Startups

Verizon is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the U.S., and the company is using its extensive network and resources to impact health care. Communication is one of the biggest challenges facing health care today. Doctors cannot use e-mail, social media networks or SMS texting to discuss patients because it violates privacy regulations and Electronic Medical Record (EMRs) systems are traditionally incompatible with each other, which makes the secure exchange of information even more difficult. At Healthbeat today, Verizon’s managing principal of Connected Health Care solutions Nancy Green explained how Verizon can benefit the health care community. “When you think of Verizon, you think of our wireless network, but we have a $6 billion health care practice and a Chief Medical Officer ,” she said on stage. “We are moving and enabling the business of health care so others can innovate. We have experts on compliance and security, and startups can use the size and scope and scale of Verizon to make a difference.” Security and authentication are major concerns when it comes to medical communication. Green said that 27 countries, the White House, and the nuclear launch codes are secured by Verizon. The company knows how to do security and authenticate people and is applying this expertise to the health care. Verizon has credentialed every clinician and physician in the United States and provide a secure channel for transmitting data, such a prescriptions. An example is Verizon’s work with Surescripts to support electronic prescriptions and set up digital signage on devices. From their iPads and  iPhones, doctors can sign in using a passcode, authenticate their identity, write, confirm, and accept prescriptions, and digitally sign documents. Verizon’s “exchange layer” moves the information securely from network to network (doctor to pharmacy) so doctors don’t have to visit a terminal or use pen and paper. Verizon’s dual persona technology is also particularly useful in the medical field. Doctors often use their personal mobile devices for work and Green said that it is a struggle to securely manage patient data on phones and keep it separate from personal information. Through an exclusive partnership with VMware, Verizon has a solution that can lock down the enterprise/clinical side of phones. To quote Voltaire (or Uncle Ben from Spiderman), with great power comes great responsibility. Verizon has a network of 115 million people and a huge telecommunications infrastructure, and Green said the company is committed to supporting entrepreneurs and ideas that use this power for good. So is competitor AT&T, which also has health care solutions. Both companies see opportunities in an industry that makes up 17 percent of the GDP and relies heavily on mobile and telecommunication technology. These opportunities also extend beyond mobile health technology. In March, Verizon announced its new cloud service for health data exchange and a partnership with HealthSpot to power telemedicine kiosks in the field. Photo Credit: Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat Filed under: Cloud, Enterprise, Health, Mobile HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here. .blurb-cat-health hr { margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }

While we don’t have all of the details on the new Xbox Live features announced at today’s XBox One launch, it’s clear that Microsoft is going all-in when it comes to social and multiplayer gaming. First, they are upping the number of dedicated servers for online play from 15,000 to 300,000 and that nearly all of your content and game data will be store in the cloud. The service will also allow you to take in-game video and photos and share them over social media services. This is similar to Sony’s PS4 solution and is definitely a method allow users to create valuable and viral homemade content while still maintaining control of distribution. As games become more social and more cinematic, this will be an important differentiator and is essentially free advertising for game makers. Finally, the new service adds asynchronous matchmaking, which means you can be searching for potential teammates (or enemies) while watching TV or playing another game. This increases the stickiness of multiplayer titles by nudging you back into the game when a worth opponent appears. Microsoft has also added “bigger matches with more players” and, most important, “living and persistent worlds.” This sounds to me like a direct attack on MMORPGs like World Of Warcraft and could make the Xbox a formidable force in the popular professional gaming subculture, a niche no console maker has yet cracked. We should see further information about the Xbox One at E3 this summer.

The Xbox One was just unveiled at Microsoft’s Redmond campus and, true to multiple reports that circulated before the official reveal, the new console will indeed come with a Kinect. The rumors of a vastly improved Kinect sensor array were right on the money — this next-generation model is capable of tracking motions as minute as wrist rotations, and Microsoft’s Marc Whitten said the new Kinect would even be able to read users’ heartbeats when they’re exercising or when players shift their weight. In short, it’s a massive, massive upgrade compared to the venerable original model, which often exhibited issues with basic limb and motion tracking. We got a brief glimpse of the new Kinect in action when Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi called out commands and used minute hand gestures to manipulate content on the Xbox One. Granted, it was a carefully staged demo, but the Kinect reacted to his commands and inputs without a hint of technical hesitation — if the new Kinect works in the living room as well as it did on stage, Microsoft could be onto something huge here. Edit Developing…

This sponsored post is produced by Matt Quinn, CTO of TIBCO. We’re well beyond any question about whether cloud computing is the future. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) paved the way for the idea that organizations can operate some of their most important systems in an on-premise or off-premise cloud. Small, medium and even large businesses accept that cloud computing delivers flexibility, cost and scalability that business has never had before. Companies are gravitating to cloud because it brings very short time to value and doesn’t impact the current business model. Lower cost and less risk are very attractive propositions. How big is this move? Forrester estimates that the average company has 9.3 different SaaS applications in use. Consulting firm Cap Gemini reports that 78% of new applications are deployed into the cloud. And that’s just the applications that are being tracked. In reality, workers today are practicing BYOS (Bring Your Own Service) as they experiment with SaaS in broad ways that IT and even business managers may not know about. Cloud has its challenges As cloud computing continues to mature and its use expands, it hasn’t been without challenges. The single most significant limitation has been the increasing pain of a lack of integration between cloud applications and the rest of the business. This is a pain that becomes more acute as the cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premise system invariably becomes more complex. On top of the integration challenge, the mechanics of cloud expose organizations to increased risk of data integrity, process latency and security. Oftentimes, SaaS applications are being marketed to the business, which likely looks at risk in a different way than IT or compliance. This is a challenge itself as the organization faces risks that aren’t understood or moratoriums on SaaS use that aren’t followed. A way to solve this problem is to stay within a single SaaS vendor “stack,” but that leaves an organization beholden to a single vendor – a risky position. But there’s a reality of the still-maturing cloud: SaaS applications are typically limited in capability, a necessary evil of the SaaS paradigm that creates economies of scale for users by requiring customers to use highly standardized interfaces and functionality. To build out the same level of capability that’s commonplace in the on-premise world, organizations need to blend custom functionality within their own walls with multiple, disparate cloud applications and storage options. The reality of Cloud is that nearly all enterprises will need to operate a hybrid model for years to come. TIBCO Cloud Bus With these challenges in mind, TIBCO today released TIBCO Cloud Bus. This is an entirely new integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) that uses ready-made templates and connectors to integrate cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premise systems and applications, and includes integration with social networks. In keeping with the nature of the cloud, TIBCO Cloud Bus is a subscription service and pay-as-you-go without a large upfront investment or infrastructure. The immediate benefit of this iPaaS platform comes from being able to rapidly connect SaaS applications without having to program, by using the latest graphical tools in a business-friendly user interface. Considering how critical time-to-value has become, this kind of ease of use is essential. Let’s face it, what matters enormously today may not be necessary tomorrow and likewise, business needs to constantly innovate through technology that changes, it seems, daily. Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company, which is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com. Filed under: Business, Cloud

Now leading the pack in gaming consoles, Microsoft’s future growth lies outside the gaming sphere. We’ll surely see tons of games at E3 in a few weeks, but at the big reveal of the Xbox One, the company chose to focus on non-gaming features, such as media streaming and Skype conversations. But what makes streaming and entertainment a true upgrade on the Xbox One, which already has access to almost all streaming platforms? Instant Switching. It allows you to switch between inputs, games, menus, internet explorer, and almost anything else almost instantly. And what’s more, it lets you layer the power of Microsoft partnerships and information across live TV. The Xbox responds to the voice; saying “Xbox On” turns on the console to the homescreen. The UI is familiar, and lets you see what you were doing last, along with trending content from friends, and other panels like games, tv, etc. But then you say “Xbox watch TV”, and live TV pops on. “Xbox show Guide”, and the guide pops up letting you see what’s available on Live TV. “Xbox watch ESPN”, and bloop, ESPN is on. Instant Switching at its best. And here’s where it gets interesting: “Xbox show Fantasy,” and instantly, along the right side of the screen showing a Knicks vs Celtics game you’ll see a run-down on your fantasy league, letting you access further information and even make alterations in real-time, right alongside the game itself. Because Xbox is now tapping into your live TV, it offers a more targeted and complete entertainment UI, with favorites showing all of your favorite content in a single destination. And it’s all powered by your voice, should you like. What’s that? Is that the voice of Microsoft telling the hundreds of thousands of Xbox 360 owners out there, who proudly revel in their ownership of what’s considered the most popular gaming console out there, that they should maybe think about upgrading? Of course, Microsoft wouldn’t upgrade software without hardware (which you can read more about here), and that includes the addition of a Blu-ray player.

Microsoft’s Don Mattrick pulled back the curtain on the Xbox One at a live event at the company’s Redmond campus, and it wasn’t long at all before the talk turned to software. One application in particular has been the subject of speculation for months, and SVP Yusuf Mehdi confirmed that Skype (which, if you recall, Microsoft acquired for $8.5 billion neatly two years ago) is part of the Xbox One experience. As you might imagine, the Xbox One Skype application allows users to participate in group video chats with their fellow users using the Kinect camera — so there are opportunities for a natural type of ongoing conversation, one that won’t require you to chat for thirty minutes and then disconnect. This could be an “always on” situation. You can answer a call by saying “Xbox, answer call” and then the video screen slides in from the right. Since the Xbox One aims to be your all-in-one “Home Entertainment System,” Skype is going to play a huge role in the overall experience. The demonstration showed a group Skype conversation happening while watching a video, with video quieting down a bit once the call is connected. Microsoft has always talked about being the hub of the living room, and it seems like the newly announced Xbox One is the device which brings its vision to reality. The game-changer with this Skype integration is that you can watch a television show or play a game while carrying on a conversation. This has been attempted, mostly as a “second screen experience,” but to make this a seamless reality is a huge step forward for Microsoft. Up until now, you were constrained to the functionality of a particular game supporting voice chat, but this gives you a more personal experience no matter what you’re doing on your Xbox.

Microsoft just blew the doors off of every integrated television experience with the reveal of its next generation console Xbox One. The new console will bring improved voice and gesture controls to watching TV. It also brings in live TV from the Xbox One (something you could do a bit clunkily on the Xbox 360 with Verizon FiOS and Xfinity TV from Comcast), Skype calling, a new trending feature that shows what’s popular among all Xbox users, and the ability to multitask while watching programs. Seriously, if the demonstration is any indication for how it’ll actually work, you’ll never watch TV the same way again. Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi showed off how you’ll be able to turn on all the devices in your living room by speaking “Xbox On,” which pulls up your Xbox Live profile without the need to click through several sign-in screens or software updates. Apparently, the console will recognize your voice to do this, and possibly even distinguish between others that might use the console. From there Mehdi proceeded to change the channel by speaking. For example, you change from watching ESPN to Syfy by simply saying “watch Syfy”. That’s right, no more “flipping” through the channels when you know exactly where you want to go. It wasn’t made clear, but I think this means those with a cable subscription (to Comcast at least, which was what they used in the demo) will no longer need to rent one of those crappy cable boxes that was probably made a decade ago. As for the gesture controls, they seem to be utilized when switching between functions, like Live TV or another app. Developing. Filed under: Games, Media

The Xbox One is real. Microsoft’s next-generation system also has a new controller that looks very familiar. Xbox One comes with a dual-analog gamepad that has nearly an identical layout to the Xbox 360 joystick. That makes a lot of sense, since many consider that controller as the industry standard. “”The xbox one controller is updated with over 40 design innovations,” Xbox Live vice president Marc Whitten said. “It features updated ergonomics and an integrated battery compartment that just fits better for gamers of all ages.” Xbox One’s controller is actually slightly different in its shell and edges. It has sharper angles in its design, and the thumb-sticks have a deep groove. Finally, the direction pad is now a plus rather than the hated circular pad from the 360. For more on the Xbox One, check out our complete coverage or our liveblog and livestream. Filed under: Games GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here! .blurb-cat-games hr { margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }

Microsoft unveiled its next-generation Xbox, the Xbox One, this morning at an even on its campus. The company’s aim is to usher in the next-generation of entertainment, using games as the Trojan horse into broader control of the living room. More than eight years in the making, the new machine represents the company’s ambitions to become the most important gaming and entertainment company in the world. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Xbox One,” said Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s game business. The system turns on in an instant with your voice commands. It will be interesting to see the reception for it. The world has changed since Microsoft last introduced its Xbox 360 game console in 2005. Apple’s iPhone ushered in a new era of smartphones and tablets that are contenders for the leisure time of consumers. Microsoft has acknowledged this changing landscape and is making the new Xbox more connected than ever. Nicknamed the Xbox 720, the new machine’s most direct competition will be the Sony PlayStation 4, which is expected to debut in November, as well as the Nintendo Wii U, a less-powerful system that is struggling to gain a foothold in the market. New game consoles typically sell millions at the outset, but Nintendo sold only 3.45 million units in its first five months. Microsoft sold an estimated 77 million Xbox 360 game consoles during the current generation of hardware. Sony sold about the same, while Nintendo has sold 99 million Wiis. But Microsoft has dominated the charts of consoles sold and game sales for the past couple of years, and companies like Electronic Arts are betting heavily that it will be a leader in the next generation alongside Sony’s PlayStation 4. Those results are far better than anyone ever expected from Microsoft, which was fundamentally a software company entering the hardware business back in 2001. With the original Xbox, Microsoft moved too slowly. It sold about 25 million units, beating Nintendo’s underpowered GameCube. But it was trounced by Sony’s PlayStation 2, which sold more than 150 million units in its lifetime. Microsoft essentially moved from zero percent market share in 2000 to 12 percent market share in 2006 in the hardware business. And as the market currently stands, Microsoft has about 30 percent of the hardware unit market, compared to 30 percent for Sony and 40 percent for Nintendo. But in dollars, Microsoft’s share is higher than that, as Wii game sales slowed down dramatically in the last couple of years. Now the company plans to complete its conquest of video games in the coming generation. The machine has an accelerated processing unit (APU) chip from Advanced Micro Devices. AMD, which also makes the APU for the PS4, is making a semi-custom chip for Microsoft, using eight processing cores, or computing brains, based on Jaguar micro-architecture designs. The chip will combine graphics and processing on the same sliver of silicon, and it represents a shift away from IBM’s three-core Power chips that were used in the  previous Xbox 360 game console. Microsoft and Sony will likely distinguish itself based on the number of cores they will have in each chip. Sony has eight Jaguar cores in its chip, and it also has a special kind of graphics memory that will speed the transfer of data within the chip. Durango has an eight-core 64-bit APU running at 1.6GHz, with 8GBs of DDR3 main memory and a large hard disk. Microsoft’s machine has similar capabilities on the semiconductor level, but its games may not run as fast as Sony’s in part because Microsoft is expected to dedicate some of its performance to running Kinect 2. Kinect 2 is expected to be a more accurate version of the Kinect motion-sensing system that Microsoft launched in 2010. That system enabled players to control their games with gestures, rather than controllers, using body movements. But it wasn’t particularly accurate, and you had to

SAN FRANCISCO — You might not guess it to look at your most recent medical bills, but doctors are nervous about their ability to make money. CareCloud, which creates a fully-online management app for health care practices, surveyed over 5,000 doctors who say they are worried about their income in the next year. “In the early 90s I saw healthcare for the first time and I was just blown away by how screwed up it was,” said chief executive Albert Santolo at VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference today. Despite attempts to modernize today’s practices in how they keep data and report revenue, the health care industry seems to be just as screwed up as it was 20 years ago, according to the survey, which CareCloud calls the Practice Profitability Index. “You think about it very differently than you would 15 years ago in the early days of the web,” said Santolo. But, he said, “when you look at these systems, they date that far back.” CareCloud is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that doctors can use to manage their finances. It also has a social layer to communicate with patients, as well as its own form of electronic health records (EHR). Indeed, it seems these EHRs are on of the main issues that make doctors worry about their profitability. Santolo explained that EHRs are currently slowing doctors down, and he admitted that even CareCloud is a part of that problem. He predicts that 20 to 25 percent of doctors will be back in the market for better solutions surrounding EHRs. There’s a lot of opportunity there, of course, for businesses to take up the challenge. (For instance, Practice Fusion has made great headway offering a free EHR now used by 150,000 doctors.) CareCloud isn’t ignoring the issue and says it will release a new user interface for its EHRs next month. Other than coding and documenting changes, doctors are also concerned about declining reimbursements, rising costs, and Affordable Care Act requirements, according to the survey. Nearly 50 percent of doctors are worried about using all this new technology to handle the flood of new patients that the ACA will bring to them. “Doctors still care very much about their future, economics of their business, and what healthcare reform is imposing on them,” said Santolo. “They feel ill-equipped to handle the influx of 30 million new patients.” CareCloud image via Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat Filed under: Health HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here. .blurb-cat-health hr { margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }