Immigration and Out sourcing "Profitable business?"

This is a direct correlation between out sourcing U.S. job over seas and hiring illegal immigrants, lower wages and higher profits for companies involved. The easiest solution to both problems is to remove the incentive or profit that companies can make by increasing fines and enforcemnet of existing laws to discourage violators.

At some point it become fashionable to ship U.S. jobs over seas. You got to point to the auto industry to see how shipping U.S. jobs over seas became fashionable. Once it became clear that in the global economy, over seas competitors were able to make a superior product at a lower cost, US jobs were in trouble. The question is, who fault is it that many over seas competitors can make a superior product at a lower cost (management, worker, unions, health care)? Management and Executive sold us on, the only way we compete in the global economy is to send our U.S.jobs over seas. Ever since, it has been down hill and we are still trying to recover.

In a free market, there is great pressure to maximize profit at all cost. Many executive teams at companies have jumped over board in the regard. What can we do to help turn things around especially for the middle class. Many worker advocates would point to the Employee Free Choice Act currently in front of congress.

In my next post, I will look for solutions that will help U.S. companies stay competitive while ensuring more U.S. jobs are not out sourced and overwhelmed with immigration issues.

Immigration "The good, the bad, and the ugly"!

The good immigrants helped build America into the country it is today. Many immigrants came here and built successful business and contributed to our economic growth. The US is truly diverse country where Evey one has a chance to be successful. Additionally the USA has access to talent through out the world, who want to work under our H-1B visa program.

Though out the last few decades, we have heard more stories on illegal immigrants who live in the USA illegally. For many of these people, they have been here for decades and have children who are presumably legal citizen by birth. Many of the the illegals are uneducated and perform very low wage jobs that helps many of our service industries run such as: farming, season employment,construction labor etc. With out these workers, many of our industries would have a problem (labor shortage).

The ugliest of the situation is, many of these people get a free ride (health care, crime,welfare, etc which hurts our legalized citizens. We need to know what has been done to improve the situation? These our the facts I will try to uncover.

Stem cell research

Stem cell research
Does stem cell research have the potential to save and benefit life. If stem cell research can cure cancer in our life time, would we be more tolerant of abortion and pro choice. To really understand these questions, we must understand what stem cell research is all about.

The first scientific break through was related to embryonic stem cells used to grow human cells such as: blood and skin cells. These specific cells can be used to re engineer cells to repair damaged tissue.

Research related to stem cells has been limited, because congress limited public funding for any research related to embryonic cells in 1995. Due to these bans, much of the funding comes from private sector.

The ethical disputes centers on when human life begins? Some people consider human life to begin when the egg is fertilized. In this scenario, the embryo is consider a human life. Conducting research on an embryo would in some way destroy a potential human life.
On the other side, a fertilized egg must be implanted in the uterus to sustain life. In Vitro fertization generates embryos that are excess and therefore, could be used for research.

There is valid points to both agreements and the true test is, whether scientific advances, improve life and are used in the most ethical ways possible.

Health Care reform status:

The for runners of the Health industry have been developing RHIO’s (Regional Health information organizations composed of hospitals health maintenance organizations looking to share information among themselves.

Covinsint and e-market developer help health organizations communicate while keeping all of the information private. There roles is authenticate system users, ensure compliance with regulations, and has created application programming interfaces so practices and HMO’s can connect to various management systems.

There is a growing number of service providers entering health care information exchange market. The development revolves around personal health care records developed by each provider. The health record would theoretically be available from one site. Many question still remaining concerning this approach; can such a company be trusted to handle such personal information? This approach would require each individual to keep their medical records up to date.

People in the industry believe a system is available which can be used to create a national electronic health records system. The bottom line is, the system has to improve services and treatment by effective sharing critical information. Implementation and integration remains a complex and difficult process. To make the system work, there has to be great cooperation, innovation, and investment in health orientated IT. Here in Boston, we have began the ground work.

Health Care reform and records standards

One of the huge problems with government implementing reform is conflicting interest. In most cases private industry can do a much better job than the government especially when it comes to innovation. These conflicting interests usually slow down development until these differences can be hashed out.

The Veterans administration has developed a Electronic Health Records system using Vista, but private medical software providers claim they can develop a better system. This debate has been going on for better than the last decade.

Cooperation between the government and private industry should create interoperability standards using SOA, middleware, and standard file formats, similar to open document format (ODF) and resource description format (rdf) standards for information medication base structured meaning.

There is a process to create Continuity of care, an XML base standard file format standard for Electronic Health Records (EHR) vendors can write in the same file format. To facilitate this conversion, the Commission of the certification of Health IT does certification and creates interoperability and definition guidelines in three key areas: Privacy, format, and content.


The Health care industry use glossary of terms to describe procedure and diagnosis of patients which revolves around International Classification of disease IDC-9 which must convert to IDC-10, IDC-10 holds 155,000 codes allowing the tracking of disease, diagnosis, and treatment procedures. Deploying or upgrading from IDC-9 to IDC-10 is another challenge for Health care professionals and IT staff.

There is an overwhelming amount of information that must be tracked especially related to molecular understanding of disease. The information system needs to help make better decisions while being comprehensive, flexible, and manageable way to handle data.

Cyber and Network Security Talent

In a slow economy where jobs and incomes are adversely affected, crime increases do to many factors. Computer hacking and identity theft are a huge problem. To combat domestic and foreign threats to government and business networks, we must produce more security technicians and engineers.

Many companies have out sourced network security due to lack of skilled professionals in the USA. The government has put a limit on visas for foreign students and USA students are not going in to science and engineering, especially related to computer systems. We have to do a better job or attracting top students and emphasizing the exciting and challenging field which is computer science.

US government and private computer networks were hacked 37,000 times in 2007. These attacks are only escalating in frequency and complexity.

Typically, 50 -60 computer security doctorates produced in the USA, only 15 - 20 teach in the USA. The net result of this, terrorist, criminals, are gaining trade and national security secrets as we fall behind in counter terrorism.

We need skilled professionals who truly know and under stand control systems cyber security. Senators Rockefeller and snow will introduce legislation to create scholarships to encourage more students to enter computer science.

Information Technology solution for Health Care Reform

1. Information Technology solution for EHR
   
   Some of the large Health Care organizations and hospital networks have implemented independent Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems to manage records electronically. One approach would be to get all of the EHR systems to communicate and share records. In order for this approach to work, the following important points would have to be established:
   
   A standard EHR format must be established for all records and conformity requirements developed.
2. The EHR system must be developed and written so small medical practices (that make up 75% of all practice in the USA) are simple enough to use and implement. The system should simple enough where any long term information technology support is not needed.

The new buzz in computing is cloud computing were a group of small practices band together for a EHR cooperative or use a managed EHR services delivered over the Internet. Sharing and cloud base computing requires that records be stored on a remote server or off site. This brings up patient privacy issues related to the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act law. These record would have the potential, (if system is comprised) to be viewed by unauthorized parties.

The opportunity for IT companies falls into solving problems such as:
Managing large enterprise systems, establishing protocols and procedures, simplification of process, system integration, securing and authenticating readers of health records, coordinating information sharing laws across states, creating a dictionary of of procedural terminology used by vast health care providers. On the network side, communication and network protocol must be established and agreed upon to exchange data among systems with USA.

I am gearing JBrock Consulting to help implement some of these systems and help reform health care.