Healthcare fined for fraud

A healthcare training supplies firm has been forced to pay more than £19 000, after it was found to be using unlicensed Microsoft and Adobe software by the Business Software Alliance, reveals eWeek.

OCB Media specialises in producing medical training systems for healthcare professionals. The Leicester-based firm agreed a £7 800 settlement with the BSA, and also purchased licenses for ongoing use of the software, to the tune of £11 500.

“Although OCB Media cooperated fully with the process, this case shows that businesses that fail to comply with software copyright legislation are increasingly vulnerable to legal action,” says Michala Wardell, chair of the BSA UK Committee. The abuse of intellectual property rights is a serious offence and we want to make it clear that the use of unlicensed software will not be accepted.”

Oracle has released tape hardware designed to deliver unprecedented storage capacity and data transfer speed, says Computing.

Oracle says the new technology should be particularly attractive to the hard-pressed healthcare sector because the cost of providing power and cooling for comparable disk systems is very expensive.

Quocirca service director for business process analysis, Clive Longbottom, says there is still a significant market for tape that Oracle could tap into.

Xhead = 2011 promising for M&A

This year may showcase larger parade of M&A deals based on the health care IT play, and ever-bigger deals as the industry consolidates its arguably scarce commodity, notes The Street.

"M&A activity in the health care IT industry will rise to dizzying heights [in 2011]," says Leo Carpio, health care analyst at Caris & Company.

Last year, the HITECH program (the federal stimulus system intended to spur the evolution of an information age medical industry) fuelled healthy M&A activity. Interest in deals should be sustained with the first HITECH program checks actually being cut and mailed out to recipients in 2011.