According to an article in “The Imaging Channel” magazine, Canon’s Precision, Chemicals and Toride plants might still be closed in northern Japan due to the recent earthquake, which may result in shortages of toner and other products this summer, and will also impact Hewlett Packard, as Canon makes the engines and toner for all LaserJet branded products.
o Canon’s Utsunomiya plant is closed, which makes aspheric lenses for MFPs
o Also Ricoh apparently still has plants closed which make MFPs and toner
o Tohoku plant closed which makes PxP polymerized toner
o Plant which makes finishers is closed
o Other vendors in Japan that may be impacted, which provide chemicals used by many toner makers are:
o Kao Corp. (produces polyester)
o Mitsubishi Chemical
o Mitsui and Co. (makes resin)
o Nippon Carbide
o Sanyo Chemical (makes resin)
o Cabot
o Dow
o DuPont
o IMEX
o Mitsubishi Kagaku Imaging
o Tomoegowa
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- Recent survey data from Computer World magazine about company’s usage of MFPs:
o most companies fail to utilize the advanced functionality of the hardware
o 91% have activated scan to email
o 86% have set auto-duplex as default
o 39% use N-up function (putting 4 pages of info on one sheet of paper)
o Most do not user secure print feature, even though they are printing confidential documents
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- Many EHR systems (including Epic) supposedly are based on an old programming language developed in the 1960s called MUMPS, which stands for “Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System”
o MUMPS was developed by Neil Pappalardo and colleagues in Dr. Octo Barnett's animal lab at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston during 1966 and 1967. The original MUMPS system was, like Unix a few years later, built on a spare DEC PDP-7 computer.
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- Four out of five community hospitals believe they can achieve meaningful use by 2013 with their current electronic medical record systems, meaning one-fifth of community hospitals plan to switch their EMRs within the next couple of years, according to a KLAS news release.
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- InfoTrends said a recent survey on scanning usage reveals:
o 52.4% are scanning more
o 43% staying same
o 4.6% scanning less
o 45% using content management systems more
o 44% are now managing scans with software systems
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- The National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) reported that results of a recent survey reveals that nearly 70% of printshop owners feel that their sales will grow in 2011.
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- Texas Instruments announced it will spend $6.5 billion to buy rival chip maker National Semiconductor.
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- The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, which is in charge of pushing healthcare providers to get EHR systems, announced it has appointed Dr. Farzad Mostashari as the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. He previously worked for New York City’s Department of Health.
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- Recent data from survey on ambulatory-care (non-hospital) physicians conducted by Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) on usage of EHRs:
o 72% are satisfied with their EHRs
o 61% claims their EHRs have increased productivity and boosted practice revenue
o 52% claim to be using EHRs
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- Recent research from IDC on what decision makers feel about sales people:
o 24% believe that sales reps are NOT prepared for appointment/meeting/presentation
o 30% believe they are somewhat prepared
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- Xerox announced that it purchased United Business Solutions, a Ricoh dealer in Addison, Illinois. (Ricoh will cancel this dealership, so Xerox will rush to convert them to Xerox product) Former owners were Reed Byhring and Fred Martin. Purchase price not announced.
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- According to Infonetics, revenue for managed security services will grow by 62% over the next 5 years to $17 billion worldwide.
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- Recent survey results from Information Week magazine regarding what IT is doing to keep devices on their network secure:
o 68% educate their users about security
o 62% put written policies in place, but no technology in place to enforce
o 50% technology in place to enforce
o 48% rely on employee common sense
o 37% require encryption
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- Canon announced it has settled out of court, thus ending its lawsuit in attempt to shutdown Ninestar’s production of toner cartridges in China that work in Canon printers and MFPs. (due to Japan earthquake damage will the company use Ninestar’s Chinese made products?)
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- Adam Greene was named at Senior Health IT & Privacy Advisor in the Office of Civil Rights, which is part of the Department of Health & Human Services, and is enforcing HIPAA legislation on the healthcare industry. In a speech he reminded healthcare administrators:
o Business associates and subcontractors can be held directly liable for HIPAA breaches
o In accounts of disclosures of patient information (PHIs), treatment info, payment info and healthcare operation info must be tracked and disclosed
o New restrictions will be put on use of patient data for marketing and sale of protected health info (PHIs)
o Minimum HIPAA breach penalty raised to $50,000, maximum still at $1.5 million
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- Imagetec, a copier dealership owned by former IKON executive, Rich Cucco, announced the opening of its 5th Chicago area location in Lincolnshire.
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- More layoffs at Ricoh? Ricoh announced that it is consolidating two separate production print divisions into one. InfoPrint Solutions (which it acquired from IBM) and Ricoh Production Printing Business Group will be merged together to form Ricoh Production Print Solutions (RPPS), and run by Shiro Sasaki, who formerly ran Ricoh Europe.
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- Hewlett-Packard is suing a former executive for allegedly stealing trade secrets before he took a job with HP rival Oracle.
o Filed Wednesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, the lawsuit alleged that Adrian Jones, a former HP senior vice president in Asia, stole proprietary information before he resigned in February and moved to
o An internal investigation at the time of his resignation uncovered that Jones failed to disclose a "close personal relationship" with a subordinate, gave that subordinate a 97% salary bump and expensed thousands of dollars spent visiting that person with no relevant business purpose, HP said.
Before he left, Jones copied "hundreds of files and thousands of e-mails" related to HP's business strategies, future plans, employee data and customer data, the suit said.
o HP seeks an injunction from the court to prevent Jones from using the sensitive information to put the company at an "unfair competitive disadvantage."
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- The media is still publishing reports of copier hard drive security threats.
o The Kilgore News Herald newspaper of Texas ran an article that said; “employee and customer data could easily be downloaded (from copier) by criminals”
o Senator Bob Smith of Middlesex, NJ stated to the press; “It’s frightening to think about all the information that is potentially at risk unless we require (copier) hard drives to be erased…”
o Ondrej Krehel, Chief Security Officer at ID Theft 911 stated; “I don’t think vendors have been doing a good job of pushing the security capabilities available on their devices”
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- HIPAA breach: MidState Medical Center In Meriden, Connecticut reported that an employee took info on 93,500 patients home on a personal hard drive. The employee was fired, but the drive has not been found.
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- According to the Health Information Management Systems Society, here is list of most common EHR installs in the hospital/acute care market in the U.S.:
o Meditech 1,212 installs
o Cerner 606
o McKesson 573
o Epic 413 (but fastest growing)
o Siemens 397
o CPSI 392
o Healthcare Management Systems 347
o Healthland 223
o Allscripts/eClipsys 185
o 273 hospitals claim to have developed their own
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- A radio station destroys a Canon copier. As part of a contest, MOJO 92.5, a radio station in Billings, Montana, allowed Jeff Anderson to push a Canon imageRUNNER off the roof the Western Security Bank building. Mr. Anderson won a new copier from Big Sky/Star Office Solutions for his efforts.
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