A new service where patients can consult doctors over webcams is starting up in Hawai’i.   The full article discusses weaknesses and strengths.

Patients use the service by logging on to participating health plans’ Web sites. Doctors hold 10-minute appointments, which can be extended for a fee, and can file prescriptions and view patients’ medical histories through the system. American Well is working with HealthVault, Microsoft’s electronic medical records service, and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, which scans patients’ medical history for gaps in their previous care and alerts doctors during their American Well appointment.

The Hawaiian health plan’s 700,000 members pay $10 to use the service. The insurer also offers the service to uninsured patients for $45. Health plans pay American Well a license fee per member and…

Telecom Cook Islands Ltd, the sole provider of telecommunications in the Cook Islands, has completed commercial deployment of ADC’s UltraWave GSM softswitch. Telecom Cook Islands, which has been in operation since July 1991, is a private company owned by Telecom New Zealand Ltd. (60%) and the Cook Islands Government (40%).

The new softswitch – which upgrades Telecom Cook’s core wireless network to more efficient, IP-based technology in order to reduce costs and enable value-added services such as integrated SMS, voicemail, GPRS and pre-paid calling, has been in deployment since September 2007, and the final network cutover was accomplished last week. The UltraWave solution includes an overall expansion of the network’s capacity to 15,000 from 8,000 GSM subscribers.

Read the full story here.

(Background info: This group of islands…

[Tsunami Warning - IOC] WCATWC Message 

PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
 MAGNITUDE – 7.7
 TIME      - 0214 AKST NOV 15 2006
            0314  PST NOV 15 2006
            1114  UTC NOV 15 2006
 LOCATION  - 46.7 NORTH 153.5 EAST
          – KURIL ISLANDS
 DEPTH     – 21 MILES

THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER IN EWA BEACH HAWAII HAS
ISSUED A TSUNAMI WARNING FOR AREAS OF THE PACIFIC OUTSIDE OF
CALIFORNIA/ OREGON/ WASHINGTON/ BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ALASKA.

As Japan braces: Tech-related tsunami resources 

LIRNEasia HazInfo project partner Nalaka Gunawardene has written an excellent piece on ICTs and disasters, referring in some detail to the ongoing HazInfo project.

Bridging the long ‘last mile’ in Sri Lanka / 2006/4 / Media Development / Publications / Home – World Association for Christian Communication

While the countries of South and Southeast Asia were largely unprepared to act on the tsunami, it was not really a complete surprise. As the killer waves originating from the ocean near Indonesia’s Sumatra Island radiated across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jetliner, the alert about the impending tsunami moved through the Internet at the speed of light. Scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Hawaii, who had detected the extraordinary seismic activity, issued a…

By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News
Eighteen months after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, hundreds have died after a giant wave struck the Indonesian island of Java.
Their deaths have raised questions about the failure of a promised Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system to sound an adequate alert.
More than 300 people died and about 140 were reported missing after the tsunami struck Java’s southern coast on Monday.
Witnesses have said people had little or no warning to flee the 2m-high wave triggered by an undersea earthquake.

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4988492.stm

More than 30 countries around the Pacific Ocean have tested a system to warn them of approaching tsunamis.
The exercise began with a mock alert at the Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
An earthquake with a magnitude 9.2 was imagined to have struck near the coast of Chile, sending a tsunami racing across the eastern Pacific.
A second mock earthquake alert, north of the Philippines, will provide a further test on Wednesday.
Governments will report back on how efficiently they received the tsunami warnings, relayed through various circuits including weather services, emails and faxes.
The drill, co-ordinated by the Hawaii warning centre, will also measure how well the message is relayed through local emergency systems.

‘Already a success’
At the start of the test, a beeping noise sounded throughout the warning…

Ten preliminary lessons of the 28th March 2005 Sumatra great earthquake (Photo Source)

LIRNEasia, together with Vanguard Foundation, intends to systematically analyze the Sri Lankan media response to the great earthquake of the 28th of March. However, it appears useful to draw some preliminary lessons from this tragedy which has cost over 1,000 lives, including the people of Nias and other islands and those in Sri Lanka and elsewhere who died as a result of the warnings. The conclusions are preliminary; comments are welcome.

# Earthquake hazard detection is easy; tsunami hazard detection is not. One cannot simply infer the existence of a destructive tsunami from an earthquake. Whether a tsunami has been generated and the direction it is likely to go requires the application of expert judgment.
#…

A video news conference connecting experts in disaster warning systems in Colombo, Vancouver and Hawaii answered questions posed by the Sri Lankan press and television journalists. This event was organised by LIRNEasia and Vanguard Foundation on February 10 at the Distance Learning Center on SLIDA’s campus in Colombo.

The event was launched by the release of the draft report on a National All Hazard Disaster Warning System written by local and international experts. This draft report emerged from an Expert Consultation that was held in January 26, 2005 where broad input was obtained from Sri Lankans with disaster management expertise, experts in hazard warning and the public who responded to newspaper advertisements. The primary purpose of the video news conference was to discuss the concept paper with the…

The original purpose of the visit was to participate in a super session on “Strategies for implementing universal access.” The session was well attended and useful.

My presentation was Expanding Access to ICTs (Powerpoint)

Along with Bill Melody’s forceful comments it clearly established the importance of market and regulatory reforms, a position that may otherwise have been deemphasized as a result of the Chair’s interest in subsidies.

The visit was also used to pursue the disaster warning-communication issues that have come to the fore in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. On the 18th of January I visited the Big Island’s Civil Defense Emergency Operations Center and the Pacific Tsunami Museum accompanied by Bill Melody and at the invitation of Dr George Curtis, a tsunami…