Prezi will Rock your Presentation

I discovered the wild and playful world of Prezi this week.  I was a die hard PowerPoint fan since the 1990s able to build those boring slides with lots of word.  I was reluctant to leave my world.
I built a complicated PowerPoint slide for Professor Armstrong's class rich with animation and proudly showed it to my team.  Well, what can I say...I abandoned PowerPoint and ended up learning Prezi!  I was so engaged that I worked well into the night and woke up the next day to start again. Why?  Prezi lets you think in multiple dimensions and perspectives.  I wasn't bound by those four edges of the PowerPoint slide.  Anything can fit into the screen!  The scalability of images is truly AMAZING zooming into a tiny image to full resolution.

Prezi is not only fun and easy, you can work collaboratively online with ten of your friends.  Prezi must have been designed by person with a silly imagination because each online friend is represented by a colorful stick figure that bobbles about the screen.

This is a great read...take a look and let your mind appreciate the innovation and talent in this world.

The 20 Most Innovative Startups In Tech

Lunch Launch at DC Week

On the second floor of a lovely old DC building in Dupont Circle there was standing room only for entrepreneurs who want to startup a new business or learn more about their fledging business.  The room  had an air of excitement, an expectation that secrets would be shared that will help all of us succeed.  The Dupont Circle Business Incubator opened its doors this fall and it's founder Carter Ferrington is welcoming and genuinely interested in helping people succeed.

So what did I learn?  First off, I learned that GW is teaching us the same stuff that these folks were talking about when it comes to market research, financial analysis and business plans.  Surprisingly about half the attendees didn't have a business plan...hopefully, they didn't have a business either!
The take home point was: Don't keep your great ideas to yourself. Talk and share to get feedback.  Your idea is great, but 50,000 others have had the same idea. What will make you succeed?  Be open to feedback and let it change your idea to be even better.  Don't be afraid of contrary feedback...it may hurt, but it will also make your idea better.  You need to understand your customer and your competition.  Of course there are risks that someone may "steal" your idea, but the benefits of growing and shaping your idea through sharing outweigh the risk of losing it.

Read about other incubator labs in DC where innovators and entrepreneurs incubate great ideas.

New Biochip will Save Lives

Wireless EPIC device (10x10x3 mm)

Watch the Plessey EPIC video!

EPIC biochip... Superhero

EPIC...Just like a Superhero


What if a tiny device could locate a baby trapped under the rubble after a massive earthquake or help a firefighter find an unconscious victim in a burning building?  

Amazing? Yes and It is already here ready for sampling.  

What is EPIC? EPIC (Electric Potential Integrated Circuit) was designed by Plessy Semiconductors of England for EKG (electrocardiogram) readings on heart patients, but it can do so much more.  

How does EPIC Work?  This little device detects extremely small milivoltage changes in magnetic fields across the body's muscle (like your heart...yes it's a muscle) and nerves.  It is so sensitive it can even detect changes through walls!

Japanese Rescue Team

• What in the world could we use this for? Let me count the ways!  

EPIC is a quick way to capture the patient's EKG.  This could be life saving for the paramedic responding to a heart attack victim.  In a hospital, EPIC will continually monitor the patient without all the pads stuck on their skin and cords attached to a machine.

EPIC could make the first responder a hero by locating human life after a natural disaster.  Global organizations like the Red Cross will pursue this technology due to the promise of drastic cost reduction and saving lives of those cannot help themselves...this is a WIN-WIN-WIN!

Holds promise for the disabled...EPIC can help a quadriplegic move a wheelchair through eye movements or help an amputee control their prosthesis through residual muscle activity. 

"It's elementary my dear Watson"

Watson will make its debut in the healthcare industry early next year making recommendations to both doctors and patients.  IBM and WellPoint have partnered to bring"evidence-based" medical decision support to you.

What is Watson?  Watson is a super computer powered by a server cluster that has a total processing capacity of 80 teraflops (A teraflop is one trillion operations per second).  

But Watson is more than a machine.  Watson can read using natural language processing and prefers unstructured text.  Watson can learn and reason.  Watson can even play Jeopardy and win.  But that wasn't enough for young Watson.  He is a high achiever and is now learning medicine.  Hmmm...now I am calling Watson "he".  Now that's just like Hal in the movie, "2010".

Last week, I talked about patients who are seeking medical advice from the virtual community, but the average person is poorly informed about medicine and their advice may not be the best.  Is Watson the answer?  Watson could be the real-time consultant physician who can understand the intent of your question and respond with a prioritized list of recommendations for you to consider.  Watson may offer just the type of clinical decision support we have only dreamed of before.  Not only will this benefit the individual patient, but hopefully result in a healthier population overall.

WellPoint (Blue Cross/Blue Shield health plan) will pilot Watson in the clinical setting early next year.  Stay tuned.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/358871/IBM_s_Watson_to_Diagnose_Patients
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/ibm-watson-wellpoint_n_958227.html

Health Innovations are not stagnant

I just want to say that the innovative minds in health IT are not idle.  During a DoD/VA electronic record summit, I heard enough exciting ideas to fill all my blogs for the rest of the semester. it is great to know that people are questioning our very assumptions of how and why doctors interact with patients the way they do.  It sounds like a revolution is around the corner and I want to be part of it.  I'll drop a few crumbs next week. (not for credit)

DoD/VA Health Information Exchange Summit

I attended a fantastic DoD & VA Electronic Health Record and Health Information Exchange summit conference today in DC where several speakers talked about "disruptive" technologies and how mobile devices are the latest development in the electronic health record arena.   A few extolled the value of social tools and crowd sourcing, but others could not grasp it.  I hate to think that our user base missing out on so much if they only had a virtual meeting place.  The VA is doing exciting things in the area of open source and soliciting innovations from creative VA employees and industry.  It's good stuff. (not for credit)