able to participate and contribute to various boards and committees. It is also a way to learn a lot, meet great people and gain new perspectives. That has certainly been the case with my involvement at Danbury Hospital. For the past year I have been participating on the policy and technology committees of the board and as of this week I have been elected to the board of Danbury Health Systems, Inc. and Danbury Hospital. At a recent meeting of the policy committee, Ann Faraguna, executive director of the Danbury Visiting Nurses Association, made a presentation about the good work they are doing and mentioned that they are using technology to remotely monitor the condition of patients in their home. This really got my attention and I could not wait to learn more. (read more)

Tags: danbury hospital, monitoring, nurse, nursing, oximetry, van

Knees

Many long term runners have developed arthritic conditions in their knee joints that eventually prevent them from running. Even with the best MRI scans available, it is often hard to get an accurate description of exactly what is going on. The result is a diagnosis of “you have a bum knee” and a prescription of “try swimming”. I suspect many runners like me are frustrated with the imprecision and long for better diagnostics and cures. The Mayo Clinic has just made a large stride in this direction with new technology developed jointly with IBM.

In December, 2003 the world renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota announced it has developed a series of magnetic resonance imaging devices that make it easier to diagnose injuries and diseases affecting wrists, forearms, elbows, hands, and fingers. I don’t know if knees were left out accidentally or if they are not included. If they are not included, I am confident that they will included at some point. The devices will be sold to other medical centers nationwide. Named Mayo Clinic BC-10 MRI Coils, the sophisticated new devices will be able to take detailed pictures of a particular part of the body, producing high resolution images.

The images will improve a physician’s ability to see small structures such as tiny ligaments and nerves in the hand. Seeing the fine details makes possible more accurate diagnosis of injuries and diseases, and in some cases, eliminating the need for invasive diagnostic procedures such as arthroscopy, which is often used to gain a visual examination of the interior of a joint with a specialized surgical instrument.

Mayo has been using the new coils clinically for some time to diagnose cartilage degeneration, nerve compression, ligament injuries, tendon abnormalities, tumor detection, bone injuries and scarring within the wrist. “Accurate diagnosis is the critical forerunner to effective medical treatment, which is why Mayo focused on improving the diagnostic capabilities of magnetic imaging,” says Kimberly Amrami, M.D., a radiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. This is the first of a series of MRI coils Mayo is developing to improve the accuracy and thoroughness of imaging diagnoses.

Mayo’s partner in the project is IBM Corporation. IBM industrial design engineers helped to optimize the functionality of the new devices. For example, the IBM engineering team suggested adding windows to the sides of the device that enable technicians to better view and align patient anatomy within the coil. “This effort represents years of medical research and a great collaboration between a team of Mayo clinicians and IBM engineers,” says Samuel Prabhakar, director of system solutions, IBM Engineering & Technology Services. “We look forward to a continued collaboration, including developing more designs with the goal of improving patient care.” IBM will also be manufacturing the coils at it’s plant in Rochester, Minnesota. Revenue Mayo receives from this device will be used to support Mayo’s clinical practice, medical research, and educational activities.

Other patrickWeb healthcare-related stories

Tags: arthroscopy, IBM, knee, mayo clinic, mri

Chilling Effects

Geocaching in Florida last week was an exciting experience and it was chilling to come home and find the temperature more than 75 degrees colder. There is a lot I want to write about Linux, WiFi, blogging, digital identity and other aspects of Internet technology, but I know there are patrickWeb readers who are fellow motorcyclists and geocachers who may be interested in this update. The sky was blue, the roads were clear, and I could not resist a motorcycle ride. It was one of the shortest on record for me. An even chillier experience is what happened to my hard drive. (read more)

Tags: backup, geocache, motorcycle, wind chill

The Florida Caches

It will be back to Internet technology stories very soon, but I wanted to report on a couple of other areas today and tomorrow — geocaching and motorcycling. It was tough duty during the first week of the year in Florida but someone had to do it. Blue sky and eighty degrees would mean golf or tennis for most but not being adept at either of those, I chose to go geocaching instead. Four of us headed out for the adventure with a Magellan SporTrak Color GPS receiver in hand. Each of the two caches presented unique challenges. The first was called Geo Rock Cache. The first clue that it would be "interesting" was the following on the web site. "Also note the hundreds of crabs moving around on the ground as you walk to the cache site — no bare feet here !!" That was the first of two cautions. (read more)

e-democracy

It is not surprising that most governments of the world have web sites — in fact, many call themselves "e-governments". In early November, the United Nations issued a report entitled “E-Government at the Crossroads” which showed that 173 of the U.N.’s 191 members had Web sites. (see patrickWeb story for details). That is the good news. The bad news is that only 20% of people with Internet access use them. This is because most e-government sites offer limited content and most do not have compelling nor useful transactions. Beyond that is the ultimate power of the Internet for citizens around the world — the ability to be heard and to express opinions to their political leaders. (read more)

Riding On The Internet Wave

by Jason Tan

Malaysia: Business Computing

December 11, 2003

During a trip to Malaysia in November 2003, the Multimedia Development
Corporation, the KDU Management
Development Center and IBM sponsored a speech about "The Future
Of The Internet". The following article followed after a Q&A with reporters.

"NOT only will this next-generation Internet be orders of magnitude faster, but it also will be always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy and trusted," says John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC.

"Soon, one billion people will be using the Internet, empowering themselves to get what they want, when they want it, from wherever they are. Expectations for on-demand e-business are expanding by the day." (read more)

Glass Update

Thanks to reader Vikk for pointing out a broken link to the story about The Glass Engine. The story was just re-published.

The other thing I wanted to share was an advertisement I saw on the Metro North train today while returning from a board meeting in New York City. The advert was prominently displayed on a mini billboard in each car of the train. It read "Do you really need the laptop tonight?” Near the bottom of the ad it said "citi — Live richly". At the very bottom it was labeled "citi.com". The ad suggests that you can’t "live richly" unless you are physically out of your house and using your credit card. Perhaps Citibank didn’t notice that retail sales on the web were up roughly 30% year over year. I have a story in the works about "The Future Of Advertising". I don’t claim to be the expert on this but I have some views that I suspect readers will agree will find interesting. Stay tuned.

One last thing. While on the train from New York to Goldens Bridge, the train stopped at Mt. Kisco, New York. After a brief pause, the engineer announced that he was ordered by police to not open the doors. Then the police came aboard and searched every car. I overheard the police officers talking on their walkie-talkie. They were looking for a 23 year old woman in black. After about ten minutes they found her and escorted her off the train. No idea what the issue was.

The Glass Engine

The Glass Engine represents a very interesting new approach
to searching and interacting with information. (Note: unfortunately it requires Microsoft Internet Explorer).
I suspect you will be as impressed as I was when you see this remarkable
technology prototype. It was developed by Mark Podlaseck at IBM’s
Hawthorne, New York Research
Laboratory. The project started when Philip Glass, the composer,
asked what his catalog of music might look like online. Mark thought
the music should be an integral part of the navigation experience,
like it is when “surfing” the radio or television. He wanted to be
immersed in the sound of it, making micro-decisions about whether
he liked something or not as opposed to making arbitrary, uninformed
decisions about whether he wanted to hear chamber music or film soundtracks,
or Symphony #1, #2, #3, #4, or #5.  (read
more)

Tags: glass engine, musci

Marvelous Mozart III

The experience of conducting the first movement of Mozart’s twenty-fifth symphony was a humbling one. Even more humbling was to hear Stanley Drucker play Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major last night. The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra provided an outstanding accompaniment and a silk smooth blend of orchestra and soloist was provided by Maestro Sidney Rothstein. Prior to the solo the orchestra performed Mozart’s Overture to Così fan tutte and afterwards his Symphony No. 36 (Linz) in C. It was an extraordinary evening. (read more)

Tags: clarinet, drucker, koechel, mozart