Issue Archive: January/February 2008
Cover Story
Buffy Rojas
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia or CHOP as it is commonly known is a truly outstanding institution. In 2007, for the fifth consecutive year, U.S.News & World Report ranked CHOP the best hospital for children in the United States. Child magazine bestowed a similar honor. The oldest U.S. hospital dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, CHOP is an undisputed world leader in the advancement of healthcare for children.
Here's just a smidgen of what the people at CHOP do: "Physician-researchers draw on the latest available information about the human genome to customize therapies to variations in genetic makeup. Oncologists are working on therapeutic vaccines for children that teach patients' healthy cells to recognize and fight cancer. Other researchers are investigating prenatal stem-cell transplants to improve treatments for a variety of diseases including muscular dystrophy, leukemia, and sickle cell disease." Simply put, CHOP is committed to researching and finding cures for chronic and fatal pediatric illnesses.
Features
Mark Hughes and Robert DiLossi
The more things change, the more they (must) stay the same. As an industry, we’ve gone through significant leaps and bounds to make disaster recovery and business continuity easier. But an Achilles heel of many organizations is the tendency to focus on the latest and greatest technology, without paying due attention to the equally critical components of people, processes, and planning. In fact, as technology grows more complex and advanced, there’s an even greater likelihood organizations won’t pay enough attention to these elements because they erroneously think that technology has the job covered.
Harvey Betan
First responders, such as police, fire, and emergency medical technicians, are a welcome sight after an event occurs. We now live in a world where we need these individuals to not only react as they have been trained to do in the past but also take on a different role – that of possibly preventing events. The new environment in which we find ourselves requires us to be more lenient and accept certain limits to privacy and individual rights. In no way does this mean we must forgo these rights, but instead learn to live with the reasons behind relaxing them for the benefit or safety of others.
Brian Zawada
I was asked by a number of readers, as well as the staff at Continuity Insights, to "predict" some of the trends we, as business continuity professionals, will deal with in 2008. In preparation for this column, I spoke with a number of leading practitioners, and generally it was agreed that very little will change in 2008 – many of the key issues that emerged in the latter half of 2007 will continue to take shape. It also was agreed that despite the lack of new trends for '08, we will be dealing with some of the most significant issues our industry has ever faced.
Chris Scheffler
Have you ever wondered how the media is able to report damage estimates within hours of an earthquake or immediately after a hurricane makes landfall? They can do this by using sophisticated natural hazard consequence models. These models, previously used only by insurance companies and the like, now are available to business continuity professionals to guide our planning for complex exposures such as natural catastrophes. We’ve all seen the results of earthquake and hurricane modeling, and this article will describe how these models work and how BC professionals are using them to plan for disasters.
Staff
Our Editorial Advisory Board Tackles Your Tough Questions
John Jackson
Welcome back to my column of trends and directions in the continuity industry. I’d like to ask you to take a more participatory role in reading this article. Please let me know what you think of my perspectives — good and bad — and offer up some of your own thoughts that I can share in future articles on this topic.
