I ran across this blog by Houston Neal of Software Advice.com, on seven great applications for IP-PBXs in the medical field, which is a good start to laying out what can be done in different vertical markets with IP, particularly in the medical field, which is ripe for transformation. Houston points out, that in his practice of advising companies of free software to help in business, that in the medical field he believes that there is a lot to be gained by integrating IP-PBXs with electronic health records (EHR) and practice management systems. I couldn’t agree more. He then lays out the seven great applications he feels would be the result of combining voice and data using open source technology.

I’ll leave you to read his blog, but here is his list with some of my comments.

• Patient screen-pops - this isn’t just something that would benefit medical practices, in the traditional PBX world, its 21 year old technology that even today is so underused that it has most contact center analysts tearing their hair out
• IP faxing - Couldn’t agree with Houston more. Whereas faxing has gone the way of the Dodo in some fields, in others, such as medical, it’s still a big necessity.
• Appointment reminders - Sure thing, and lots of other outbound reminders, from pre-surgical instructions to education.
• Find me, follow me
• Dunning Voicemails - Hmm. I like this title about as much voicemail jail, and prefer to call it outbound collections or something like that.
• vPrescribing - Otherwise known as automated prescription refill. This is even better when combined with education for the patient about the drugs they are taking.
• Patient-centric recordings - IVR with personalization - extremely hot in the industry right now.

That is enough on my comments on his list. Here are a few I think he missed.

• Radiology dictation using speech recognition packages. I doubt this is open source free at the moment, but streaming dictation reports over an IP Network to a database that is then accessible to all parties that need that information is a great application.
• Unified communications applications other than find-me-follow-me. How about collaboration software, presence, IM, video. All of these can greatly enhance the productivity of medical personnel.
• Expert agents outside the contact center - IP Telephony provides a great opportunity, particularly when combined with UC functionality, of being able to bring in experts into a call with a doctor or patient, that aren’t part of the contact center.

OK, that is my short addition of what I’d like to see. I’m going to go check out some of the other verticals Houston works with.

Tags: Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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Microsoft released their Visual Search beta on Bing this morning. It’s pretty cool, particularly if you are a visual person. I played around with some of the categories they had listed to show off the application. One category, dog breeds, really shows how this software shines, compared to doing searches on Google. I’ve done this search before when trying to show what certain breeds of dogs look like, for my kids. Visual search is cool. Click on dog breeds and up come boxes with the individual dogs in them, just like if you pulled open a big file drawer and could see all the files. Go and try it.

Easily laid out to help, the screen allows you to sort by size of dog, either by clicking on a “sort by size button” at the top, or sliding a scroll bar labeled as such down the side. On the left side are popular subcategories that some one might want to click on, such as “most obedient”, “hypoallergenic”, etc., Below that are sub categories under the heading “narrow the search”. For example, categories include grooming needs, size, temperament, etc. Once you narrow your search, then you get links to the best choice for what you are looking for.

I loved it. But it’s more than that. The visual component is what got me. Let’s take “popular books” as a category. Sometimes you know the author or the name of the book, but sometimes you have just seen a book around and can’t remember either of those. Click on “popular books” and up come dozens of covers. I instantly recognized several my fellow airplane passengers had been reading last week on a plane with me.

While just playing with it seems like a toy, it does have the potential for enhancing unified communications and mobility applications, particularly multi-modal applications. Giving people visual choices, even on a small screen can speed up their ability to make selections, and the visual component spurs memory recall. I’d like to see how developers will incorporate this function into applications.

For now I have to quell my desire to go to Barnes and Noble.com rather than work. :) I now have to quell my desire to play longer with Visual Search. It’s fun and useful. Oh oh, I hear “greatest movies” calling me. Back to work.

Tags: ADA communications, Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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While the waiting game is over regarding the winner of the auction for Nortel Enterprise, there are still many unanswered questions – mainly the who’s and the what’s.

Who – we heard from Avaya and Nortel in a press/analyst call that Avaya has agreed with a minimum employee transfer of 75% of Nortel employee work force at the time of close of deal. Note – at the time of close of deal, not today, not last week. Who knows how many Nortel employees will still be around by December when the deal is expected to close.

Also, in a letter to the Nortel troops, Nortel Enterprise President Joel Hackney stated that Avaya will employ about three-quarters of Enterprise Solutions employees globally. This includes the full Nortel Government Solutions workforce and most employees who work wholly or mainly for the Enterprise Solutions business in countries with an Acquired Rights Directive (ARD) or similar law. ARD or similar laws apply in many of the countries in EMEA and require that employment automatically transfers to the purchaser upon an acquisition of the business. Outside of Nortel Government Solutions employees and those employees in countries where ARD or similar laws apply, we expect that a minimum of about 60% of the remaining Enterprise Solutions workforce will be offered employment with Avaya.”

If you’re a non-Government Solutions or non-ARD employee, you now have only a 60% rather than a 75% chance of being retained. And the Avaya employees aren’t all safe either – if someone from Nortel is retained but their job duplicates that of an Avaya employee, then the Avaya worker may be out of a job. I’ve known many of the Avaya and Nortel folks for a long, long time, and I certainly wish them the best and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for them.

Now for the most important part – the what. What products will remain, which will move forward with the company, and which will be set out to pasture? Will it be CallPilot or Modular Messaging? BCM or IP Office? ACE or Aura? And where do the Nortel products fit in Avaya’s Aura vision? Avaya is still working on its Aura story and now has to figure out how to leverage the products and platforms that Nortel brings to the table.

There are very few areas where there is no overlap (data solutions excluded). The one product that is sure to go forward in the Avaya line up is Nortel’s Diamondware (Nortel acquired Diamondware last year). I hope that Avaya recognizes its value and continues with development in this exciting area, particularly with Diamondware’s special audio capabilities. Similarly, I expect to see Avaya leverage web.alive and be more aggressive in this area.

I hope to soon get some of my questions answered regarding the future of the combined company, but I’m not holding my breath. It will take the company a long time to figure out its new product portfolio, and customers on both sides will have to guess as to the life expectancy of the products they have installed.

Of course, all this assumes that the DOJ doesn’t decide that this acquisition is anti-competitive and prevents it from happening. This is pretty unlikely to happen, as there are still lots of vendors in the telephony and contact center markets.

I was really hoping for a more creative outcome, such as Oracle, SAP, or an application vendor acquiring Nortel in order to communication-enable its applications. But alas, our industry has never been known for its creativity.

Tags: Unified Communications by Blair Pleasant
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