cmyk
DC
Apple will
no longer
pre-install
Flash on
Macs.
A dose
of IT
Time to grab the
US healthcare pie
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
A
s our country
gears up for US
President
Obama's visit, one won-
ders what has really hap-
pened to much-hyped
healthcare reforms dur-
ing his tenure.
If our leaders in Delhi
are smart, they could set
an agenda for pushing
ahead healthcare trade
and commerce and out-
sourcing between US
and India.
While the US health-
care reform was the
panacea for helping US
emerge out of the reces-
sion and also create more
jobs in their economy, it
really has not made
much impact, but com-
pounded the issues fur-
ther.
Firstly, it is the way US
funds its own social safe-
ty net, including health-
care, and how that fund-
ing creates additional
pressure for outsourc-
ing/offshoring.
Unlike other developed
countries, US does not
fund the bulk of health-
care programs through
taxes. Instead, it sug-
gests (with healthcare)
or mandates (with social
security and Medicare)
that employers become
more responsible for all
or manage healthcare
these costs of their
employees. These costs
cannot be avoided.
Remember the issue
around healthcare costs
that the labour unions
raked up when General
Motors went bust. Hence
pressure is built up on
US healthcare payors
and providers to out-
source their operations
to reduce costs.
Secondly, US health-
care reforms
aggressively opened up
have
mergers and acquisitions
(M&A) opportunities to
further consolidate oper-
ations and to reduce
costs. Mergermarket in
association with Epstein
Becker & Green and
Rodman & Renshaw,
recently published a
report that states reform
initiatives will be the
most significant driver of
M&A activity, according
to 65 percent healthcare
insurance and 59 percent
of hospital providers
respectively.
The M&A activity
would signal significant
job cuts due to consoli-
dation, only delaying
offshoring and
outsourcing for a while
till the merged or
Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare and
ICT expert. Kapil@KapilKhandelwal.com
Marketers can glean private data on Facebook
MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO
Oct. 24: Online advertising
offers marketers the chance
to aim ads at very specific
groups of people — say,
golf players in Illinois who
make more than $150,000 a
year and vacation in Hawaii.
But two recent academic
papers show some potential
pitfalls of such precise tai-
loring.
Both papers focus on Face-
book ads and show that in
certain circumstances,
advertisers — or snoops
posing as advertisers — may
be able to learn sensitive
profile information, like a
person’s sexual orientation
or religion, even if the per-
son is sharing that informa-
tion only with a small circle
of friends. Facebook does
not share such information
acquired companies go
through their post-acqui-
sition drill.
However, despite
healthcare reforms, US
has not created jobs in
healthcare as anticipated
and thereby suffers from
shortage of people with
critical skills to meet the
requirements.
Most healthcare leaders
in the US believe that US
cannot erase labour cost
arbitrage (in fact, it will
probably increase it), but
it may reduce the over-
head costs of healthcare
work within the US.
Hence it is imminent
that healthcare outsourc-
ing to India is one of the
key agendas that our
leaders in Delhi set up
with President Obama
during his visit.
India's track record and
scorecard as a leading
destination for health-
care outsourcing is
immaculate. It has been
long supporting large US
payors and providers
companies in informa-
tion technology, insur-
ance claims, processing,
coding and billing and
transcription.
Over the years, we have
also demonstrated suc-
cess in highly skilled
knowledge process out-
sourcing (KPO) such as
teleradiology, 3D med-
ical animation, drug dis-
covery, research and
development, remote
patient monitoring, med-
ical tourism and so on.
The questions we need
to be posing to the
Democrats, who are
against India, should be
on how many “US jobs”
are taken away from US-
born workers in health-
care due to immigration
and outsourcing?
Or is it possible,
instead, that immigration
and outsourcing, by pro-
moting cost-savings and
enhanced efficiency in
healthcare operations,
spur the creation of
native jobs?
With the aging of the
baby boomers in the US,
they are expected to raise
US spending on health-
care. Moreover, US
would face shortages in
healthcare supply and
would be forced to look
out for outsourcing solu-
tions, if their healthcare
industry does not go into
job creation mode now.
It is time we set eyes on
the huge pie that is worth
$250 billion and has
been set aside for health-
care outsourcing in the
US.
A screenshot of Facebook with the ad outlined in red.
with advertisers.
The papers come amid an
intense focus on vulnerabili-
News Corp
ices Alesia
digital
newsstand
plan.
Credit cards to get a makeover soon
TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
NEW YORK
Oct. 24: The simple credit
card is about to get a
makeover.
Next month, Citibank will
begin testing a card that has
two buttons and tiny lights
that allow users to choose at
the register whether they
want to pay with rewards
points or credit, at most any
merchant they please.
Other card issuers are test-
ing more newfangled cards,
including some that can
double as credit and debit
cards, and cards with fraud
protections baked right into
the plastic. One, for
instance, shows a portion of
the account number only
after the cardholder enters a
PIN.
The microscopic engine
powering the plastic will
help breathe new life into a
1950s-era technology — the
black magnetic stripe found
on the back of the 1.8 billion
credit and debit cards circu-
lating in the United States.
Much of the world has
already moved to using
more advanced cards, like
the ones in Europe that
require a PIN and use a chip
instead of a magnetic strip.
Even with the innovations,
no one knows how long
plastic cards will reign.
They may eventually be ren-
dered obsolete by technolo-
gies that will transform con-
sumers’ cellphones into vir-
tual wallets, and a large
number of companies,
including Visa, MasterCard
and Apple, are developing
these. But several card ana-
lysts say it will probably
take a while before any one
technology standard
becomes available across all
phones and merchants.
In the meantime, banks are
hedging their bets. Citi’s
cards — known as 2G, for
second generation — are no
thicker and just as flexible
as conventional plastic, but
they contain a battery with a
four-year life, an embedded
chip and, of course, the but-
tons, which took nearly a
HP unveils $799 tablet with a PC feel
GABRIEL MADWAY
SAN FRANCISCO
Oct. 24: Hewlett-Packard
Co unveiled its first product
for the fast-growing tablet
market, a $799 device run-
ning Microsoft Windows
that is aimed at business
customers.
HP's Slate 500 attempts to
replicate the PC experience
in a tablet form, providing a
contrast to rivals who have
brought more of a smart-
phone feel to their devices.
The Slate runs the same ver-
sion of Windows 7 used by
many companies on their
standard PCs.
The tablet has a bigger
price tag than competing
products such as Apple's
iPad, which kick-started the
tablet craze when it debuted
earlier this year.
HP's offering has an 8.9-
ties in Facebook’s privacy
safeguards.
In one paper, researchers
RIM opens up
BlackBerry
app purchases
on Web
browser.
Citi’s cards — known as 2G, for second
generation — are no thicker and just
as flexible as conventional plastic, but
they contain a battery with a four-year
life, an embedded chip and, of course,
the buttons, which took nearly a year
and hundreds of thousands of dollars
to develop. Citi’s cards will be
tested by a select group of
cardholders beginning in November.
year and hundreds of thou- holders beginning in
sands of dollars to develop. November, though some
“It’s a big deal,” said Citi employees have been
Megan Bramlette, director testing the cards since May.
of research for the Auriem- The pilot program will
ma Consulting Group, a expand as Citi incorporates
payments industry consult- user feedback. The bank
ant in New York. “If once a plans to make the cards
month a consumer can fill available on a broader scale
up their gas tank for free, in mid to late 2011.
and they don’t have to do The 2G card will be
anything except push a but- offered on two of Citi’s
ton before they swipe their existing rewards cards,
card, that’s cool. And that is including the Citi Dividend
something that I think will Platinum Select Master-
resonate with consumers.” Card, whose holders earn 1
Dynamics Inc., the compa- percent cash back on all pur-
ny that developed the mini- chases and 2 percent on cat-
computers-in-a-card, said egories that change season-
that it had more cards in the ally, as well as the Citi Pre-
works and that its bank part- mierPass Elite, whose hold-
ners would introduce its ers generally earn one point
electronic cards on their for every dollar spent and
own schedules. mile flown. To pay with
Citi’s cards will be tested points, users press the
by a select group of card- request-rewards button
HP’s new slate
inch, multi-touch-enabled high-speed cellular net-
screen, weighs 1.5 pounds works, as rivals including
and comes with 64 giga- the iPad, Samsung Electron-
bytes (GB) of storage and a ics' Galaxy Tab and Dell's
digital stylus pen. It gets five Streak have.
hours of battery life. Carol Hess-Nickels, direc-
It comes equipped with tor of business notebook
Wi-Fi access but no built-in marketing at HP, empha-
capability to connect to sized the Slate's business
many found that it was pos-
sible for an advertiser to find
the stated sexual preference
of Facebook users.
The researchers created six
nearly identical Facebook
accounts, three for men and
three for women. The one
significant difference was
that in one account for each
gender, the profile specified
that the user was “interested
in” people of the same sex.
Not surprisingly, the dif-
ferent accounts were shown
different ads, because adver-
tisers can specify what types
of people they want to reach
on the site. In particular, the
accounts that appeared to
belong to gay people
received ads for things like
gay bars.
But the researchers also
from Microsoft in India and found that the gay profiles
the Max Planck Institute for were shown ads that were
Software Systems in Ger- not shown to straight people
Bengaluru ● Monday ● 25 October 2010
Technomics
before swiping the card; the
button marked regular credit
allows a straight credit
transaction.
Pressing the buttons
changes the data imprinted
on the magnetic stripe, so it
still works like conventional
plastic and can be swiped
through existing card termi-
nals nationwide. At least for
now, cardholders need to
know how many points they
have, and if they don’t have
enough, the transaction will
be processed using credit.
“We’ve developed a pro-
prietary technology that will
allow Citi to do the conver-
sion when the transaction
comes through,” said Terry
O’Neil, executive vice pres-
ident of Citi Cards. “All they
need to do is push that
request-rewards button and
we take care of everything
else for them. They leave the
store with the merchandise
they selected.” The cards
are going to be most valu-
able to bigger spenders. The
average cardholder spends
about $6,300 a year, accord-
ing to The Nilson Report,
and, on a typical rewards
card, users may earn one
point for each dollar spent.
At one penny a point, that
translates into about $63 in
annual rewards. Still, that is
enough for a free cup or two
of coffee each month.
HP's offering has
an 8.9-inch, multi-
touch-enabled
screen, weighs
1.5 pounds and
comes with 64
GBs of storage.
utility. She expects retail,
healthcare and insurance
companies, among others, to
build custom applications
that take advantage of the
device's portability.
“It's really like a full-func-
tion PC, it runs Windows, it
will run your office applica-
tions, it just so happens to be
in a slate form factor,” Hess-
Nickels said.
The HP Slate features the
Intel Atom processor, which
is commonly found in inex-
pensive netbook computers.
and had no obvious connec-
tion to sexual preference —
like those for a nursing
degree at a medical college
in Florida, which appeared
exclusively in the gay man’s
account.
If users click on such an ad
and visit the advertiser’s
site, they are essentially
revealing to the advertiser
that they are gay.
“The danger with such ads,
unlike the gay bar ad where
the target demographic is
blatantly obvious, is that the
user reading the ad text
would have no idea that by
clicking it he would reveal
to the advertiser both his
sexual preference and a
unique identifier,” the
researchers wrote. The
researchers did not seek evi-
dence that any advertiser
actually employed this tech-
nique. What’s more, the
Citi may yet change its
rewards equation or decide
that redeeming points at cer-
tain locations will yield bet-
ter returns. “What we want
is to get feedback directly
from the customers, which
will influence how we will
roll the cards out,” Mr.
O’Neil said. “We want to
dig a little deeper on what
the right redemption model
is.”
American Express recently
made its Membership
Rewards points redeemable
at Amazon.com, though
they are not worth much:
one point is equal to seven-
tenths of penny that can be
spent at the online retailer.
“Creating greater flexibili-
ty on how you redeem
rewards points has been per-
colating in the industry for
two or three years now,” said
David Robertson, publisher
of The Nilson Report, an
industry newsletter. “The
novelty of being first to mar-
ket is a plus for Citi. But I
anticipate that other issuers
will have the technology as
well.” The technology that
makes the new Citi card
possible was created by Jef-
frey D. Mullen, the 32-year-
old chief executive of
Dynamics, an electrical
engineer and former patent
lawyer who started the com-
pany in 2007 while he was
working on his master’s
degree in business at
Carnegie Mellon. Months
after he graduated, he
secured $5.7 million in ven-
ture capital financing from
Adams Capital Manage-
ment.
“We are just scratching the
surface with what these
cards can do with these ini-
tial products,” said Mr.
Mullen, whose innovation
won business plan competi-
tions, as well as $1 million
in free advertising at a
recent technology confer-
ence. “We are trying to be
the innovation arm of an
industry that has never had
one. With this card, which is
the baby-step card, you need
to acclimate the consumer.”
— NYT
Rival tablets run on low-
power ARM-based chips
found in smartphones.
The device is equipped
with cameras in the front
and back, enabling video
conferencing, and a USB
port. It comes with a case
and a docking station.
HP's Slate is now available
online, and the company
will be selling it to business-
es through its direct sales
force. It's $799 price tag
makes it more expensive
than the Wi-Fi-only version
of the iPad, which starts at
$499 and runs up to $699 for
a 64-GB model. A 3G iPad
starts at $629.
Verizon Wireless plans to
sell Samsung's 7-inch tablet
for $600. Dell's 5-inch
Streak is priced at $550 but
can be had for $300 if
bought with a data plan
through AT&T. — Reuters
identifier — typically a
cookie or a computer’s
Internet address — does not
necessarily disclose the
identity of the person who
clicked. But privacy experts
said an advertiser could
potentially obtain the name
in other ways and link it to
the user’s sexual orientation,
perhaps by asking the per-
son to sign up for a newslet-
ter or fill out a form.
“This is yet another exam-
ple that there are privacy
landmines built into Face-
book,” said Christopher
Soghoian, a privacy advo-
cate and research fellow at
the Center for Applied
Cybersecurity Research at
Indiana University. “Even if
the company is trying to do
the right thing, when they
have this many users, they
are going to be a target for
bad guys.” — NYT
cmyk
15
Google admits
cars collected
personal data
G
oogle Inc admitted
for the first time its
“Street View” cars
around the world acciden-
tally collected more per-
sonal data than previously
disclosed — including
complete emails and pass-
words — potentially
breathing new life into
probes in various countries.
The disclosure comes just
days after Canada's privacy
watchdog said Google had
collected complete emails
and accused Google of vio-
lating the rights of thou-
sands of Canadians.
“If in fact laws were bro-
ken...then there's some seri-
ous question of culpability
and Google may need to
face significant fines,” said
Marc Rotenberg, the execu-
tive director of the Elec-
tronic Privacy Information
Center, a Washington DC-
based privacy advocacy
group.
Regulators in France,
Germany and Spain,
among others, have opened
investigations into the mat-
ter.
A coalition of more than
30 state attorneys general
in the United States also
have launched a joint
probe.
It remains unclear how
many people may have
been affected by the priva-
cy breach.
Connecticut Attorney
General Richard Blumen-
thal, who is leading the
multi-state investigation,
said in a statement on Fri-
day that Google's disclo-
sure about the types of data
it collected “validates and
heightens our significant
concerns,” and noted that
the investigation is continu-
ing.
Google's Street View cars,
which are well known for
crisscrossing the globe and
taking panoramic pictures
of the city's streets, acci-
dentally collected data
from unsecured wireless
networks used by residents
in more than 30 countries,
Google disclosed in May.
At the time, Google said
the information was typi-
cally limited to “frag-
ments” of unencrypted data
because the cars were
always moving and
because the cars' wireless
equipment automatically
changed channels about
five times a second.
A Google spokesperson
said the company had not
examined the roughly 600
GB of data captured by the
cars in any detail to avoid
violating privacy.
The latest disclosure
comes from information
from regulators in various
countries, who have exam-
ined the data collected by
Google.
“It's clear from those
inspections that while most
of the data is fragmentary,
in some instances entire
emails and URLs were cap-
tured, as well as pass-
words,” Google Vice Presi-
dent of Engineering and
Research Alan Eustace said
in a post on Google's blog
on Friday.
Google also said in the
blog post that it hoped to
delete the data as soon as
possible.
Meanwhile Britain's pri-
vacy watchdog is to look
again at what personal
information internet giant
Google gathered from pri-
vate wi-fi networks. The
Information Commission-
er's Office had investigated
a sample earlier this year
after it was revealed that
Google had collected per-
sonal data during its Street
View project. At the time,
it said no “significant” per-
sonal details were collect-
ed. But Google has since
admitted that e-mails and
passwords were copied.
Britain's privacy watchdog
is to look again at what
information Google gath-
ered. — Reuters