Blog articles from 06/2008

CONNECTIONS 2008 is about half over already and I wanted to share a few thoughts. If there’s one message that seems to come up in every session, keynote, and panel it’s that simplicity is the key to consumer adoption. Of course, we’ve all heard that before. Our industry’s ability to confuse customers is well recognized. Yet this is what made me stop and think. If we’re all in agreement that simplicity is the key, why do we need to remind each other year after year. Why are the...

The Continua Health Alliance organized an information session yesterday at the annual Connections conference hosted by Parks. Three executives gave a very humble and candid overview of Continua’s mission, agenda, progress, and momentum. Rick Cnossen, who is the Technical Working Group Chair of the Alliance, highlighted the upcoming version one of the interoperability standards and the Alliance’s membership growth momentum. Dr. Hyung Tai Kim, who is VP of Research from Ascension...

As Congress nears passing a bipartisan bill to push the use of e-prescribing, the Drug Enforcement Agency is finally getting on board. E-prescribing, digitally sending prescriptions directly from the doctor’s office to the pharmacy, is only currently being used by a small portion of the nation’s physicians due to DEA restrictions which create additional work for the doctors. Previously the DEA required doctors to handwrite prescriptions for the controlled substances that make up...

On two different fronts yesterday, caregivers joined forces to improve modern healthcare for all. Tuesday at the annual meeting, the American Medical Association voted in favor of a resolution calling for government allowance of the e-prescribing of all drugs, including schedule 1 drugs , without restrictions previously dictated from the Drug Enforcement Administration. In addition, they aimed to be free of the confines set around e-prescribing and Medicare/Medicaid, both in regards to...

... White paper encourages service providers to use remote and automated digital home customer support solutions for cost savings and as tools to drive new services revenue. Broadband service providers will benefit significantly from the deployment of premium technical support services that not only contribute to cost savings but allow them to use analytics to better target additional value-added services revenue, a new white paper from Parks Associates reports. Parks Associates ,...

Parks Associates’ leading analysts will explore the implications of high-speed connections and the exponential growth of digital devices in homes as a kickoff to CONNECTIONS™: The Digital Living Conference and Showcase . The session Analyst Roundtable: Top Trends to Watch, Tuesday, June 24, will feature analysis of the digital living industry and focus on trends in broadband and access services, video delivery, online content services, advertising, digital health, and home...

I was thinking that things were awfully quiet in the IPTV space for some time. However, it looks like the major systems integrators are all looking for new angles of attack in the space. Last year, the company to beat up was Microsoft ("It's a monolith and doesn't allow third-party software developers to play within the Mediaroom framework"; "Microsoft can't scale"; etc., etc. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal says that Cisco is now in the crosshairs of some marketing...

The Internet Advertising Bureau yesterday released its latest guidelines on the reporting metrics for digital video in-stream ads. The standards, created by the IAB’s Digital Video Committee comprised of 145 leading interactive companies, cover the following four types of digital video ad formats: *Linear Video Ad With or Without Companion Ad *Linear Video Interactive Ad *Non-linear Overlay Ad *Non-linear Non-Overlay Ad For both linear video ads (usually referring...