Lesson 6

BioBusiness Revolution: Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences

Readings - Section 7A and B, Youtube clip on Emergence of and Immerging of Disease Management

Thoughts and Summary: The emerging trend in global health is a concern especially when baby boomers are consuming large medical health services. As they aged, chronic conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and arthritis are inevitable. Due to the emerging trends in global health, medical centres are tailoring personal home-to-home medical services to the elderly so much so that the medical costs are reduced. Elderly can now lived up to 90 and above, and it is never surprising the number goes higher than 100. Elderly are living longer and healthier with the help of medical care and increased self-awareness on their health problems. It just struck me on the question, “Can I be able to live so long just like them?” I just pondered over this. I am just not sure by looking at the lifespan of my grandparents. I wish that in the past they can receive such medical treatment as compared to now.

With the new methods proposed for each individual, doctors can carefully monitor their patients though the telecommunication systems on internet and telephones. High risk patients will seek higher attention health care from their medical providers at home without leaving their houses. It makes the entire systems so efficient and serves the purpose of bringing convenience to the less mobile patients. All it needs to take is the patients administer their health status and doctors/ nurses can accesses to these information easily and give medical advice according to their health condition. I find that this daily or weekly proactive monitoring system allows patient to communicate with the doctors in an efficient way through virtual messages instead of patient going through the pain of waiting for the next medical consultation. I know how it feels because one of my family members has shared the experience he had in the hospital for every medical check-ups (as usual long waiting time, long queues, short consultation with doctor… )

This IT solution is definitely motivating as patients know that the medical providers are actually looking after them and they will be more self aware on their medical conditions. Besides, early symptoms can also be detected. It is proven that with DM kept in place on the grey population, health care costs are lowered, improved health outcomes and lower hospital admissions. DM is definitely a great promise to the health care delivery.

Thoughts and summary: This week’s discussion is rather close and real to us, intertwining with biology. We discover how technology has come into contact with our self interest and perfectionism. One of the presenters has shared with us great insights on Human Gerome project. The main advantages of the project are that the human is now able to revolutionize the ways to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases with the knowledge of effects of variation of DNA (more development of medicine and other aspects of health care) and it definitely provides clues to understand more in depth on the human biology. What about the ethics issues? As this astonishing treasure trove is introduced into society, are we going to misuse such knowledge? There have been on-going controversial debates over it. Some still believe that it could be the betterment of human in future?  

Overall: 7.5

"The BioBusiness Revolution will transform our lives (our health, food, clothes, energy source, others ..) and for our economies. BioBusiness may well be our best hope for achieving sustainable development."

Dr Shahi

Lesson 5

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and World Change

This week session is all about the vast advancements of different communication methods in today's context. Certain areas we looked in depth during class were the areas of interest, advantages and dangers of ICT and how do we capture the value of ICT revolutions in different industries. This is interesting to know how it can shape the future of our world.

In the past, we could only communicate through face-to-face or through the tradition medium of posting letter out to our recipient in which the communication will only reach by a few days later. Slowly, as we move on inventions from pagers to big cell phone and a shift to our handheld PDA or Iphone that have mobile internet connections and all-in-one functions in such a small device. SMS, MMS and internet becomes an everyday mode of communication. I was curious to know more about our telecommunication statistics therefore I went to research and below are my findings.

 Mobile Phone Penetration Rate

The figures of the chart above show the increasing percentage of mobile phone penetration in Singapore. In the year 2009, it reaches 137.4% penetration rate (IDA Singapore) and 6.58 million mobile users (BuddeComm) which hits one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world at around 76%. This implies that every Singaporeans own at least 2 hand phones per person. Imagine the numbers of text messages we sent and phone calls we made daily are expected to rise at an exponential rate. And look at the way how our major mobile operators package their services at a competitive pricing to the consumers. They include free incoming calls and unlimited SMS options in our phone contract which have made our communication so easily reached to our recipient at practically no cost. This has also improved the method in which how communication is being exchanged.

Besides, there are growing concerns on the social networking sites at an individual level or business context. People can get to share information, ideas, activities, and interests; voice out personal opinions or daily updates through these sites and on the other hand businessmen are using this platform as a form of reaching their business to their target audience. In fact I have also shared during my presentation that the rapid growth in the social networking sites has become popular across different age groups, and if the largest social networking site, Facebook, is to use to be an illustration of a country it is said to be the third largest country in the world. These sites can be a gift or the opposite way of playing into issues of identity, privacy, exposure and many factors of dangers. In my opinion, for the issue on privacy it’s a matter of how a person is willing to share his or her private information and control who can access that information. With internet being able to store records of everything (online photo, status update, post or any blog entry) and information gets stored forever, everyone should be careful on publishing these information about themselves and not to be a victim of one.

This week is my presentation sharing with the class, the revolutionary change of web 2.0 to web 3.0 in the near future. Web 2.0 is all about the user-generated content and read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through social networking sites or other sites like Youtube, Flickr. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in this era.

So what’s new about Web 3.0? In short, this can also be named as the semantic web (adding meaning of data), personalization (iGoogle), intelligent search (search engine understands the general knowledge of language and knows what the users likes and dislikes) and behavioral advertising among other things. It is also believed to be the most comprehensive vision of Internet’s future available as of 2010 - and this is now we rule the internet of tomorrow.

Rate: 9/10

I feel that the individual presentations should be appointed not more than 5 persons in each session as the class will usually restless towards the end of the class. However being the last presenter, it gets hard to pull their full attention to my speech. In addition, due to time constraints, the discussion I had with the class was insufficient and I believe more interesting discussions on web 3.0 could be raised. I hope we could work this out by allocating strict time allocation for each individual on the following lessons.

Lesson 4

Drivers of World Change

Summary and Thoughts: Drivers of world change as well as Change management and Change Leadership is said to have take place in the process of change that is happening now. Drivers of change series give us an opportunity to stimulate thought and create conversations around the world. There is no doubt that our environment has transformed for the better, transformed from a local phenomenon to a global one. We are now confronted with more pressing social, technological, economic, environmental and political change forcing us to shift to a local mindset to a global scale. Everything here seems to be a cycle and view is now on a big macro picture. “Think globally - act locally” - quoted from the rally cry of UN and other global environmental initiatives, coined in 1972 by philosopher and UN advisor Rene Dubos. This becomes more than an empty slogan but now an urgent statement.

Look around us. The material used on our infrastructure, waste we have created, food that we are eating ... In this increasingly interconnected world, what defines our environment? Increasing environmental pollution? Global warming disaster? Progressive, developed, local and national governments are taking the initiative and setting examples of sustainability from a governance standpoint. In Singapore, our government is gearing towards a eco-friendly approach towards individual practice and industrial level which is a step closer to building a sustainable world and imbuing social responsibilities to individual to save the earth. But to some extent, the main motive behind business is the profit margin and potential growth. After all, is this how businesses strive to survive in the market? I believe only big organizations are able to afford spending big bucks in their Research and Development (R&D) in working towards the sustainability aim.

Change in management and Changing Leadership

Summary and Thoughts: The second half of the class addressed the issues to it. Business should be working towards a continual and highly responsive change in the environment, but not by sticking to the traditional business operation model of freeze-unfreeze-refreeze that we had previously discussed in class. Organization must be open to new ideas and map out a clear sense of directions they are heading to. “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory” - W. Edwards Deming

The two dimensions of performance: Efficiency and Effectiveness are often used together. This in turn has narrowly based our thinking of performance – we have come to believe that efficiency and effectiveness is all there is to performance.

The Efficiency and Effectiveness Cliche

According to the article, while efficiency and effectiveness are necessary dimensions to define performance, they are not sufficient for long-term success. Without flexibility, processes become rigid to the time and place in which they operate. What is today, an effcient and effective process, can become stale and unproductive overnight. The answer to this is the ability to be flexibility that allow a business to sustain a long term survival. The challenge is never preparing for what you do know, it is preparing for what you don’t.

I feel that our prof can spend more time on the introductory remarks, as I find some of the concepts taught are very useful and adaptable to the change now. Lesson is interesting especially when videos are shown. Overall, I would rate 8/10.

Lesson 3

Technology and Industrial Development: Towards Sustainability

Thoughts: In the economic development, it is fundamentally a process of structural form of transformation going on that involves reallocation of productive factors from traditional to modern agriculture, industry and services, and the reallocation of those factors among industrial and service sector activities. If successful in its growth, this process requires shifting resources from low to high productivity sectors. When such industrial development has had become an important role in the economic growth of countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia, do such countries still work towards the efforts of sustainability?

In class, we discussed extensively on the importance of not tapping into resources from the future generations to meet own needs, through the use of renewable resources and be environmental friendly. Everyone agrees that sustainable development ties in together the concerns of using our environmental limits with regards to the economy and society. With the problem that that our world is facing now, relating to the human activity not using its natural resources at the rate at which they can be replenished naturally, the earth would theoretically be unable to sustain human life in the long run. Besides, one of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. They will last quite a while but will probably run out in tens to hundreds years later. Also, Prof had mentioned that solar energy can be further developed in years to come so that its high cost could be significantly reduced just like the chip example. We had also touched on the discussions of implementing nuclear energy plant that we can potentially look into. Before I go into making my own stand, I read up more on the nuclear industry, which has been around for 56 years, in order to know more information on it before I make a biased judgment, after hearing the negative impacts on the nuclear plants in the past especially the explosion incident.

I feel that we can tap on the advantages of using nuclear energy before its too late, before we run into the “dark doom” stage desperately finding for alternatives on renewable resources. True enough people will question how about the nuclear waste? Nothing is perfectly safe but they are safe enough to be relied upon as a source of energy. Countries that need it the most will continue to use it. For instance, France gets 77% of its electricity from nuclear reactors and the rest from hydroelectric. Japan, with little domestic coal and no oil, is close to 30% and increasing steadily. Most nuclear accidents occurred in the nuclear reactors. Majority are caused by the design or operator errors. Radiation leaks can also occur because of earthquakes, poor waste storage practices or terrorist attacks. The most important safety goal is to maintain the proper operation of the reactor cooling systems. Furthermore, the use of nuclear energy does not produce carbon dioxide into atmosphere which we would not want to be zapped by the greenhouse effect, wouldn’t we? I am supportive on building of such plants for the world’s sustainability.

Sustainability explained through animation


Technology and Innovative Management

I agree with Prof that innovation should be market-driven, even though the reserve way does work. The potential target audience already exists before firm's marketing department deploys advertising techniques to capture the demand from the market place. People are willing to buy your product even it is capped at a high selling price - a good illustration is Apple company selling Iphone/Ipad.

Overall, I rate the lesson 7/10.

Sustainability requires a shift from linear to circular thinking.

Old indstrial model = Economic Dev VS Environment Dev

Sustainable industrial = Economic Dev AND Environment Dev

Dr Shahi

Lesson 2

Technology, Society and Global Dominance (economic, military, cultural)

My thoughts: The change with regards to technology evolves from Globalization. This term can relate to any of several levels of aggregation - the world, a country, a company or even a specific line of business or functional activity within the company. Is the world truly becoming more global? Clearly we can see countries' GDP gowth is largely measured by the exports and imports of the countries, and with the fast pace of globalization figures are raising high. In class, we discussed interesting concepts of model (rising stars, dominant players and falling stars). Some of the dominant nations - China, India and raising star Singapore are countries that are categorized as leaders in their areana willing to learn and are optimistic in adopting new ideas. These countries are getting more competitive and working towards the globalizational goals. But when it comes to USA, it becomes questionable as to whether will they still remain leader in the near future? Or becoming a falling star in years to come? I believe only time is going to tell.

Technology and Human Development

My thoughts: Human development is all about people, about how people can create and use technology to improve their lives. It is also about forging new public policies to lead the revolutions in information and communications technology and biotechnology in the direction of human development. Many people fear that these technologies may be of little use to the developing world—or that they might actually widen the already savage inequalities between North and South, rich and poor. Without innovative public policy, these technologies could become a source of exclusion, not a tool of progress. The needs of poor people could remain neglected, new global risks left unmanaged. But the rewards could be greater than the risks if it managed well. I firmly believe that with such aid, the poor people are able to raise their standards of living with a healthier lives, longer life span, greater social freedom, increased knowledge and more productive livelihoods. Throughout history, we have seen, technology has been a powerful tool for human development and poverty reduction.

Is HDI a good indicator to measure Human Development? Many have different definitions of happiness.

What is happy without money? What is happy without your love ones? What is happy without a healthy body? In my opinion, happiness can be in tangible (money, family, beautiful house etc) and intangible forms(education, knowledge, health, opportunities etc). What's yours then?

Prof later moved on to the millenium development goals (MDG) youtube video clip. Personally, I feel that these goals ae possible to achieve if every nation put in an collective efforts in making this work in raising awareness and provide hands-on support to these needy. Government corruption in the developing countries should also be put to a stop.Tackling goverance issues within their system may not be easy but only inadequate goverance linvaiably leads to ineffective use of available resources.Weakness in these areas will therefore translates into weak policy commitments and poor service provision towards attainment of the MDGs.

Overall, I find this week lesson interesting especially when knowledge is shared by the presenters and engaging discussions. I would rate 7.5/10.


" Change is inevitable and often necessary; the transition process can often be difficult or painful (for some)"

                                                                                                         Dr Shahi

Change is always happening and it happens so frequent that you will not notice the changing process that has already been taken place.

Cool Technology to Share

Click here to watch : Modern furniture using technologies

Lesson 1

There are some key topics and interesting observations being discussed: 

Deeper understanding on technology and world change 
I feel that globalization era is marked by the rapid technology advancement. There is no one avoiding technology aid in their daily life. Almost all people's needs are successfully fulfilled by technology and these technology advancement has made people's job much easier. Day by day, we will see new technologies springing up, taking shape and literally transforming our entire world. Discoveries are made on a daily basis in all areas of technology. Human curiosity and passion are shaping these new developments with the world. However, with the new advance in technology being introduced at greater and greater speeds, are today's workers able to learn new technology every few months? How can we learn to embrace change and acclimate to new technologies as they emerge? I feel that this is a great challenge - changing nature of time and pace. People need to see it as a must to recognize, embrace and after which the willingness to open up and accept the changes made. People can look on the positive impacts technologies bring great help to them (efficient work, faster speed) and with a big hope to help people to be smart both heart and mind. 

The future of the Human Race
I agree with the class that technologies can bring negative impacts to human race when one rely too much on the advantages of what technologies. Examples: Convenience (instant information - internet, e-mail, blackberries, instant messaging, blogs, web conferencing and wikis), Ease of transportation etc.Having to receive these benefits, it was not the main purpose of creating generations of lazy people. I totally agree that it is by choice that we choose to become fat and later on lead to obesity-related problems. In this fast-paced modern society, facing the obesity epidemic of the early 21st century would be a norm if we find excuses eating convenient/ fast food food or finding less ways not to move around from point to point using technologies. This might question us whether do we have the time to prepare a healthy balanced meal? Majority would response that the time constraint factors that restricted them to eat grab-and-go food to settle for their daily meals. There should be a good balance in their work life by doing exercise. Relating to technologies, I believe people are over-using technologies which result to this outcome. The big hope in technology must be accompanied by the realizing of the “bad impacts” which are possibly produced by the technology. After realizing the bad impacts, then we must think the continuous actions to prevent them. Automatically, it is needed maturity and knowledge as well. For example, we must think over and over again about the impact of fast food. Besides, we have to prepare ourselves to be ready in facing particular effects brought by technology through doing some useful activities such as learning ways to prevent the bad effects of the technology - keep a healthy lifestyle by exercising in this case.

Overall I find the class interesting. In fact, it was an eye-opening and insightful knowledge shared among our classmates and a good flow of discussions raised by Dr Shahi. I feel that the videos shown during class get everyone's attention and thinking, and definitely would want to see more of it during the upcoming lessons. I would rate this lesson a 7 out of 10.



Useful link relating technology news: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html