My fortnightly column, A Dose of IT discussing on the potential of genomics Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
15Bengaluru ●● Monday ●● 5 October 2009
BIG PLANS: In a bid to garner a
bigger pie in the world’s fastest growing
mobile market, US-based handset maker
Motorola said it will launch seven new
handsets in the next three months in
India. The new phones are in the low-end
to mid segment in the price range of Rs
3,500 and Rs 8,000.
DC
REQUEST: Google, CEO Eric
Schmidt said that former
Genentech CEO Arthur
Levinson should stay on the
boards of both Google and
Apple, despite regulatory
scrutiny.
business
TECHNOMICS
BAN TWEETS: North
America’s professional sports
leagues are all a twitter over
tweeting and have pushed
through guidelines to ban
player access to social
networking sites during games.
The promise
of ‘Omics’
Kapil Khandelwal
Biotech’s powerful
research and informat-
ics tools have set the fast
pace for life sciences dis-
covery and whole host of
‘omics’: genomics, pro-
teomics, metabolomics,
immunomics and transcrip-
tomics. These research
avenues attempt to integrate
IT into whole systems
rather than focus on the
individual components in
isolation from each other.
However, IT is also essen-
tial for integrating genetic
data into a coherent whole
and enable personalisation
of healthcare and going
away from ‘one-size fits all’
approach to healthcare
delivery. The outcomes
coming from the Indian
Genome Variation (IGV)
consortium funded by the
Council of Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR)
on the Indian genotype and
their inherent risks to vari-
ous diseases is very encour-
aging. This would open up
immense possibilities of
how we can treat infections
in India by personalising
the delivery of care.
Building on the pioneer-
ing work by IGV, it’s time
the industry and academia
collaborate with govern-
ment initiatives such as the
National ID Commission to
create relevant vertical solu-
tions for discovering and
integrating genetic knowl-
edge into the healthcare
systems.
The benefits are four-fold.
Firstly, it would reduce
errors, simplify communi-
cation, and automate steps
including diagnostics, ther-
apeutics, banking and
screening patient’s genetic
samples and reduce the
costs and efforts by 20 to 30
per cent. Secondly, open up
collaboration with western
academic medical centers
that have funding to the
tune of over USD 8 to 12
billion for BT and disease
specific research in this part
of the world. Thirdly,
enable the growth of Rs
10,000 crores bio pharma
and bio similar market.
Lastly, speed up adoption of
evidence-based person-
alised healthcare by propo-
nents in the health value
chain. In summary, this
would mean a growth
opportunity of over Rs
25,000 crores for the Indian
health sciences industry in
the next few years that we
could lose China.
Other tangible benefit
would be DALY savings to
Indian economy as a result
of productive days lost on
account of chronic diseases
that would be to the tune of
approximately 5 per cent of
GDP by 2015.
Indian health sciences
industry is working out
charters through their repre-
sentative industry bodies on
a model for collaboration
and sharing of information.
The Indian IT sector has
been mute in this dialogue
of evolving a model for
investment in IT solutions
such as disease and patient
registries, electronic med-
ical records, bio and clinical
research informatics and
other ICT solutions for
healthcare, that would be
over Rs 3,000 to 3,500
crores if successfully imple-
mented more or less on the
scale of the HCIT imple-
mentation that President
Obama has proposed for
USA.
Also there is lack of role
of government both at the
state and the center for any
participation. There are sev-
eral models that we can dis-
cuss in funding and creating
such an enabling system for
India. Public-private part-
nership (PPP) has been one
of the routes that have been
discussed for a while.
However there is yet any
tangible success. The start-
ing point will be the cre-
ation of an independent per-
sonalised e-health informat-
ics regulatory body with
government and industry
participation. This body can
then come up with bidding,
financing and operating and
integration and ICT models
like some of the mature
healthcare systems.
In case we miss this
opportunity, the health sci-
ences industry and the
nation as a whole would
have to play catch up like
mature healthcare systems
like USA and others are
now witnessing to integrate
their complex healthcare IT
systems.
Kapil Khandelwal is Director at EquNev
Capital Private Limited
A dose
of IT
A dose
of IT STEVE LOHR
NEW YORK
Oct. 4: The latent but ever-
present tensions between
two technology giants,
Microsoft and IBM have
come to the fore after the
former’s bullish boss Steve
Ballmer criticised IBM last
week, saying the firm had
become a shrinking violet
among technology giants.
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano
replied with a defiant “so
what”.
During an interview last
week, Ballmer, MS’s CEO,
was critical of IBM’s deci-
sions over the last decade to
dispose of its networking
equipment, hard disk and PC
businesses. Technology
companies must pursue con-
stant market expansion and
diversity to stay alive and
relevant, according to
Ballmer.
“IBM is the company that
is notable for going the other
direction,” he said. “IBM’s
footprint is more narrow
today than it was when I
started. I am not sure that
has been to the long-term
benefit of their sharehold-
ers.”
IBM sold off its network-
ing business in 1999 and
then steadily exited lower-
margin hardware businesses
throughout this decade. IBM
has argued that it makes
more sense to concentrate on
higher-profit businesses and
leave the grunt work to other
guys, namely HP.
Today, IBM directs most of
its energy toward software
and services and continues
to sell higher-margin hard-
ware like Unix servers and
mainframes.
IBM’s CEO, Samuel J.
Palmisano, went out of his
way to reply, if ever so
obliquely, during a discus-
sion of leadership and public
policy. Palmisano was on
stage with Aneesh Chopra,
chief technology officer of
the US, being interviewed
by Fareed Zakaria, editor of
Newsweek International and
a television talk-show host.
In a comment that meant
the most to the few in the
audience aware of Ballmer’s
criticism of IBM’s pullback
from some businesses over
the years, he observed:
“People say IBM invented
the computer, IBM invented
the disk drive. Why sell it?”
Answering his rhetorical
question, Palmisano said, “A
$300 netbook is a commodi-
ty” — and, the inevitable
implication, not a business
for IBM.
Institutions get trapped in
the past, he added, because
of their “cultural resistance
to change.”
Ballmer’s comments about
IBM came in the context of
a discussion about
Microsoft’s varied, large
bets — be it investments in
gaming consoles, Web
search, mobile devices or
virtual assistants.
The company hopes that
going wide will help it cre-
ate vast new businesses that
can complement its
Windows and Office fran-
chises.
Growth barbs aside,
Ballmer’s jab at IBM reflect-
ed the tensions that have
long surrounded the compa-
nies’ relationship. — NYT
Sure IBM is smaller. So what? Sam asks Steve
New York, Oct. 4: You can
buy “The Lost Symbol,” by
Dan Brown, as an e-book for
$9.99 at Amazon.com.
Or you can don a pirate’s
cap and snatch a free copy
from another online user at
RapidShare, Megaupload,
Hotfile and other file-storage
sites.
Until now, few readers have
preferred e-books to printed,
so the public availability of
free-for-the-taking copies did
not much matter. But e-books
won’t stay on the periphery
of book publishing much
longer. E-book hardware is
on the verge of going main-
stream. More dedicated e-
readers are coming, with ever
larger screens. So, too, are
PC tablets that can serve as
giant e-readers, and hardware
that will not be very hard at
all: a thin display flexible
enough to roll up into a tube.
With the new devices in
hand, will book buyers avert
their eyes from the free
copies only a few clicks away
that have been uploaded
without the copyright hold-
er’s permission? Mindful of
what happened to the music
industry at a similar transi-
tional juncture, book publish-
ers are about to discover
whether their industry is dif-
ferent enough to be spared a
similarly dismal fate.
The book industry has not
received cheery news for a
while. Publishers and authors
alike have relied upon sales
of general-interest hardcover
books as the foundation of
the business. TheAssociation
of American Publishers esti-
mated that these hardcover
sales in US declined 13 per
cent in 2008, versus the pre-
vious year. This year, these
sales were down 15.5 per
cent through July, versus the
same period of 2008. Total e-
book sales, though up con-
siderably this year, remained
small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6
per cent of total book sales
through July. “We are seeing
lots of online piracy activities
across all kinds of books —
pretty much every category is
turning up,” said Ed
McCoyd, an executive direc-
tor at the association. “What
happens when 20 to 30 per
cent of book readers use dig-
ital as the primary mode of
reading books? Piracy’s a big
concern.” Adam Rothberg,
VP for corporate communi-
cations at Simon & Schuster,
said: “Piracy is a significant
issue, but it’s been difficult to
quantify the magnitude of the
problem. We know people
post things but we don’t
know how many people take
them.” We do know that peo-
ple have been helping them-
selves to digital music with-
out paying. When the music
industry was “Napsterised”
by free file-sharing, it suf-
fered a blow from which it
hasn’t recovered. A report
earlier this year by the
International Federation of
the Phonographic Industry,
based on multiple studies in
16 countries covering three
years, estimated that 95 per
cent of music downloads “are
unauthorised, with no pay-
ment to artists and produc-
ers.” Free file-sharing of e-
books will most likely come
to be associated with
RapidShare, a Swiss file-
hosting firm. It says its cus-
tomers have uploaded onto
its servers more than 10
petabytes of files — that’s
more than 10 million giga-
bytes — and can handle up to
three million users simulta-
neously. Anyone can upload,
and anyone can download;
for light users, the service is
free. RapidShare does not list
the files — a user must know
the impossible-to-guess URL
in order to download one.
But anyone who wants to
make a file widely available
simply publishes the URL
and a description somewhere
online, like a blog or a dis-
cussion forum, and Google
and other search engines
notice. No passwords protect
the files.
— NYT
Will books be Napsterised?
GABRIEL MADWAY
SAN FRANCISCO
Oct 4: Electronic readers
could be the hottest gift this
holiday season as a new crop
of portable media devices
begins to join iPods and
other music players as must-
have tech accessories.
The number of readers
bought will be closely
watched by industry analysts
in advance of the expected
emergence of multimedia
tablet PCs, which Apple and
others are thought to be
working on and which could
alter the competitive land-
scape.
Falling prices and an ever-
growing library of digital
books are driving demand
for e-readers like
Amazon.com’s Kindle and
Sony’s Reader.
The light, thin devices now
mainly appeal to book
lovers, but many see them as
the first iteration of a go-
everywhere gadget that con-
sumers will use to watch
movies and surf the Web, as
much as scan books and
newspapers.
ISuppli expects global
sales of e-readers to top 5
million this year from about
1 million last year. It
remains to be seen whether
the current crop of readers
morph into something with
richer features, or tablets
swoop in to define the mar-
ket.
“There is tremendous
potential for these devices to
become more multi-func-
tion,” said Sarah Rotman
Epps, an analyst with
Forrester Research.
Holiday shoppers will be
able to buy e-readers in
stores owned by Wal-Mart
and Best Buy. In May,
Forrester predicted 2 million
e-readers would be sold in
the US this year, but the
research group now expects
sales to far exceed that fore-
cast. However, the market is
still small. Around 225 mil-
lion portable music players
are expected to ship this
year, according to research
firm In-Stat. “More con-
sumers read books on their
iPhones and iPod Touches
than own Kindles and Sony
Readers put together,” noted
Forrester’s Rotman Epps.
But e-readers are growing
in popularity. A study by
Retrevo, a website specialis-
ing in consumer electronics,
found they beat the perenni-
al favourite, MP3 players, on
the holiday wish list this
year, with 20 per cent of
respondents planning to buy
an e-reader.
Amazon’s Kindle is the
dominant device, with an
estimated 60 per cent US
market share. The Kindle 2
retails at $299 and costs
about $186 to make, accord-
ing to iSuppli, giving
Amazon a nice margin.
But the market is getting
increasingly crowded. Sony,
which pioneered e-reading
devices but was eclipsed by
Amazon, has been adding
new models, including one
for $199. Taiwan’s Asustek,
pioneer of netbook PCS, is
also reportedly launching a
reader, perhaps this year.
The wildcard of tablet-style
PCs is looming on the hori-
zon, analysts say, with the
potential to disrupt a market
that is far from settled. They
are essentially laptops with
touchscreens that can be
swiveled to lie flat.
Much of the buzz about
tablets has been generated
by Apple, even though it has
said nothing publicly about
moving into a category that
has seen its share of failures.
Last week, reports emerged
about a Microsoft tablet
called Courier, said to be in
late-prototype stage.
Tablets offer the promise
of Web browsing, video,
music, and e-books — but
battery life has been a major
obstacle.
The next batch is expected
to break new ground.
Archos, a French firm, has
unveiled a keyboard-less,
touchscreen 9-inch tablet,
and Toshiba has showed off
the 7-inch Journe Touch,
which can play high-defini-
tion video. Analysts say e-
readers continue to appeal to
a particular slice of the mar-
ket by offering an experi-
ence that many find equal to
a real book. — NYT
E-readers seen
as holiday hit
Buzz and Woody get new dimensionMEKADO MURPHY
NEW YORK
Oct. 4: Imagine taking a
Nintendo 64 game and get-
ting it to play on a Wii. That
technological task gives an
idea of what the staff at Pixar
Animation Studios faced in
converting 1995’s “Toy
Story,” Disney’s first entirely
computer-animated feature,
and its 1999 sequel into 3-D.
The double feature of “Toy
Story” and “Toy Story 2,”
not only offers another gen-
eration of children the
chance to see both films in
theaters. It also, convenient-
ly, helps prime the promo-
tional pump for next sum-
mer’s “Toy Story 3.” For
Pixar and its owner, the Walt
Disney Company, 3-D inno-
vation means the films can
be seen as they should have
been all along.
“I’ve always been thinking
in three dimensions, ever
since I started working with
computer animation in the
early ‘80s,” said John
Lasseter, chief creative offi-
cer of Pixar and Disney
Animation Studios and the
director of “Toy Story” and
“Toy Story 2.”
The production process for
a 3-D movie requires the use
of two cameras, positioned
next to each other, shooting
action at the same time to
mimic each of the viewer’s
eyes. A live-action film not
originally shot with two
cameras cannot be made into
a 3-D film, but in the more
malleable world of computer
animation, the second cam-
era view can be added. The
process involves a bit of vir-
tual time travel.
“We have every scene in
both the movies saved, so we
have this bit of action that is
frozen in time,” Lasseter
said. “If we bring that up in
our system, we’re going back
in time into that moment.”
Without changing any of the
film’s action, Pixar’s 3-D
specialists, or stereogra-
phers, returned to each frame
of the film and virtually
placed a second camera next
to the original, creating left-
eye and right-eye views of
the scene. Then all the scenes
were re-rendered in the PC
with this additional perspec-
tive. The process of taking
the original files from the
first two movies and getting
them to a place where they
could be enhanced was one
that Lasseter called “digital
archaeology.” “We had to
have some very smart people
at Pixar go back in and write
some software and figure out
a way to make it so that those
files would render on our
current PCs,” he said.
It took four months to res-
urrect the old data and get it
in working order. Then,
adding 3-D to each of the
films took six months per
film.
One person charged with
that task was Bob Whitehill,
the lead stereographer. And
his role was not just techni-
cal; emotional impact also
informed some of the
changes. The distance Bob
would position the second
camera from the first would
determine the degree of 3-D
and which of three types: “in
front of screen”, “at screen”
and “behind screen”.
But in creating various lev-
els of 3-D, both Lasseter and
Bob did not want to create
anythin imagery that causes
people to think of something
other than the story. — NYT
Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story, Disney’s
first computer-animated feature. — Reuters
A digitised version of the 700 year-old Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an using unique
“Turning the Pages” technology. — Reuters
Sam Palmisano, CEO
of IBM
Steve Ballmer, chief
executive of MS.