Industry Challenges to Full-Scale M2M Deployment
Posted by Jesse Ward on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 · 
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With such a wide range of applications, there are many challenges to uniform, widespread deployment. Harish Viswanathan, CTO advisor for M2M and Devices at Alcatel-Lucent, made the analogy that these obstacles are similar to the plumbing of a construction project, a necessary function for the technology to function.
Currently, there is a shortage of IP addresses, which are assigned to Internet-enabled devices and a critical component to their connectivity. As a result of this address shortage, the industry is at the early stages of a decades-long evolution from IPv4 to IPv6, the standard on which the Internet is based. Once the transition is complete, IPv6 will enable exponentially more devices to connect to the network.
Each M2M device will produce an incremental amount of data and an accompanying small amount of revenue. As such, mobile operators must create new, compelling business offerings, with accompanying service-level agreements and billing arrangements.
In addition, mobile operators must evolve their core networks to handle a large number of devices, applications and transactions. The operator must create a platform that is capable of provisioning, authenticating, automating, monitoring and managing many, many more devices. Read more
The Promise of M2M
Posted by Jesse Ward on Friday, February 3, 2012 · ·
Imagine a typical workday in the not-too-distant future. Your cell phone alarm goes off. Thirty minutes earlier it communicated with your thermostat, requesting your preferred temperature. Ten minutes prior it started your coffeemaker and it now turns on your TV to your favorite news channel as you wake up.
You’re surprised that your alarm went off 20 minutes earlier than you expected. That’s because it retrieved weather and traffic information and understood that you needed to leave the house earlier due to a snowstorm. It also communicated with your car to ensure that the electric engine re-charged itself overnight, as planned.
As you finish getting ready, it beeps again to inform you that it’s starting your car to de-ice the windows. It contacts your GPS to send the most updated directions based on road closures and information. As you leave the house to drive away, your car signals your home automation system to lock all doors, change the thermostat to save energy and arm your security system.
This automation is possible thanks in large part to machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. In its most basic form, M2M involves devices that communicate autonomously, without human involvement. M2M indicates that everyday objects are readable, recognizable, locatable, addressable and controllable through the Internet. In fact, M2M is now synonymous with the “Internet of things.” Read more
Telemedicine: Remote Patient Monitoring
Posted by Jesse Ward on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 · ·
Remote patient monitoring uses devices to remotely collect, store and communicate biometric health information to practitioners. The technology allows health care providers to accurately monitor and intervene in the patient’s care before he presents at the doctor’s office or hospital. The field capitalizes on two trends in the health care marketplace—proactive care and patient mobility.
MedApps, a market leader, understands the benefits of this technology. Chief Executive Officer Kent Dicks notes that a connected patient is more compliant, more likely to conform to doctors’ orders, more inclined to take his medications and, as a result, stay out of the hospital.
MedApps produces a line of remote monitoring solutions including HealthPAL and HealthAIR, dedicated cellular devices that can be used wherever the patient is located. The technology communicates with retail medical devices—such as glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, scales and pulse oximeters—through wireless Bluetooth technology or a wired USB connection. MedApps’ devices collect data from these monitors and automatically upload the information to the patient’s EHR in the cloud via machine-to-machine cellular technology. The health care practitioner can view the data online, in his chosen application and export reports in various file formats.
MedApps’ technology is store-and-forward, but it can send data in near real-time. Read more
Telemedicine: Health Information Technology Services
Posted by Jesse Ward on Thursday, September 22, 2011 · ·
For many years there has been a movement in the health care industry to adopt technology; however, it was often implemented in an isolated fashion, mainly to increase administrative efficiencies and decrease paperwork. Today, industry-wide implementation of health information technology (HIT) promises to unite disparate systems and practitioner offices for more efficient and effective patient care. The government is funding several programs that are accelerating the adoption and utilization of HIT.
When discussing HIT, arguably the most important legislation is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, and its Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions. The HITECH provisions create various programs to support the adoption and sustained utilization of HIT, and more specifically, the widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs).
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has invested more than $23 billion in HIT initiatives. The majority of the funding, $20.6 billion, is set aside for incentive payments, designed to motivate health care institutions and practitioners to upgrade their hardware and software to enable EHRs. The HITECH provisions mandate that all health care facilities will need to be able to access and exchange patient health information via EHRs by 2015. If they are not ready, penalties will be assessed in the form of decreased reimbursement rates for Medicare patients.
The rest of the DHHS funding is devoted to the creation of data centers, and assisting health care providers with upgrading customer premises hardware and software. ARRA grants have been awarded to develop large-scale data centers, which enable health information exchange (HIE), the reliable and secure storage and transmission of health-related data among facilities, organizations and government agencies, according to national standards and in compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Read more
Telemedicine: Business Opportunities for Rural Broadband Providers
Posted by Jesse Ward on Monday, September 19, 2011 · (1) ·
The health care industry is under increasing pressure. Costs are rising and straining available resources. Currently, the U.S. spends more on health care than any other developed nation.[1] It accounts for 17% of U.S. GDP;[2] by 2017 it will top 19%.[3]
The population also is aging. By 2040 there will be twice as many Americans over age 65 than there are today.[4] Chronic conditions, which account for 75% of nation’s health care costs, are increasing across all ages.[5] Further, the current health care system is not without fault. For instance, on an annual basis, 1.5 million Americans are injured because of prescription drug errors.[6]
In rural areas, health care providers face additional challenges. Rural Americans experience more chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease than their urban and suburban counterparts.[7] People living in rural locations also face greater difficulty accessing quality health care. Although nearly 25% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, less than 9% of physicians practice there.[8] As a whole, the country is expected to have a shortage of tens of thousands of physicians by 2020.[9]
Faced with these challenges, the health care industry is undergoing dramatic, evolutionary change. Regulatory, legislative and industry drivers are altering established pricing and reimbursement structures, enabling new treatment applications, and creating new standards of care, while simultaneously promising to reduce costs.
This transformation in the health care value chain will be facilitated and enabled through the use of technology. Broadband-enabled solutions, usually grouped under the name health information technology (HIT), will assist health care practitioners as they strive to more effectively and efficiently serve the patient.
Over the next few weeks, the New Edge will publish a series of articles exploring how the health care industry is adopting and utilizing information technology, and how broadband providers can support health care facilities, practitioners and patients with their technology needs. Read more
The Future of Education: The Underlying Broadband Network
Posted by Jesse Ward on Monday, March 14, 2011 · ·
Susan Patrick, president and chief executive officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), shares a national perspective on how online education is progressing. “In the early days of online learning, content was flat, sequential and text-based,” she said. “This is evolving into a dynamic environment, with customized, adaptive content. Artificial intelligence will be increasingly built into interactive, online systems.”
As evidenced by Florida Virtual School’s (FLVS) distribution model, resources often are stored online and streamed in real-time to the end-user’s computer. The school is preparing to deliver personalized content to each student. “Before a student enters a course he or she will take an assessment of what they already know, and how they like to learn,” said Andy Ross, FLVS chief sales and marketing officer. “The system will then create a customized course, building the content from a variety of learning objects stored in the cloud.” It will take another 18 months-2 years for FLVS to transition to this customized, streaming media system.
Terri-Lynn Brown, senior education specialist at Desire2Learn, said it’s clear that the instructor’s use of video applications and multimedia will play a large role in determining future bandwidth requirements. “We are seeing increased use of multimedia in online learning,” she said. ““The [Desire2Learn] platform delivers maximum functionality across the lowest bandwidth possible, but at the same time, it is imperative for broadband carriers to continue to expand network capacity given the increase in streaming media.”
Patrick agrees that broadband availability and capacity is a challenge to this new educational model. “Everything our research shows is that educators and their technology partners are going to see broadband user demand loads unlike anything they’ve experienced before,” Patrick said. “A school’s infrastructure is just not ready for five or more students running simultaneous multimedia content with embedded assessments.” Read more
The Future of Education: Interactivity and Collaboration
Posted by Jesse Ward on Friday, March 4, 2011 · ·
Simulation: The Lab of the Future
Simulation is a powerful multimedia tool used in scientific and mathematics courses and to train a variety of technical professionals—from veterinary technicians to plumbers. Simulation involves using a computer to model a real-life or hypothetical situation so that it can be studied to understand how the system works.
Online content providers such as SAS Curriculum Pathways have embraced the use of science and mathematics simulations. Chemistry students complete laboratory experiments via an animated, interactive SAS tool that incorporates streaming video from a real lab environment. In another SAS course, Geometry students visualize and manipulate problems with 2D and 3D diagrams.
iLab Central is dedicated to the proposition that real laboratories accessed remotely over the Internet can enrich science and engineering education by expanding the range of experiments and equipment that students are exposed to in the course of their education. Read more