Posted on March 30, 2005
Filed Under Management, Policies | Leave a Comment
USA Today carried this article on an employee (of Eli Lilly) being fired for his book. Surprisingly the book was about his tenure as a Pfizer Sales representative. He has been with Lilly for the past 4 1/2 years, so this book is almost 5 years old. Pfizer spokesperson said that the employee was fired because the book advocated actions that violated Lilly’s policies. 
Earlier I had blogged about the need for a corporate blogging policy here. Blogging is probably (depends on who you ask) around 3 years old, so this book must have been published in the pre-blogging days. It made me think what’s different now and then? Nothing!
The rules of employment are the same, respect your employers guidelines. It does not matter what the medium of communication is – books, speeches, emails, blogs; the rules are clear. Be smart about what you do. Just remember the job interview you had, your employer hired you for whatever strengths you were brining in. Make no mistake, smartness is an implied strength you were supposed to bring. And you should prove it day-in day-out.
Posted on March 29, 2005
Filed Under Healthcare | Leave a Comment
This survey found that 70 percent of Americans turn to the Internet for healthcare decisions; 60 percent said they also talk to their doctors. I myself do it at times, and my wife is on WebMD all the time. People should be aware as to what’s happening in the medical world and make better decisions.
What if instead of we googling on medical terms and diseases, the required information is streamed to us? Think about it for a moment. Every hospital, today, has some form of a web site and your primary care physician has the required medical history of yourself. What if these systems could ’subscribe’ to medical encyclopedia’s on topics that are found in patients medical transcription? And what if, after subscribing, these systems can publish the results to a patient portal? All the patient needs to do is now log on to the hospitals website, and his portal shows all the information he/she needs. Bingo!!
Take it a step further, how about a messaging system between a physician and the patient. No more waiting, no more phone calls. Send a message to your doctor, on your portal, and let the portal scream You got Mail!
Posted on March 28, 2005
Filed Under Open Source, Technology | Leave a Comment
There is no need to talk about what OS(Open Source) is, or how it can reduce the cost of software infrastructure for varied business profiles. Of late many big companies like IBM, Sun & Oracle have put their weight behind the OS(Open Source) movement. However, there are still some unanswered questions as to how to turn this into a win-win situations. As enterprises start adopting OS solutions, they are finding that this approach does indeed dramatically reduce acquistion and deployment costs. On the other hand, very few delivery vendors have realized the true ROI(Return on Investment) of growing such practices.
It is common wisdom that providers and subscribers can benifit by mass adoption of OS solutions. But that is easier said than done with so called “free software”. Community developed software fail to provide a layer of accountability required to manage mission critical systems. Red Hat & JBOSS pioneered the concept of wrapping a service offering around OS solutions. This is the true value proposition of OS(Open Source) foundation - a diverse workforce and a service organization that ensures OS(Open Source) solutions are easier and safer to deploy. Besides such service organizations potray a ‘human face’ to large enterpises and provide the much needed escalation point. A win-win-win situation develops when service organizations can give back to the “community” in some form or the other.
Cignex is one such organization (and my employer) that provides service offerings around OS(Open Source). More details on Cignex and its business can be found on their website.
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