I’m on my way back from back from Moscow. It was my first time to attend the EBAN conference and my first time to visit Russia . Overall, I think this can best be described as an eye opening experience for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Moscow was nothing liked I expected. The sheer scale and grandness of the buildings, roads, infrastructure was daunting. I have traveled to and lived in big cities most of my life however this was something different. There were traffic jams at 3am. It has been described as the most misunderstood city in the world. A city of extremes -30c in winter and +30c in summer. Traveling to and around the city felt like a real journey – exactly how travel used to feel 15 years ago.
I spent most of the time at Digital October which was previously an old chocolate factory which has been transformed into a the meeting place for conferences and start-ups. I believe that physical meeting places are very important in terms of building an open community and supporting collaboration.
What impressed me the most was that organizations like Skolkovo have developed specific programs for start-ups tailored to the needs of emerging markets. Also RVC’s authorized capital of RUB 30,011,320,700 isn’t to be sneezed at.
The conference itself was very diverse and very international. Aside from representation from the majority of the 400 European networks that EBAN covers there were over 200 Russian delegates. More surprisingly were the big contingents from China, Turkey and US. There was even representation from Australia.
How exactly the angels will organize across borders remains to be known. Also how the entrepreneur scene will develop in Moscow will be interesting to watch as well known figures like Esther Dyson, Mike Butcher and Steve Blank spend more time in the city.
We’ll be back soon with details on our plans for SmartCamp in this interesting city.
A: Access to world-class mentors who understand your industry, networking and publicity that can lead to funding.
Q: How do I apply for IBM SmartCamp 2012
A: Read on
Context: It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m on route to Moscow to attend the EBAN conference for the first time. It’s been a hectic week which started with a small press event in Startupbootcamp on Monday morning and finished in the Lord Mayors House on Thursday with the Sandbox launch.
During the week there was a battery of events including the biggest angel meet-up on the Island, another great Archie Talk, a Dublin Web Summit meet-up, and a panel on how entrepreneurs and scienists should meet more. I spent most of the week at events and even then managed to miss the iGap finale.
Overall, I guess it is a sign of a healthy ecosystem and got me thinking about the value of events and how to balance with ‘real’ work. In particular how to we program a global series of SmartCamp events which respects the time our mentors give for free and while really helping entrepreneurs succeed.
We spent a lot of time during Q1 reviewing our strategy and we are delighted to introduce some new formats, new locations and a new category.
We plan more than 17 SmartCamp events worldwide this year. The schedule starts in Miami on May 15th with a new format focused on Healthcare. Over the last two years we have seen growing interest in certain topics and believe timing is right to have dedicated events. These one- and two-day events will bring together entrepreneurs, mentors and investors in particular industries. We follow this up in New York on May 24th with a focus on Smart Cities. The New York event was planned to coincide with TechCrunch Disrupt NYC to allow mentors and companies to make the most of the community.
We are introducing a new category of start-up that will continue to the global finals event. To ensure we continue to recognize the best early stage companies around the world we will now have a ‘best newcomer’ category at each event. We think combining this new category with our more traditional selection criteria will allow us to identify a strong, diverse group of companies for the 2012 IBM SmartCamp Global Finals.
We are very pleased that many of you have been a cornerstone in making our IBM Global Entrepreneur and IBM SmartCamp initiatives a success since its launch in 2010. Our hope was to help start-ups bring their new businesses to the international marketplace, and with your help over the last few years, companies have received significant press in Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Bloomberg, and raised over $50M in venture capital, with many going on to work closely with IBM and expand their businesses. In addition, the program is now live in 15 countries and we are very proud of the network of over 400 experienced mentors who give up their time to work with these companies.
In 2012 we are using the F6S platform in line with many of the leading accelerator programs. We believe this will make it even easier for entrepreneurs to apply for SmartCamp.
The full schedule is outlined below including a number of new locations like Cape Town and Mexico City. We are finalizing plans for a number of additional markets including Latin America and Russia and will provide more details at the end of April.
Otherwise, we hope we’ll see you soon at one of the events in the near future.
Schedule – KickStart Events
· Miami (15th May – healthcare focus)
· New York (24th May – smart cities focus)
· Munich (20th June)
· Bangalore (18th July)
· Tel Aviv (12th Sept)
· Moscow (mid Sept)
· Paris (28th Sept)
· Istanbul (3rd Oct)
· London (5th Oct)
· Cape Town (10th Oct)
· Mexico City (11th Oct)
· Moscow (Oct)
· Dublin (25th Oct)
Schedule – Regional Finals
These events will feed into the regional finals in the following locations
· Asia – Beijing (23rd/24th Sept)
· Europe\Middle East \Africa – Berlin (13th/14thNov)
· North America – Boston (20th/21st June)
· South America – Sao Paolo (28th/29th Nov)
It is hard to believe that in just over two years SmartCamp has expanded from a pilot in Dublin to a global program. We are totally dependent on the support of our partners and while IBM is a huge company we realize that for the planet to become smarter we need a global network of ecosystems of entrepreneurs and investors – all focused on the same prize of making the world world better.
Talking a break from Healthcare today as we wanted to get your feedback on the following that our team in India have been working on. Please let us know what you think about the images
Today we continue on the healthcare theme in the build up to our Miami event on the 15th May. This post is focuses on Watson which captured the imagination of the public last year by winning the quiz show Jeopardy! and exploring how this could transform the healthcare industry.
Watson is an AI system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. In 2011, as a test of its abilities, Watson competed on the quiz show in the show’s only human-versus-machine match-up to date.
Watson beat Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak (74 wins) to received the first prize of $1 million which was donated to charity. Watson had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content.
We were delighted that Manoj Saxena, (General Manager of IBM Watson Solutions) was able to present at our SmartCamp Global Finals in Feburary. Manoj Saxena is an serial entrepreneur who joined IBM in 2006 through the Webify Solutions acquisition (a company he founded in 2002 and led as its chairman, president and chief executive officer). His new task is finding, creating and scaling new markets for Watson’s
On obvious area of opportunity is patient care and public health. How can this technology improve our healthcare systems and what opportunities are there for entrepreneurs working in these areas?
Watson has skills that could be applied to patient care and to public health. It could improve doctor-patient visits as a skilled physician’s assistant. And it could improve the payments process as a clever administrative assistant. It could even help spot epidemics at very early stages by monitoring blogs and Twitter feeds.
The US federal government is making huge strides in computerizing health care. The commitment of billions of dollars has spurred 41% of doctors offices to plan to adopt electronic health records within two years, up from 25% at the beginning of this year.
More than 80% of hospitals plan to use electronic records within two years, allowing them to participate in electronic health exchanges where information about patients can be shared rather than hoarded. The human genome project has harnessed computer power to decode the basic instruction set of human life.
Now it’s time to start using computers to make health care smarter. Watson isn’t ready to be “Dr.” Watson yet. But its core capability of parsing complex text and retrieving meaningful answers to questions should be adaptable to many medical situations. Its technology embodies natural language recognition, information retrieval, multiple layers of analytics, and even advanced betting strategies.
IBM is currently working with university medical experts and partnering with insurers and other health care businesses to develop applications. At University of Maryland’s medical school professors are taking Watson through the same course of study that they give a first-year medical student. They teach it what a symptom is, some basic anatomy and how to read a medical chart and spot abnormal values provided by laboratory tests. From there, they will move on to teaching it how to make diagnoses and how to watch out for drug interactions.
One promising application of Watson will be as a reader of electronic medical records. Once it understands what to look for, Watson could tirelessly proofread EMRs, looking for abnormalities like prostate cancer screening for someone who has had several pregnancies. It could serve as the equivalent of a grammar-checker in a word-processor. Researchers think that capability could be commercially implemented within 24 months.
Within five years, researchers expect Watson will be able to help doctors with diagnosing patients and creating treatment plans. That’s no small benefit. One quarter of all medical errors involve misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.
Research shows that 50% of cancer diagnoses change from the first opinion to the second opinion. If a patient receives the wrong cancer treatment, the results can be serious, if not fatal. But cancer research is among the fastest growing bodies of medical literature, and even specialists can’t keep up with the volumes of reports that appear each month. Watson can be relied on to read all the literature and make suggestions based on the latest evidence.
Better diagnosis early also has big cost implications. Cancer treatment costs are growing at a rate of 23% per year compared to regular health care costs which are growing at a rate of 8%. Getting it right quickly saves money.
Within ten years researchers hope that Watson might seamlessly participate in doctor-patient conferences, putting reminders or suggested questions on a doctor’s computer screen. Since many medical terms are predictable, it’s possible that Watson could use speech-recognition to understand what a patient says and use the information to prompt a doctor’s follow-up questions. Would doctors and patients ever be comfortable with having Watson interject its own spoken queries? Maybe.
Watson could also have another role in health care: helping doctors deal with health plans. This is a big issue for doctors. The average practice spends $60,000 a year dealing with payers. Studies show physicians typically spend four hours a week, in addition to five hours a week of staff time, coping with unnecessary complexity in payment systems. Doctors can’t remember whether a patient’s insurer covers a particular treatment or requires pre-approval. Watson could.
Watson would be much too expensive to put one in every physicians’ office. But a cloud-based Watson could become an aid that many doctors would use, if usage was paid for by insurers and Medicare. Watson is designed to be a collaborative tool, and reprogrammed for medical care it could become a standard part of any doctor visit.
Better, faster diagnoses, adherence to payer guidelines and advice on evidence-based medicine would all contribute to controlling medical costs.
We are delighted to announced our partners and sponsors for SmartCamp Kickstart Miami on the 15th May. Our focus for this event is healthcare and we are really excited by the level of engagement with the partners already. So, in no particular order…..
In the 3rd post focused on healthcare opportunities we are focusing on social media. Along with connected devices and analytics we believe there are many big opportunities for entrepreneurs to build scalable companies. If you have such a company and want to engage our extended mentor and partner community please apply for SmartCamp KickStart Miami here.
The Social Media Doctor Is In – Dan Pelino – General Manager IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences
All around the world, businesses are getting social. Ford Motor Co. is crowd-sourcing ideas for features in future cars. Shoe seller Zappos shares Facebook “likes” with customers. Toy maker Hasbro ties Facebook videos to its Cranium board game.
Hospitals, doctors, nurses and patients would seem like naturals for social media. But they have been slow to take advantage of it because of well-founded fears of violating patient-privacy laws. As valuable as social media can be for businesses and employees, they can also be perilous. Workers who love to use wikis and chat for personal communications or YouTube for showing off funny videos, can get in trouble when they start using them for sharing company plans or customer information. This is particularly true in industries where information sharing is subject to government regulation. Health care is a field where strict patient-confidentiality rules have kept hospitals and doctors from embracing social media. In a sign of the growing concern about the issue, a Westerly, R.I. hospital, just fired an emergency room doctor for posting information about a patient on her Facebook page, even though she didn’t name the patient. The disciplinary action follows sanctions against doctors and nurses in California and Wisconsin over similar issues, according to the Boston Globe.
Two physicians at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital recently wrote an opinion piece in The Annals of Internal Medicine that physicians should think of the Internet as the world’s elevator where someone is always listening in.
While Facebook and AOL chat will never be appropriate places for medical discussions, similar technologies can be used in secure online environments. Hospitals and caregivers should be looking at ways to use social media behind a firewall with safeguards that assure accountability.
New software applications permit organizations to use social tools while complying with regulations. For instance, Actiance software archives and logs social content to help enterprises remain compliant with corporate policies and government regulations.With such software packages, auditors can search data from internal wikis, blogs, and chat sessions. They can tell who entered information, when it was entered and who was allowed to view it.
It’s easy to imagine scenarios for using social media in patient care. A doctor who specializes in a relatively rare disease might create a wiki – an online text that anyone can contribute to — meant for her patients and clinicians in other cities. Patients might share links to web sites and research through an online capability similar to Yahoo’s Delicious service. Hospitals might solicit suggestions for improving services through blog comments.
None of those applications are likely to happen using consumer social media. Hospitals, doctors and nurses would worry that they couldn’t protect the identity of patients who posted information or were given passwords to read it.
Patients are understandably reluctant to have details of their health exposed on line. Some are embarrassed about being treated for a sexually-transmitted disease. People with an episodic illness like arthritis or multiple sclerosis often fear that prospective employers wouldn’t hire them..
That’s why federal law tightly regulates sharing of personal health information. In the U.S., since 2003, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, has required care-givers and hospitals to protect any individually identifiable medical records or payment history. The 2009 HITECH act enabling electronic medical records, also has stiff penalties for unauthorized sharing. Information-technology research firm Gartner recently said that by the end of 2013, half of all companies will have been forced to produce material from social-media Web sites in response to lawsuits or government investigations. These “e-discovery” procedures are common in lawsuits alleging sexual harassment, age discrimination, insider trading and product liability. A patient lawsuit that documented disclosure of private medical information would leave a doctor or hospital in a weak position to defend against other claims.
So far, worries like those have kept medical care organizations from taking advantage of social media. But the potential benefits are too great to ignore. Social-business interactions can reveal expertise that wasn’t widely known. Doctors in teaching hospitals frequently invite colleagues to consult on difficult diagnoses.
Allowing more online collaboration, with patient approval, might speed the process by casting a wider net. Ad hoc teams could form to fine-tune a treatment plan for a difficult cancer. A survey of human-resource officers done by my company, IBM, last year, found that 57% of those that said their company had invested in using social media had out-performed their peers. In a growing number of businesses, social networking concepts are fundamental to collaborating with partners and associates and reaching out to customers. Social networking is too valuable a capability to be left out of the medical care field. Software technology, with the appropriate safegaurds built in, exists today and can help health care providers build out secure scaleable social networks, allowing providers to confidently communicate with clinicians and with patients.
SmartCamp is an exclusive global program bringing together entrepreneurs, investors and experienced mentors who want to build a Smarter Planet.
SmartCamp provides access to world-class advisors plus a direct route to seed and venture capital.
What is Smarter Planet?
We are now moving into a world where we're getting to an Internet of things and devices and increasing instrumentation. We have an overwhelming amount of data that companies have to deal with. And that's another reality in a smart world - the need for new insight, new analytics, new intelligence to deal with this explosion of data. That's another angle in a smart world where IBM can help companies.
