Serppentino Weblog

India and China telecom market comparison

There is an interesting report of the financial comparison analysis of the telecom industry of India and China, the two most populated and fastest growing countries. The report was done by India’s Telecom regulatory authority. Below is an excerpt of revenue distribution, suggesting different perceptive and usage of telecom technologies in these two countries. With the economic power, ambition and momentum of both two, this area will become the locomotive of the prospering of telecom technology.

                                             

Distribution of revenues

China		India
Service	% Of Contrib ution to Total Revenue4	% Of Contribution to Total Revenue5
Mobile	42.69%	23%
Basic	31.31%	68%
Long distance	19.46%	6%6
Data Internet	6.26%	2%
Paging	.20	-
Satellite	.08%	0.35%
Others	-	0.65%
Total	100%	100%

Lucent Technologies Awarded Wireless Network Projects in Tibet

Lucent Technologies is going to build up network infrastructure in China's borders know of harsh natural environment -- Inno Mogolia and Tibet. Last year they won the contracts from corresponsive provincial network authorities.  Lucent Worldwide Services (LWS) will deliver professional optimization services for its entire GSM network to improve network performance and increase customer satisfaction. According to Jiadong Qu, chief of staff of  Lucent China and vice president of Lucent Worldwide Service for China,

   "China has one of the largest and most advanced telecom networks in the
    world. Service operators in China are looking for ways to maximize value
    from their existing networks, which represents a tremendous market
    opportunity for our services group."

About Network Infrastructure in China

I posted a comments regarding the fast development of IT network infrastructure in China, on Chinese Government OKs Standard for Next-Gen Cellular Services.

Surprised maybe, when I traveled around China I found that the network infrastructures in Chinese cities are very advanced. The bandwidth is better than what I have in my Michigan home. Cell phone is much more popular in possession and use. This is partly due to the decade-long reconstruction zeal allover the country, that makes it possible to install the most advanced technology for hundreds of metropolitans and municipals. People, especially young people are crazy about what new technology brings about. Sending short message via cell phone and blogging are fancy hobbies. Network technology, especially wireless network, is bringing up serious changes in the idea and life for Chinese people. A major downside is that, I haven't seen many businesses making use of the technology. This could be a great opportunity in the coming decade.

Patient Safety Tracking System On Market

Hoana Medical announced its LG1 Intelligent Medical Vigilance System secured FDA 510(k) for marketing. This is claimed to be the first system of the kind on the market, which traces patient's vital signs and movements to or away from bed. According to CEO Dr. Patrick Sullivan, the system will greatly help decrease medical error and increase vigilance level, for example alerting the nurse for a 3am crash of a patient, which would be easily unnoticed during the morning shift. The death rate of medical error in hospital is 1/200, or 200,000 people annually in US.

Chipping Pioneer

Chipping Pioneer

John Halamka, CIO and physician at a major Boston health center volunteered to chip himself – with a RFID implanted under his skin, which contains his personal ID. He did this to promote the use of implanted RFID containing patient’s medical information, vital in many cases he experienced where patients had no ID, were unconscious, non-verbal or mentally ill. Alzheimer’s patients will be good example of benefit from the technology.

He said he felt to be at a unique position to pilot the technology, and his action would “inevitably reunite the patients with their loved ones”. He claimed no side effects and other health safety issue of the implantation. He did acknowledge the privacy and data security concerns, including improper use of the information of his whereabout for marketing purpose. He emphasized the limits of user and scanner facility, non-disclosure of information, and patient consent of receiving the implantation.

As Halamka says "I have no regrets", I have high respect to this guy’s being a guinean pig for something he thinks is right to do. Are we all going to be chipped one day?               

Man Chipped

Not SciFi any more – a man was chipped.

The man is Joseph Krull from San Antonio. He had the doctor implant a RFID under – not on – his shoulder. The chip contains his medical records so that hospital staff can access them immediately once he gets to the clinic. His medical condition requires that.

He is now human number 1020000000. He elected to store his medical information, along with address, phone number, fax and email, at the website. He can access and change them at a VeriChip’s portal – the maker of the chip that acquired FDA approval for human implantation at last November.

Other people get chipped for “everything from entertainment to personal safety”. Some attorney chipped himself with personal ID in case he becomes crime victim. A bar owner offered the chipping service to his clients, so that he can prepare their favorite drinks moment before they step in.

Wary are his family, along with concerns for various reasons from various people. In addition to medical conditions, disputes like privacy violation and protection will surely be stirred up – again.

Original story comes from here. Is this going to be the trend anyway? People have predicted that the next milestone of IT technology revolution will be the ‘node’ era – everything becomes a node that is interconnected with various networks. Even an individual human being.

Productivity Increases with Wireless Network in UM Hospital

UM Hospital sees productivity increases with use of wireless network.

There are increasing needs to receive data and make communication on a timely base. The wide adoption of wireless system is gradually turning it to reality. Faculties, administrative staffs, doctors and students are more and more converting to using laptops from desktops, so that they are connected to people and facilities, and have access to data wherever they move within the medical center structures. Emails and document searching now can be done in the cafeteria.

Furthermore, the wireless system simplifies network administration. The hospital doesn’t need additional staff to administrate servers for the wireless network.

The biggest challenge to it is security. Both the hospital’s responsibility to patients and the compliance to government regulation pertaining to privacy request tighter access control and activity control.

UM Hospital Goes Wireless

University of Michigan Hospital is deploying the plan of installation of Cisco Aironet 1200 series wireless network.

The plan started from 2001, when the administration decided to install the wireless network to facilitate the clinical and educational activities for physicians and students, who frequently need to move from one facility to another. By 2002 a WLAN was installed to cover 4.5 million square foot of medical center.

The UM medical center contains two major parts: the hospital and the medical school. While constructurally interconnected, the two parts adopt different network policies. For the hospital, a firewall and a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and media access control-based authentication system is used to protect from unauthorized access. For the medical center, however, open registration using student designated ID and password is allowed.

The next step is to install similar system to over 40 remote clinics associated with UM healthcare system, which are located throughout the Detroit metropolitan area, 25 – 30 miles away from the Ann Arbor campus.

Much detail can be found from the Cisco report.

What Does HIPAA want?

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA, frequently reasonably misspelled as HIPPA), requests special acts to be done to insure safety and security of health care data, including those for patients, health plan participants and beneficiaries, and so on.

In upating or implementing IT systems, hospitals realize the less competancy of the security standards of the current wireless LAN systems and protocols in compliance with what HIPAA requested. Hospitals and health care providers are discussing about using more secured WPA encryption protocol. Many other products are aiming at this market to target the compliance issues.

Meru Network's solution on HIPPA compliance of wireless LAN

I found a good remark here on the security issue of current wireless LAN system against compliance with HIPPA.

The article compared the security standards of current wireless technology with IEEE with HIPPA requests. It recommended using WPA encryption as meeting the HIPPA standards. Several security management procedures are:

• Defense Against Rogue Access Points
• Notification of Configuration Changes
• Prevention of Additional Internal Security Violations
• Incident Reporting