India-China encyclopaedia will mark new chapter in ties

India and China are expected to unveil a first-ever jointly compiled two-volume encyclopaedia, chronicling a 2,000 year-history of cultural exchanges when Vice-President Hamid Ansari visits China this week.

Mr. Ansari, who will arrive in the Chinese city of Xian on Thursday evening and travel to the capital on Friday, is likely to unveil the encyclopaedia following his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vice President Li Yuanchao.

The more than four year-long project contains nearly 800 entries, and was compiled by a group of eight scholars and historians — four each from India and China India. Chinese officials say the focus of his visit – officially to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the “Panchsheel” or five principles of peaceful coexistence between India, China and Myanmar — will look to underline both countries’ civilisational links at a time when Beijing and New Delhi, under new leadership, have spoken of “a historic opportunity” to reboot ties.

To that end, one of Mr. Ansari’s first official events will be a visit to the famous Wild Goose Pagoda in Xian — the ancient capital famed for its terracotta warriors — where the first Buddhist scriptures from India were translated by the monk Xuan Zang (or Hsuan-Tsang, according to older romanisation).

The encyclopaedia project came into existence as a result of the Joint Communiqué issued during the time of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India in December, 2010, in which the compilation of the encyclopaedia of India-China Cultural Contacts was first proposed. A Joint Compilation Committee was formed with officials and experts from both sides, which met five times during the last two years to draw up a final list of entries on the basis of themes identified through the concept note and subsequent discussions.

Sabaree Mitra of the Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, who led the Indian team of scholars, said it was a wonderful and enriching experience working on the joint project.

“This project has been a great learning exercise in many ways, in scholarly support, in mutual accommodation and as an excellent team work,” Dr. Mitra told The Hindu.

The Chairperson of the Chinese Expert Group was Prof. Xue Keqiao, an Indologist of great repute. Where there were differences of perceptions between the Chinese and Indian scholars, they were resolved through discussions without much difficulty and every single entry and overview was finalised by consensus, she said. “It is true that there was difference in scholarly training, in the academic schools and traditions we came from, but we acknowledged that difference and worked together to find our way ahead,” said Dr. Mitra.

“I think the journey that we undertook to compile and publish the Encyclopaedia of India-China Cultural Contacts is a testimony of our great shared intellectual and cultural heritage,” she said. The encyclopaedia is being seen as a symbolic project flagging off a new chapter in the relationship. China’s President Xi Jinping took over in March last year, and is likely to make his first visit to India as President later this year, before Mr. Modi is likely to travel to Beijing. Indian officials described the project as “covering the span of civilisational interface over two millennia,” but also as “a dynamic document that is not an ending, but just the beginning of this process.”

(SOURCES - http://www.thehindu.com)

Genius Child Kicked Out Of School For “Not Being Able To Learn” Could Win Nobel Peace Prize

They said he would never learn, now he’ll teach them a thing or two…

A genius boy whose IQ is higher than Albert Einstein is on his way to possibly winning a Nobel Prize after being set free of special education programs in public schools.

His mother made the decision to take him out of the programs, even after having doctors diagnose him with Aspergers and say that her son Jacob Barnett would never even learn to tie his shoes.

She describes in her book “The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius” that she was afraid of trying to pull him out of school. “For a parent, it’s terrifying to fly against the advice of the professionals. But I knew in my heart that if Jake stayed in special ed, he would slip away.” Jacob was not thriving in special ed classes. He kept turning deeper into himself and was uncommunicative with other people.

His doctors prescribed medical treatment for the boy. When he wasn’t in therapy though, his mother noticed him doing amazing things. “He would create maps all over our floor using Q-tips. They would be maps of places we’ve visited and he would memorize every street.” Jake dropped out of elementary school in the 5th grade. His incredible memory allowed him to attend university classes after he learned all of high school math in two weeks. Now he’s on track to graduate from college at age 14 and working on theories to build on Einstein’s theory of relativity. 60 minutes did a special on Jacob below:

Naib Canselor UiTM Bakal Beri Ceramah Di Universiti Oxford

Tan Sri Profesor Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar

SHAH ALAM: Naib Canselor Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Tan Sri Profesor Sahol Hamid Abu Bakar akan memberi ceramah tentang bagaimana melahirkan usahawan berjaya di Universiti Oxford, United Kingdom (UK) bulan depan.

Beliau berkata beliau dijemput universiti terkemuka dunia itu sebagai penceramah dalam 'Entrepreneurial University Leaders Programme' yang bakal disertai wakil lebih 20 universiti dari seluruh UK pada 10 Julai ini.

"Saya telah dipelawa untuk memberi ceramah mengenai bagaimana UiTM dapat melahirkan usahawan berjaya. Saya merupakan satu-satunya penceramah yang dijemput dari UiTM dan ia menjadi suatu kebanggaan buat kami," katanya kepada pemberita selepas meraikan pemenang kejohanan debat seluruh Asia, di sini Selasa.

Beliau menyifatkan jemputan itu sebagai peluang untuk menaikkan nama UiTM di peringkat dunia. 

"Ini juga adalah satu permulaan di mana Universiti Oxford telah mengiktiraf UiTM sebagai universiti yang berjaya melahirkan pelajar berpotensi tinggi," tambahnya.

Majlis itu meraikan empat pelajar UiTM yang menduduki antara 10 tempat terbaik dalam pertandingan debat berkenaan yang berlangsung 2 Jun lepas.

MUTAKHIR Badlisham mula tugas hari ini sebagai Pengarah Urusan Malaysia Airports

SEPANG: Datuk Badlisham Ghazali memulakan tugas sebagai Pengarah Urusan Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) hari ini. 

Mengikut MAHB, Badlisham adalah calon tepat untuk menerajui syarikat itu selepas mencatat rekod cemerlang menyuburkan inovasi di Multimedia Development Corporation (MdeC) hingga meningkatkan pelaburan ke MSC Malaysia kepada sejumlah RM35 bilion. 

Industri penerbangan sentiasa berada dalam persekitaran yang berubah berikutan perubahan minat warga dunia kepada gaya hidup baru serta arah aliran teknologi yang menyebabkan sektor perniagaan perlu tampil dengan model perniagaan baru yang lebih inovatif untuk bergerak seiring perubahan itu. 

“MAHB yang berusaha menjadi pemain utama global dalam pembangunan bandar raya lapangan terbang, memerlukan pemimpin yang mampu memacu syarikat dalam persekitaran yang bersandar inovasi berterusan,” kata MAHB dalam kenyataan di sini, hari ini. 

Sebagai sebuah syarikat berkaitan kerajaan (GLC), MAHB menarik minat pelbagai pihak. Bukan hanya perlu berurusan dengan pemegang kepentingan seperti syarikat penerbangan, kerajaan, pelabur dan pemegang saham tetapi turut mendapat perhatian orang ramai yang memantau isu berkaitan yang dianggap sebagai isu nasional. 

Justeru, pengalaman Badlisham dalam persekitaran sama sebelum ini akan banyak membantu beliau memacu MAHB. 

MAHB mengendalikan 39 lapangan terbang di Malaysia, merangkumi lima lapangan terbang antarabangsa, 16 domestik dan 18 lapangan terbang kecil. Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa KL (KLIA), lapangan terbang utama kendalian MAHB sudah tiga kali dipilih sebagai Lapangan Terbang terbaik (15-25 juta penumpang setahun. 

SURAT TERBUKA MEMINTA PENJELASAN AZMIN ALI KERANA GAGAL MEMPERTAHANKAN KEPENTINGAN ANAK SELANGOR

Beberapa hari lepas saya telah mendapat dokumen dipercayai milik PKNS yang mempunyai maklumat berkenaan projek usahasama PKNS Holding iaitu PJ Sentral Development Sdn Bhd.

Dokumen tersebut juga menunjukkan Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Selangor (PKNS) sedang menjalankan penyiasatan dalaman terhadap anak syarikatnya PKNS Holdings Sdn Bhd terutamanya dalam transaksi yang berkaitan projek PJ Sentral Development (PJ Sentral).

Jabatan Audit Dalaman PKNS digambarkan sedang menjalankan siasatan secara terperinci termasuk mendapatkan maklumat dan dokumen daripada ahli-ahli lembaga pengarah PKNS Holdings yang mewakili PKNS dalam PJ Sentral iaitu YB Mohamed Azmin Ali dan Datin Paduka Norazlina Zakaria.

Projek PJ Sentral melibatkan pembangunan komersil di kawasan seluas 9,854 ekar yang menempatkan Ibu Pejabat PKNS. Pada 6 September 2007, PKNS menjual 8.05 ekar kepada Bisraya Pembinaan Sdn Bhd dan dana itu digunakan bagi membiayai pembangunan Ibu Pejabat PKNS yang baharu di kawasan tanah berbaki itu.

Anak syarikat PKNS iaitu PKNS Holdings (PHSB) telah menjalinkan kerjasama dengan Nusa Gapurna dan membentuk sebuah syarikat untuk membangunkan PJ Sentral dengan pegangan saham 30-70.

Menerusi syarikat kerjasama itu, PHSB telah diwakili oleh YB Mohamed Azmin Ali dan Datin Paduka Norazlina Zakaria yang masing-masing merupakan Ahli Lembaga Pengarah sejak dari tahun 2011 dan 2012.

Pada Februari 2013, Nusa Gapurna telah mengadakan perjanjian dengan MRCB untuk menjual 70% pegangan saham dalam PJ Sentral kepada MRCB melalui reverse takeover proposal.

Dokumen yang diperolehi menggambarkan kegagalan wakil PKNS dalam PJ Sentral untuk mempertahankan kepentingan PKNS.

Dalam dokumen tersebut juga menunjukkan YB Azmin Ali gagal hadir siasatan audit malah tercatat rentetan tarikh – tarikh yang dimana siasatan audit gagal menemui YB Azmin Ali seolah dia lari dan cuba mengelak proses siasatan.

Dari dokumen ini muncul persoalan

i. Kenapa dia lari dan mengelak lebih dari dua bulan untuk menghadiri sesi penyiasatan audit ? apa yang hendak disurukkan ?

ii. Adakah dia lemah atau sengaja dalam gagal mempertahankan kepentingan PKNS dalam projek PJ Sentral ? maaf jika dikatakan jika tidak dijelaskan maka mungkin akan wujud persepsi bahawa mungkin wujud juga imbuhan untuk berpura lemah.

iii. Adakah kegagalan ini penyebab penamatan beliau sebagai ahli lembaga pengarah ?

Kegagalan ini mempertahankan kepentingan PKNS dalam projek bernilai billion ringgit ini merupakan satu kerugian kepada semua warga Selangor secara keseluruhanya. Saya selaku anak Selangor dan juga anggota PKR menuntut jawapan dari YB Azmin Ali dan YAB Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim juga harus tampil memberikan penjelasan mengenai perkara ini dan Kerajaan negeri harus menerangkan apa tindakan lanjut untuk mempertahankan atau mendapatkan semula hak warga Selangor yang hilang.

Dalam kesempatan ini juga ingin memohon penjelasan YB Azmin Ali mengenai berapa ramai kakitangan yang beliau bawa masuk dalam PKNS untuk dibayar gaji oleh PKNS selepas lantikan beliau sebagai Ahli Lembaga Pengarah sehingga tidak disambung kontrak ?

Akhirnya besarlah harapan saya agar surat saya ini jangan disalah ertikan malah seharusnya dijadikan peluang dan ruang harus digunakan bagi menjelaskan kepada rakyat. Saya percaya dan yakin sama ada YB Azmin Ali mahupun YAB Tan Sri Khalid selaku Menteri Besar sendiri tentu mementingkan integriti dan keterbukaan maklumat.

Sekian dan terima kasih.

Khairooll Anuar AlMegat
No. anggota PKR B 030003354
Cabang Hulu Selangor

14 Google Glass Innovative Uses In Education

By Vala Afshar Chief Marketing Officer, Extreme Networks.

14 Google Glass Innovative Uses In Education

Google Glass is finding its way into almost every industry, with applications in healthcare, construction, gaming, tourism, and law enforcement. Gartner believes that smartglasses will save the field service industry $1 billion per year. One domain that is especially ripe for Google Glass innovation is education. I spoke with Brian A. Rellinger, CIO Ohio Wesleyan University about the ways Glass can be used on campus. The OWU Information Services Department purchased Google Glass in March, 2014 and started brainstorming about ways to use it with a cross section of campus groups. Since Glass is a new technology, the ideas continue to multiply as individuals gain hands-on experience. Even so, the faculty, staff, and students at OWU came up with a diverse list of initial ideas.

Brian Rellinger, CIO Ohio Wesleyan University

Based on the OWU list, here are 14 ways that Google Glass can improve higher education. Each idea may not be a fit for every campus, but hopefully it can help start the discussion for new or potential Glass owners. Do you have more ideas? Feel free to tweet them to us at @ValaAfshar and @rellinb.

1. Incorporate Glass into college athletics. Football, baseball, basketball players, for example, can wear Glass during practice. The coach can give them realtime instructions. Players can view recordings to understand their head and body movements. Also, spectators can join the hangout to experience the sport from the player's first person perspective. Tennis and football QB examples.
2. Ask alumni or others to wear Glass during performances in the arts and other intense professional activities, so students can experience the performance and participate remotely. See video with chef Roy Choi.
3. Give students realtime interactive (and subsequently recorded) field trip experiences to difficult-to-reach places like the Large Hadron Collider (CERN); the Oval Office; a war zone; Federal Reserve Bank; Mt. Everest; Tibet, Papua, New Guinea; Cheyenne Mountain; Antarctica; Egyptian pyramids.
4. Professor can wear Glass during lectures and open up a hangout so students can participate remotely. Glass can also provide a back-up resource to the professor to call up more detailed impromptu content as required by student questions. Can also be used by student teachers to help them as they learn to teach.
5. Experiment with QR codes around campus to display location specific information, such as classes taught in a particular room. Google Glass quickly interprets the QR codes.
6. Students sitting in lectures can use Glass to help take notes and bookmark important passages, as well as to view extra-classroom content provided to them by the lecturing professor. Glass can provide realtime language translation for foreign students.
7. Lend to visiting students and prospects for self-guided tours of the campus. Glass will (with added functionality) automatically point out landmarks within the student's vision, explain history, and answer questions.
8. Invite remote prospective students to tour the campus via a live Hangout with a Glass-wearing guide.
9. Provide a simulated (virtual reality) experience to students of intense events such as in an operating room, on the athletic field, or in outer space. In these cases, the wearer is the one directly participating in the simulation, rather than watching as someone else participates.
10. Provide live first-person experience of graduation, by having a student wear Google Glass throughout the ceremony and convocation.
11. Professors can use Glass to receive questions from students during their lectures. Andrew Perlman of Suffolk University Law School describes how students who may be reluctant to speak up in class can text their questions directly to the professor who views the texts with Glass. It is even possible topoll the student audience to see if they are grasping difficult concepts during the lecture.
12. 
    

Suffolk University Glass Video


13. Professors and instructors can use a Glassware app like Speech Helper to view their slide notes during a slide show presentation and can also control the slides("Ok, glass. Slide Remote").
14. Create a course or club to teach students how to design Glassware apps.
15. Develop a Glassware app to take attendance and pull recent grades of students to assist faculty in the classroom.

There is another aspect to Google Glass and other wearables in education that has a disruptive effect on what students are taught and how they are tested. Stephen diFilipo, CIO at Cecil College, notes that, "With wearables every test becomes open book. The phrase don't teach that which can be Googled has become a familiar cry for those advancing education reform."

Melissa Woo, Vice Provost for Information Services and CIO at the University of Oregon and an early Google Glass Explorer stresses that higher education has a vital role to play in the field of wearable computing, that goes beyond just using the technology: "Higher education is an important area for experimentation with Glass and other wearables, not only because they enhance teaching, but because they help us understand how we should best interact with and incorporate these technologies into our society's future."

Follow Vala Afshar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValaAfshar

(Source - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/14-google-glass-innovativ_b_5410893.html)

Why China and America are Headed Toward a Catastrophic Clash

By Hugh White Professor of Strategic Studies, National University of Australia; author “The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power.”

This article also appears in The Interpreter, the journal of the Lowy Institute in Australia.

Many people find it hard to understand why China is acting the way it is in the East and South China Seas. What does Beijing hope to achieve by alienating its neighbors and undermining regional stability?

Let me suggest an answer: China is trying to build what President Xi Jinping calls "a new model of great power relations." To understand how this might be the aim of Beijing's actions, we have to recognize that under his "new model," Xi wants China to wield much more power and influence in Asia than it has for the past few centuries. These things are inherently zero-sum, so for China to have more power and influence, America must have less. This is what Xi and his colleagues are trying to achieve.

Their reasoning is simple enough. They know that America's position in Asia is built on its network of alliances and partnerships with many of China's neighbors. They believe that weakening these relationships is the easiest way to weaken U.S. regional power. And they know that, beneath the flowery diplomatic phrases, the bedrock of these alliances and partnerships is the confidence America's Asian friends have that America is able and willing to protect them from China's power.

So the easiest way for Beijing to weaken Washington's power in Asia is to undermine this confidence. And the easiest way to do that is for Beijing to press those friends and allies hard on issues in which America's own interests are not immediately engaged -- like a string of maritime disputes in which the U.S. has no direct stake.

By using direct armed pressure in these disputes, China makes its neighbors more eager for U.S. military support, and at the same time makes America less willing to give it, because of the clear risk of a direct U.S.-China clash. In other words, by confronting America's friends with force, China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China. Beijing is betting that, faced with this choice, America will back off and leave its allies and friends unsupported. This will weaken America's alliances and partnerships, undermine U.S. power in Asia, and enhance China's power.

This view of China's motives explains its recent conduct.

Ever since President Obama announced the "pivot," China has tested U.S. willingness to support its allies over the Scarborough Shoals and Senkaku/Daioyu disputes. Until his Asian trip last month, Obama seemed inclined to step back from America's commitments, but his bold words in Tokyo and Manila suggest he has recovered his resolve to stand firm.

Now we can expect China to test this newly-recovered resolve by applying more pressure in the same places or elsewhere. And that is what Beijing is doing today in the waters off Vietnam. It is calling Obama's bluff. Expect more pressure against Manila and Tokyo soon.

Of course this carries risks for China. It does not want to fight America, so it must be confident in the judgment that America will back down and desert its friends rather than engage in conflict with China, even if backing down badly weakens the U.S. position in Asia. This confidence reflects two key judgments by China's leaders.

First, they believe that China's new anti-access/area denial capabilities can deny America a quick and easy victory in an maritime clash in the East Asian littoral waters. They have been reassured by America's own Air-Sea Battle doctrine that the U.S. knows it cannot prevail in these waters without launching a major campaign of strikes against Chinese territory. Such strikes would obviously risk a major escalation which might not stop below the nuclear threshold. So China's leaders think their U.S. counterparts understand that a war with China today is one that America could not be confident of either winning or limiting.

Second, Beijing believes the balance of resolve is on China's side. Washington clearly wants to preserve its role in Asia, but Beijing is even more determined to win power at the U.S.' expense. China's conduct suggests that the leadership in Beijing believes Washington understands this imbalance of resolve. That makes the Chinese confident that U.S. leaders will not assume that China would back down first in a crisis.

The idea that China might believe these things comes as a surprise to many outside China, including, one suspects, many in Washington. U.S. policy towards China, including the pivot itself, is based on contrary assumptions. The consensus is that Beijing is not really serious about challenging U.S. leadership in Asia because it is simply not willing to risk a confrontation with America which Beijing's leaders must know they would lose, and they do not care enough about expanding China's role in Asia to take that risk.

If that's true, then China's conduct is clearly foolish. But before assuming that the Chinese leaders are fools, we would be wise to wonder whether they really do believe what Washington assumes they believe. I'm pretty sure they do not.

Asia today therefore carries the seeds of a truly catastrophic episode of mutual misperception. Both Washington and China are steadily upping the stakes in their rivalry as China's provocations of US friends and allies become more flagrant and America's commitments to support them become more categorical.

Both believe they can do this with impunity because both believe the other will back down to avoid a clash. There is a disconcertingly high chance that they are both wrong.

Someone needs to change the nature of the game to avert the risk of disaster.

(Sources - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hugh-white/china-america-relations_b_5412014.html)

Start with a Theory, Not a Strategy

by Todd Zenger

Well-crafted strategies are road maps to places that yield competitive advantage and generate value for the firm. But once you’ve arrived, they don’t take you anyplace else. That’s a problem for companies under continual pressure from investors to find new sources of competitive advantage.

I recently had lunch with the CEO of a large privately held corporation that illustrated this dilemma. After two decades of strong growth, he recognized that that his strategy had run its course. In the minds of his investors, his success was baked into his company’s current value and they wanted to know where he was going to find more.

He presented to me three broad options for growth: diversify into a rather distant, weakly-related industry; develop and sell new services desired by their somewhat narrow set of existing customers; or expand globally into the same services they provide domestically. He asked which I thought made the most sense.

Of course, I did not give him a straight answer. Instead, I suggested that what he needed was a theory about strategy: a mental model about how his company could create value that would help him assess his three options.

In science, a good theory reveals compelling hypotheses that subsequent experiments will validate. A good corporate theory similarly reveals likely hypotheses about how the firm can create most value. It has three components:

Foresight into the future evolution of their industry,
Insight into what is distinctive and uniquely valuable in the composition of assets and capabilities the company possesses; and
Cross-sight into how combinations of internal and external assets and opportunities can create value.
For a company that has a good corporate theory, selecting the right next strategy should not be a problem; the fact that this CEO and I were having such a conversation about such divergent options revealed the absence of a good theory about what strategies were right for his firm.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s easy to come up with a good corporate theory. And, if anything, companies that have comfortable market positions will find the exercise more challenging than most. Microsoft is a case in point. Although it attained a remarkable position almost decades ago, the company has struggled to find new sources of value creation.

In the long run, firms compete not on their strategies, but on the basis of their corporate theories. For the past several years I have asked students ranging from executives to undergraduates the simple question: If you were given $10,000 to invest in Google, Apple, Facebook, or Amazon, where would you invest?

While the pattern of responses varies, most students quickly recognize that their answers have less to do with assessments of current market positions, and more to do with assessments of each firm’s corporate theory.

Each firm is entrenched in a market position quite distant from the others. Apple makes consumer electronics unrivaled in their ease of use. Google offers a search engine unparalleled in its speed and breadth. Facebook supports a social network unmatched in its reach. Amazon features a web store without equal in scope. But each is guided by a very different corporate theory, distinctly crafted as a reflection of the beliefs and current assets of their firm, which informs how they will move beyond their established and fully valued positions.

These theories (ideally) provide a sense of coherence to the growth initiatives that have pushed these firms into quite disparate and increasingly overlapping market space. Indeed, their theories seem to suggest no limit to the potential for strategic collision. Future results of strategic actions will ultimately determine the worth and accuracy of each firm’s theory.


Bottom line, unlike a strategy, a well-crafted corporate theory can take you beyond the one position or advantage. This is not to say that your theory will necessarily be the best one, but at least it will not be dead on arrival.

(Sources - http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/start-with-a-theory-not-a-strategy/)

Wearable Technology: The Coming Revolution in Healthcare

By Vala Afshar Chief Marketing Officer, Extreme Networks

The year 2014 may well go down as theyear of wearable technology. The impact of wearables is already being felt in education, communication, navigating, and entertainment; but perhaps the greatest potential lies in healthcare. Wearable technology has started to revolutionize healthcare by assisting doctors in the operating room and providing real timeaccess to electronic health records.

The full potential of wearable technology in healthcare, though, goes well beyond directly assisting doctors. Patients can now continuously monitor their own health. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sony, LG and Garmin introduced devices that track everything from heart rate and blood pressure to a patient's O2 saturation. By 2018, the overall number of wearable devices shipped to consumers is expected to reach 130 million. With such acceptance on the part of the public, wearables are perhaps the perfect application for healthcare.

To learn more about wearables in healthcare, I spoke with David Peterson, Chief Marketing Officer for Emdeon, a company well-experienced in linking healthcare payers, providers and vendors. David believes that the adoption of wearable healthcare-related devices could indeed be a significant step in patient engagement and improving population health -- two critical success factors driving today's increasingly complex healthcare environment. Specifically, wearable health technology brings three distinctly beneficial trends to the table -- connected information, community, and gamification. By harnessing this trifecta, healthcare leaders have new ways to build engagement and create accurate, far-reaching views of both personal and population health.

David Peterson - CMO Emdeon Inc.

Connected Information

Healthcare information has traditionally been extremely siloed. Finding ways to integrate, aggregate, and analyze disparate data can be difficult and costly, but is needed to move healthcare toward cost-effective, evidence-based treatments. Furthermore, privacy and security considerations, like HIPAA regulations, have presented technical challenges related to the exchange of healthcare data.

To successfully employ wearable health technologies, the industry must find a way to develop networks that allow information access and provide support on the back end. This is already being done on a small scale: think about users of Fitbit® and similar health and wellness tracking gear who view their personal data and compare it against data from other users.

Having a network or backbone that a much broader population base can seamlessly connect to will fuel more meaningful data comparisons and analysis and distill useful information. This may spur wearable health technology vendors to partner with organizations that have extensive national networks and access to a large volume of health claims and other patient data. Companies like Emdeon, which processes more than seven billion U.S. healthcare transactions annually, and programs like theDepartment of Veterans Affairs Blue Button initiative or the Health Data Consortiumcan play a key role. Such a network could then aggregate data from wearables with other health information -- data from across a certain geography or specific diagnosis, for example -- to create a more complete picture of group health.

Community
Creating healthcare communities from which to collect data is a way to crowd source valuable healthcare information. By bringing together people with a common interest such as weight loss, wearables serve as a mechanism to build engagement and at the same time compile information. It is a logical approach: The more you know about a population's health, the more steps you can take to keep them healthy.

For instance, patient data entered into electronic health records at practices and hospitals could reveal allergies, health histories, and medication use. Combined with information collected through wearables, providers will have more complete and essentially real-time data to treat and manage the health of individual patients, as well as patient populations.

Gathering data this way is somewhat like microphilanthropy, where individual donors give small amounts to charity over a period of time. The real power comes from the cumulative sum of the donations from many individuals. In healthcare, the exponentially larger pool of data about a health condition or population could prove tremendously powerful.

Gamification
With information networked and communities built, participation in wearable groups can be driven by gamifying healthcare and fitness apps. Most of us are competitors at heart, and we love a good game. Imagine the interest in competing not against three or four friends who are trying to lose weight or lower cholesterol levels, but rather against a larger group of individuals who are members of your health plan or who share a similar health condition.

Health plans might offer incentives to members willing to sign up for designated wearable health programs and join in the "game." The incentives build participation by making the competition more engaging for participants. Growing the volume of data collected has the potential to broadly improve population health.

The Future

Surprisingly enough, wearable technology dates back to the 1200s, when the first eyeglasses were made out of crystal. Fast forward a few hundred years, when Chinese artisans of the Qing Dynasty created an abacus worn as a finger ring. Today, wearable health technology comes in the form of smart clothes, including sneakers, glasses, watches, rings, and more. Regardless of what they look like or how they are worn, wearables will play an pivitol role in the future of healthcare.

As the accuracy and scope of data improve, wearables hold the potential to reduce healthcare costs by identifying trends and commonalities among certain populations -- thereby enabling better preventive care. In addition to engaging patients and aiding personal wellness, they can move healthcare beyond individual monitoring and treatment toward more effective population health management.

By engaging and empowering patients to take an active role in data collection, wearables can change the way data and analytics are used to improve health. It is fascinating to think about, just as the abacus ring must have captivated the ancient Chinese. Consider how this can become the healthcare equivalent of how Google Maps displays traffic; showing healthcare patterns based on real time reporting of anonymous data from healthcare wearable devices.

While technology may never completely replace the all-inclusive health record, a detailed diagnosis or a one-on-one dialogue between patient and provider; the data collected from these devices can provide a broader scope of information. Healthcare organizations can tap the power of that data to engage patients and develop more effective and more personalized approaches to care, thereby lowering the overall cost of care.

This post was co-authored by David Peterson, Chief Marketing Officer for Emdeon.