In an interview with CNET, the mobile-chip maker's president, Derek Aberle, discusses his company's strategy to grow in 2015, as well as its China troubles.

Qualcomm's booth at CES 2015, filled with robots, wearables, VR goggles, a car and plenty more. Sarah Tew/CNET

LAS VEGAS -- The brightly colored Qualcomm booth at this year's Consumer Electronics Show packed in a panoply of gadgets: There was a red-dragon robot, a blue connected car with Qualcomm's logo splashed across the hood and disembodied mannequin hands in glass cases wearing a range of smartwatches.

As thousands of people walked through the loud and sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center -- with Qualcomm's space right in the middle of the chaos -- Derek Aberle, the company's president, sat in a quiet meeting room tucked in the back of the expansive booth to discuss his company's strategies for 2015.

As the booth illustrated, Qualcomm -- already the world's biggest maker of mobile chips -- is hoping to use its wealth of research in mobile devices to become the company powering wearables, robots, cars, medical technologies and more.

Aberle at Qualcomm's CES 2015 press conference, where he discussed the company's plans to expand into a lot more areas this year. Josh Miller/CNET

"We look at it and say, OK, with a relatively small incremental investment and the right go-to-market," Aberle said of Qualcomm's push into new tech sectors, "we can capture a pretty big opportunity, just leveraging this massive investment we made because of the scale of the smartphone business."

Qualcomm's expansion effort comes as tech firms scramble to connect millions of objects to the Web -- an idea known as the Internet of Things -- creating vast new ground for chipmakers like Qualcomm to gain new business. While the Internet of Things area offers huge potential, its already invited plenty of competition from Qualcomm's rivals. For example, fellow chipmaker Intel -- whose booth was stationed right next to Qualcomm's on the convention floor -- constructed a booth just as broad and filled with all kinds of connected devices.

It's clear why these companies are so keen to stake a claim in this area: the market for Internet of Things is expected to grow to $3.04 trillion by 2020, according to market research firm IDC.

While Qualcomm tries to capture a piece of all these new markets, the maker of Snapdragon mobile chips has been distracted by an ongoing investigation by Chinese regulators. Officials there have spent more than a year looking into whether the chipmaker's lucrative licensing business runs afoul of the country's anti-monopoly laws. Aberle couldn't say when the investigation might be resolved, but he said it was unlikely any negative outcome out of China would -- as some analysts predict -- create a domino effect, with fines or new limitations spreading to more countries.

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For Qualcomm, health care, autos represent the next ...

Medicare's top administrator unexpectedly resigned Friday, becoming the latest casualty in the turmoil over the president's health care law, which is still struggling for acceptance even as millions benefit from expanded coverage.

Marilyn Tavenner's departure underscores the uncertainty overshadowing President Barack Obama's health care law nearly five years after its party-line passage by a then-Democratic-led Congress. The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the legality of the law's financial subsidies this spring, and a new Republican Congress is preparing more repeal votes.

A former intensive care nurse with a businesslike approach to a divisive area of public policy, Tavenner told staff in an email that she's stepping down at the end of February with "sadness and mixed emotions." Her chief of staff is also leaving.

Tavenner, 63, survived the technology meltdown that initially paralyzed HealthCare.gov. She remained in place even as her boss, former Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, left office following signals of White House unhappiness.

But Tavenner was embarrassed last fall when she testified to Congress that 7.3 million people were fully enrolled for private coverage under the health law. That number turned out to be an over-count that exaggerated the total by about 400,000 people. The error, discovered by Republican congressional staff, was termed "unacceptable" by new HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.

Tavenner had a played a key role in the 2013 decision to go live with HealthCare.gov, signing a required cybersecurity clearance after technology professionals under her balked because testing was incomplete. The website later passed security tests and received full authority to operate.

In her farewell message, Tavenner termed the health law's online insurance markets "a success." But she also said her job, which involves oversight of Medicare and Medicaid as well, was a "huge and complex responsibility" and "we had many additional challenges put before us" because of Obama's health law. Roughly 1 in 3 Americans are covered by health insurance programs run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Despite Tavenner's close association with "Obamacare," some senior Republicans in Congress said they were sorry to see her leave.

"She has proven herself to be a strong leader and a straight shooter who brought in much-needed private sector sensibility into the agency," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement. "I truly appreciate her service and wish her the very best in her next adventure."

But former House oversight chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said, "Tavenner had to go." The over-count, discovered by his staff, "was a deplorable example of an agency trying to scam the American people," Issa said. The administration insists it was only a mistake, resulting from a double-count of people with dental coverage.

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Medicare Chief Steps Down, Ran Health Care Rollout - ABC News

A revised contract that would provide health care benefits to retired Scranton police officers could be a future budget buster that would cripple the city financially for decades to come, a Times-Tribune analysis shows.

Mayor Bill Courtrights administration has touted the deal as a significant breakthrough that will save the city up to $4.5 million over the life of the contract. Those savings dont account for the possibility the city could be obligated to pay costly health care benefits for decades to come, however.

The debate centers on how many people will qualify for the benefits. The citys analysis is based on six people being eligible for the benefits, but that assumes the city will be able to remove the perk after the contract expires in 2021. If the city cannot, it would be obligated to pay the benefits to 99 current employees in the ensuing decades, the newspapers review found.

The mindset is the union will give it back. Thats just not the way it works, said Councilman Wayne Evans, one of three council members who voted Thursday to table a vote on the memorandum of understanding that would alter the current contract. Its very hard to get any kind of concession. Thats a very, very attractive benefit. ... Once its in there, thats a budget buster and something the city could not sustain.

The health care provision is among several enhanced benefits the city offered in exchange for concessions from police that Police Chief Carl Graziano estimated could save $4.5 million. The citys labor attorney, Edwin Abrahamsen, previously estimated the savings at $750,000 to $1 million a year. That analysis did not include all costs and revenue, however.

Mr. Grazianos savings include $1.3 million from eliminating a minimum manning clause, roughly $846,000 from other staffing changes and $2.5 million in increased revenue from parking violations that will result from having two civilians dedicated to writing tickets.

The analysis, which was provided to council on Thursday, did not include a deduction for the cost of the health care benefits. Mr. Abrahamsen on Friday said he estimated that cost would be $445,000 over a 10-year-period, which would start in 2020 and 2021 the first year anyone would qualify for the benefit.

That calculation is based on the assumption only two of the six officers who are eligible will actually retire, he said. Even if all six retire, the cost would be $1.3 million over 10 years.

Mr. Evans and councilmen Joe Wechsler,Bill Gaughan and Bob McGoff said that cost, if accurate, might be manageable. The question, they said, is whether the city can afford to gamble that it will be able to halt the health care benefits in the future.

The contract would provide the benefits to officers who were hired after Jan. 1, 1994 and retire with 25 years of service. The benefit would extend to those employees spouses. The city requires officers be age 55 with 25 years before they can receive their pension. The age requirement was removed for the health care benefits, however, which means an officer could retire before age 55. He or she would not receive their monthly pension until 55, but the city would be obligated to immediately pay their health care until they reach Medicare age, currently 65.

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Health care benefits in police contract could be budget buster

AP Photo/Don Ryan, File FILE - This Nov. 12, 2014 file photo shows the HealthCare.gov website, where people can buy health insurance, on a laptop screen, shown in Portland, Ore. A little-known side to the governments health insurance website, HealthCare.gov, is prompting renewed concerns about privacy, just as the White House is calling for stronger cybersecurity protections for consumers.

WASHINGTON A little-known side to the government's health insurance website is prompting renewed concerns about privacy, just as the White House is calling for stronger cybersecurity protections for consumers.

It works like this: When you apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, dozens of data companies may be able to tell that you are on the site. Some can even glean details such as your age, income, ZIP code, whether you smoke or if you are pregnant.

The data firms have embedded connections on the government site. Ever-evolving technology allows for individual Internet users to be tracked, building profiles that are a vital tool for advertisers.

Connections to multiple third-party tech firms were documented by technology experts who analyzed HealthCare.gov, and confirmed by The Associated Press. There is no evidence that personal information from HealthCare.gov has been misused, but the number of outside connections is raising questions.

"As I look at vendors on a website...they could be another potential point of failure," said corporate cybersecurity consultant Theresa Payton. "Vendor management can often be the weakest link in your privacy and security chain."

A former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, she said the large number of outside connections on HealthCare.gov seems like "overkill" and makes it "kind of an outlier" among government websites.

The privacy concerns come against the backdrop of President Barack Obama's new initiative to protect personal data online, a highlight of his State of the Union message scheduled for Tuesday night. The administration is getting the health care website ready for the final enrollment drive of 2015, aiming to have more than 9 million people signed up by Feb. 15 for subsidized private coverage.

Medicare spokesman Aaron Albright said outside vendors "are prohibited from using information from these tools on HealthCare.gov for their companies' purposes." The government uses them to measure the performance of HealthCare.gov so consumers get "a simpler, more streamlined and intuitive experience," he added.

The administration did not explain how it ensures that privacy and security policies are being followed.

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New privacy concerns over government's health care website

Through the first 11 months of 2014 the first full year of Medicaid expansion in Ohio statewide employment in health care and social assistance, which includes jobs at hospitals, doctors offices and other facilities providing medical care, rose by about 7,000 positions, according to figures from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.

Thats up about 1 percent from job growth in the health sector for the same period a year ago, and just slightly below the full-year forecast. The figures, however, do not reflect jobs created in other sectors that benefit indirectly from increased health care spending.

The influx of federal dollars into Ohio to fund the expansion of Medicaid was projected to boost employment in health care and other industries by at least 9,000 jobs by the end of last year, according to economic impact studies from the Urban Institute and Regional Economic Modeling Inc.

When additional funds are coming in for any particular type of programyou would expect to see job growth tied to additional expenditures in those areas, said Richard Stock, director of the Business Research Group at the University of Dayton. That would be as true for something like the Affordable Care Act and increases in Medicaid spending as for (U.S. Department of Defense) spending.

Still, its hard to say exactly what percentage of job growth can be attributed to the $2.5 billion in extra Medicaid funds Ohio accepted to expand Medicaid eligibility.

An improving economy has boosted overall job growth and is at least partly responsible for growth in the health care sector.

But the addition to Ohios Medicaid rolls of more than 450,000 residents, who became newly eligible last year under guidelines granting coverage to most adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, has created a huge group of new health care consumers who are driving hiring at local medical practices.

Over the past two years, our Medicaid volume has increased steadily.and we have services in place that required additional staffing, said Holly Card, director of oncology services at Dayton Physicians Network, the largest oncology practice in the local area.

Robin Arthur, a recent hire, said she left Five Rivers Medical Surgical Health Center in Dayton last September because of a surge in new Medicaid patients that placed increased demands on staff.

We enrolled a lot of Medicaid patients last year at Five Rivers because of expansion, and I became more of a case manager than a specialist, Arthur said. I came here (Dayton Physicians) because I wanted to be able to focus on oncology infusion.

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Health care jobs spike with Medicaid expansion

Health care in Kansas supports far more jobs than just doctors and nurses, according to a report from the Kansas Hospital Association.

About 4,403 people worked for Stormont-Vail HealthCare as of the end of the fiscal year in September, spokeswoman Nancy Burkhardt said. Ben Bauman, spokesman for St. Francis, said about 1,600 people are employed at St. Francis Health.

KHAs last report on Shawnee County, in 2013, found every 100 health care jobs generate an average of an additional 55 jobs, though not all health care jobs had the same impact. By that calculation, employees at Stormont and St. Francis would support about 3,300 additional jobs.

Hospital jobs generate more additional employment than most other health care jobs, possibly reflecting the relatively high level of pay their workers receive compared with people in fields like home health care.

Stormont paid out $268,349,385 in salaries throughout its system in fiscal year 2014, Burkhardt said. A 2013 KHA report showed each $1 in health care salaries generates roughly an additional 40 cents in other economic activity in Shawnee County as workers spend their salaries on other services and goods. If that multiplier is still valid, workers at Stormont would generate about $106 million in additional economic activity.

Recent salary data for St. Francis wasnt available Monday.

Statewide, 221,501 people worked in health care. KHA found health care supported 357,408 other jobs, or about 61 additional jobs for every 100 health jobs. Employees in the health sector also drove about $5.5 billion in retail sales and $57.4 million in other economic activity.

Health care was the fourth-largest sector by employment in Kansas, behind services other than health, retail and government, and accounted for 11.6 percent of all jobs in the state. Health care tends to have a bigger impact in rural communities, where local government and schools may be the only entities that employ more people, according to KHA.

Health care spending in Kansas in 2013 was about $21.7 billion, including about $11.9 billion in salaries. That averages out to about $53,859 per worker, though an average conceals the broad discrepancy between pay for a home health aide and an elite surgeon, for example.

The largest employers within health care were hospitals, where 84,210 people worked. Nursing and residential care facilities were a distant second, with 45,228 employees, followed by doctors offices, 23,787; health and personal care stores, 10,977; and dentists offices, 9,271.

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Report: Health care supports other jobs in Kansas, Shawnee County

(Bloomberg View) -- The next big shift is coming in U.S. health care, and Republicans are doing their best to speed it up. What's not clear is how carefully they've thought through the consequences.

A defining feature of U.S. health-care policy is that most Americans get insurance through their employers. That has frustrated liberals' attempts to rally voters behind Obamacare's modest reforms, let alone the single-payer model that works so well in most developed countries: The average person has no incentive to support changes that might jeopardize their situation.

But judging by the trend of the past few years, Americans with job-based coverage could soon become a minority. The chart below shows the percentage of Americans younger than 65 with health insurance provided by their employer. (Almost everyone 65 and older is covered by Medicare.) There has been a gradual but steady decline, from 59.2 percent in 2009 to 57.1 percent in 2013.

The shift away from employer-based insurance has been pronounced for most age groups. Among those 55 to 64, for example, the share with employer-based coverage fell almost four percentage points from 2009 to 2013. There's one exception: young adults, who benefited from an Obamacare provision that forces insurers to keep children on their parents' plan until age 26.

Other parts of Obamacare will accelerate the trend. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 2018, 8 million fewer people will have employer-based coverage than would have without the law. If 8 million fewer people 64 or younger had been covered by their employer in 2013, the share of non-elderly Americans with job-based health insurance would have been 54.1 percent.

That drop will be even greater if Republicans succeed at narrowing the category of workers to whom companies must offer affordable health insurance or pay a fine. The protection now extends to anyone at a company with 50 or more employees who works at least 30 hours a week; Republicans want to raise that threshold to 40 hours.

A still greater change would come from repealing the employer mandate entirely, which Republicans may try to pursue if they get more leverage. The latest Supreme Court challenge for Obamacare may give them that opportunity.

It's debatable whether Republicans have considered the consequences of that push. In the short term, it would reduce the regulatory exposure of U.S. businesses, which explains why Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue highlighted the campaign in a speech last week.

Over the long term, who wins and who loses gets a lot murkier. Republicans who support decoupling insurance from employment, on the grounds that doing so would free people to change jobs more easily, may see the decline of employer-based insurance as something to cheer.

But there's another view, one that's less happy for Republicans. The sooner employer-based coverage becomes something that only a minority of Americans enjoy, the greater the challenge to the psychological barricades against government-sponsored health care -- whether that's Obamacare, as my colleague Megan McArdle has noted, or something more sweeping.

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Analysis: The next big health-care shift is coming

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Exercises to Do During Pregnancy: Introduction to Safe Practices
Introduction: This video provides you some instructions and guidelines before starting any exercise program. It does not replace medical advice therefore you should speak with your health...

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Lymphedema Part 1
Clinical cases of lymph edema (oedema) reviewed. John talking to Andrea. Lymphoedema can be a bit of a #39;Cinderella #39; topic in health care. We need to learn how to treat and prevent this condition.

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What is Chiropractic?
Do you know what Chiropractic really is? Let Dr. Ali help you get a better understanding. For more information on how chiropractic can help you contact Dr. Ali at: http://alignlife.com/dundee...

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Tucson VA hosting job fair on Friday
The Southern Arizona VA Health Care System (SAVAHCS) will be hosting a job fair on January 16.

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Tucson VA hosting job fair on Friday - Video

January: Cervical Cancer Awareness Month
Dr. Ali Mahdavi of Aurora Health Care talks to us about Cervical Cancer Awareness Month. Subscribe to WISN on YouTube for more: http://bit.ly/1emE5YX Get more Milwaukee news: ...

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Organization helps Jefferson Parish residents with community health fair
Fresh produce, access to health care and free legal advice were just a few of the options available as a local food pantry reached out to the community Saturday. Subscribe to WDSU on YouTube...

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Mango
Khabir Southwick is an internationally known Naturopath, Ayurvedic Health-care Practitioner and herbalist with a successful...

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Mango - Video

By Moses Mugugunyeki

When Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) arrived in Gweru in 2004, in a joint operation with the Ministry of Health and Child Care, the effort brought amazing improvement in the city's health delivery system.

Passengers push a truck along the muddy Nembudziya-Mashame road recently... The poor road network has immensely contributed to the demise of the health delivery system in Gokwe North.

The people of Gweru were happy with the new health services brought to them. Seven years down the line however, it depressingly dawned on the people that what they had believed to be a life-long health menu, was in fact a temporary meal ticket.

While the government was aware that it was a temporary health delivery arrangement, it failed to capitalise on the availability of the health expertise to impart knowledge to local personnel to enable the continuation of such a health delivery system at the expiry of the joint venture.

So, when the MSF Gweru contract came to an end in 2011, the inadequacy was exposed. Serious challenges in the treatment of HIV and Aids and tuberculosis (TB), especially drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), resurfaced.

MSF, which had by then moved on to Gokwe North, apparently noticed the problem that had befallen Gweru and were determined not to let the same thing happen at their next port of call.

"The strategy that we used in Gweru created gaps in the health delivery system after MSF had left," said Stambuli Kim, communications officer for MSF. "Our objective in Gokwe North was then to reduce morbidity and mortality as a result of especially HIV and Aids and TB. We also ensured that activities would continue independently after MSF pulled out."

Zhomba Clinic

The international aid organisation wrapped up its operations in Gokwe North at the end of last year having breathed life into the district's health delivery system.

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Zimbabwe: MSF Breathes Life Into Gokwe North Health Care System

A Kaiser mental health worker with the National Union of Healthcare Workers looks through a pile of signs Monday during day one of a week-long demonstration outside of a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Francisco. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

A Kaiser mental health worker with the National Union of Healthcare Workers looks through a pile of signs Monday during day one of a week-long demonstration outside of a Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Francisco.

This past week, more than 2,000 mental health workers for the HMO health care giant Kaiser Permanente in California went on strike.

The strike was organized by the National Union of Healthcare Workers. The union says Kaiser Permanente patients have been the victims of "chronic failure to provide its members with timely, quality mental health care."

On Thursday, about 150 Kaiser Permanente employees picketed the Woodland Hills Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley. One of them was therapist Deborah Silverman. In her eyes, the biggest problem at Kaiser right now is understaffing.

Silverman says there are so many patients waiting to see therapists, that Kaiser sends new patients to see her, even if she's already overbooked. She says for three days over a two-week period she had four people she didn't know.

"I have to put them some place, and I didn't have any appointments for at least three weeks. So that's a huge emotional cost to me," Silverman says. "I either have to try to find someone else who has an open slot, which means the person has to switch, or people have to wait, and they've come to see you. It makes you feel it really bumps up against our ethical standards."

Silverman says switching therapists often makes it difficult to establish a bond and make progress.

John Nelson, Kaiser Permanent's vice president of government relations, says the company delivers some of the highest-quality mental health care in California and in the country. But, he says, they absolutely want to get better.

"Really the only way we can do that is by working together," Nelson says. "So we need our therapists and psychologists and others to be working with us, and constructively on how to get better, and not walking away from patients and being gone for seven days."

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Calif. Strike Highlights Larger Issues With Mental Health System

The nation's health care systems are in transition. And while hospitals across the country are grappling with changes to payment systems and quality measures, the tiniest hospitals in rural areas must work even harder to keep up.

In Iowa, the rural health care system is made up of 82 Critical Access Hospitals a special Medicare designation for smaller 25-bed facilities and 142 rural health clinics, making it one of the largest rural health systems in the country, said Gloria Vermie, director of the State Office of Rural Health Director, which is part of the Iowa Department of Public Health.

These facilities care for the more than 1.4 million people or about 46 percent of the state's population living in a rural community and are vital economic drivers in the communities they serve.

But planning their futures whether that be attracting physicians, fundraising or dealing with aging infrastructure can be a challenge.

Iowa has some of the best rural hospitals and clinics in the nation, Vermie said Improving access to quality, whole-person health care while ensuring organizations and health care professionals stay on course with state and federal changes requires vigilant dedication.

As health care evolves, small hospitals don't want to be left behind, said Kirk Norris, Iowa Hospital Association president and chief executive officer.

Shifting focus to increase the quality of care could benefit small hospitals, he said, because, with fewer patients, they frequently can respond quickly to problems areas. But at the same time, because there are limitations on how long Critical Access Hospitals can keep patients, he noted some quality measure such as infection rates really can't be applied to them.

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Surviving small: rural healthcare in Iowa

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3 Tips for Keeping Your New Year #39;s Resolutions - BEXLIFE
21 DAYS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE: http://bexlife.com/21mantras SIGN UP FOR FREE GOODIES: http://bit.ly/BlissNotes ------- GET MORE GOOD STUFF BELOW ------- 3 Tips for Keeping Your ...

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