Communication through voice, sms/text, mobile internet, basic features to mobile touchscreen interfaces, GPS capabilities, and the emerging “augmented reality” features, and mobile projection.
Patients will be able to access a telemedicine system for medical advice
Jan 23, 2011 11:29 PM | By KEVIN SHALVEY
Imagine you're a two-day trip away from the nearest doctor and are starting to experience flu-like symptoms, but you're unsure if it's malaria, swine flu or merely a common cold.
Why not just SMS a doctor and be diagnosed over the phone?
By March, you'll be able to do just that.
Telemedicine, as long-distance diagnosing, teaching and monitoring is known, will soon be introduced across the country, said executives of MTN and Sanlam, who have teamed up to develop and launch the technology.
“What it means is that a number of services can be offered through the mobile phone,” said MTN corporate affairs executive Rich Mkhondo yesterday. “You would be able to speak to a health professional qualified to diagnose.”
Sanlam Health CEO Grant Newton said the two companies have spent more than 10 years developing a series of questions that patients will answer by SMS or on the phone, which will enable doctors to diagnose 340 diseases.
Operation Ajax tells the true story of the CIA’s involvement in the Middle East and the roots of the modern American conflict with Iran.
Experience history through the eyes of a nameless protagonist, whose identity was redacted from declassified CIA records, as he recalls the dramatic and real events he was involved in with heads of state, covert agents, and underground political activists.
Posted with permission. Provided by Dr. James Spohrer in response to a request from Phi Beta Iota for a “snap-shot” overview of the “soul” of IBM going into the 21st Century.
1. Cities: here is a short IBM video (YouTube 4:15) on cities as the nodes in the planetary system of systems
Features Mike Wing, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Julia Grace. Cities as planetary accupunture points of intervention. Cities are HUMAN–computers cannot handle the unpredictable. Dominos analogy–everything is interconnected and knowledge or information are the “energy” being exchanged among individual people, the HUMAN element. It is the mixture of people and hardware, and software that is so elegant and exciting.
2. Universities in Cities: My current job at IBM builds from the notion that universities are the knowledge batteries of city/regions… see slide #34 in this presentation on Service Science: Progress and Directions (64 Slides), connected with Handbook of Service Science (Springer, 2010). NOTE: Downloading presentation enables viewing of Notes for each slide.
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Overview of IBM University Programs focusing on 5 R's (Research, Readiness, Recruiting, Revenue, Responsibilities); Quality of Life balance between local and global optimization; Ecology–study of all things in relation to all life forms; and Holistic Service Systems with cities and within cities, universities, and the fundamental “intelligent” building blocks. Emphasis on information information exchanges and life-long learning. Slide #34:
3. Connecting Universities and Cities Locally and Globally: My global team at IBM University Programs is funding connecting the universities locally with their cities, and globally with each other – networked improvement communities in Doug's language… Really connecting service systems, see Slide #16 in this presentation.
It might be about the size of the screen and whether or not you're standing up.
Start at the bottom. For the first five years of the Internet, the most used function was email. Email remains a bedrock of every device and system that's been built on top of the internet, though sometimes it looks like a text message or a mobile check in. This is the layer for asynchronous person to person connection, over time.
Moving from left to right, we see how the way we use the thing we call the internet has evolved over time. We also see how devices and technology and bandwidth have changed the uses of the net and, interestingly, how a growth in mass has led to a growth in self-motivated behavior.
Early online projects were things like Archie and Veronica and checking in changes to the Linux code base. You needed patience, a big screen and a sense of contribution.
Layer on top of this a practice that is getting ever more professional, which is creating content for others to consume. Sometimes in groups, sometimes using sophisticated software and talented cohorts.
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As we move to the right (and through time) we see the birth of online shopping. Still to this day, most online shopping happens on traditional devices, often sitting down.
The sitting down part is not a silly aside. Ted Leonsis theorized twenty years ago that the giant difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You're not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.
Moving over in time and device and intent, we see the idea of consuming content. While tablets get their share of shopping, this is where they really shine. I think 2011 is going to be the year of the tablet, from the Kindle to the iPad to the thing we used to call a phone.
It's in the last two categories that these other devices, things that don't involve sitting down, are superior, not just a mobile substitute. The social graph is a very low bandwidth, peripheral attention interaction, perfect for this audience and this medium. And the last category–tell me where I am, where to eat, who's near me, what's the weather, get me a cab right now–is all about me and now and here.
I don't believe this is a winner take all situation, any more than one bestselling book makes all other books obsolete. I think different pillars work for different devices, and there will continue to be winners in all of them.
A new feature built into Google Translate for Android, Conversation Mode is a little rough around the edges, but it's basically your own personal Babel Fish. It does what Wordlens does but in real-time speech, translating English and Spanish.
Phi Beta Iota: A new book is about to come out on Google's last few years' investment in R&D. Rumor has it–we've heard the book summarized but not read the book itself–they have very little to show for the money in comparison with Chinese and other options that are emerging. One down, 182 to go…
