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Ebracing the data waves: County firms finding
role in informatics
By DAVID E. LEIVA
Staff Writer
For thousands of years, Egyptians had to
cope with the Nile River flooding. Every year, the 4,200 miles of
water would wipe out crops and erase land boundaries.
But the
Egyptians learned to live with it, embrace it, and even take
advantage of it. They had no choice because they would never be able
to rid themselves of the annual deluge. Eventually, they developed
new tools and math to harness the flooding and cultivated a society
that flourished,
Information, according to one technology
expert, is no different. The key for technology companies is to act
like the Egyptians and embrace the wave of data.
"You're
never going to get rid of the flood of information," said Michael
Dunn, dean of the Indiana University School of Informatics. "Ride
the wave. Don't think you're going to avoid it. Be able to channel
all that information in ways that are structured in new ways of
dealing with all that force and volume of that wave to help your
business."
Dr. Dunn relayed his message to about 100 Anne
Arundel County business executives this month at an Anne Arundel
Tech Council seminar. It came a little more than a year after a top
National Security Agency official dropped a one-word bomb on the
same crowd: informatics - the study of billions and billions of bits
of information and turning it into news that can be
used.
Eric Haseltine, NSA associate director of research,
said in November 2004 it was possible for the "informatics
corridor," which encompasses the county, to surpass the success and
notoriety of California's high-tech valley.
Particularly
since this region - a kidney bean-shaped area that stretches to
Northern Virginia - includes the Central Intelligence Agency,
Homeland Security Department, the National Institutes of Health, NSA
and major research universities.
The matter becomes more
daunting because there's a large disconnect between the data load
and the capacity to handle the growing information, which triples
every couple of months, according to one estimate.
Couple
that task with getting a handle on which technology companies fall
under the informatics umbrella has been tougher than anticipated.
Especially since informatics has been largely associated with the
health care industry for the past decade.
"But that is not
the case anymore, it's already expanded way out," said Laura
Willoughby, executive director of the Tech Council. "There are so
many different industries it applies to now and many converge here
in Anne Arundel County and the surrounding areas."
Randy
Boldyga, president of RxNT, a Pasadena electronic prescription
software company, didn't know he was a member of the informatics
community until he answered a recent survey.
His company
tracks medical information of several million patients. Today, most
patients get handwritten prescriptions from doctors and take it to a
pharmacist. RxNT handles this procedure online for 10,000 doctors
across the country in 47 states.
"What ATMs did for the
banking system, RxNT does for the health care industry," Mr. Boldyga
said.
Other applications include defense, finance,
agricultural, manufacturing and, even, eventually,
consumers.
Bruce McIndoe, chief executive of iJET Intelligent
Risk Systems of Annapolis, said informatics is as simple as analyzed
information.
"A piece of information, you can be lucky to
give it away," Mr. McIndoe explained. "Analyzed information is 10
times more valuable than raw information. Analyzed information
linked to business objectives is even 100 times more
valuable."
That's the business model of iJET, a private
intelligence agency for 400 multinational corporations, complete
with field agents, subject-matter experts and analysts. The company
produces a daily newsletter.
"Our job is to know what's
brewing, what is likely to happen so they can prepare and avoid,"
Mr. McIndoe said.
Dan Buan, president of Buan Consulting,
sees informatics differently from other companies.
"We're
organizing unstructured data, data that hasn't been organized into a
database," he said.
His West Annapolis firm has a five year,
$1 million contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Later this year, he will unveil a program to help advance search for
EDGAR filings, where companies' quarterly, annual and special
documents are kept. It has historically been a "hodgepodge" of
arcane systems, he said.
"The quality of searches are not
good," Mr. Buan said because many public companies are dumping
everything, including business brochures, into this electronic
database.
More on informatics
According to Michael
Dunn, dean of the Indiana University School of Informatics,
informatics connects people in different discipline areas through
information technology.
The focus is on the use of
sophisticated applications, and the development of new applications.
Here's a look at some common fields of informatics research and
development:
Bioinformatics - Information science applied to
biology. It is particularly important as an adjunct to genomics
research, because of the large amount of complex data this research
generates.
Chemical informatics - Acquires, organizes and
evaluates massive amounts of physical and chemical property data
generated each year to yield new insights for further chemical
research.
Cybersecurity - The branch of security dealing with
digital or information technology.
Data visualization -
Presenting data and summary information using graphics, animation,
3-D displays and other multimedia tools.
Data mining - The
process of analyzing data to identify patterns or
relationships.
Health informatics - Often called medical
informatics or biomedical informatics, the generation and use of
health care data and related
information.
dleiva@capitalgazette.com
Published March
13, 2006, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2006
Capital-Gazette Communications, Inc.
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