Today Finland officially becomes first nation to make broadband a legal right

 

By Chad Catacchio Follow Chad Catacchio on twitter on July 1st, 2010

Starting today (July 1), every Finnish citizen now has a guaranteed legal right to a least a 1Mbps broadband connection, putting it on the same footing as other legal rights in the country such as healthcare and education.

As we reported last year, Finland was the first nation in the world to pass this type of legislation, followed by Spain in November.

The Finish government has promised guaranteed speeds of 100Mbps by 2015 for all of its citizens, and currently about 97% of Finns already have access to broadband connections.

As our @Zee mentioned last year: “the fast growth of technology has led the European Commission to bring forward a review of the basic telecoms services Europeans can expect.”

And as this blog points out:

“This is no mean feat in a geographically challenging region, with a quarter of the country lying above the Arctic Circle. The country has followed the Scandinavian trend of fixed-to-mobile migration, with increasing numbers of citizens choosing to bypass the limitations of fixed-line telecoms and Internet for mobile-only connectivity.”

Finland’s communication minister Suvi Linden told the BBC that, “We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life. Internet services are no longer just for entertainment.”

So there you have it, broadband access to the Internet is now officially a legal right in one country at least. Here’s hoping the word spreads.

About the Author

Chad Catacchio

Chad Catacchio is a lead writer at The Next Web. He has held management positions at a number of tech companies in the US, as well as 7 years in China in market research and tech management consulting. Follow him on Twitter @chadcat, or contact through email at chad@thenextweb.com.

Wow this is an interesting move by a government.

Sexy. h/t to Thrillist

SMART

There are two basic signs your e-mail  account has been hacked:

1. You can’t log in, even with a password you know is valid
2. Your account is sending e-mails that you never wrote

Those are obvious, but savvy e-mail hackers don’t often tip their hands with these sorts of  blatant clues anymore. They’d much rather hijack your account and use it without your ever knowing it. Serious hackers rarely change your password, and they don’t often resort to sending e-mail to recipients from your address book (who will quickly notice that you’re sending them Viagra ads or porn site signup links). The new breed of email hackers will simply hang out in your account until you get an online bank statement or similar sensitive message, then use that data to steal actual money from you.

That’s why Gmail adds a third method for sniffing out e-mail hackers: the account activity log.

Located at the bottom of your Gmail inbox, just below the “You’re currently using XXXX MB (XX%) of  your 7XXX MB” listing, is a line displaying your last account activity. This readout displays the last time someone logged into your Gmail account. If the time and date that follow last account activity don’t match up to a time you were actually using Gmail, that should be a red flag.

In any case, it’s a good idea to regularly click the details link that follows the last account activity timestamp. This will prompt a chart of your last dozen or so Gmail logins, organized by the login method (your web browser, your mobile phone, or a POP3/IMAP connection like that used by Outlook or Thunderbird). Each login will also be timestamped and associated with an IP address.

If you don’t ever log into Gmail from a mobile phone but the activity log says your Gmail has a history of mobile access, that’s a warning sign. The same goes for an IMAP or POP3 link if you don’t use a third-party program or service to sync or access Gmail.

Note that your regular Backupify backups will appear in this activity log as authorized logins, as will some other legitimate services you don’t immediately recognize, which is why checking the IP address of each login is a good idea. Simply copy the IP number and paste it into the lookup service at Domain Tools. You’ll instantly learn who owns the IP address that logged into your Gmail account. Your Backupify backups will typically look like IMAP logins from an IP address owned by Amazon.com; that’s our application backing up your data to our Amazon S3 storage account.

If there’s a sketchy looking IP address on the activity list, now would be a good time to change your Gmail password. Gmail does a good job of noting when a known hacker IP address (or even a suspected one) logs into your account and throwing up an alert. Gmail does the same thing when your account is logged into from two IP addresses simultaneously (like when I have my work VPN laptop and my personal PC on Gmail simultaneously). Follow the instructions in these alerts and change your Gmail password whenever your receive one.

If at any point you suspect your Gmail account has been compromised, notify Google here and follow their instructions. They’ll lock down your account from any further unauthorized access and help undo whatever damage was done — if possible. Whatever Google can’t recover, Backupify is here to replace.

Stay alert, don’t panic and — as always — have a good backup plan.

Some good tips here on keeping your Gmail safe.

By: Mike Colias July 12, 2010

Advocate Health Care is learning just how bumpy the road to health care reform will be.

The state’s largest health system is dutifully carrying out the sort of cost-saving steps that would please President Barack Obama’s health-reform team. It’s curbing expensive CT and MRI scans. It’s urging physicians to nix excessive lab tests. It’s trying to keep chronically sick patients from returning to the hospital again and again.

Advocate’s reward: a hit of more than $35 million, or 1%, to its 2009 revenue. That’s because it’s eliminating services that, under today’s fee-based system, generate a separate payment for every test, procedure and doctor visit.

“You’re shooting yourself in the foot by making these changes now, even though they will pay off down the road,” Advocate Chief Operating Officer William Santulli says.

Local hospitals are just starting to grapple with national health reforms that will fundamentally change how they treat patients — and how they’re paid. The federal Medicare program is moving toward a model that will pay hospitals and doctors a lump sum for an entire “episode of care,” from the initial heart scan to the rehab after surgery, for example. Poor quality and high costs will be punished.

BIG CHANGES

Chicago-area hospitals are in for a more jarring change than most. They are prolific users of resources, spending 25% more on medical care per Medicare patient than the national average in 2006, according to research from Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire (Crain’s, Sept. 28). And they are among the nation’s worst at keeping chronically ill patients from returning to the hospital soon after they are discharged.

Dr. Dave Farnsworth examines Keyshawn Brown, 11, at Advocate Health Center on Chicago’s South Side. With them, from left, are mother Carmella Harris Brown, Kirsten Brown, 3, and Kaleb Brown, 4. Photo: Stephen J. Serio

Experts say Chicago lags in part because of its splintered delivery system. Most physicians are in private practice and don’t work directly for hospitals, making it tougher to track patients. A lab test done in a doctor’s office is often needlessly repeated at the hospital a few months later because the two don’t communicate.

The winners will be the hospitals that align with doctors, nursing homes, rehab facilities and other medical providers to manage patients throughout their care, experts say. That requires closer collaboration and costly electronic patient records.

“It’s not about building new facilities or mergers and acquisitions,” says Michael Nugent, director of the managed-care pricing team at Chicago-based Navigant Consulting Inc. “The hospitals that will fare best are the ones that are dealing most seriously with getting ready for these reimbursement changes and partnering with the right doctors.”

The federal Medicare program will test lump-sum payments, known as “bundled payments,” in certain markets, and probably wouldn’t adopt them more broadly for years. But Chicago hospitals need to hurry: Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois aims to roll out bundled payments in contracts with some hospital systems and physician groups starting next year.

The city’s dominant insurance carrier expects that by the end of 2011, 10% of its membership will be covered by contracts that pay providers on an episode-of-care basis, says Steve Hamman, the insurer’s vice-president of network management. UnitedHealth Group Inc., the No. 2 insurer in Chicago, also plans to test bundled-payment here and elsewhere, Chief Medical Officer Sam Ho says.

Blue Cross already uses a similar payment structure in its HMO networks, which cover 123,000 of Blue Cross’ 6.8 million Illinois members. Medical costs for those plans are nearly 30% lower than in Blue Cross’ more-expensive PPO plans.

COST CONTROL

Bundled payments put the onus on providers to control costs, rewarding quality and efficiency over volumes, says Scott Sarran, Blue Cross’ chief medical officer.

“I do think there will be winners and losers” under the bundled-payment plans, Mr. Sarran says. “Some (hospitals) have such high cost structures that, if they can’t get those under control, those folks may have real problems.”

Some larger health systems say they are ready. At University of Chicago Medical Center, physicians are on salary, which experts say takes financial considerations out of the decision-making process. U of C is one of the most careful users of medical resources among Chicago hospitals, Dartmouth data show.

“In essence, we have to pay for everything out of the same big pot of money already,” says Rick Bacon, U of C’s director of financial planning and strategy.

Provena Health, whose six hospitals include facilities in Aurora and Elgin, could thrive under bundled payments because it owns nursing homes and home-health facilities, key tools for tracking patient care outside the hospital, Provena Chief Medical Officer Robert Permut says. For example, prompt home visits to recently discharged heart-failure patients cut one Provena hospital’s readmission rate in half.

Taking those steps today usually requires giving up revenue, says Erik Johnson, a senior vice-president at Washington, D.C.-based consultancy Avalere Health LLC.

“I’d hate to be a hospital executive right now,” he says.

©2010 by Crain Communications Inc.

Maybe because my grandmother, girlfriend and half her family are nurses, but I’m increasingly intrigued by healthcare, especially the seemingly backwards way of doing business. I don’t know of the laws and regulations but healthcare providers need to figure a way to integrate better with each other. It would be a huge security issue, but imagine being able to tap into each other’s patient database via API’s and such…

Perspective.