IT
IT Can Matter
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-technology-business-today-2709.html
Chris Joseph from Demand Media identified some positives and negatives of how engrained IT has become into business today.
He said that the major benefits were saving money and time. Because you don’t need to all be in the same physical location anymore and teleconferencing technology has improved greatly money is saved by some workers working form home and others not needing to travel to hold meetings. Technology has sped up many business processes that has in tern saved a lot of money.
The drawbacks he identified were dependance and the need to upgrade. Unfortunately, technology does not always improve efficiency. Being so relent on technology can cause massive losses if that equipment or software were to go down. Also, since technology is always changing you will always need to upgrade your systems which will cause many expenses in the future.
Do you agree that these are benefits and drawbacks of technology in business? Can you identify others? Which do you think are the most important to consider.
Apple HealthKit
I was doing some research on healthcare management and found this article on Apple’s HealthKit application. This application allows patients to input personal data, such as weight, blood glucose, heart rate and blood pressure. This information is transmitted through the cloud to healthcare providers. This can then be utilized to catch early indicators of disease and allow healthcare providers to treat an issue before it becomes more serious. This will ultimately lead to improved survival rates. Other areas of the medical industry utilizing this type of technology include assisted living, home monitoring, and clinical trials. One of the problems with this type of technology is data security. Because it uses cloud storage to improve its connectivity and data sharing, there is a serious threat to theft and data manipulation.
Personally I find this interesting because of the benefits this could provide. Over time, this data can be used to establish trends which would allow health professionals to determine what activities/actions lead to certain health outcomes. I also think it could allow for better health insurance pricing. For example, if you had two people on diabetes management plans, health insurance providers could see which customers are following their health plan and which ones aren’t. The idea here being that people who are compliant with their health plans will use fewer medical services, leading to a reduction in spending on medical services. Health insurance providers could then adjust payments based on health plan compliance.
Outside of benefits mentioned in the article, what benefits do you see from using Apple’s HealthKit? Is there any technology that could be used in conjunction with this? Do you have any suggestions for solving this data security problem? Do you see any other threats to healthcare data security as a result of cloud storage?
“Cyberattacks” Is our information really secure?
Debate Deepens Over Response to Cyberattacks – WSJ
I ran into this article shortly after reading Jessica’s topic regarding information security. I see information security as one of the greatest concerns for businesses today; especially, ones that collect client/customer information, which in this day and age most companies do. I know it may not seem like a huge deal that hackers obtained control over government social media accounts, but is this a risk management red flag that should be taken much more seriously? It makes me think about BP oil company, or Sony. If hackers can breach government firewalls, and security protocols what makes Amazon, Facebook, or any other company that collects our personal information safe?
Why do you think there is a sudden increase in company security breaches? Are companies getting lazy with IT security, or are hackers just getting smarter?
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