Managing medical data has proven to be a challenge in any place, but in China, mastering the system is a step more challenging given the current state of its data management in hospitals. In some of the hospitals in the country, patient records are still handled in paper, making it easy to create redundancies. It also makes it difficult to track patient history and discern whether Western or Chinese medicines work best.

At a group of hospitals in China’s southern Guangdong province, IBM has deployed technology to standardize patient records and use it to create statistical analyses of traditional Chinese medicine treatments. Through the technology, the company aims to provide a solution for doctors to identify treatment using both Western and Chinese medicine. This treatment would be drawn from the standardized patient records. The team behind this system, the IBM Healthcare Solutions Lab, is a finalist for the Wall Street Journal’s Asian Innovation Awards.

Using this innovative technology, IBM aims to provide evidence for the effectiveness of non-Western remedies. If the developed technology proves successful, it could be replicated in other parts of the world that still hold fast to their own form of medical treatment, such as in India.

According to Janet Chiew, an analyst for the research firm IDC, China’s healthcare IT market will see remarkable growth in five years, triggered in part by the three year healthcare reform program.

As a brand new market, the healthcare infrastructure of China poses as an area ripe for new things in the data storage and solutions industry. I believe this is a good opportunity for businesses there. Creating a system that can handle the large mass of patients daily while working with a unique set of treatment that covers both Western and traditional methods opens up a chance for innovation that can benefit healthcare infrastructures all over the world.

During the International Tiger Summit Partners Dialogue and Meeting recently held in Bali, Indonesia, it was announced that the Sumatran tiger population is slowly increasing. According to Bengkulu Natural Resources Conservation Board (BKSDA) Chief Andi Basrul, numbers are expected to increase by 20% by 2014.

Constant promotion of environmental conservation as well as local and international efforts to save the Sumatran tiger are starting to pay off. Stricter enforcement of laws against illegal poaching has also kept the endangered species protected from deliberate harm or malice.

The Sumatran Tiger is not the only species with a hope to make it onto future centuries. All tiger populations in the wild are steadily increasing. During the summit, 13 countries that serve as natural habitats for various tiger species vowed to take more aggressive action toward the conservation of the remaining big cat population. These countries are China, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Russia and of course, Indonesia.

Chief Basrul claims that hunting remains the leading threat to the Sumatran tiger species’ survival. The big cat’s vibrant striped pelt fetches a handsome price in the black market. Conflicts with humans in the forest also pose a great threat. Several communities in Indonesia, such as the Seluma and Kaur districts have houses and plantations that located close to the tigers’ habitat. As a result, it is common for tigers to enter the residential areas, lured by the livestock, which they prey on.

Luckily, the local government seems to have matched its efforts with the level of urgency felt by environmentalists and conservationists world-wide. Endemic to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, this unique tiger is not only a tourist drawer, but a cultural heritage that the country has been given the responsibility to protect.

Currently, Japan’s overall economic output totals $1.29 trillion. Its economy grew 0.4 percent during the second quarter, substantially less than forecasted.

Jesper Koll, an economist with JPMorgan in Tokyo, predicts that China’s economy may grow up to 8 percent per year over the next decade. Japan’s underlying growth rate, on the other hand, will be one percent.

Several factors are helping China rise up the world economic ladder. Unlike Japan and other established economies, China has only just started its boom of urbanization. There is a lot of room for growth within the country. It also has a lower standard of living, an aspect that has greatly appealed to outsourcing companies.

According to another economist, Frederic Neumann at HSBC in Hong Kong, if China continues its rapid growth, it may be able to solidify its position as the world’s second largest economy by the end of the year. By 2030, it may even overturn the United States as the reigning economic power. China has already overturned several established European economic powers over the last few years, including Germany, France, and Great Britain.

The implications are not limited merely to economics. The way I see it, as more wealth is distributed to China’s vast population, the quality of life can begin to equalize among its peoples, and relative to the citizens of other, more established, developed countries in the west. If China can become like Japan, Brunei and Singapore, with their excellent poverty ratings, a larger absolute number of people, by far, stand to benefit. And as China’s economy grows, its neighboring countries can also take advantage through trade and human resource exchanges.

It’s been a long time coming for some of the new additions. Amsterdam’s canal belt and France’s historic town of Albi, for instance, are already well-visited international attractions. Most of the World Heritage Sites, though, reflected the changing times and addressed the need for further cultural diversity.

When people began harnessing nuclear energy in the early 20th century, it sparked a significant era in modern history. Bikini Atoll in Marshall Islands was added to the list because it symbolized “the dawn of the nuclear age.” In the 1950’s, the atoll was used as a detonation site for early nuclear devices.

There was also a concerted effort during the World Heritage Committee’s meeting to rectify the long-prevailing imbalance in the list, which has made cultural assets in Africa, Latin America, and part of Asia, not as well represented as those of Europe.

Some of the most notable additions to the World Heritage List from the developing world are: the historic monuments of Dengfeng in China, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long-Hanoi in Vietnam, a shrine in Ardabil, Iran, the Jantar Mantar astronomical observation site in India, and the archaeological site Sarazm in Tajikistan.

To date there are 911 World Heritage Sites. With UNESCO’s seal, these areas are elevated to symbols of national pride and indispensible value. The government as well as the public is obliged to preserve the location’s original state. It is commendable that so many historical and cultural sites are gaining recognition. We need tangible reminders of our culture and heritage to keep us from forgetting our roots, and the values that come with them.

This line of thought was taken up by Universal, the largest of four major record companies. They believe that perhaps there is room in the Western audiences’ auditory palate for more of the spice of South Asian music. Teaming with Desi Hits!, a New York-based company promoting South Asian entertainment on its website DesiHits.com, Universal plans to create a label for musicians with South Asian roots. Through this label, the record company’s ultimate goal is to give South Asian music and its artists global exposure.

“It’s far from a vanity project for us,” said David Joseph, chief executive of Universal Music U.K. For him, South Asian pop music holds great potential as a relatively untapped art, presenting a huge amount of opportunity.

The new label, called Desi Hits! Universal, would give the music genre a “home,” a way for the music to be shared with Western audiences. According to Anjula Acharia-Bath, chief executive of Desi Hits!, after the success of the 2008 hit, “everyone saw that with some resources some of these songs really popped.”

Although mainstream western acts and Indian music have shown some mingling, the success of Desi Hits! Universal could be an excellent untapped resource for those looking for the next new sound. And, modernizing some of the more traditional South Asian music with elements from pop music can bring it to a wider audience, even within its country of origin. “Jai Ho” showed the ability of good music to transcend cultural affinities. I look forward to more endeavors that get the music of a rich culture reach out to more of the world.

The solution that these two have presented is a modified everyday salad spinner that has been turned into an easy-to-use transport centrifuge. This ingenuity makes it possible for blood to be successfully separated for the diagnosis of anemia without the need for electricity. Dubbed the “Sally Centrifuge” by its creators, what had begun as an assignment for their Introduction to Bioengineering and World Health class has become a possible great help to the aid of people living in rural areas without electricity.

The Sally Centrifuge is currently undergoing a series of field tests this summer in places needing medical aid where resources are lacking. This is all part of Rice University’s initiative for global health, with a focus on developing countries. Kerr and Theis are traveling along with their invention to places like Ecuador, Swaziland and Malawi, where real-world testing of this tool will be done at rural clinics.

Simple ideas that don’t necessarily involve reinventing the wheel are what I believe to be the innovations that truly deserve attention. With a way to make diagnosis quicker, especially in areas too far for urban laboratories to deliver reports in a timely manner, simple works like the centrifuge by Kerr and Theis which is portable, convenient and can run without power, will help global health a great deal. Perhaps as well, this can inspire others to create similar inventions to help the world.

Among these efforts is the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards Exhibition, which runs from August 1 at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, where local artists will be given a platform to showcase their works.

The local government has also planned other projects to encourage the blossoming of Hong Kong art culture, such as the creation of a projected $2 billion West Kowloon Cultural District and the development of an empty police station into “a self-sustaining, non-profit site that will be home to designers, art studios and exhibition spaces,” according to a government press release.

Perhaps as a result, though underrepresentation of Hong Kong art seems like common knowledge among influential names in the art scene, some acknowledge that, slowly but surely, Hong Kong’s own local talents have begun to rise up. “Arguably, it is this freedom from market pressure that has seen the emergence of a group of artists in Hong Kong whose works are conceptually very strong. You won’t find any grinning faces staring back at you,” says Claire Hsu, founder of the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive.

Hong Kong style art is strikingly different from Mainland Chinese art but with the global art community already flocking to Hong Kong for its art galleries, the gap won’t be very hard to bridge. Hong Kong culture may rise in the wake of China’s recent cultural success and attention gained in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

This is a marked improvement on the H-1B visa, which allows firms to temporarily employ foreign workers for three years with the possibility of a renewal. The H-1B visa has a 65,000 yearly numerical cap that prevents too many foreign workers from being able to work in the country at the same time. It has also been criticized for allowing foreigners to fill job positions that may otherwise be granted to US citizens.

Far from the H-1B visa, the startup visa actually shows promise in the creation of jobs for Americans, while helping to support the economy with foreign innovations and talent. Venture firms looking for the next big idea no longer have to invest outside the country in order to capitalize on great ideas.
Other Silicon Valley natives that support the visa are Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar, Brad Feld, Paul Kedrosky, Manu Kumar, & Fred Wilson. The Startup Visa Act was introduced in late February of this year.

While this works out for the founders of startup companies and for the US, one has to wonder how foreign governments will react to having their human resources courted away. Developing countries are already at a disadvantage without having their best talent pirated so easily.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Innovation.

The accident happened on April 20, 2010, and is said to have been caused by a deadly combination of faulty equipment, sub-par safety and maintenance practices, and simple bad luck. Since then, the well has been estimated to be pumping out close to 5,000 barrels (approximately 200,000 gallons) of crude oil a day into the ocean, posing a major threat to the hundreds of species of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Everglades, and other areas along the Gulf Coast.

BP has been trying different strategies in order to cap the well, but has not had much success so far. Their first plan was to have remote-controlled submersible robots cap the well, but this proved impossible due to the high volume of the oil leak. The company then attempted to surround the area with a containment boom. However, rough weather caused damage to the boom, allowing the oil to escape.

Their most extreme idea to date is to lower a hastily made dome – or more accurately, an inverted box – over the well site to contain most of the oil. If it had been successful, the four-story-tall, 98,000-pound dome should have been able to contain about 85 percent of the oil leak. The oil inside the box would then have been pumped through a pipe to a waiting drill ship, which would bring it to special treatment facilities.

However, BP engineers did not count on the effects of the formation of ice-like crystals called hydrates inside the dome. These hydrates prevented the dome from creating a water-tight seal against the sea floor, disrupting the flow of the oil that workers were trying to pump onto the drill ship.

The search for ideas to head off what is said to be potentially the greatest oil spill since the Exxon Valdez incident continues. However, what this puts into light is the effect that man’s needs and greed can have on the world around us.

New laws are being drawn up by the Obama administration to severely clamp down on offshore drilling in the US. But will these laws be enough to prevent another Deepwater Horizon-type disaster? Only time will tell.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about the Environment.

Dyson – who is perhaps best known for his bagless vacuum cleaners – is calling for more investment and support for innovative engineering. Together with some of Britain’s most highly regarded industrial leaders, he has developed a number of policy recommendations which the next government should follow to make the UK more competitive and help the country leave the recession behind.

“We need to inspire and enlighten people: science and engineering can change lives, society and the economy,” said Dyson. “High tech exports create real wealth and jobs, and will help set us on a course for sustainable prosperity. If we don’t capitalize on our engineering expertise now there’ll be no turning back.”

The report suggests a stronger bond between universities and companies should be developed by changing the way education is structured. It says large scale projects must be put in place to prove the UK’s ability with high-tech infrastructure, claiming research and engineering has been ignored for decades in Britain.

I personally believe James Dyson is right. The UK has some inherent strengths. It’s the sixth largest manufacturing economy in the world, and has four of the top ten global universities. If they harness the best of both worlds, they can grow their high value add industries in a big way.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about innovation