Kodesh to head EMC's Cloud Infrastructure Business

EMC Corporation has announced the appointment of Harel Kodesh as President of EMC's Cloud Infrastructure Business. Kodesh will be responsible for the growth and development of EMC's global cloud infrastructure products and solutions and for the expansion of the business' partner eco-system.

Kodesh will also serve as the CEO of Decho, the recently-created EMC subsidiary focused on personal information management in the "cloud." Decho (short for "digital echo") helps individuals protect, manage and enrich the ever-growing quantity of personal digital information. As a member of EMC's executive management team, Kodesh will report to Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

"We believe EMC is among the rare few to possess the foundational technologies, vision and fiscal strength required to succeed as a leading cloud infrastructure and services provider," said Tucci. "Harel's depth of industry and business management experience, combined with his extensive expertise designing and developing enterprise and consumer-class information management products will serve as tremendous asset to customers and shareholders as we embark into our next phase of technology innovation. We're very fortunate to have an executive of Harel's caliber join the EMC management team."

Procter and Gamble taxes fat employees, smokers. Congressman Carney says US should do same

U.S. Rep. Chris Carney says that a local program that gives workers a financial incentive to stay healthy could serve as a national model.

Carney discussed issues in an interview Friday with staff from The Daily Review. In the interview Carney also said he was very troubled over the current situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and discussed his views on the financial future of the Social Security program and ways that the No Child Left Behind Act needs to be improved.

Health care

To address the high cost of health insurance, Carney said the federal government needs to get involved in programs designed to prevent poor health.

Carney said a successful preventative program at Procter & Gamble’s Mehoopany plant could serve as a model for what could be done nationally.

The plant reduces its employees’ payments toward their heath insurance premiums if they meet any of six different measures of health, such as if they stop smoking, keep their blood pressure in a normal range and have a normal body-mass index, Carney said.

If they meet one of the measures, they’ll see in their paycheck a $7 reduction in the amount they pay toward their health insurance premiums, and if they meet all six, their health insurance premiums are reduced by $42 per pay period, he said.

As a result of the Procter & Gamble program, “productivity at the plant has increased, sick days have dramatically decreased, and employees are actually competing with each other to get healthier,” Carney said.

“I think the Procter & Gamble program is a way ahead (a way forward) for health care,” Carney said.

An emphasis on preventative health programs would also save taxpayers large amounts of money, because taxpayers currently have to pay the bills of people who lack health insurance and are treated at emergency rooms in hospitals when they become very sick, he said.

Daily Review

Business Model or Advertising Gimmick?

AT&T has announced plans to bring its mobile phone service business model to laptops, subsidizing the cost of the devices for customers who sign a 2-year service agreement.

A closer look at the plan reveals significant differences between the phone and laptop programs that make them apples and oranges.

First off, laptops cost more to begin with. This means that while mobile handset subsidies generally account for more than 50% of the device's total cost, laptop subsidies will probably be in the 15% to 30% range.

Next, laptop net service traditionally costs less. That may be because it was only available in a very limited way, but so what: the point is - phone service expense is already a consumer budget item, but people aren't used to paying monthly for their laptop. Just ask Boingo.

Finally, the laptop is not exclusive to AT&T like so many mobile handsets are. That element of lock-in doesn't exist in the computer industry. (And let's hope it never does...)

AT&T, Lenovo Offer Subsidized Laptops, Information Week

Richard Sarwal Returns to Oracle

After only nine months on the job, VMware's head of research and development is packing his bags and returning to Oracle.

Richard Sarwal resigned his post effective immediately in order to
resume his life at Oracle, where he spent almost two decades. Sarwal
was plucked from the database outfit by VMWare's former-CEO, Diane
Greene, in December 2007. from the Register

Why don't drug ads work? Or do they?

excerpt of article by Keith J. Winstein and Suzanne Vranica

(Companies Featured in Article: Amgen, Schering Plough, Novartis)

Consumer advertising for prescription drugs had a negligible impact on sales of products studied by Harvard Medical School researchers -- in a finding that may confound both advertisers and their opponents.

The study may undercut the arguments of opponents of such ads, which have been allowed almost nowhere outside the U.S. Critics say they lead to drug overuse and misuse by impressionable patients pressing their doctors to prescribe what is seen on TV.

But the study also raises the question of whether the pharmaceutical industry's $4.8 billion annual spending on such ads is a waste of shareholders' money. from WSJ U.S. Drug Ads Questioned

Hospitals Share

What is it with different hospitals sharing the same name? Beth Israel and Beth Israel Deaconess is confusing enough, but I can't make heads or tails of Mount Sinai Medical Center and Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Both are large metropolitan hospitals with affiliated medical schools. Both have the same name. One is in New York, one is in Miami. They are apparently unaffiliated and try to pretend the other doesn't exist. Mount Sinai NY has 1,171 beds and 2,181 attending physicians. Mount Sinai Miami has 955 beds and more than 700 physicians.

P.S. There's also one in Toronto. 472 bed Mount Sinai Hospital.

Trounson handed $3B, told to build stem-cell therapies

Alan Trounson’s job is to figure out how to spend $3 billion.
Doesn’t sound that tough on its face, but there’s a pretty
big catch: He’s supposed to give the money to people who can find
stem-cell-based medical therapies within a decade.

Trounson, a researcher who was a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, runs the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the shop set up after the state’s voters approved raising $3 billion in bonds to fund stem cell research. He’s profiled in today’s WSJ. from WSJ Health Blog

Google May Start Venture Fund

Btw, Sergey Brin's wife is a former partner at health investment fund Catalytic Health. from NYTimes DealBook

Social Networking for Scientists

Typically, scientists have stacks of papers, protocols, and notes in their offices that they pass around as PDFs. Labmeeting is designed first and foremost as a document management site that allows scientists and students to easily upload all of those PDFs, organize them, search them, and share them. Scientsist can create groups, and invite other members of their labs to create a common repository of papers that can be accessed from anywhere. from techcrunch

a similar site is SciLink: With over 104 million relationships mined from literature, SciLink already knows who you're connected to.

Illinois Ponders New Ban on Cell Phones

Have you ever text messaged as you crossed the street? Or checked out your PDA? Or been on your cellphone?

Well, if the Illinois General Assembly bill known as HB 4520 ever gets signed into law, it will be illegal to use a wireless device while crossing the street. from ieee's The Risk Factor

More Patients Failing To Manage Their Medications

"Increasingly, people take their medications at home, away from hospitals and clinics. But most studies of fatal medication errors have focused on those clinical settings. We wanted to know three things: how many of these fatal errors happen at home; how many involve alcohol and/or street drugs; and are these numbers going up?"

For the study, the researchers examined all US death certificates from 1st January 1983 to 31st December 2004 (over 49.5 million), and particularly those citing fatal medication errors (FMEs, nearly 225 thousand).

They classified the deaths into 4 types of FME: domestic or non-domestic, with and without alcohol/street drugs and examined them with respect to the relative importance of alcohol or street drugs and the relative likelihood of professional supervision in the use of the medications.

The four FME types were:

Type 1 = domestic FMEs combined with alcohol and/or street drugs,
Type 2 = domestic FMEs not involving alcohol and/or street drugs,
Type 3 = nondomestic FMEs combined with alcohol and/or street drugs, and
Type 4 = nondomestic FMEs not involving alcohol and/or street drugs.

The results showed that:

• Overall FME death rate went up by 360.5 per cent during the 1983 to 2004 period. from MedicalNewsToday
  

GE Legal

A discussion with company lawyers. from the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

Intel Gets FDA Approval Of Personal Health System

Expected delivery Q408, the system can be used to monitor blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, and many other critical health issues. It also issues reminders to patients, i.e. to take their medications. Intel has also recently set up a social networking website for patients and providers. from Information Week.

Social Networking Catches on at GE

Inside GE they describe this as the "post-email world." from John Warner at SwampFox

NHS selects Trillium Software to measure patient and clinical data

The Commissioning Support Service (CSS) of the NHS has selected
Trillium Software System from Harte-Hanks, to measure the quality of
patient, clinical and service data collected from health provisioning
services in the London region. Computer Business Review

VC investments in med equipment, vid comunication

Arbel Raises $4.5 Million for Medical Devices

Arbel Medical, an Israeli start-up, has completed a $4.5 million second funding round, the company said in a press release. Arbel develops the next generation of medical equipment for removing tumors by freezing. The round was led by Giza Venture Capital fund. Docor International invested $1 million, joining the other Arbel investors who include Giza, Ofer High
Tech, the Bridge Investment Fund, TRD and Fattal.

Qumu Snags $10.7 Million from V.C.s
Qumu, a provider of enterprise video communications, said Monday that it has completed a new a $10.7 million round of funding led by Advanced Technology Ventures and joined by SAP Ventures, Storm Ventures, Garage Technology Ventures, Halo Opportunity Fund and the Angels Forum. Qumu, which says its customers include Dell, Microsoft, and eBay, will use the funds to continue to accelerate its product development efforts and expand its sales and marketing operations.