"With speeds of 100Mbps (megabits per second) for both download and uploads, those behind the project hope it will also breed some innovative services. "It will allow home working, telemedicine, video calling and net-based services on TV," explained Chris Smedley, chief executive of Geo, the company appointed to build the network. Such services are often touted as great uses for fibre-to-the-home networks but most are at a very embryonic stage. But there are more mundane wins for consumers, thinks Mr Smedley. Because it has super-fast upload speeds, a fibre-to-the-home network will allow users to store data such as pictures and videos remotely. "

"We're talking about 100 megabits, which is a big step forward for this country. It means you can have interactive teaching over the Internet at home; you can have telemedicine; "

"nce a week at a pre-arranged time, Olive sets up the complicated looking equipment her end. She then phones Victor to make sure he is ready to receive her call and that his computer is switched on. She then calls him up, and they have a face-to-face consultation. While Victor sits on his bed in his semi-detached home in Middlesex, Olive can check his breathing, heart rate and temperature and watch out for any early signs that his body is rejecting his double lung transplant. "This allows us to be there for him," Olive said. "

"The doctors studied 100 rheumatology patients and found the teleconference diagnosis was 97% accurate."

"The Millennium Villages use so-called telemedicine technology to improve health care. Health workers in the villages are given mobile phones and sent out to treat patients. After testing patients for various diseases, the workers send the results via text message to remote clinics and are told which treatment to provide. "It is a very wonderful system," Mr Sachs said. "It empowers providers in the community to get very powerful results.""

"For over a decade now, health care experts have been promoting telemedicine, or the use of satellite technology, video conferencing and data transfer through phones and the Internet, to connect doctors to patients in far-flung locales. But are doctors ready for this form of technology?"

Please read this news item and add a thoughtful comment that shows how this article helps you think differently about the Case Study for 2010

Can these cases be relevant to our class case study?

"New studies determine that telemedicine is the key to transforming healthcare by making medical care more accessible and convenient to patients while reducing cost. Solutions are needed in response to the following problems that plague patients and practitioners in today's inefficient U.S. healthcare system: * Doctors are hard to see. As many as one-in-three people have trouble seeing their primary care physician, and nearly one-in-four have problems taking time from work to see a doctor. * Patients have trouble contacting physicians by telephone or e-mail. Very few doctors will consult by telephone and less than one-in-four are set up to communicate with patients electronically. * There are too few doctors in rural areas. Compared to metropolitan areas, there are fewer physicians serving rural patients and patients must travel further for office visits. * Patients overuse emergency rooms. Because their primary care physicians are inaccessible by telephone or after hours, many patients turn to hospital emergency rooms. More than one-half of all ER visits are for non-emergency health problems. * Patients have difficulty getting information during office visits. More than one-third of physicians do not have the time to deliver enough information to their patients during office visits, and 60 percent of patients later say they forgot to ask questions during their visits. * Convenience. Telephone medical consults support healthcare consumerism with a proven solution that is easy to access. "

"When doctors eventually saw him they were at a loss to know how to save him. The bandage had been on for 25 days and his leg was hanging off. Everyone was resigned to him dying. Saved But his life was saved by the dedication of an English peer and his wife, their aid charity, telemedicine and a team of the best surgeons in the world. "

"At his wits' end, the doctor in Baghdad dispatched his plea for help - an email detailing a patient with a particularly difficult case of uterine cancer. More than two thousand miles away, in the study of her Kent home, Pat Swinfen swiftly forwarded the request on to a British specialist. The man who received that email, Dr Philip Savage, replied: "Don't give up on this woman. Her life can be saved." And that, with the help of continued advice from the eminent oncologist from Imperial College, is exactly what the Iraqi doctor did. "

"Swinfen, a retired nurse in her early 70s, sat at her computer and tapped out an e-mail, trying to connect doctors in Basra working on the woman, who had suffered a brain hemorrhage, with a renowned neurologist from Northern Ireland trekking in Nepal. She soon had an e-mail response from the neurologist, who told Swinfen to forward details of the case. "

"The charity facilitates a low cost telemedicine service linking doctors at hospitals in the developing world with leading medical and surgical consultants who generously give free advice. Local doctors can send clinical photos, a patient's history and any other relevant material (such as X-rays) to the Trust. A secure web-based messaging system is used, see below. This allows referring practitioners access to a panel of over 400 specialists in a wide range of disciplines. The median length of time between receipt of original message and first reply by a specialist consultant is currently 1.8 days."

phone apps for tracking health data (cached version of WSJ article)

"In the United States, more states are passing laws that require the recycling of goods, especially electronics. But because the United States places fewer restrictions on trash exports and monitors them far less than Europe, that increasing volume is flowing relatively freely overseas, mostly legally, experts say"

"Textecution, for example, is an app for the Android platform that uses GSP technology to disable a phone's text function when the device is traveling more than 10 miles per hour. Jonathan Young, developer of Textecution, told TechNewsWorld he originally thought up the app when his teenage son was getting ready to get his driver's license. "This is a huge problem, and parents are finally becoming aware of it," he said. "Sure, you can preach to your children, but what they do when they are not around you is another "

"An emerging set of tools is making it easier than ever to track and compile all sorts of "data" and display it in a way that's relatively easy to understand. You can now point your mobile phone at a street and instantly get ratings for restaurants. Or type in your address and find reports of crimes that may have occurred in your neighborhood. It's even possible to track emotions on a national and global scale."

"On Dec. 9, perhaps anticipating DOJ action, Amazon announced that audio menu features would be available on Kindle e-readers by summer 2010. Amazon's press release at the time noted that Kindle "has enabled many vision-impaired readers to enjoy books more easily than before, and has also helped dyslexic readers and those with learning disabilities improve their reading skills. ... To make Kindle more useful for the blind, the Kindle team is currently working on an audible menuing system so blind and vision-impaired readers can easily navigate to books unassisted. ... In addition, a new super size font will be added to Kindle, increasing the number of font sizes from six to seven. This seventh font size will be twice the height and width of the current largest font" "

European data-protection chief Peter Hustinx talks about how far an IP address can stand as an ID Published: 04 Nov 2008 15:24 GMT

"In terms of monitoring its employees, the list of things a corporation can't do is a short one - it's basically confined to eavesdropping on a personal oral conversation, Maltby said. "Anything else is open season." And outside the workplace, personal blogs or social media pages on services like Twitter or Facebook offer no refuge. "

"Mrs. Clinton also identified Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan as countries that constrain Internet freedom or persecute those who use the Web to circulate unpopular ideas. She pointed to an Egyptian blogger, Bassem Samir, who was in the audience at the Newseum in Washington for Mrs. Clinton's speech and had been imprisoned by Egyptian authorities."

How far can a nation go to block information the Internet? What methods are being used? Is it working? What are the consequences?