The Ottawa Hospital uses IBM technology to help improve patient care
LAS VEGAS -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled a range of new business integration software capabilities designed to help organizations quickly begin incorporating the collaborative and intelligent capabilities of social media, mobile computing and cloud computing into their enterprise applications. (#IBMimpact)
The cornerstone of enabling enterprises to embrace these critical technologies is the new version of IBM WebSphere Application Server. The fastest application server on the market, WebSphere Application Server now provides clients with new flexibility for embedded deployments and is ready for cloud with built in virtualization. This new offering provides the software platform that today powers more than 100,000 clients worldwide.
Complementing WebSphere Application Server is a range of new integration software offerings including:
-- IBM Business Process Manager - Combines new capabilities around social, collaboration, governance and mobile to dramatically improve the way work is done. This allows organizations to gain visibility in the ways they change, manage, measure and improve the processes that run their business.
-- IBM Operational Decision Management - Speeds and simplifies the way that organizations manage the business rules that control a wide range of decisions across business processes and applications. The new "social media" style user interface provides an intuitive environment for collaboration and simplifies searching, viewing and making rule changes.
-- IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Live Web Application Programming Interface (API) Services - Allows companies to extend their services to support the emerging community of developers who are building new social, mobile and cloud applications. This new purpose-built offering provides a comprehensive solution to deliver, socialize and manage business API assets.
The Ottawa Hospital Turns to IBM to Improve Patient Care
One client - The Ottawa Hospital has already begun testing how these new software and services from IBM can dramatically change their business model. Working with IBM, they are building a new system that improves the quality of patient care and helps them to better manage the flow of patients throughout the hospital.
Recently, the hospital had seen a tremendous increase in patients, resulting in higher occupancy rates and ultimately, overcrowding. Additionally, the patients being admitted had complicated and acute symptoms, placing a greater strain on the need for coordinated healthcare delivery. The IBM system provides extensive patient information and hospital resource availability to the clinical staff, via mobile device, at the point of care - speeding both admission and treatment.
"Physicians should be focused on patient care, not be tied up doing lower value activity, like calling for consults or trying to negotiate admission for a patient," said Dale Potter, Senior Vice President & CIO at The Ottawa Hospital. "The concept behind our new system from IBM is that we are able to help our staff have one consolidated view on important data and processes, getting the right information to physicians at the right time."
For example, the attending physician can send an electronic request to the patient's physician for clarification on past diagnosis. The patient's doctor receives the consultation request immediately on their most accessible device - a tablet, smart phone or a computer. They respond directly to the specific consult questions electronically, so the attending physician can correctly diagnose the patient.
The new system builds upon IBM's expertise in the area of Business Process Management (BPM), Operational Decision Management and analytics, and is critical to helping the hospital rethink the manner in which it utilizes its IT infrastructure in order to cut across functional silos and better coordinate care.
A Decade of Leadership
IBM has been the overall marketshare leader in middleware software for eleven consecutive years. In fact, IBM now commands 32.1 percent market share and has extended its lead to nearly double that of its closest competitor. (1)
Key to WebSphere's success within the middleware segment is IBM's continued investment in product performance, a commitment that has once again resulted in industry leading benchmarks. In the first test of its recently announced WebSphere Application Server v8.5, IBM was named world leader in middleware performance as measured by SPECjEnterprise 2010 in EjOPS/processor core which measures efficiency of middleware software servers. Based upon the latest industry standard benchmark results, IBM's middleware software is 16 percent faster than any other vendor's middleware software on equivalent hardware. (2)
These new capabilities are on display at this year's IMPACT conference, which features more than 8,500 attendees and hundreds of client testimonials, presentations, workshops and product demos. For more information, visit: http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressk...
For more information on how IBM is helping clients and partners make smarter, faster decisions and increase their business, visit: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet
(1) Gartner, Inc., Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2011, March 29, 2012
(2) SPEC and SPECjEnterprise 2010 are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.
Results from www.spec.org as of 04/29/2012 Oracle Sun Blade X6270 M2 - 452.285 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core (equivalent hardware to world record result), Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M3 - 519.386 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core (Oracle's best SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core result so far). IBM HS 22 Blade - 524.621 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS/core (world record SPECjEnterprise2010 EJOPS/core result)
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, WebSphere, SmartSOA, Smarter Planet and the planet icon are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. For a current list of IBM trademarks, please see www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
All other company, product or service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of others. Statements concerning IBM's future development plans and schedules are made for planning purposes only, and are subject to change or withdrawal without notice. Reseller prices may vary.
How Europe's power broker wound up at centre of its financial woes - Globe and Mail
The euro might be the best thing that’s ever happened to Germany.
It’s sparked soaring exports, a manufacturing renaissance and near-zero interest rates.
But as Greek voters get set to vote in a pivotal election Sunday and financial contagion threatens to spread beyond Spain, the world is looking to Germany to dig much deeper to save the common currency, because only Germany can.
Even as leaders from across Europe join together to fix the continent’s financial mess, efforts are failing to bring much needed confidence. Moody’s sharply downgraded its rating of Spanish government debt late Wednesday, just days after euro-zone finance ministers pledged €100-billion in loans to stabilize Spain’s teetering banking sector. The loans will only add to Spain’s debt load as it struggles with a weak economy, Moody’s noted.
As Europe’s woes mount, eyes turn to the continent’s one financial powerhouse.
How Germany – Europe’s largest economy – came to hold the fate of the euro in its hands is Economics 101. Fiscally lean and economically strong, only Germany has the financial clout to write more bailout cheques for the euro zone’s faltering siblings.
“Any solution requires the agreement of the Germans,” said Patrick Leblond, associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs. “There’s no way to bypass them on any of this.”
And while the calculation should be an easy one for Germans to make, the decision to put more money on the table is achingly slow and deliberate in coming.
Germany’s economy soared, almost from the moment the euro was born in 1999. Freed from competitive currency devaluations, its borrowing costs have dropped. And 13 years later, nearly 70 per cent of its exports go to the rest of Europe, providing a foundation for its manufacturing industry. Germany also stands virtually alone among Western countries in maintaining a trade surplus with China, buoyed by exports of such items as sophisticated manufacturing equipment.
All that would be put at risk if the euro zone splinters or dissolves.
Experts say the impending Greek vote marks a perilous inflection point in the euro-zone debt saga. Either Germans give more, and soon, or the system begins to unravel.
“It’s overwhelmingly in Germany’s economic self-interest to provide trans-European financial stability,” insisted Janice Stein, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
But a complex mixture of history, politics and the collective psyche of the German people has turned a no-brainer decision into a soul-searching exercise.
Germans have a “visceral discomfort” with the whole notion of going into excessive debt, fearing that it will spur potentially dangerous inflation, Ms. Stein explained. The country’s fixation with austerity dates back a century, she said.
“[German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has a very limited time to change her position,” said Ms. Stein, who has visited Germany a handful of times in the past year. “She’s inching her way forward when the markets need a strong statement to restore confidence. She may have too little, too late, to offer.”
Germans’ debt aversion is rooted in its experience of the early 1990s, when the country bankrolled the reunification of East Germany to the tune of a trillion dollars. That forced painful restructuring for the economy, including labour reforms. It also made Germany more productive and economically stronger.
Many Germans feel they paid their dues to reach the top of the European economic hierarchy, and they want their southern European neighbours to make deep sacrifices to stay in the club.
But the austerity bug goes back much further than reunification. The current generation of German political and business leaders was schooled on the lessons of the Weimar Republic and the hyper-inflation of the early 1930s. And many worry that taking on huge debt to save Greece, Spain and perhaps Italy could trigger a bout of inflation.
Mike Moffat, an economist and lecturer at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business, said he can’t figure out if Germany is playing a high-stakes game of “chicken” to extract deeper sacrifices from Greece, Spain and the rest of the euro zone, or whether it’s given all it can.
Either way, the fate of the euro zone is in Germany’s hands, he said.
“They really are the only large country left with any money. They really do hold most of the cards.”
Few Europeans would be spared if Germany fails to act. An analysis released Wednesday by Credit Suisse warns of a disaster for European banks if the single currency dissolves, wiping out nearly 60 per cent of their value and sucking about 10 per cent of available credit out of the system.
Business relay runners can help charity fund-raisers cross £250,000 finishing line - Nottingham Evening Post
THIS could be the year when business people from across Notts puff and pant their way to a £250,000 charity landmark.
If they do it will mark a happy tenth birthday for the event which has helped raise much-needed cash for a number of charities.
Business advisory firm Cooper Parry first launched its Corporate Challenge in 2002, holding a relay race alongside the city's Robin Hood marathon.
It has turned into the UK's largest corporate relay race, and the amount of money it has cumulatively raised has now reached £240,000.
The 2012 event is due to take place on 30 September – and Cooper Parry is now looking for businesses to join in the push to break the quarter-of-a-million fundraising barrier.
Race organiser Melanie Campbell said: "Our total for the event stands at £240,000 and this year we are hopeful of smashing the quarter-of-a-million pound mark.
"It's a great event and gives business people the opportunity to get fit and compete with each other in a fun environment, and at the same time raise funds for local charities."
For this year's event, Cooper Parry has teamed up with three charities: Rainbows Children's Hospice, the NSPCC and Treetops Hospice.
It wants businesses to put forward teams of five, with each member running a leg of around 2.5 miles.
Last year's winner was a team from RBS in Nottingham, with second place going to a squad from Aldi Stores.
Enterprise Rent a Car and Adamson Jones took awards for raising the most money from the relay.
Companies interested in entering a team can register up until 14 September via www.cooperparry.com or by calling Melanie Campbell on 0115 958 0212.
The Corporate Challenge will take place alongside the Ikano Robin Hood Half Marathon from the Victoria Embankment.
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