Rhythmia Medical Maps A Better 3-D Picture Of A Beating Heart--From The Inside

Boston Scientific's new heart mapping and navigation tool is the first sign of its larger interest in electrical mapping systems for the human body.

Heart conditions show up as irregularities in the organ's electrical routine. Heart surgeons and physicians sometimes check in on that routine by using catheters with electrodes at their tips. They winds up a vein or artery in patients legs or arms and into their heart chambers where they record electrical signals thundering through the muscle.

But as insightful as the procedure can be, it results in a picture that's flat--a sketch of what's going on at best. Now a company called Rhythmia Medical is developing a system for translating mere pings into pixels to give doctors a clearer picture of the heart's architecture and electrical activity--in 3-D--as it pumps. Rhythmia’s researchers have been able to cut the time taken to map the heart's electrical activity by at least half in preclinical and clinical tests, Peter Sommerness, general manager of Boston Scientific's electrophysiology division, tells Fast Company.

The first part of Rhythmia's new two-part system involves a new kind of catheter with 64 electrodes. It’s designed to track electrical signals coursing through the heart as it beats, as well as sketch its geometry and internal shape. Part two involves making sense of all the data that the souped-up catheter is collecting. The company has designed software that translates the electrical signals into 3-D visualizations.

For patients with irregular heartbeats, or arrhythmias, the sensors and the mapping software are designed to give physicians an unprecedented view of a patient’s heart chambers, helping them not only identify that there's a problem but spot which sections of muscle could be the source of irregular beats.

Electrophysiology and 3-D visualization is an area Boston Scientific is getting serious about, and Rhythmia is part of a larger plan. “We want to increase the size of this venture and this partnership. And that means growing our footprint in the Boston area with these critical skill sets,” Sommerness says. Though non-cardiac applications for Rhythmia’s tech have yet to be developed, it’s entirely possible that it could be adapted for use outside the heart.

“Electrophysiology is a $2.5 million space, and it’s growing rapidly. This tool is an essential strategic piece,” he explains, adding that Rhythmia's high-data density electrodes and visualization tech, presented as a complete package, was what was appealing to the higher ups at Boston Scientific.

Rhythmia, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, was founded in 2004 by two business school graduates, Leon Amariglio and Doron Harlev. They were looking to start a successful business, but “one that had a greater good other than the commercial one,” Harlev tells Fast Company. They were sure of one other thing: The way to go was to build something new. “We felt that innovating our own technology was something that would bring value,” Harlev explains.

With experience in finance behind them, Amariglio and Harlev were in the unique position of starting a high tech venture without any personal experience in the medical device space.

So they spent the first year together researching and brainstorming, sitting in at labs and hospitals in the Boston area. They developed a handful of ideas in that time, many of which needed to be abandoned sometimes after months of effort. Until Rhythmia finally stuck. “No one makes perfect decisions and neither did we, but that was the process,” Amariglio tells Fast Company.

Where building a business is concerned, Amariglio says that entrepreneurship is less about taking risk and more about managing risk. For the two partners, their plans seem to have paid off.

Rhythmia was scooped up by Boston Scientific earlier this month. Boston Scientific bought the company for $90 million and intends to pay another $175 million over the next five years if the company meets certain targets. It comes at a crucial time for Rhythmia, which is looking to get its diagnostics checked out and greenlit for use by the FDA. Clearance permitting, Boston Scientific expects to begin limited market launches of the system in 2013.

Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and health. Follow on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Mozilla Firefox Aurora Marketplace Opens For Android Users, Time to Get Testing

As apps become a commonplace with both an increased interest in web apps and smartphone usage, there are more and more options for where users can get them. Mozilla Firefox has joined other companies, like Google, and developed its own web and mobile app marketplace.

Mozilla Lab’s Engineer Manager, Bill Walker, made the announcement in a blog post yesterday. In his statement, Walker said that this pre-beta version of Mozilla's Aurora Marketplace was released as a way for the company to get proper feedback from users before releasing the beta and full versions.

Our goal is to collect as much real-life feedback as possible about the Marketplace’s design, usability, performance, reliability, and content,” he says. “Feedback from early adopters helps us enhance the quality of the Marketplace before it is released to larger audiences.”

With their marketplace, Mozilla aims to bring together not only those who use apps for business and recreational purposes, but aims to give users the opportunity to be a bigger part of the Marketplace and Mozilla community. In his post, Walker mentions that Mozilla is always looking for ways to engage with their users, as they can both browse current apps and submit and develop their own ideas for apps.

Firefox Marketplace also offers APIs for app submission, payments, and app discovery,” he says. “Like everything Mozilla does, this ecosystem is always open — users have choices and developers have control over their content, functionality and distribution.

The site also offers potential developers tutorials, FAQ’s and other material to help with the creation and development processes

What’s Available?

As the marketplace is in development, there are a limited amount of apps available. Even though the choice is limited, all of the apps on the site are available for free. Users can either search an app, or browse categories that range from Games and Lifestyle to Education and Business and News. Some of the current Apps include, The Boston Globe, Twitter, MixCloud and WordWars.

Where to Get it

If this marketplace venture proves to be successful, once it’s finishing beta testing it will become part of the Firefox OS that Mozilla has set up for mobile users.

Mozilla Firefox Aurora is available for download through Mozilla’s website to mobile users who have Android phones (version 2.2 and higher). Users can also choose to scan the QR code on the download page instead of downloading the program. In order to use the apps, users must configure their mobile device to accept non-market apps.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Silicon Valley Companies Adjust To A New Norm In Washington

Techies may be heroes in Silicon Valley. But in D.C., they’re just another special interest--and they’re finally coming to accept that.

Illustration by Bigshop Toyworks

When companies set up a lobbying presence in Washington, they tend to stay under the radar. There's much to learn there. But when Google arrived four years ago, it threw itself a debutante's ball at its hip D.C. digs--serving "YouTubes" (vodka cranberry shooters) to Washington's power set. The company was signaling that it planned to handle Washington on its own terms, something then-CEO Eric Schmidt reinforced on the interview circuit. His team would win on the strength of ideas, he said, and not the Rolodexes of Washington lobbyists.

But in a few years' time, Google fell in the sights of a congressional antitrust probe. Soon it was hiring a dozen lobbying firms, running inside-the-Beltway advertising, targeting key lawmakers in their home states, and hiring a former Republican congresswoman to head its lobbying shop--all moves ripped straight from the D.C. playbook. Google had gone native.

This is becoming a common story. Many tech companies were slow to the D.C. market. Partly, that was on purpose. For years, Valley players saw Washington as anathema to innovation, a place they were dragged unwillingly. (See United States v. Microsoft.) But eventually the garage startups that once worried about survival grew into multinational corporations concerned with regulation and taxes. And they grudgingly began making their way east.

Some arrived on the USS Know-It-All and proceeded to hand out their wisdom to the doddering old Luddites on Capitol Hill. The sooner they could explain this crazy Internet thing to the senior citizens who run the government, the sooner they could get back to improving the world with whiz-bang innovation. Or at least, that was the perception among some Washington veterans--on the Hill and K Street alike--who would privately grumble about the new kids' arrogance. To be fair, on tech issues many lawmakers ran closer to dial-up than broadband speed. Still, they had the power to essentially regulate the tech wunderkinds out of existence, and that reality seemed to be lost on many of the Valley kids.

The year 2012 may have begun differently--with a show of force among tech companies that effectively killed the online privacy legislation known as PIPA and SOPA--but the quieter months that followed are what truly define this new relationship. For as much of a watershed as the victory was, it belies an industry still struggling to find its footing in Washington. Companies are learning, as Google did, that everyone plays by Washington's rules, not the other way around. It's a particularly difficult, and frustrating, lesson for innovators accustomed to transforming industries. But now they've accepted the rules of the game. In September, Google, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook officially launched The Internet Association, a trade group aimed at becoming the "voice of the Internet" in Washington. Other companies are mulling over whether to merge their Washington trade associations so they might speak with a stronger, more unified voice. Honing that voice isn't easy: These are companies with disparate and competing interests. And even those tech outfits joining together are seeking lobbyists to represent their corporate interests.

Now policy makers are delving into issues, such as wireless spectrum and privacy, that will profoundly shape the industry's future--and the once-irritating D.C. noobs are getting real. That's why Facebook, for example, recently increased its Washington wattage, hiring former Clinton, Bush, and Obama White House aides and a former spokesman from Senator John McCain's presidential campaign. Earlier this year, Facebook and Google dumped record amounts of cash on their Washington lobbying operations. Between April and June, Facebook spent almost $1 million. And Google bested its second-quarter record by spending $3.9 million--a sum that catapulted it to the top ranks of influence.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

HP Secures Big Data, Cloud, Mobile Content With Major Security Release

While there has been an understandable interest in HP and how it is going to integrate Autonomy into its business, HP, under its still-new CEO Meg Whitman carries on as usual. Today, it announced new additions to its security portfolio that build on the strategy it outlined last year.

HP's Identifies Security Threats

Nine different upgrades, or releases, were announced today. Combined, their focus is on securing Big Data, mobile content and devices, and providing security for widespread and complex IT environments, including cloud environments.

We saw in the early days of cloud computing that the lack of proven security for these environments had a considerable impact on whether enterprises deployed cloud environments or not.

In survey after survey of enterprises and SMB’s we noted that adoption rates were low. That is, of course, until vendors were able to convince IT buyers that the cloud was safe. Even now, though, cloud security is still holding back cloud adoption.

Big Data and mobility are also perceived as very useful tools, but still insecure. Citing research it carried out last July for its HP Research: Security and Risk Management report, HP says cloud, big data, along with mobile data loss and theft are major concerns for enterprises.

In fact, two thirds of those surveyed said they had security concerns around these technologies, while half cited mobile security as their major concern. It also showed that most spent more money cleaning up the mess after a security breach, than actually preventing a breach in the first place.

And this is where HP is coming from with these releases:

Cybersecurity threats are growing exponentially, and without a proactive information risk management strategy, enterprise growth, innovation and efficiencies are hindered,” said George Kadifa, executive vice president, HP Software.

There are three main groups of offerings:

Intelligent Security for the Public Sector

The first set of upgrades offers intelligent security for the public sector. This is a particularly problematic area of IT security as tighter regulations combined with tighter budgets are making even the smallest incident into something major. In this space, HP has released:

• Assured Identity: New enhancements to HP’s identity management solution provide simplified identity, credential and access management. It also enables tighter controls against insider threats, as well as easier and tighter security around information sharing and collaboration.
• Comprehensive Applications Threat Analysis (CATA): O-demand services will considerably reduce the cost of application security by addressing security at all stages of the development cycle.
• HP Security Operations Center (SOC): These are a set of  consulting services for clients outside of the US that enable users to establish an on-site intelligent cybersecurity center. This is one of the new products that is leading the HP charge and is complementary to HP’s U.S. Public Sector security consulting and security operations center service.

Risk Management Management

The second set of releases aim to provide enterprises with better client transparency and control across the entire enterprise, including those that are geographically dispersed. They include:

• Data Center Protection Services: Offers recommendations to enterprises on their existing security practices and program management around data centers after evaluating their security set-up.
• HP ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager 6.0c: A scalable security monitoring solution that detects and manages security threats fast than before across entire infrastructure and prioritizes critical issues to reduce potential damage.
• HP TippingPoint NX platform: This aims to provide protection across network devices, virtual machines and operating systems, using a modular architecture adapts automatically to threats as they are discovered.

It also announced a new and free mobile application that monitors current and trending cyberthreats. It’s currently available for web browser platforms as well as WebOS, iOS, and Android and web browser platforms.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Google Invests In Electronic Signature Vendor DocuSign

If electronic signature has never been one of the sexier components of cloud computing and not attracted much media coverage, we’ve watched interest in it grow steadily over the past three years. The announcement by Google that it is investing in DocuSign suggests that e-signatures are about to become a lot more interesting.

Google, DocuSign

To be more precise, Google Venture, Google's investment arm,  is investing in DocuSign, which has launched a Series D funding round to continue its ongoing expansion.

DocuSign, if you're not familiar with it, is a San Francisco-based e-signature company that has been developing and marketing its products since 2003, and which now has offices in Seattle and London.

Clearly Google can sense a change in the air for electronic signing. It joins Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures and SAP Ventures in the funding round which has been led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. DocuSign says it has raised US$ 55.7 million so far, although it hasn't specified how much Google invested.

But let’s get back to electronic signatures and the cloud. While cloud development has attracted a great deal of attention in the past couple of years, so too have the concerns many companies have around cloud security.

Sometimes the fears were justified and sometimes they were built on a lack of understanding of how the cloud works and what the potential risks actually are.

The result is that many companies were reluctant to send sensitive documents into the cloud or complete business transactions there.

Cloud-based E-Signature

However, there is evidence that suggests this is changing. Companies are now happy to go the cloud route, even if it’s only because of the perceived lower costs of cloud-based software as opposed to on-premises software.

This is where electronic signature vendors are finding their niche: companies that want to go whole hog and do business in the cloud need legally verifiable signatures that can be sent through the cloud.

DocuSign has been building that business from the start and as cloud and social business become increasingly popular, so too will electronic signatures and the companies that provide that capability.

For DocuSign this has translated into considerable growth.

According to its own figures, 60,000 new users are joining the DocuSign Global Network every day, and 20 million users have DocuSigned more than 150 million documents in 188 countries.

DocuSign says it will use the cash to grow its SaaS platform, to accelerate international expansion and invest in more research.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com