Conmergence

St. Joseph Medical Center (Houston) and MedConcierge to Demonstrate Telemedicine Solutions at FTTH Council Conference

Top Houston Hospital Selects MedConcierge to Offer Telemedicine to Corporations and Master Planned Communities

September 8, 2009 (Sarasota, FL & Houston, TX) - St. Joseph Medical Center, the largest, Level 3 trauma hospital in downtown Houston, has selected MedConcierge to provide its advanced telemedicine solution to leading communities and corporations. Both parties will demonstrate the user experience and benefits of telemedicine during the upcoming 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo taking place at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, September 27th through October 1st.

"We are very excited to demonstrate the MedConcierge at St. Joseph Medical Center service to local community developers and corporate executives at the upcoming Fiber to the Home Conference," states St. Joseph chief executive officer Phillip D. Robinson, "Telemedicine will clearly be at the center of healthcare delivery moving forward and leveraging the technological advantages of the MedConcierge service over fiber-optic communications will help us extend patient services, generate additional revenue and save costs."

"St. Joseph is a leader in the Houston area, and we are thrilled to play a role in helping them deliver health and wellness services to residents of FTTH communities in and around the Houston metropolitan area," says MedConcierge director Rob Scheschareg. "Telemedicine offers competitive and financial benefits in a cost-effective fashion that is critical in today's market environment. We look forward to meeting service providers and developers at the FTTH Conference & Expo who want to take advantage of the billions being spent by consumers and the government in the next 30 months on home-based telemedicine."

Substantial news coverage, increasing consumer interest and adoption, and the allocation of billions of dollars in Federal stimulus funds specifically for broadband and healthcare information technology have placed telemedicine at the forefront of applications that benefit from fiber to the home networks.

"Fiber to the home provides benefits to consumers and employers that truly improve the quality of life. From our own industry research to that of our members and market followers, it is becoming increasingly evident that consumers want the benefits of improved healthcare services and access to doctors that services like MedConcierge and healthcare providers like St. Joseph can provide," states Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council. "Telemedicine is a prime example of the type of applications that will be on display at our upcoming conference demonstrating the power of fiber".

To showcase the user experience, benefits and implementation of telemedicine services, MedConcierge and St. Joseph Medical Center will be hosting a number of activities at the upcoming 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo.  These include:

Corporate VIP Demonstration & Reception, Tuesday, September 29th.  For more information call the Corporate Health Connection at St. Joseph Medical Center at (713) 756-8600. 

MedConcierge Booth in the Fiber Zone, located on the show floor during exhibit hours. 

Phillip D. Robinson, CEO, St. Joseph Medical Center will be discussing telemedicine over FTTH networks as part of the Closing Keynote presentation Wednesday, September 30th at 2:00 pm.

For information about these events, visit the conference website at http://www.ftthconference.com.

About St. Joseph Medical Center

St. Joseph Medical Center, downtown Houston's only general acute care hospital, partners with Houston physicians to provide comprehensive health care to all.  As Houston's first hospital, St. Joseph Medical Center provides services for outpatients as well as inpatients, with a full continuum of care in surgery, cancer care, emergency care, Women's services, cardiovascular services, wound care, rehab, sports medicine, Corporate Health Connection and more. For more information on St. Joseph Medical Center, please visit http://www.sjmctx.com or call 713.757.1000.

About MedConcierge, LLC

MedConcierge is the leading provider of telemedicine solutions for community developers and operators, broadband service providers, healthcare providers, and municipalities, that deliver personal, concierge healthcare services to consumers at home, at work and while traveling. Utilizing our award-winning, patent-pending technology, MedConcierge provides unparalleled private and secure access to certified doctors, specialists and content. MedConcierge offerings range from real-time, live videoconference consultations, on demand, 24/7 with leading doctors, specialists, psychiatrists and wellness experts, to educational content, health status monitoring and dynamic electronic medical records - all accessible from the comfort, privacy and convenience of homes and facilities. For more information, visit http://www.medconcierge.com.

8th Annual Fiber to the Home Conference Call for Papers - September 27-October 1, 2009, Houston, TX

Lake Oswego, OR - February 9, 2009. The Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council has issued a Call for Papers for its 8th annual conference to be held from September 27-October 1, 2009 in Houston, TX.  The 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo is the only gathering of its kind dedicated to the advancement and deployment of FTTH technologies and benefits. This year's theme, Building the Business of FTTH, will bring leaders, visionaries and decision makers to the Hilton Americas-Houston and the George R Brown Convention Center to share success stories and lessons learned about the business elements needed to generate revenue with FTTH.

With considerable investments in fiber to the home deployment, the pressure is on for operators to add subscribers and to generate revenue from the subscribers they serve. The stakes are high and so are the expectations. The 2009 program will offer attendees an overview of best business practices for advancing of high speed broadband over fiber optic networks.

The FTTH Council is seeking papers in the following target areas:

Conference Tracks

1.    Building FTTH Revenues: Explain how to build the top line as an FTTH service provider. Describe your marketing and service packages and how they attracted subscribers.  Provide an overview of the video content and internet packages that were considered and selected, and how to increase market share away from the competition. Experience-based service provider submissions are requested.

2.    Success Stories: Share your experiences as a provider of FTTH services to help others build successful FTTH based businesses. Explain the benefits realized from linking your customers and community to FTTH, to better quality of life and prosperity.  Experience-based service provider submissions will be given first consideration.

3.    New Technology: Educate prospective and practicing network builders on new technologies that enable profitable FTTH services. Target topics include MDU technologies, in-home connectivity, video and IP video, green benefits, and new electronic and optical systems. Special consideration will be given to system-level papers that help decision-makers improve the business case for FTTH.

4.    Advanced Network Design, Construction and Management: Explain innovations in efficient network design, construction, installation and testing. Describe new options for efficient management of the network and subscribers. Target topics include network design cost modeling, construction techniques and equipment, testing and tools for managing subscribers.

5.    Finance and Regulatory:  Elucidate the new funding and financing options available, and teach how to access capital.   Explain how to navigate through the application process to reach government loans and grants. Clarify the latest regulatory changes and implications to FTTH service providers.

Abstract Guidelines

Abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words, without pictures, and must be commercial free. The abstract should describe the primary conclusion or results of the paper including pertinent details of the work indicating the significant findings. Learner outcomes must be included. Papers must contain significant new material not presented or published previously.  Papers may range from introductory to advanced, but bear in mind that your audience may be just getting started in this field. As such, "FTTH 101" papers will also be considered within each category.*

NEW for our 2009 Program...we will be offering a few repeated track sessions in Spanish.  As a perspective speaker, you may wish to indicate that you wish to repeat your presentation in Spanish during the online submission process.

For complete information on deadlines and submission guidelines, please visit www.ftthconference.com...Become a Speaker. 

*FTTH 101 Papers do not need to meet the new or unpublished requirement.

About the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council

The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council is a non-profit association consisting of companies and organizations that deliver video, Internet and/or voice services over high-bandwidth, next-generation, direct fiber optic connections - as well as those involved in planning and building FTTH networks.  The Council works to create a cohesive group to share knowledge and build industry consensus on key issues surrounding fiber to the home. Communities and organizations interested in exploring FTTH options may find information on the FTTH Council web site at www.ftthcouncil.org.

About Legend Conference Planning

Legend Conference Planning is the official project management and event planning firm for the 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo and the FTTH Council Secretariat. For further information, email at info@legendconferences.com.

Contact:
Speaker Liaison, Jennifer Cakir
Legend Conference Planning
Tel: 613-226-9988 x4
Email: speakerliaison@legendconferences.com

 

74 Open Source VoIP Apps & Resources

<ed.note>Aaron Rosenthal sent me a pointer to http://www.os-voip.com which in turn held a link to "74 Open Source VoIP Apps & Resources" over at VOIPNow.org<ed.note>

When a body of independent auditors and experts recommended that the State of California consider open-source software and Voice over Internet Protocol telephony (VoIP) as two measures to cut costs in 2004, that was the signal that open source and VoIP should unite. After all, what’s better than free software? Open source is better, because you have access to the code. What’s better than open source? Open source that’s focused on VoIP. That’s what you get here — 74 open source apps tucked into categories that you can use “as is” or change to fit your specific VoIP needs.

The following apps and resources are categorized by SIP, H.323, IAX, and RTP protocols and include clients, libraries, gatekeepers, and any other open source resource available for those specific protocols plus PBX and IVR platforms. You’ll also find tools like faxware, voicemail apps, and middleware that applies to one or more of the previously mentioned protocols.

OpenSER

OpenSER is a mature and flexible open source Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server (RFC3261). It can be used on systems with limitted resources as well as on carrier grade servers, scaling to up to thousands call setups per second. It is written in pure C for Unix/Linux-like systems with architecture specific optimizations to offer high performances. It is customizable, being able to feature as fast load balancer; SIP server flavours: registrar, location server, proxy server, redirect server; gateway to SMS/XMPP; or advanced VoIP application server.

OpenSER aims to be a collaborative project of its users to develop secure and extensible SIP server to provide modern VoIP services.

Anyone can contribute to one of next items:

• - code development - OpenSER core, modules and adjacent applications
• - documentation - writing or enriching documentation
• - miscellaneous - different management tasks (e.g., web site maintenance)
• - ideas - new ideas bring brilliant solutions

Features:

• robust and performant SIP (RFC3261) Registrar server, Location server, Proxy server and Redirect server
• small footprint - the binary file is small size, functionality can be stripped/added via modules
• plug&play module interface - ability to add new extensions, without touching the core, therefore assuring a great stability of core components
• stateless and transactional statefull SIP Proxy processing
• support for UDP/TCP/TLS transport layers
• IPv4 and IPv6
  
• support for SRV and NAPTR DNS
• SRV DNS failover
• IP Blacklists
  
• multi-homed (mhomed) and multi-domain support
  
• scripting language for configurations file. With a syntax similar to sripting languages, the configuration offers a powerful and flexible way to deploy custom SIP services.
• management interface via FIFO file and unix sockets
• pseudo-variables to access and manage parts of the SIP messages and attributes specific to users and server
• authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) via database (MySQL, Postgress, text files), RADIUS and DIAMETER
• digest and IP authentication
  
• CPL - Call Processing Language (RFC3880)
• SNMP - interface to Simple Network Management Protocol
• XMLRPC -management interface via XMLRPC
  
• NAT traversal support for SIP and RTP traffic
• ENUM support
• PERL Programming Interface - embed your extensions written in Perl
• Java SIP Servlet Application Interface - write Java SIP Servlets to extent your VoIP services and integrate with web services
  
• load balancing with failover
  
• least cost routing
• support for replication - REGISTER offer new functions for replicating client information (real source and received socket).
• logging capabilities - can log custom messages including any header or pseudo-variable and parts of SIP message structure.
• modular architecture - plug-and-play module interface to extend the server's functionality
• gateway to sms or xmpp
• multiple database backends - MySQL, PostgreSQL, flat files and other database types which have unixodbc drivers
• straightforward interconnection with PSTN gateways
  
• impressive extension repository - over 70 modules are included in OpenSER repository
  

Scalability:

• OpenSER can run on embedded systems, with limitted resources - the performances can be up to hundreds of call setups per second
• used a load balancer in stateless mode, OpenSER can handle over 5000 call setups per second
• on systems with 4GB memory, OpenSER can serve a population over 300 000 online subscribers
• system can easily scale by adding more OpenSER servers
• OpenSER can be used in geographic distributed VoIP platforms
• straightforward failover and redundancy

Smart Phone Electronic Medical Record / Mobile Contactless Payment / Remote Monitoring, Developments Toward...

<ed.note>Since vendors are looking at remote monitoring for disease management I should list those as well. I'll also be on the look out for sensors which are car-based now that wi-fi is available in automobiles. There are some parallel developments which I guess I should mention: Major League Baseball and other event vendors as well as transportation providers and social networks are putting the cell phone closer to the center of their business models. ( Robert Neelbauer on social graphs here -- cells will eventually be tracked by them. ) Of course, on the other end of the spectrum is home automation.</ed.note>

Phillips (still using POTS lines)
Qualcomm
Nokia's Intellisync Call Connect for Cisco

Shout out to http://www.wirelesshealthcare.co.uk who usually gets these stories before anyone else.

The Tech Scene: Banking by Cell Phone - This Time It's for Real?,
Use of Mobile and Wireless Technology Jumps in Hospitals,

iPhone ? ? ? ( Remember Osirix ), icefirst, liferecord, Access, aKos, ARANZ Medical, Asia eHealth presentations, Banco do Brasil, Blackberry [2], Diebold, Docobo, ebay VOIP (Skype), Gemalto, Google [2][3][4], INSIDE Contactless, J/Speedy, mBlox, mFoundry, Microsoft, m-Wallet, Obopay, payWave, Mayo Clinic InTouch, NTT DoCoMo, PayPal Credit Card, Privium, Samsung, telSpace, Telzuit's Bio-Patch PDA,
Telemedicine & eHealth Directory 2005, Verisign, ViVOtech, FeliCa, [2], Mifare [2], NFC Forum, Blackberry, Ubuntu mobile, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications

Managing Virtual Distance - Driving Business Transformation through Distributed Work, November 14-16, 2007

The Disneyland Hotel • Anaheim, CA

THE One, THE Only Conference Focused on Strategies, Teams, Tools & Beyond in the Virtual Workplace
ANNOUNCING INAUGURAL CONFERENCE ON MANAGING VIRTUAL DISTANCE

• IDENTIFY, MANAGE & MEASURE virtual distance
• Break through language barriers & manage MULTI-CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS
• Harness virtual KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
• Believe the unbelievable & witness the power of VIRTUAL WORLDS technology
• Transform business norms & cause cultural shifts in the way people work through SOCIAL NETWORKING
• Implement new millennium strategies that change the way we think about INNOVATION in a corporate context
• Manage, Train & Measure Productivity of the REMOTE EMPLOYEE
• Identify SECURITY CHALLENGES introduced by the transition into Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

To Register:
E-mail register@iirusa.com
Call 888.670.8200
Fax 941.365.2507 
Visit http://www.iirusa.com/virtual

The New World of Work
Daniel W. Rasmus
Director of Information Work Vision – MICROSOFT

Virtual Distance Under High-Stress
Honorable Jerry MacArthur Hultin
President – POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY & FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF THE U.S. NAVY

Global Projects vs. Traditional Projects
Karan Sorensen
Chief Information Officer – JOHNSON & JOHNSON PHARMACEUTICAL R&D

Legal Issues & IP Protection
Michael S. Mensik
Partner – BAKER & MCKENZIE

Virtual Worlds Technology
Philip Rosedale
Founder & CEO – LINDEN LABS

Secrets of High-Performance Distributed Teams
Cynthia C. Froggatt
Author of “Work Naked: Eight Essential Principles for Peak Performance in the Virtual Workplace”

Leadership in the Digital Age
Charles H. House
Executive Director – STANFORD UNIVERSITY, MEDIA X LAB

A Perspective From Corporate Resources
Ann Bamesberger
Vice President of Open Work Services – SUN MICROSYSTEMS

More here.

Voice: The New Fingerprint?

Jun 1, 2007 By David Jastrow, speechtechmag.onlineinc.com

Prevailing security methods used to protect against identity theft are losing ground to fraudsters. In fact, the total cost of identity fraud in the United States in 2006 reached $56.6 billion, up 6.4 percent from $53.2 billion three years earlier, according to the 2006 Identity Fraud Survey Report from Javelin Strategy and the Better Business Bureau. What’s more, mean resolution time for these cases has risen to 40 hours and costs $6,383 per person, up from 33 hours and $5,249 per person three years ago, according to the same report.
 
The overwhelming damage to organizations forced the government to step in. New laws designed to protect people from identify theft, such as the Bank Secrecy Act, are requiring higher levels of user authentication for financial transactions.

internet Low Bitrate Codec

iLBC (internet Low Bitrate Codec) is a FREE speech codec suitable for robust voice communication over IP. The codec is designed for narrow band speech and results in a payload bit rate of 13.33 kbit/s with an encoding frame length of 30 ms and 15.20 kbps with an encoding length of 20 ms. The iLBC codec enables graceful speech quality degradation in the case of lost frames, which occurs in connection with lost or delayed IP packets.

Features

• Bitrate 13.33 kbps (399 bits, packetized in 50 bytes) for the frame size of 30 ms and 15.2 kbps (303 bits, packetized in 38 bytes) for the frame size of 20 ms
• Basic quality higher then G.729A, high robustness to packet loss
• Computational complexity in a range of G.729A
• Royalty Free Codec

IP Over IP

Mar 26, 2007, "More VoIP patent suits likely" by Carol Wilson, telephonyonline.com

The season for suing over Internet telephony patents has probably just begun, according to patent attorneys.

<ed.note>One of the realities of non-open source business is dealing with the fact that it's not what you earn, it's what you are allowed to keep.</ed.note>

Calls for Change - free emerging telephony conference in San Francisco

Calls For Change is a one-day miniconference bridging emerging telephony applications and social change. A series of talks and workshops targeting Activists, Advocacy, Fundraisers, and Organizers will be held by Technical Innovators who have been successfully using telephone networks as a powerful tool for social change. A wide breadth of tools will be covered, from traditional membership communication, Get Out The Vote, and call centers, to more recent tools and technologies such as Web 2.0 applications, VoIP, polling, and SMS. The community is invited to brainstorm, discuss needs of advocacy organizations, and share skills in building out these systems.

Calls For Change will be held in conjunction with O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference February 27th to March 1st. When: February 27th 2007 Where: San Francisco Airport Marriott

Who: Activists, Advocates, and Organizers working for social change will meet with and collaborate with Techies who will have been using the the phone system for social change.

Cost: FREE, register online with the discount code "etel07ftel" here.

What: The day will be divided up in to two sections, a morning of presentations about campaigns which have successfully used the phone system (mobile, voip, and landline). We will have presentations on some of the applications which have been built for these campaigns.

The afternoon will be devoted to workshops to evaluate the needs of advocacy organizations and technical workshops to share skills in building out the systems.

If you would be interested in speaking, please contact me. We are particularly interested in hearing about non-technical problems that were solved using technology.