Compliantly

Several major technology companies are notably absent from the EHR Stimulus Alliance, a newly formed group that aims to educate U.S. doctors about the benefits of electronic health records.

The alliance, which promises to educate 500,000 physicians about EHR in 200 days, includes companies such as Nuance, Intel, Dell and Microsoft. Missing from the list are major EHR players such as Cerner, Google and GE, which recently launched "Healthymagination," a long-term, $6-billion commitment to improve health information technology. Also missing is Medsphere, a promising start-up trying to help hospitals implement VistA, an open-source EHR system. The alliance did not respond to a question about the group's membership.

The EHR Stimulus Alliance has planned briefings, roundtables, presentations and webcasts on the benefits of EHR. The group also hopes to inform medical professionals about government incentives available to doctors who adopt electronic health records.

The massive effort is a sign of how anxious companies are to get a slice of the EHR pie. President Barack Obama is making a push to digitize all health records by 2014 and has allotted $20 billion dollars in the stimulus bill that will go toward transitioning to EHR. 

Some observers have reacted with dismay to parts of yesterday's subcommittee meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee, in which Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) expressed concern that online media may not maintain the same high standards of journalism that he believes print media has.

Players in the online media world have hammered newspapers and magazines for years, saying that they are too large and dinosaur-like. Yesterday's meeting brought out a new wave of criticism.

Gabe Rivera, the founder of Techmeme and several other niche news aggregators, hinted that the current rounds of layoffs that many newspapers are going through are necessary.

"Kerry's premise is false. They weren't competitive. There was redundancy. Trimming the fat yields a competitive organization," he wrote on Twitter.

In his testimony, Sen. Kerry also said steps need to be taken to make sure news media stays diverse and independent.

Implying that the Internet already lets consumers access diverse sources of news, Mike Steib, director of TV Ads at Google tweeted, "There are 90 feeds in my Google Reader."

The hearing was prompted by the crisis facing traditional media outlets, especially newspapers and magazines, as advertisers and readers have migrated to the Web. Close to 9,000 layoffs and buyouts have occurred in 2009 alone at U.S. newspapers, according to Paper Cuts, a blog about the news industry. 

But some see opportunities in the disruption of the news industry. 

Journalist David Cohn, founder of community journalism website Spot.Us, believes that this is an exciting time for news media.

"I think what journalism needs is 10,000 different start-ups," he told CNN.

Chinese outsourcer Neusoft is pushing to expand in Europe and the U.S. ahead of an upswing in outsourcing the firm expects after the global recession.

Neusoft, one of China's bigger outsourcers, has appointed new top executives in Europe and the U.S. in recent months to help crack those markets, said Walter Fang, the U.S. head for Neusoft since last fall. That will diversify foreign clients for the firm, which drew 80 percent of its overseas revenue from Japanese firms last year, he said.

"Outsourcing will probably surge after the crisis is over," said Fang.

Outsourcing has suffered along with the global economy, but a continued need for cost-cutting at firms will help the industry rebound, Fang said. Rising pressure for firms to quickly develop products that keep up with changing technology will also boost outsourcing demand, he said.

Neusoft's main business is in embedded software outsourcing. It counts Intel and Nokia among its clients, though Chinese customers last year accounted for two-thirds of its revenue of 3.7 billion yuan (US$544 million).

India remains the top offshoring choice for most firms despite saturation in its market and a recent financial scandal at outsourcer Satyam Computer Services. Almost all of Neusoft's U.S. clients have outsourced to India or say they think about doing so, Fang said.

But China is among countries including Vietnam and Mexico that will benefit as customers start to consider destinations besides India, said Frances Karamouzis, a Gartner analyst. China offers a large pool of untapped, cheap labor and better infrastructure than India in telecommunications and transportation.

Offshoring to China is especially attractive for firms like financial service providers that aim to build their businesses in the country, Karamouzis said.

China's outsourcing appeal still suffers from weak enforcement of intellectual property laws. Clients rely on the internal standards of outsourcers rather than China's courts to shield against the loss of trade secrets, said Karamouzis. The outsourcers with such mature standards are usually U.S. or Indian firms with operations in China, she said.

Neusoft has worked to shake free of China's reputation by conforming to industry standards for the protection of intellectual property, Fang said. Neusoft is one of the few firms allowed access to the source code for Symbian, the operating system used by Nokia's smartphones, he said.

Neusoft's work on Symbian occurs in a restricted access room built to meet security needs. The room's computers are blocked from networks in other areas and made without USB ports to guard against the copying of data, Fang said.