My fortnightly column, A Dose of It that discusses Disruptive Healthcare Business Models and UID and Aadhar Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
Apple in
talks on
fee-based
music
service. Technomics
Microsoft
licenses
some Palm
smartphone
patents.
Adobe’s stock
drops as
Microsoft deal
speculation
ebbs.
DDCC14 Bengaluru ●● Monday ●● 11 October 2010
What are you driving? Ford wants
you to think it is a mobile phone
What did Steve Jobs learn in the wilderness?
RANDALL STROSS
NEW YORK
Oct. 10: The saga of Steven
P. Jobs is so well known that
it has entered the nation’s
mythology: he’s the prodi-
gal who returned to Apple in
1997, righted a listing ship
and built it into one of the
most valuable companies in
the world.
But the Jobs of the mid-
1980s probably never could
have made Apple what it is
today if he hadn’t embarked
on a torment-filled business
odyssey.
Lawrence J. Ellison, the
chief executive of Oracle,
overlooks this. In August,
after the ouster of Mark V.
Hurd as the chief executive
of Hewlett-Packard, Mr.
Ellison said in an e-mail to
The New York Times that
the H.P. board had made
“the worst personnel deci-
sion since the idiots on the
Apple board fired Steve
Jobs many years ago.”
Actually, the Apple co-
founder wasn’t fired. Mr.
Jobs was relieved of operat-
ing responsibilities in a
company reorganization in
May 1985. But he was still
the company’s chairman.
Apple was ailing: sales of
the Macintosh, introduced
the previous year, were
falling well below expecta-
tions; inventory was piling
up; and the company
seemed headed for its first-
ever loss. In September
1985, Mr. Jobs resigned
from Apple to start a new
computer company he
called Next.
Suppose Mr. Jobs had not
left in 1985. Suppose he had
convinced the Apple board
to oust his nemesis, John
Sculley, then chief executive
and president. Under Mr.
Jobs’s uninterrupted direc-
tion, would Apple have
arrived at the pinnacle it has
reached today, but 12 years
earlier?
It’s hard to see how any-
thing like that would have
transpired. The Steve Jobs
who returned to Apple was a
much more capable leader
— precisely because he had
been badly banged up. He
had spent 12 tumultuous,
painful years failing to find
a way to make the new com-
pany profitable.
“I am convinced that he
would not have been as suc-
cessful after his return at
Apple if he hadn’t gone
through his wilderness
experience at Next,” said
Tim Bajarin, president of
Creative Strategies, a tech-
nology consulting company.
Mr. Jobs began Next —
which the company itself
spelled as NeXT — with the
intention of building a high-
powered computer express-
ly for customers in higher
education, giving students
and scholars what he called
“a personal mainframe.”
Advisers from universities
told him that he should keep
the price under $2,000. (The
Mac was selling to colleges
at a discounted price of only
$1,000.) But the price of the
Next machine when finally
unveiled in 1988 was
$6,500. On top of that, it
was underpowered and the
accompanying printer was
an additional $2,000. When
colleges and universities,
not surprisingly, demurred,
Mr. Jobs tried to sell to cor-
porate customers by enlist-
ing Businessland, then a big
computer retailer, but the
new price of $9,995 fared no
better in that market.
Mr. Jobs’s lieutenants tried
to warn him away from cer-
tain disaster, but he was not
receptive. In 1992-93, seven
of nine Next vice presidents
were shown the door or left
on their own.
In this period, Mr. Jobs did
not do much delegating.
Almost every aspect of the
machine — including the
finish on interior screws —
was his domain. The interior
furnishings of Next’s
offices, a stunning design
showplace, were Mr. Jobs’s
concern, too. While the
company’s strategy begged
to be re-examined, Mr. Jobs
attended to other matters.
After selling only 50,000
computers in seven years, he
finally pulled the plug on
manufacturing hardware,
laid off more than half his
500 employees, and tried to
make a go of selling Next’s
software. His company
would end up serving as
Apple’s R&D laboratory.
Apple acquired the compa-
ny in 1997 and used Next’s
software as the basis for the
new operating system, Mac
OS X.
Mr. Jobs had to get out of
his system the idea that
computing in the future
would resemble computing
in the past. In recent years,
with the iPod, the iPhone
and the iPad, he has worked
on computing that does not
take place in conventionally
shaped computer boxes. He
didn’t invent the media play-
er, the smartphone or the
tablet, but he understood
that no one else had yet
come up with the equivalent
of a Mac. So these offered
ripe opportunities for him to
bring his design talents to
bear. Kevin Compton, who
was a senior executive at
Businessland during the
Next years, described Mr.
Jobs after returning to
Apple: “He’s the same Steve
in his passion for excel-
lence, but a new Steve in his
understanding of how to
empower a large company
to realize his vision.” Mr.
Jobs had learned from Next
not to try to do everything
himself, Mr. Compton said.
It took 12 dispiriting years,
much bruising, and perspec-
tive gained from exile. If he
had instead stayed at Apple,
the transformation of Apple
Computer into today’s far
larger Apple Inc. might
never have happened.
— NYT
SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA
DC | BENGALURU
Oct. 10: Bengaluru-based
Scalene Energy Research
Institute (SERI), the
research wing of Scalene
Cybernetics Ltd, claims to
have developed a highly
controlled biological reac-
tion process which helps to
convert everyday waste into
high purity combustible gas
– SERIGAS. The gas which
can be used for cooking,
power generation, to run
vehicles and industrial
plants is not only carbon
neutral, but also carbon neg-
ative. More important, the
solid and liquid byproducts
of Serigas can be used to
make bio-fertilizers and bio-
pesticides, that will enhance
organic food production.
Carbon di oxide, another by
product, can be bottled for
industrial use.
“We have built the world’s
first power plant that uses a
specifically designed
Microbe Incubated Bio-
Reactor and a natural gas
refinery to produce pipeline
grade natural gas, in our
campus. SERIGAS is fur-
ther enriched using a propri-
etary technology that we
have developed called Spiral
Protium Accelerated Reac-
tor Super Enrichment
(SPARSE), before using it
as a fuel in an engine
designed for SPARSE tech-
nology. The power plant has
been running since March
2010 and produces 200 kgs
of organic natural gas every-
day, which is more than suf-
ficient to cater to the energy
needs of our campus. The
organic feed that we use to
generate Serigas. Seri-
gaslable weeds such as
water hyacinth that choke
water bodies and partheni-
um grass which cause respi-
ratory allergies” said Dr
Rajah Vijay Kumar, Group
Chairman, Organization de
Scalene. The powerplant is
the result of 20 man years of
research developed over 8
years.
The power plant was inau-
gurated in the company’s
campus in Bengaluru on Fri-
day by Dr Madhavan Nair,
Former Chairman, ISRO
and Dr A R Shukla, Advisor,
Ministry of new and renew-
able energy, Govt of India.
“This Scalene technology is
just half the cost of what
developed nations are sell-
ing to us today and is much
more cost effective than the
biogas generated from cow-
dung. Western technologies
cannot process newspaper
waste, whereas Scalene
technology can use newspa-
pers, agricultural/kitchen
waste, sewage, municipal
solid waste, weeds, oil
effluents, human and animal
excreta, parts of animals,
fish and poultry that is not
eaten, wasted food, etc to
generate energy” said Dr
Shukla.
We have urged Scalene to
design a biogas plant which
looks very much like a mod-
ern, stylish refrigerator or
washing machine that can
be placed in our living
rooms and be used to gener-
ate energy for daily cooking
with household waste,
added Dr Shukla. Many for-
eign countries have shown
great interest in this technol-
ogy – Maldives, Malaysia,
Nigeria and Jordan and are
seeking technology know-
how to set up their own
power plants. Closer home,
the UB Group and
Malankara Plantations have
signed agreements with Sca-
lene to have such power
plants set up in Nelaman-
gala, Bangalore and
Kotayam. Other organiza-
tions who are setting up the
plant include Prabha power
corporation, Hyderabad,
House of Khoday’s Banga-
lore, Global Green Energy
Parks, Bangalore, Krish
Power & Gas Pvt Ltd,
Ghaziabad and many more.
The powerplant technolo-
gy will be showcased by
Scalene in the upcoming
annual Trade Fair held at
Pragati Maidan on 14
November 2010.
bITs
Parents, teens
want more
privacy online
A
large percentage of
US parents would
support a law
requiring companies to be
barred from collecting
information about Internet
users unless they explicitly
agree, according to a new
poll out on Friday.
Concern over privacy,
which 85 percent of parents
said they were more con-
cerned about now than five
years ago, has pushed law-
makers and federal agen-
cies to advocate tighter
rules.
A poll commissioned by
Common Sense Media and
done by Zogby Internation-
al found support for gov-
ernment action.
The poll found that 92
percent of parents were
concerned that teenagers
and children were too open
about personal matters
online and that 75 percent
believed that social net-
working sites failed to pro-
tect children's privacy.
Eighty-eight percent of
parents and 85 percent of
teenagers wanted online
companies to ask their per-
mission before sharing
information with advertis-
ers, and 88 percent of par-
ents would support a law
making “opt in” a legal
requirement, according to
the poll.
Since much of the infor-
mation on the Web is free
because it is a vehicle for
advertising, companies
have worried that “do not
track” lists could shake the
Web's financial founda-
tions. But the chairman of
the Federal Communica-
tions Commission, which is
pushing a plan to extend
broadband, argued that pri-
vacy concerns could hurt
Internet commerce. “This
distrust has implications
for industry,” FCC chair-
man Julius Genachowski
said. Federal Trade Com-
mission Chairman Jon Lei-
bowitz has urged the indus-
try to do a better job of self-
regulation or face tougher
federal oversight."If there
were a 'do not track' adopt-
ed, I'm not sure that the rate
of people who would not
want to be tracked would
be terribly high," he said.
Edward J. Markey, a
Massachusetts Democrat,
and Joe Barton, a Texas
Republican, criticized
online marketers. on
Friday.
— Reuters
Software taps
on slim actors
on-screen
G
oodbye, Hollywood
fat suits! Scientists
in Germany have
created software that
enables actors to appear
thinner or heavier on-
screen.
The program also alters
muscle tone and body
shape, according to The
New Scientist (via Valley
Wag). The developers say
their software will save
money because advertisers
won't have to shoot differ-
ent actors to account for
“standards of beauty ...
across cultures.”
They also say it can help
stars stay healthier, point-
ing to Robert De Niro, who
famously gained 60 pounds
for his role in “Raging
Bull.”
"The actor wouldn't need
to go to all that trouble," a
scientist is quoted as say-
ing.
— Reuters
PHIL PATTON
NEW YORK
Oct. 10: Look inside the
2011 Ford Fiesta and you
will see dashboard controls
that have been modeled after
the keypad of a cellphone.
In some ways, that makes
perfect sense: Ford’s market
research suggested that
young buyers were more
attached to their mobile
phones than to their means
of mobility.
But by the time the new
Fiesta arrived in American
showrooms this summer, the
phone that Ford had chosen
as its model looked old-
fashioned alongside the lat-
est Apple iPhones and
Motorola Droids — and so
did the dashboard controls.
Those outdated buttons are
a glaring reminder that
mobile electronics evolve
much faster than automo-
biles. In fact, Ford had
already recognized the chal-
lenge of keeping its vehi-
cles’ controls and instru-
ments up to date and in 2006
began to address the situa-
tion.
Ford’s goal in establishing
a set of design principles for
automotive interfaces that
would be consistently
applied to all models was to
improve what it called the
cabin experience. The pro-
gram was given the internal
code name HAL.
The company sought
advice from Ideo, the design
consultancy known for
developing the original
Apple computer mouse and
shaping interfaces for Palm
and other high-tech compa-
nies. Ideo’s co-founder, Bill
Moggridge, now the director
of the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum in
New York City, was one of
the early prophets of what
he called interaction design.
The guidelines that result-
ed from the program, a sort
of universal logic for all the
cars’ switches and systems,
helped shape the dashboard
controls in the redesigned
Ford Edge and Explorer.
The standards will apply to
future Ford models around
the world.
“We wanted to get outside
the bubble,” said Jennifer
Brace, a user interface
design engineer at Ford.
“We wanted an instruction-
by-instruction DNA for
vehicle interiors.”
Ideo said that its methods
were built on research and
making prototypes for fast
feedback. Its work began
with interviews of a broad
cross section of people —
not just seasoned drivers,
but also airplane pilots and
ATM users. This is called
ethnographic research; simi-
lar work from Ideo helped in
the development of the
SmartGauge in the Ford
Fusion Hybrid, a display of
green leaves that coaches
drivers to drive more effi-
ciently. “We found we
learned the most not from
the average driver, but from
the extreme cases,” said Iain
Roberts, head of the inter-
face group in Ideo’s Chica-
go office, who led the team
working with Ford. “We
want to get to the ends of the
bell curve.”
Stepping beyond the focus
groups and drivers that Ford
had traditionally used for
research, Ideo went to raw
novices. Some teenagers,
Ms. Brace said, had no idea
what the tachometer was or
why it was there. Getting rid
of the tachometer had not
been seriously considered
by Ford. Ideo also went to
extreme experts, Mr.
Roberts said. One was a
member of an Internet
forum of audio tinkerers
pioneering the use of the
MP3 format music in cars.
These users had addressed
many of the interface issues
that concerned Ford, devel-
oping their own ways to
combine audio, video and
other entertainment streams.
“About six users represent-
ed 80 percent of the prob-
lems,” Mr. Roberts said.
“They were early adopters
of technology who put 15-
inch screens on the console
and huge disk drives in the
trunk.”
New ideas were tested on
drivers. Ideo teams quickly
mocked up ideas, often
using little more than sticky
notes, cardboard and model-
ing clay.
For this project, a PlaySta-
tion 2 game console and a
dashboard from an older
Ford Edge were pressed into
service, Ms. Brace said. For
a driving simulator, the
group used a projector
showing the video game
Gran Turismo 3. The con-
trols — pedals and steering
wheel — were worked up
from controllers intended
for racing video games.
The rules for design drawn
from the research were so
fundamental as to border on
cliché: Be attentive. Be
approachable. Be clear. Be
connected.
But from these arose use-
ful specifics: Just because
you can doesn’t mean you
should. “When you have an
eight-inch touch screen, you
think of all the things you
can do,” Mr. Roberts said.
“But then you remember
that people have to drive
while doing it.”
— NYT
Clean tech converts daily waste to power
After testing prototype controls, Ford’s design team proposed layouts. The changes
were eventually made in the 2011 Ford Edge.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs
“We have built the world’s first
powerplant that uses a specifically
designed Microbe Incubated Bio-
Reactor and a natural gas refinery to
produce pipeline grade natural gas, in
our campus. SERIGAS is further
enriched using a technology that we
have developed called SPARSE.”
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
K
arnataka Chief
Minister finally
has a Unique ID
(UID) as part of the
Aadhaar roll out in the
country! Bengaluru’s
aam admi will have to
wait till 2012 to possess
their UID number. The
issue is not time that the
UIDAI will take for
issuing the UID for the
1.2 billion population of
India, but a turning point
for India's automation
and egovernance efforts.
While a lot has been
written and spoken in
public on the health
informatics that Aadhaar
should and will enable,
there is still no concrete
direction for linking the
UID to a national repos-
itory of unique life-span
(from birth till death)
health records in terms
of: who — identification
of the person creating,
changing or viewing the
life-span data; what —
details of life-span data
entry or what was
viewed; when — date
and time of life-span
data entry or viewing;
where — the location
where life-span data
entry or viewing
occurred; how — com-
mitment from different
stakeholders in ensuring
the stickiness of the life-
span health record and
creation of killer appli-
cations; and how much -
money required to cre-
ate and sustain the oper-
ations at decentralized
level for the country.
Let us understand that
India is different from
other countries that have
already embarked on
similar national health
informatics program.
Hence it may not be pru-
dent to replicate ideas
from other national
health informatics sys-
tems that are prevailing
elsewhere. Over 75 per-
cent of healthcare
spending in India occurs
outside the government-
controlled healthcare
delivery system. Here is
the billion dollar oppor-
tunity for the health
informatics to create
disruptive healthcare
delivery business mod-
els in India. Inspite of
the networking effect
that will be taking place
when the UID systems
are fully integrated as
part of the overall e-gov-
ernance roll out, private
sector healthcare service
providers will still build
'Chinese-walls’ around
their Indian patients’
health data to maintain
their deemed competi-
tive advantage in private
sector Indian healthcare.
Hence before any third
party agency can take
the national health infor-
matics initiative for-
ward, there would need
to be a clear law enacted
that states that the
patient or Indian con-
sumer is the owner of
the information and not
the private healthcare
service provider who he
has provided access and
authority to act as his or
her agent. Once this is
clear, we will see some
major disruptive busi-
ness models emerging.
The emerging e-
healthcare business
models that would be
disruptive would be
divided into four or five
key categories.
First set of firms will
build on the UID to cre-
ate and maintain life-
span health records.
The second set of firms
will utilise the informa-
tion to provide diet,
wellness and disease
management services.
Thirdly, with deep
healthcare information
analytics, online health
content firms like
WebMD will emerge in
the space of patient and
consumer health educa-
tion and counselling.
Fourthly, with the
health informatics
available online, online
doctor-patient consulta-
tion and e-clinics will
emerge as disruptive
business models to
delivering acute and
chronic illness consulta-
tions virtually. Players
Healthcare Magic,
Pinkwhale. Healthcare
will see more loyalty
with their customers and
their profile, completely
transforming older
Indians.
Kapil Khandelwal is a leading healthcare,
ICT expert and director, EquNev Capital.
He can be reached at
Kapil@KapilKhandelwal.com
Med records:
UID is useful
‘Aaadhaar’ can
help disruptive
healthcare
business models.
A dose
of IT
A dose
of IT