PC Magazine has a mixed review of Sharp’s Linux-based Zaurus SL-5500 handheld the main negatives were some interface issues the reviewer didn’t like, but they thought the powerful hardware and loads of applications for it were great: ‘…In terms of hardware specs, the SL-5500 is on even ground with the best Pocket PC handhelds. Under the hood, you’ll find a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor, 64MB of RAM, a replaceable lithium-ion battery–which lasted more than three hours in our tests–and a 320×240-pixel reflective TFT screen. We were quite impressed with the color and sharpness of the 3.5-inch display…
AMedNews: Firm pushes online medicine to new level
American Medical News is reporting about MyDoc.com a startup firm who diagnoses and treats patients for certain diseases sight unseen. ‘…Well aware of the reputation of online treatments as fronts for prescribing so-called lifestyle drugs, and aware of organized medicine’s distaste for the concept, Indianapolis-based MyDoc.com is opening up for business and hoping for acceptance from patients, physicians and businesses, which are the focus of an advertising campaign that encourages MyDoc.com as an employee benefit…MyDoc.com uses software that many telephone-based nurse call centers around the country have used for years. When patients go online, they answer questions about their symptoms. Each answer generates a specific set of questions. After the questionnaire is completed, the software generates an assessment that is reviewed by a physician. If a case appears to be serious, the system immediately tells the patient to seek emergency care…’
WP: VA Experience May Herald New Uses for ‘Droids’
The Washington Post has a story about the use of hospital robots at the Veterans Administration: ‘…TOBOR, the robot, is a delivery “droid” that glides along the corridors day and night, ferrying medicines from the hospital’s central pharmacy to its wards. Bigger and boxier than R2D2, the rolling robot in the “Star Wars” movies, TOBOR shares the hospital’s elevators many times a day with patients and visitors. It announces its intentions in a clear baritone voice. “I am about to move,” it tells fellow passengers. “Please stand clear.”… Wonder if they are ever going to hook the robots up to the VA’s VistA surprisingly good clinical software.
FDA Declines to Regulate Implantable ID Chip
In a sort-of approval for an implantable ID chip the FDA opened the door for use in humans when it declined to regulate the device, reports Wired: ‘…For the past several weeks, Applied Digital Solutions has worked to get its VeriChip — a biochip containing personal data that is similar to devices used to identify lost pets — classified as a non-regulated device. On Thursday, the company’s wish was granted. “They inquired about the use of the product for non-medical, identification purposes,” said FDA spokeswoman Sharon Snider. “If it’s a non-medical use, the FDA doesn’t regulate it.”
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Uses Linux NetworX Cluster to Aid in Drug Discovery
Linux NetworX announced today that Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is advancing its human healthcare research and development processes with a 120-processor Linux NetworX Evolocity™ cluster supercomputer. Full press release enclosed.
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, April 2, 2002 – Linux NetworX announced today that Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is advancing its human healthcare research and development processes with a 120-processor Linux NetworX Evolocity™ cluster supercomputer.
The Ridgefield, Conn. laboratory of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals is using the cluster supercomputer to help predict the suitability of certain molecules in potential drugs. This process is ideal for a Linux cluster supercomputer because the same compute process is completed for hundreds of thousands of molecules. Computational chemists and biologists at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals are also using the cluster to run applications to find the best combinations of molecules and protein binding sites for drug development.
�With a 120-processor cluster, managing every aspect of the system can be quite overwhelming,� said Dave Craska, lead systems engineer for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. �The ClusterWorX software from Linux NetworX helps alleviate the complexities of cluster management, especially when upgrading and propagating new releases of software.�
Before switching to a Linux NetworX cluster, scientists at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals were running the same applications on a variety of systems, but results were slowed because of the limited number of available CPUs. After deploying the Linux NetworX cluster, information was processed quickly and efficiently, saving Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals time and money.
The massive amount of data computation inherent in drug design typically requires the power of a supercomputer class system. Cluster technology is a method of linking multiple computers, or compute nodes, together to form a powerful, unified system. Linux NetworX clusters can match the performance of traditional supercomputers for a fraction of the cost.
�The bioinformatics industry is experiencing an enormous demand for cost-effective, reliable supercomputing solutions and many pharmaceutical companies are turning to Linux clusters to meet that need,� said Clark Roundy, vice president of marketing at Linux NetworX. �Companies such as Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals demand quick, accurate results and Linux NetworX provides the management tools to ensure our customers focus on their core competencies instead of system management.�
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals� Evolocity system includes 120 Pentium III 866 MHz processors, 50 GB of memory, an Intel 10/100 NIC connection and ClusterWorX cluster management software. To ensure optimum cluster operation, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals also signed a service and support contract with Linux NetworX.
About Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Ridgefield, CT, is the largest U.S. subsidiary of Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation (Ridgefield, CT) and a member of the Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies. The Boehringer Ingelheim group of companies, with headquarters in Ingelheim (Germany) is one of the 20 leading pharmaceutical firms in the world and reported revenues of almost US $5.8 billion in 2000. Boehringer Ingelheim, which has some 140 affiliated companies worldwide, focuses on human pharmaceuticals and animal health. The human pharmaceuticals business, which accounts for 95% of sales, is comprised of prescription medicines, consumer health care products and chemicals and biopharmaceuticals for industrial customers . Research and development, production, and distribution facilities are located around the globe. In 2000, Boehringer Ingelheim spent almost US $914 million on R&D, equivalent to 15.6% of net sales.
For more information on Boehringer Ingelheim, please see the international Internet website www.boehringer-ingelheim.com
About Linux NetworX
Linux NetworX (www.linuxnetworx.com) brings its powerful and easy-to-manage cluster technology to those demanding high performance and high availability systems. Linux NetworX provides solutions for organizations involved in oil and gas exploration, aeronautical and chemical modeling, biotechnology research, graphics rendering and visual effects, Web serving, ISPs, ASPs, and other technological research fields. Through its innovative Evolocity hardware, ICE™ cluster management tools and professional service and support, Linux NetworX provides end-to-end clustering solutions. To date, the company has built some of the largest cluster systems in the world, and boasts numerous Fortune 500 customers.
CONTACT:
Brad Rutledge
Linux NetworX
801-562-1010 ext. 218
brutledge@linuxnetworx.com
JSOnline: Doctor prescribes cure for office
This article looked like yet another: ‘I’m going to fix medicine by selling software to those dumb doctors.’ articles that crop up frequently only to sink beneath the waves. However, this one has an intriguing approach: ‘…Half of the company will belong to its founders, investors and employees. The other 50% will belong to all of the physicians who sign up. At the end of each year, the company will set aside some reserves and distribute half of the remaining profits to the network of physician owners. The remaining money will go to the founders, investors and employees with equity stakes in the company…’ Now if Zelko and co would only go open source, they’d have something.
Linux Medical News Turns 2
Hooray! March 30th is Linux Medical News 2nd birthday. 430 articles have been posted since the first article on March 30th, 2000. The site has grown considerably since then, adding a newsletter , a surprisingly active Jobs/Classified’s section, hosting several lists such as MedNews and ZopyMed as well as increasing its audience by a factor of 10 over its first week. More importantly, significant events have happened in the world of free and open source medical software.
2 years ago, many free and open source medical software projects were just beginning and full of idealism. Unfortunately, there was little in the way of ready for prime-time software. However, there was a breathless enthusiasm and a sense of promise in the air, that vexing medical IT problems such as incompatibility, vendor-lock in, fragmentation and high cost could be surmounted with free and open source software.
Since then, a little of the boundless excitement in free and open source medical software faded as the dot-com era boom turned bust. Some of the optimistic estimates for real-world free and open source medical software product availability became replaced by a sobering reality.
Despite this, many projects such as FreePM, GNUmed and many more have showed enormous progress in a short time, nearing real-world ready status. Psychiatry-oriented SQLClinic has actually reached 1.0 status.
The dream of free and open source medical software unifying medicine under standard, non-proprietary software with its attendant increases in quality of care and decrease in cost is very much alive. Considerable progress toward these goals have been made in these two short years. If large scale events such as the now commonplace embrace of free and open source software by the likes of IBM, Sun Microsystems and Wall Street continues, then the possibility of a free and open source medical software industry being born is high. Linux Medical News will continue to be honored to be a chronicler and participant in these transforming events.
BBJ: Health care takes steps to improve communication
The Boston Business Journal has an article about some of the promise and difficulties of CPR’s (acronym of the moment: Computer based Patient Records). ‘…Hieb says there are about a dozen major vendors with CPR products. “No organization, no vendor has learned all the tricks needed to succeed in this market,” he said. “The technology is far from complete. It’s still being developed and fine-tuned.” Somewhat interesting read, like that 500 of the roughly 5000 US hospitals are now electronic, but I’m a little suspicious of these because another set of numbers about percent of GDP at the very end of the article are frankly, absurd.
Yahoo: Wall Street Embraces Linux
Yahoo News is reporting on Merrill Lynch’s ‘top down’ efforts to deploy RedHat Linux in its organization: ‘…Merrill’s plans, and others like it, are very significant because they are the first companywide–rather than departmental–Linux implementations…”We are telling all of our vendors that they need to have some kind of Linux strategy,” says Carey, chief technology architect at Merrill. “We are hearing that consistently from everyone on Wall Street.”…one of the big benefits that Carey sees is that Merrill can write an application once and then deploy it with minimal work on mainframes, minicomputers, desktops, laptops and handhelds–whether it be on Intel (NasdaqNM:INTC – news) hardware or something else…’
Wired: Tech Support for Pelvic Exams
Wired has a piece on the ‘ePelvis’ a ‘…truncated mannequin, equipped with a realistic set of internal reproductive organs and several strategically placed sensors…When a pelvic exam is simulated on the device, software on an attached computer shows just what’s being touched, how hard and how thoroughly…’ The article also mentions other intriguing medical simulators.