World Health Day - A Dose of IT - 11 April 2011 Page 13 - Kapil Khandelwal - EquNev Capital
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c m y k c m y k New Google CEO Larry Page reshuffles exec team. Technomics Infosys, Mah Satyam among the four shortlisted for Irda IT project. RIL may stop supply to non- priority sector to meet government order. DC 13 Bengaluru ● Monday ● 11 April 2011 IT firms get new mantra: Gender rebalancing in the workplace SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA DC | BENGALURU April 10: Although women constitute 30-35 per cent of the total engineering talent pool graduating every year, their representation in the IT workforce still hovers between 16-22 per cent and in many instances, even lower than that. All that is about to change as IT firms launch a spate of ‘women only’ recruitment drives that hold the promise of support- ing them with flexible work hours, mentoring, leader- ship development pro- grammes, daycare facilities, maternity returnees pro- gramme, adoption leave and the opportunity to be part of an exclusive women’s net- working club. While some IT firms have resorted to catchy print advertising to attract specif- ic profiles of women, others have launched employee referral programmes and enlisted HR consultants to bring in the Eves. HCL Technologies, a $5.5 billion enterprise hosted a ‘women only’ recruitment event over the weekend in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi. The event which will be hosted in a central location to make it easy for candidates to commute, is targeted at hiring 1,000 plus women for entry level to middle management posi- tions in the technical and non-technical streams. “Rebalancing the work- place with more women is a part of our diversity and inclusion programme initi- ated in 2006. However, this is our first attempt to target women only. Our learnings from this attempt will help us in women-focused, hiring efforts in future” said Sri- mathi Shivashankar Associ- ate Vice President – Diversi- ty & Sustainability, HCL Technologies. At present, women constitute 24 per cent of our workforce, we would like to increase that to 35 per cent to reflect the available talent pool of women engineers in the country” she said. HCL laid out the red carpet treatment for candidates who walked in for the event - allocating a separate area and refreshments for those who accompany the candi- dates to the interview. The candidates were interviewed by a panel dominated by women to help increase their comfort levels. The recruitment cycle culminat- ed with lunch for all. IT, BPO and outsourcing services firm, MphasiS completed 8 recruitment events to induct women over the last 12 months. Explain- ing why the firm has launched a dedicated drive to recruit women, Elango R, Head of HR said “When we are faced with a supply crunch, we have to start looking at various ways to deal with it. We found that not enough women were being channeled into the pipeline and decided to launch a women-specific recruitment drive through referrals, HR consultants and advertisements. Second, as organizations mature, there is an increasing need for diversity in the work- force without which there is no diversity in thinking or viewpoints,” he noted. How- ever, women are hired pure- ly on merit, and not because they belong to the fairer sex. Once hired, we support them with women-friendly policies in the workplace, where the managers are trained to handle issues of a diverse workforce, he added. Today, women con- stitute 27 per cent of the firm’s 38,000 employees and Elango aims to increase the number of women in middle management from 18 to 33 per cent, because it is typically difficult to retain women at those levels. “A firm’s ability to inno- vate depends on its diversity quotient, which includes gender, multi-generational workforce, and people with disabilities. We recognize the fact that hiring women brings in significant busi- ness value to the company – it promotes diversity in thinking and ideas which are required to come up with innovative solutions for global customers” said Mahalingam C, Executive VP & HR Head, Symphony Services. The firm has 29 per cent women on its team and is targeting to take it to 40 per cent. Accenture India, another equal oppor- tunity employer has over 50,000 employees, 30 per cent of whom are women. While most IT firms have no problems attracting 30- 48 per cent women at the entry levels, that percentage dwindles to the low teens and tapers down to barely 3- 4 per cent at the top manage- ment levels. Yahoo! India R&D is working toward cre- ating a more balanced work- force by aiming to increase its women headcount from a low 16 per cent with a ‘Women in Technology’ programme – that helps them succeed in their careers with mentorship, inspiration and technology training. Google’s $700 m ITA buy cleared Washinton: Google’s entry into the online travel sector was cleared for takeoff Fri- day as the US Justice Department gave the green light to its $700 million purchase of flight data company ITA Software. The Justice Department’s anti-trust division, however, extracted a number of con- cessions from Google and imposed conditions on the Internet search giant to allow the controversial acquisition to go ahead. The proposed legal settle- ment, which will need the approval of a US District Court, requires Google to notably develop and license ITA’s travel software to other companies. Several online travel sites, including Expedia, Kayak and Travelocity, had sought to block the Google-ITA deal, claiming it would give Google too much control over the lucrative online travel market and lead to higher prices. The Justice Department agreed that unless modi- fied, the acquisition "would have substantially lessened competition among providers of comparative flight search websites in the US." ITA flight data soft- ware is used by many US airlines and a number of leading online travel sites. Russia denies plans to ban Gmail Moscow: The Russian security service denied Sat- urday it had plans to ban Skype and Gmail after one of its top officials said such services posed a serious security risk. The informa- tion and special communi- cations director of the Fed- eral Security Service (FSB) told a cabinet meeting that he was growing “increas- ingly concerned” by the use of services with foreign- made encryption technolo- gy. The comments sparked an immediate furor in the Russian Internet communi- ty and were dismissed as a “personal opinion” by a source close to President Dmitry Medvedev — a tech-savvy leader who is often seen with an iPad in hand. An FSB spokesman said Saturday that the agency was not proposing a ban on the popular services. “Quite the contrary — the development of advanced technology is a natural process that should be wel- comed,” the security serv- ice spokesman told Russian news agencies. A spokesman for former FSB chief Vladmir Putin called the ban suggestion “well-reasoned”. Naming that star? Ask your telescope New York, April 10: Long- time stargazers learned the basics of the night sky the hard way — with pencils, star charts and lots of patience with their tele- scopes. Now high-tech equipment and smartphone apps are making the task a lot less daunting for beginners. New point-and-shoot tele- scopes, for example, require only the push of a button to go into action: Plunk one down in the driveway and the device gets its own bear- ings, aligning itself with the stars above so it can tell you that the twinkling light in the eyepiece is Betelgeuse. Three models of these new, self-aligning tele- scopes, costing about $700 to $800, will be offered this July by Celestron. The com- pany's new line, called SkyProdigy, is intended for amateurs who don't have in- depth knowledge of the night sky, or may not even have a clue of how to set up a telescope, said Danyal J. Medley, a principal engineer at the company in Torrance, Calif. Even seasoned astronomy experts are heralding such automation. "I think the telescope that sets itself up, so anyone can easily use it, is great," said Jay Pasachoff, chairman of the astronomy department and director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. "This kind of tele- scope makes it possible for people to be out in their backyards and look at the most interesting astronomi- cal objects within minutes." To find its position and then recognise the stars above, the telescope has a digital camera that takes pictures of the sky. It then compares them with its computerized database of stored images, Mr. Medley said. The process typically takes less than three min- utes. Automated telescopes that can find celestial objects with no help from humans are not new. Telescopes have long had motors to drive them, allowing built-in processing and databases. Users of some older tele- scopes, for example, can choose "Saturn" from the menu on the hand controller, recentering the eyepiece over the planet. Amateur stargazers are also finding a wealth of data via low-cost technology like smartphone apps. Smart- phones, with their cameras and abundant processing power, offer novel features that telescopes cannot. For example, United Soft Media offers the app Red- shift for iPhone and iPad ($11.99 at iTunes) that iden- tifies bright stars or planets you can see in the night sky. It can also simulate a ride on a spacecraft taking you on a tour of distant planets. Last year, the App Smart column of The New York Times reviewed several other astronomy-related apps including Star Walk ($3 for the iPhone; $5 for the iPad) and Google Sky Map for Android phones (free). Smartphone apps and accessories for stargazing are so popular that they will have a separate block of vendors at the Northeast Astronomy Forum and Tele- scope Show, to be held April 16 and 17 in Suffern, N.Y. KAPIL KHANDELWAL W orld Healt h Day on 7th April high- lighted a very unusual situ- ation facing the World Health Order. How do we combat drug resistance that occurs when microor- ganisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and para- sites change in ways that render the medications used to cure the infections they cause ineffective. When the microorganisms become resistant to most antimi- crobials they are often referred to as “superbugs”. India is at a brink as there a major concern because a drug-resistant infections of malaria, TB, HIV may kill, can spread to others, and imposes huge costs to individuals and society. Last year, in my column on “superbug” bugs our healthcare, I had highlight- ed the issues western world researchers may play with an emerging sci- entific and medical super power like India. However, WHO’s call for action on drug resistance superbugs is to avert future global disaster, the challenge is what to do and how to do it. Despite the mass of liter- ature on drug resistance superbugs, there is depressingly little on the true costs of resistance and the effectiveness of medi- cines. Given the lack of data, in the face of a grow- ing realisation that actions need to be taken now, to combat a global menace that can take the world health order back to the pre-antibiotics era. We are talking of a potential bio- logical World War III! WHO’s Armageddonis a 6-points strategy to tide over the biological World War III and announce the world’s victory over the superbugs that kill over 60% of people who acquire these infections from the superbugs. These include planning the fund- ing for the global world war on the superbugs, strengthening surveil- lance, ensuring medical reinforcements to combat superbugs attack, armistice on the blatant abuse of antibiotics by medical practitioners and care givers, enhancing the commando’s for infection prevention and control and finally fostering the NATO-like alliance between the scientific, philanthropic and health industry to foster innova- tions and R&D to produce new stealth-bombing antibiotics against the superbugs. The current issue is lack of data that can really describe the size and the nature of the enemy we are combatting. Information, communications and tech- nology (ICT) can bridge the gaps in this war against the superbugs. Many chal- lenges exist to effectively meeting these critical information needs. Firstly, how do we get the clini- cians who are often unaware of the existence of relevant information resources aligned with ICT technologies. Second- ly, the ICT systems need to be comprehensive in their coverage. Thirdly, issues of time efficiency, accessi- bility at point of care, and automatic provision of information for decisions and analytics. Fourth, customisability to account for local factors because of significant local variations in super- bugs susceptibility. Next is the issue of ease of updat- ing content and notifying the users in the WHO, governments, regulatory bodies, doctors and care givers. Last but not the least the cost of such ICT systems. We have learnt lessons from the western and advanced nations on how their different ICT systems do not sync lead- ing to expensive solutions in integrations and data standards. Open source is the way to go in combating this war rather than open- ing another war in the ICT front. Finally, one major force that needs to be included is the growing influence of social media in combatting the super- bugs when putting out the implementation guide- lines. We have some lessons from the way global clini- cal trials have been con- ducted and the information collected from different sites for regulatory sub- missions. There are several open source bio surveil- lance, clinical trials sys- tems that have worked per- fectly. We need to stick to the best in the open source world to ensure that there is co-operation and data exchange to win this bio- logical world war against the superbugs that may change the world health order and take us to the pre-antibiotics era. ConsumerScope Kapil Khandelwal is Director, EquNev Capital, a niche investments banking and advisory services firm and a leading healthcare and information com-munication technology (ICT) expert. Fight superbugs with Open Source US trains activists in Web protection Washington, April 10: The United States is training thousands of cell phone and Internet pro-democracy campaigners worldwide to evade security forces in what it calls a "cat-and- mouse game" with authori- tarian governments. The US government is sponsoring efforts to help activists in Arab and other countries gain access to technology that circumvents government firewalls, secures telephone text and voice messages, and pre- vents attacks on websites. "This is sort of a cat-and- mouse game and govern- ments are constantly devel- oping new techniques to go after critics, to go after dis- senters," said Michael Pos- ner, the assistant US secre- tary of state for human rights and labor. "We are trying to stay ahead of the curve and try- ing to basically provide both technology, training, and diplomatic support to allow people to freely express their views." Posner told a small group of reporters that the theme of Internet freedom will be "peppered" throughout the State Department's annual report on human rights for 194 countries that is sched- uled for release on Friday. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is campaign- ing hard for freedoms of expression, assembly and association online -- what she calls the world's town square or coffee house of the 21st century. The chief US diplomat has said the protests in Egypt and Iran fueled by Face- book, Twitter and YouTube reflected "the power of con- nection technologies as an accelerant of political, social and economic change." The US government, Pos- ner said, has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments. And it has organized train- ing sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Mid- dle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there. "They went back and there's a ripple effect," Pos- ner said. State Department officials said one of the new tech- nologies under development is the "panic button," which allows activists to erase con- tact lists on their cell phones if they are arrested. "If you can get the panic button that wipes that (list) clean before they get locked up, you're saving lives," said Posner. The new technology has not yet been made available to pro-democracy cam- paigners but it will prove useful in places like Syria, where the authorities simply go out and arrest activists who use their mobile phones. The State Department said it has already funded efforts by private firms, mainly from the United States, to develop a dozen different technologies to circumvent government censorship fire- walls. "One of them has been very successful in Iran. It's being used extensively. and we have the download numbers," a State Depart- ment official said on condi- tion of anonymity. The State Department is also funding efforts to pre- vent governments from launching attacks. bITs DIGITAL TROOPERS Celebrity tracker app for Android smartphones San Francisco, April 10: Startup Scoopler was invit- ing owners of Android-pow- ered smartphones to install an application that promises to alert them every time a celebrity is sighted nearby. The free JustSpotted soft- ware was available online at the Android Market. “There is no other applica- tion that gives you real-time alerts like this with thou- sands of spottings on our website every day,”Scoopler co-founder AJ Asver told AFP in an email. “If you are in a metropoli- tan area, you are going to be pleasantly surprised by how close you are to the celebri- ty world.” JustSpotted.com launched in October with an online map that pinpoints celebrity whereabouts in real time based on public updates from social networking star Facebook and microblog- ging service Twitter. JustSpotted members also contribute sightings. While branded by some as a potential resource for stalkers, JustSpotted billed itself as "celebrity friendly" and said stars can make deals to use the service to promote their images or messages. “We have not had any complaints from celebri- ties,” Asver told AFP. “We’ve actually been approached by people about promoting upcoming films.” He said that a ver- sion of JustSpotted tailored for iPhones was undergoing an Apple approval process and was expected to be available in the App Store by the end of the month.
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Transcript of World Health Day - A Dose of IT - 11 April 2011 Page 13 - Kapil Khandelwal - EquNev Capital
c m y k c m y k
New GoogleCEO LarryPage reshufflesexec team. Technomics
Infosys, MahSatyam amongthe four shortlisted forIrda IT project.
RIL may stop supply to non-priority sector tomeet governmentorder.
DDCC 13Bengaluru ● Monday ● 11 April 2011
IT firms get new mantra: Genderrebalancing in the workplace SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA
DC | BENGALURU
April 10: Although womenconstitute 30-35 per cent ofthe total engineering talentpool graduating every year,their representation in the ITworkforce still hoversbetween 16-22 per cent andin many instances, evenlower than that. All that isabout to change as IT firmslaunch a spate of ‘womenonly’ recruitment drives thathold the promise of support-ing them with flexible workhours, mentoring, leader-ship development pro-grammes, daycare facilities,maternity returnees pro-gramme, adoption leave andthe opportunity to be part ofan exclusive women’s net-working club.
While some IT firms haveresorted to catchy printadvertising to attract specif-ic profiles of women, othershave launched employeereferral programmes andenlisted HR consultants tobring in the Eves. HCLTechnologies, a $5.5 billionenterprise hosted a ‘womenonly’ recruitment event overthe weekend in Bengaluru,Chennai, Hyderabad andNew Delhi. The event whichwill be hosted in a centrallocation to make it easy forcandidates to commute, istargeted at hiring 1,000 pluswomen for entry level tomiddle management posi-tions in the technical andnon-technical streams.
“Rebalancing the work-place with more women is apart of our diversity andinclusion programme initi-
ated in 2006. However, thisis our first attempt to targetwomen only. Our learningsfrom this attempt will helpus in women-focused, hiringefforts in future” said Sri-mathi Shivashankar Associ-ate Vice President – Diversi-ty & Sustainability, HCLTechnologies. At present,women constitute 24 percent of our workforce, wewould like to increase that to35 per cent to reflect theavailable talent pool ofwomen engineers in thecountry” she said.
HCL laid out the red carpettreatment for candidateswho walked in for the event- allocating a separate areaand refreshments for those
who accompany the candi-dates to the interview. Thecandidates were interviewedby a panel dominated bywomen to help increasetheir comfort levels. Therecruitment cycle culminat-ed with lunch for all.
IT, BPO and outsourcingservices firm, MphasiScompleted 8 recruitmentevents to induct women overthe last 12 months. Explain-ing why the firm haslaunched a dedicated driveto recruit women, Elango R,Head of HR said “When weare faced with a supplycrunch, we have to startlooking at various ways todeal with it. We found thatnot enough women were
being channeled into thepipeline and decided tolaunch a women-specificrecruitment drive throughreferrals, HR consultantsand advertisements. Second,as organizations mature,there is an increasing needfor diversity in the work-force without which there isno diversity in thinking orviewpoints,” he noted. How-ever, women are hired pure-ly on merit, and not becausethey belong to the fairer sex.Once hired, we supportthem with women-friendlypolicies in the workplace,where the managers aretrained to handle issues of adiverse workforce, headded. Today, women con-
stitute 27 per cent of thefirm’s 38,000 employeesand Elango aims to increasethe number of women inmiddle management from18 to 33 per cent, because itis typically difficult to retainwomen at those levels.
“A firm’s ability to inno-vate depends on its diversityquotient, which includesgender, multi-generationalworkforce, and people withdisabilities. We recognizethe fact that hiring womenbrings in significant busi-ness value to the company –it promotes diversity inthinking and ideas which arerequired to come up withinnovative solutions forglobal customers” saidMahalingam C, ExecutiveVP & HR Head, SymphonyServices. The firm has 29per cent women on its teamand is targeting to take it to40 per cent. AccentureIndia, another equal oppor-tunity employer has over50,000 employees, 30 percent of whom are women.
While most IT firms haveno problems attracting 30-48 per cent women at theentry levels, that percentagedwindles to the low teensand tapers down to barely 3-4 per cent at the top manage-ment levels. Yahoo! IndiaR&D is working toward cre-ating a more balanced work-force by aiming to increaseits women headcount from alow 16 per cent with a‘Women in Technology’programme – that helpsthem succeed in theircareers with mentorship,inspiration and technologytraining.
Google’s$700 m ITAbuy cleared Washinton: Google’s entryinto the online travel sectorwas cleared for takeoff Fri-day as the US JusticeDepartment gave the greenlight to its $700 millionpurchase of flight datacompany ITA Software.
The Justice Department’santi-trust division, however,extracted a number of con-cessions from Google andimposed conditions on theInternet search giant toallow the controversialacquisition to go ahead.
The proposed legal settle-ment, which will need theapproval of a US DistrictCourt, requires Google tonotably develop and licenseITA’s travel software toother companies.
Several online travel sites,including Expedia, Kayakand Travelocity, had soughtto block the Google-ITAdeal, claiming it would giveGoogle too much controlover the lucrative onlinetravel market and lead tohigher prices.
The Justice Departmentagreed that unless modi-fied, the acquisition "wouldhave substantially lessenedcompetition amongproviders of comparativeflight search websites in theUS." ITA flight data soft-ware is used by many USairlines and a number ofleading online travel sites.
Russia deniesplans to banGmailMoscow: The Russiansecurity service denied Sat-urday it had plans to banSkype and Gmail after oneof its top officials said suchservices posed a serioussecurity risk. The informa-tion and special communi-cations director of the Fed-eral Security Service (FSB)told a cabinet meeting thathe was growing “increas-ingly concerned” by the useof services with foreign-made encryption technolo-gy.
The comments sparked animmediate furor in theRussian Internet communi-ty and were dismissed as a“personal opinion” by asource close to PresidentDmitry Medvedev — atech-savvy leader who isoften seen with an iPad inhand.
An FSB spokesman saidSaturday that the agencywas not proposing a ban onthe popular services.
“Quite the contrary — thedevelopment of advancedtechnology is a naturalprocess that should be wel-comed,” the security serv-ice spokesman told Russiannews agencies.
A spokesman for formerFSB chief Vladmir Putincalled the ban suggestion“well-reasoned”.
Naming that star? Ask your telescopeNew York, April 10: Long-time stargazers learned thebasics of the night sky thehard way — with pencils,star charts and lots ofpatience with their tele-scopes.
Now high-tech equipmentand smartphone apps aremaking the task a lot lessdaunting for beginners.
New point-and-shoot tele-scopes, for example, requireonly the push of a button togo into action: Plunk onedown in the driveway andthe device gets its own bear-ings, aligning itself with thestars above so it can tell youthat the twinkling light inthe eyepiece is Betelgeuse.
Three models of thesenew, self-aligning tele-scopes, costing about $700to $800, will be offered thisJuly by Celestron. The com-pany's new line, calledSkyProdigy, is intended foramateurs who don't have in-
depth knowledge of thenight sky, or may not evenhave a clue of how to set upa telescope, said Danyal J.Medley, a principal engineerat the company in Torrance,Calif.
Even seasoned astronomyexperts are heralding suchautomation.
"I think the telescope thatsets itself up, so anyone can
easily use it, is great," saidJay Pasachoff, chairman ofthe astronomy departmentand director of the HopkinsObservatory at WilliamsCollege in Williamstown,Mass. "This kind of tele-scope makes it possible forpeople to be out in theirbackyards and look at themost interesting astronomi-cal objects within minutes."
To find its position andthen recognise the starsabove, the telescope has adigital camera that takespictures of the sky. It thencompares them with itscomputerized database ofstored images, Mr. Medleysaid. The process typicallytakes less than three min-utes.
Automated telescopes thatcan find celestial objectswith no help from humansare not new. Telescopeshave long had motors todrive them, allowing built-inprocessing and databases.Users of some older tele-scopes, for example, canchoose "Saturn" from themenu on the hand controller,recentering the eyepieceover the planet.
Amateur stargazers arealso finding a wealth of datavia low-cost technology likesmartphone apps. Smart-phones, with their cameras
and abundant processingpower, offer novel featuresthat telescopes cannot.
For example, United SoftMedia offers the app Red-shift for iPhone and iPad($11.99 at iTunes) that iden-tifies bright stars or planetsyou can see in the night sky.It can also simulate a ride ona spacecraft taking you on atour of distant planets.
Last year, the App Smartcolumn of The New YorkTimes reviewed severalother astronomy-relatedapps including Star Walk($3 for the iPhone; $5 forthe iPad) and Google SkyMap for Android phones(free).
Smartphone apps andaccessories for stargazingare so popular that they willhave a separate block ofvendors at the NortheastAstronomy Forum and Tele-scope Show, to be held April16 and 17 in Suffern, N.Y.
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
WorldHealth
Day on 7th April high-lighted a very unusual situ-ation facing the WorldHealth Order. How do wecombat drug resistancethat occurs when microor-ganisms such as bacteria,viruses, fungi and para-sites change
in ways that render themedications used to curethe infections they causeineffective. When themicroorganisms becomeresistant to most antimi-crobials they are oftenreferred to as “superbugs”.India is at a brink as there amajor concern because adrug-resistant infections ofmalaria, TB, HIV may kill,can spread to others, andimposes huge costs toindividuals and society.Last year, in my columnon “superbug” bugs ourhealthcare, I had highlight-ed the issues westernworld researchers mayplay with an emerging sci-entific and medical superpower like India. However,WHO’s call for action ondrug resistance superbugsis to avert future globaldisaster, the challenge iswhat to do and how to doit.
Despite the mass of liter-ature on drug resistancesuperbugs, there isdepressingly little on thetrue costs of resistance andthe effectiveness of medi-cines. Given the lack ofdata, in the face of a grow-ing realisation that actionsneed to be taken now, tocombat a global menacethat can take the worldhealth order back to thepre-antibiotics era. We aretalking of a potential bio-logical World War III!
WHO’s Armageddonis a6-points strategy to tideover the biological WorldWar III and announce theworld’s victory over thesuperbugs that kill over60% of people whoacquire these infectionsfrom the superbugs. Theseinclude planning the fund-ing for the global worldwar on the superbugs,strengthening surveil-lance, ensuring medicalreinforcements to combatsuperbugs attack,armistice on the blatantabuse of antibiotics bymedical practitioners andcare givers, enhancing thecommando’s for infectionprevention and control andfinally fostering theNATO-like alliance
between the scientific,philanthropic and healthindustry to foster innova-tions and R&D to producenew stealth-bombingantibiotics against thesuperbugs.
The current issue is lackof data that can reallydescribe the size and thenature of the enemy we are
combatting. Information,communications and tech-nology (ICT) can bridgethe gaps in this war againstthe superbugs. Many chal-lenges exist to effectivelymeeting these criticalinformation needs. Firstly,how do we get the clini-cians who are oftenunaware of the existenceof relevant informationresources aligned withICT technologies. Second-ly, the ICT systems need tobe comprehensive in theircoverage. Thirdly, issuesof time efficiency, accessi-bility at point of care, andautomatic provision ofinformation for decisionsand analytics.
Fourth, customisabilityto account for local factorsbecause of significantlocal variations in super-bugs susceptibility. Next isthe issue of ease of updat-ing content and notifyingthe users in the WHO,governments, regulatorybodies, doctors and caregivers. Last but not theleast the cost of such ICTsystems. We have learnt
lessons from the westernand advanced nations onhow their different ICTsystems do not sync lead-ing to expensive solutionsin integrations and datastandards. Open source isthe way to go in combatingthis war rather than open-ing another war in the ICTfront. Finally, one majorforce that needs to beincluded is the growinginfluence of social mediain combatting the super-bugs when putting out theimplementation guide-lines.
We have some lessonsfrom the way global clini-cal trials have been con-ducted and the informationcollected from differentsites for regulatory sub-missions. There are severalopen source bio surveil-lance, clinical trials sys-tems that have worked per-fectly. We need to stick tothe best in the open sourceworld to ensure that thereis co-operation and dataexchange to win this bio-logical world war againstthe superbugs that maychange the world healthorder and take us to thepre-antibiotics era.
ConsumerScope
Kapil Khandelwal is Director, EquNev Capital, a niche investments banking and advisory services firm and a leading healthcare and information com-munication technology (ICT) expert.
Fight superbugswith Open Source
US trains activists in Web protectionWashington, April 10: TheUnited States is trainingthousands of cell phone andInternet pro-democracycampaigners worldwide toevade security forces inwhat it calls a "cat-and-mouse game" with authori-tarian governments.
The US government issponsoring efforts to helpactivists in Arab and othercountries gain access totechnology that circumventsgovernment firewalls,secures telephone text andvoice messages, and pre-vents attacks on websites.
"This is sort of a cat-and-mouse game and govern-ments are constantly devel-oping new techniques to goafter critics, to go after dis-senters," said Michael Pos-ner, the assistant US secre-tary of state for humanrights and labor.
"We are trying to stayahead of the curve and try-ing to basically provide both
technology, training, anddiplomatic support to allowpeople to freely expresstheir views."
Posner told a small groupof reporters that the themeof Internet freedom will be"peppered" throughout theState Department's annualreport on human rights for194 countries that is sched-uled for release on Friday.
US Secretary of StateHillary Clinton is campaign-ing hard for freedoms of
expression, assembly andassociation online -- whatshe calls the world's townsquare or coffee house of the21st century.
The chief US diplomat hassaid the protests in Egyptand Iran fueled by Face-book, Twitter and YouTubereflected "the power of con-nection technologies as anaccelerant of political,social and economicchange."
The US government, Pos-
ner said, has budgeted $50million in the last two yearsto develop new technologiesto help activists protectthemselves from arrest andprosecution by authoritariangovernments.
And it has organized train-ing sessions for 5,000activists in different parts ofthe world.
A session held in the Mid-dle East about six weeks agogathered activists fromTunisia, Egypt, Syria andLebanon who returned totheir countries with the aimof training their colleaguesthere. "They went back andthere's a ripple effect," Pos-ner said.
State Department officialssaid one of the new tech-nologies under developmentis the "panic button," whichallows activists to erase con-tact lists on their cell phonesif they are arrested.
"If you can get the panicbutton that wipes that (list)
clean before they get lockedup, you're saving lives," saidPosner.
The new technology hasnot yet been made availableto pro-democracy cam-paigners but it will proveuseful in places like Syria,where the authorities simplygo out and arrest activistswho use their mobilephones.
The State Department saidit has already funded effortsby private firms, mainlyfrom the United States, todevelop a dozen differenttechnologies to circumventgovernment censorship fire-walls. "One of them hasbeen very successful in Iran.It's being used extensively.and we have the downloadnumbers," a State Depart-ment official said on condi-tion of anonymity.
The State Department isalso funding efforts to pre-vent governments fromlaunching attacks.
bITs
DIGITAL TROOPERSCelebrity tracker app forAndroid smartphonesSan Francisco, April 10:Startup Scoopler was invit-ing owners of Android-pow-ered smartphones to installan application that promisesto alert them every time acelebrity is sighted nearby.
The free JustSpotted soft-ware was available online atthe Android Market.
“There is no other applica-tion that gives you real-timealerts like this with thou-sands of spottings on ourwebsite everyday,”Scooplerco-founderAJ
Asver told AFP in an email.“If you are in a metropoli-
tan area, you are going to bepleasantly surprised by howclose you are to the celebri-ty world.”
JustSpotted.com launchedin October with an onlinemap that pinpoints celebritywhereabouts in real timebased on public updatesfrom social networking starFacebook and microblog-
ging service
Twitter.JustSpotted members also
contribute sightings.While branded by some as
a potential resource forstalkers, JustSpotted billeditself as "celebrity friendly"and said stars can makedeals to use the service topromote their images ormessages.
“We have not had anycomplaints from celebri-ties,” Asver told AFP.“We’ve actually beenapproached by people aboutpromoting upcoming
films.” He said that a ver-sion of JustSpotted
tailored foriPhones wasundergoing anAppleapproval
process andwas expected to
be available in theApp Store by theend of the month.
