News Blog for 10/27

I just read an article in the AM paper on Tues 10/23 2007 about the six new products that are bad. The article was called "Worst of Worst". Basically it was about new innovative technology to stay clear of and the six items include: 1)Raon Digital Everun L30H, 2)Samsung LN-T5265F, 3)Westinghous L2410NM, 4)Spyware Terminator 2.0, 5)Lexmark Z1300, 6)Nokia N76. This made me think of what we dicuss in class about the problems a compnay might have. Even a small piece of technology can have so many problems, not to say a company which not only has tech problems, but also economic, structural, legal, political cognitive, and sociocultural all of which we learned about in class. We only talked about Covisint relating to car compnies but I found online that Healthcare Providers also use this online marketing system.

Individual Blog for 10/27

How much price transparency is there on eBay? In terms of price information who has more: the buyers or the sellers? Will the side that has more information make more profit? Why?

Most of the price transparency is due to shipping and handling. Also some transparency may be in the price at which the customer and sellers think the item is worth. For example, it is difficult to place a price on antiques. Even if it is labeled with a price, some people might not think it’s worth it to buy an old item.

I believe that both buyers and sellers should have similiar ways to find out the price information. It's a matter of who makes more effort on researching the correct prices.However the side that makes more profit is the side that knows how to do business and bargain. For example, an item can be known to be worth $100. Both the buyer and seller can profit. If the seller gets the item from somewhere for less than $100 and sells it for more than he profits. The buyer can also profit because he can try to find the cheapest offer on eBay or even elsewhere online.
I found a website: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2007-07-17-economists-study-ebay-buyers_N.htm. On this website it gives hints to buyers and sellers on eBay. It’s quite useful for buying items or selling items if you want to use eBay. But one interesting thing I learned from the articles I search is that eBay protects the buyer rather than the seller because they know that sellers will keep on coming and not leave.

News Blog for 10/20

The presentation on Monday was quite interesting. It made me want to go home and download the game a Second Life. It seems like a cool virtual game to play with when bored. The other thing I wanted to comment on was the food simulator. I don’t find it that useful. Unless they plan to use it for medical reasons dealing with training the tongue for taste because some patients shouldn’t be eating some certain kinds of food. I hope they aren’t using it for diet reasons because many people will start starving themselves without knowing since they taste the flavor.

My presentation was about artificial intelligence. I found an article called “Driving Like It’s 2057”. This article basically described some of today’s vehicles and how they feature artificial intelligence such as hands-free parking and electronic stability control. The other thing the article mentions is about the future and how vehicles might even be able to move in any direction, drive and navigate robotically and have structures that morph and adapt to passenger’s need. I’m still wondering if artificial intelligence can move so fast; however I do think it would be more convenient and easier to get around. Personally I’m not that good at parking a car. I remember last year as I was driving my friends car, she had the system where the navigation will show you what’s in the back and it made it easier to park the car. I didn’t really need to look back when I was reversing the car because there was a camera basically in the back of the car and the video would be in the front where the navigation system is. I’m still waiting to try the car that has the automatic parking; that would even be better for me because I don’t have to even put any effort in backing up into a parallel parking spot. Anyways, in this article, they introduce eight automotive design studios based in Southern California including: Audi, Gm, Honda, Maxda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Each has there own creative concepts about the RoboCar of 2057 that they wish they will be able to implement using artificial intelligence.. Below are some pictures of the cars they are envisioning:




From left to right on the first row is:
1) Honda 1 to the power of 4
2) Mazda Montonari rx
3) Audi virtuea quattro
The second row from left to right is:
1) Mercedes benz silver flow
2) Toyota biomobile mecha
3) Volkswagen concept slipstream

http:www.autoservice world.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=74915&issue=-10122007
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?AR=228621

News Blog for 10/13

In class yesterday the presentation talked about pop ups and that there’s a popup for everyone. I never knew that the internet would remember what you type and come up with ads. No wonder there is always an ad about what I’m looking for but I usually don’t click on those because of the asterisk at the bottom of the ad. Also the part of the presentation about invideo advertising, I had never noticed those before. Maybe I’m too focused on the video but I never know those ads can expand. I saw an article by Kevin McGill about online advertising at http://multichannelmarchnt,com/webchannel/email/econundrum.

The article basically was about the cost of different types of advertising. The prices per article is as follows:
Email - average cost less than $7
Banner Ads - cost of $71.89
Paid Search – cost of $26.75
Affiliate market – cost of $17.47

Based on those prices I would choose email as my #1 type of advertisement. However according to the article, most advertisers like using banner ads. I would definitely use email because logically even if email is 10x less effective, I would be paying the same amount as using one banner ad.

Individual Assignment Blog for 10/06

First we need to describe low cost and differentiation. Low cost in business means to open a sustainable cost advantage over rivals, using a lower cost edge as basis to under price rivals and market share gains or earn higher profit margin selling at going price. Your differentiation strategy is an integrated set of action designed to produce or deliver goods or services that customers perceive as being different in ways that are important to them. It call for you to sell nonstandardized products to customers with unique needs. There’s really no one strategy a healthcare provider should use. It depends on circumstances. Low cost to me means tight budgeting, eliminating waste, frugal design of office space, and thin personnel staffing. Changes in reimbursement causes healthcare providers to look at this strategy. I believe that this is a good strategy overall for business however for doctors, there is another side to business and that’s the trustworthiness. If everything seems frugal and short staffed, patients might have second thoughts about going to the provider. In this case, I think that Primary Care Physicians might be able to use this strategy more because there isn’t much competition for pediatricians, internal medicine, and family practice doctors. For specialist who need special equipment, this strategy might not be as good. Specialist might want to use the differentiation strategy. This is based on identifying patients with different set of needs. They can structure their practice and center around the unique service and therefore have an advantage. For example, European providers have been advertising laser procedures not yet in US therefore they have an advantage over US providers. Another thing with differentiation is having superior quality. For example, and orthopedic surgeon having more technology and service support in the office would have more patients coming in than for a surgeon who had less equipment. There have been many new technologies to support these strategies. For differentiation, they almost all work because basically a provider just needs to be unique from others. And the most standard technologies should be used for low cost providers, for example Project Real (which I talked a little about in my news blog). The Microsoft SQL server 2005 Project Real is a low cost implementation. It’s advantages are: 1) insight into organizational/personal clinical outcomes/financial performances; 2) simple, secure, and roles based dashboarding; 3) faster solution delivery; 4) solutions that are low-cost and web-based. As I was looking up the integration of innovation and clinical need, I came across the Mercy Supply Chain Story. This shows how much providers and healthcare organization have to spend and how they make profit. Here are some charts and tables:

The previous ones are pretty much self explanatory. The last two pictures I put in are representing the technology expenses. Several warehouse management systems, ultimately deciding on TecSys as the most affordable and scalable WMS with proven experience in specialty pharmaceutical management by several major wholesalers (the first picture – low cost strategy).

Everyday when medication administration rounds begin, nurses go to an automated medication dispensing cabinet and electronically select the patient’s ID. The system automatically acknowledges the medication order, opens the appropriate drawer, the nurse selects the needed medications and acknowledges the selection. The cabinetry electronically records the transaction and builds a replenishment order for later use. The nurse takes the medication to the patient’s bedside where she interfaces with our medication verification system including a scanning device that allows her to scan her badge, the patients arm band, and the bar coded medication. The system evaluates the transaction and either acknowledges the administration as valid or alerts the nurse of a potential medication error. Medication alerts are handled according to hospital protocol and the alert is achieved for later analysis by qualified clinical experts. This can be a differentiation strategy depending on how many hospitals use it.

Sites I used:
http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/businessvalue/housecalls/vista.mspx
http://www.tecsys.com/resources/casestudies/SistersOfMercyROI.pdf

News Blog for 10/06

In class the group was talking about Salesforce, I was actually familiar with it. Previously when I worked for Sterling Testing Systems, the sales people had to use it and as a team leader in operations, I had to familiarize myself with it to simplify my workload. Also previously in class we were talking about SQL servers and as I was doing my individual assignment blog, I came across it and learned that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Project Real) was implemented in healthcare fields as it is a low cost way to pull data from disparate storage systems near real time. This was found in the article on the website: http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/businessvalue/housecalls/projectreal.mspx

Also on this website was a link: http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/businessvalue/housecalls/vista.mspx which sort of confused me on what to do with Windows Vista. Recently I bought a new computer and the software it uses is Windows Vista which I’m highly unfamiliar with. I love Windows XP cause I know how to use it. And I read an article in the AM paper called “Vista Upgrade a headache for many retailers, buyers”. In the article, it describes Windows Vista as a technology that is too new and unfamiliar to a lot of people. There are too many steps. For example in the article it states that for Windows XP you just have to plug the driver in to use the printer; on the other hand, for Windows Vista you have to reinstall the driver, which I’m not sure I know how to do. Many people have been complaining about this software so now retailers are allowing people to bring in their computers and they will help the customers downgrade the computer for free. I was going to do this, however the above link suggests that Windows Vista is good for healthcare. Now I’m contemplating if I should familiarize myself with it or just wait because even if my company decides to implement Windows Vista, it might take some time.