Wal-Mart & The Future Of Health Care

From in-store health care clinics to eyeglasses, from flu shots to urgent care, Wal-Mart has its designs on leveraging its 4000 stores into the largest force in American healthcare. How does this affect you and your industry? What are their motivations?

In 10 short years Wal-Mart become the second largest force in optometry. Their $4 prescription plan changed the face of the prescription industry.

Will Wal-Mart become the largest referral source in medicine through their 2000 planned retail health clinics? Will Wal-Mart "Mom and Pop" certain specialties into economic hardship? How will Wal-Mart's plans for Electronic Health Records (EHR) affect physician providers?

Ron's one-hour presentation "Wal-Mart & The Future of Healthcare" addresses these questions and more as you are compelled to face a new competitive force on the horizon.

Trends In Electronic Medical Records

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is one of the areas of most intense interest in healthcare this year, due in large part to attention paid to it by the new administration. Nearly $19 billion in tax inventives are being directed to EMR adoption by hospitals and physicians.

In this presentation, Ron takes a look at 3 trends that are converging to dramatically affect this area of intense interest. First is the emergence of open source standards (OSS) in EMR software. Companies such as Microsoft and other software vendors are pushing proprietary formats for records, the analogy being the ".doc" standard in word processing. Open source advocates, including Google, are pushing for a single open standard for EMR files. Billions of dollars are at stake. Who has the advantage? Will the VA's Vista format prevail?

The second major trend in EMR is the reconciliation of privacy standards as regards the individual records themselves. How does HIPAA apply? How do individual state regulations inhibit or help the adoption of EMR? Who owns the records themselves? Are they the intellectual property of the hospital, physician, or patient? As Personal Health Records (PHR), as inplemented by Google and Dossia, increase in popularity will there be a conflict between PHR's and EMR's?

Finally, Ron will examine the role of semantics, or "tagging" of information contained in the records, and the huge part this overlooked component of EMR 2.0 will play in the coherence of EMRs, and the reason why tagging may ultimately be the driving factor in the growth of the EMR industry.

Future Money: Virtual Currencies & Payment Systems

Money is a medium of exchange. The exchange is still taking place but the “mediums” are rapidly changing. From stored value cards, to mobile device payments systems, the very nature of money is changing. The “QQ’” a virtual currency in China, is so popular it is having an effect on the money supply. A $195 million dollar bank run occurred inside a video game. Google, Paypal, and Amazon want to be your wallet. Ron examines these new forms of “Future money” and assesses their impact on our financial system.

Boxed In: Competitive Threats to Financial Services Firms

From Wal-Mart to Google, Paypal to Amazon, more and more businesses are leveraging information technology and distribution to enter the retail financial services industry.Assets are the name of the game in financial services, and there is increased pressure as financial service firms, "non-bank" banks, and now retailers are leveraging their existing distribution "footprints" to grab more of the pie.

For example, if just 5% of the people who walk into one of Wal-Mart's 4000 stores in one week opened a $3000 deposit account in a "Wal-Mart Bank," the company would raise $22 billion that week alone. Wal-Mart withdrew their ILC application, but GMAC, Merrill Lynch, and Target all have ILCs. The assets of all ILCs chartered in Utah are 12 times the assets of all Utah banks, S&L's and credit unions combined.

Meanwhile, Paypal and Google have developed payment systems that do a complete end-around the traditional banking system. All the while hedge funds use their huge, unregulated pools of capital to draw assets away from banking.

Find out how you can compete with the overwhelming distribution and resources of these emerging threats in this presentation.

The Top 12 Tech Trends Of 2009 & How You Can Benefit From Them

The past year has brought forth startling changes in technology. You can shake your iPhone and it will recommend restaurants near your physical location. Have your DNA analyzed for $300 and find out if your prone to cancer. 250 million people in China use virtual cash instead of Chinese currency. Online news sites are destroying the newspaper industry. Cars talk to you. The Amazon Kindle is changing the way we read and buy books. Google can predict flu outbreaks faster than the CDC.

It's a brave new fascinating world out there, and in this 60 minute presentation Ron Galloway looks forward to 2009 and predicts the top technology trends and how you can adapt to, and prosper from these new innovations. For example, will Twitter become a primary tool for communicating? Will artificial intelligence "bots" manage and trade funds for traders? Will cable companies adoption of IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) allow you to have their own low cost cable channel that customers can watch and communicate through? Will debit cards contain member healthcare information? Will the mobile phone finally become your "wallet?"

Ron is a graduate of Georgia Tech, writes on technology for the Huffington Post, and revels in all things nerd. "The Top 12 Technology Trends For 2009 & How Credit Unions Can Benefit From Them" is a fun, informative, forward-looking presentation that will have your attendees talking for quite a while.