Week thirty

As the year draws to a close, I would like to thank you all for participating in my blog, and leaving your comments for me to read. I have enjoyed our discussions and the opportunity to keep in touch and to renew so many good acquaintances. Betty, I, and our children wish you and yours a very happy New Year. See you in 2007.

Click on the comments link to share your thoughts.

- Bob

Here are my responses to previous weeks’ comments:

Keith Nightingale (Week 29): Thanks for your blog comments. Looks like a very busy Christmas season for the Beyster family. It’s unusually cold here in San Diego so you should feel sorry for us while you are in Hawaii. If you’re down here after your return, please drop in and see all of us.

Mary Lou Dunford (Week 28): Thanks for your constructive comments. Maybe Amazon would consider pairing the book with “Pirates of San Diego Bay.”

William Weeks (Week 28): Good to hear from you again. I am surprised and pleased that a consortium is looking into building two new nuclear power plants. Are they really expecting to do that in Houston, the oil capital of the world? Anyway, we badly need the energy and I’m sure our great-grandchildren will benefit from these efforts. Why don’t you tell us more about your entrepreneurial endeavor?

ONE NOTE: A couple of posts were inadvertently erased from our computer. If you recently submitted a post and have not seen it appear, please re-send it. Thank you.


5 Responses to “Week thirty”

  1. 1 Andy Laidig

    Dr. Beyster:

    I just happened upon your site and wanted to share with you the benefit that SAIC brought to my career and eventually to the U.S. healthcare market. I spent 18 years with SAIC in Huntsville, Alabama and left the company as a division manager in 2003. As a young electrical engineer, I focused on simulation development for SDI hit-to-kill weaponry, autopilot design, threat system definition and developed many of the software tools used by experts to analyze defense situations.

    In 1995, I asked SAIC management to alter my course as an engineer and allow me to bring this technology to healthcare. I opened a commercial division and hired nurses and engineers to deploy vendor IT solutions in the intensive care units and operating rooms throughout the country. Although this was a divergence to SAIC’s core business, my managers supported the development of this business and after initial investments, the division eventually became profitable.

    Unfortunately, the SAIC that I had initially been so enamored with in 1985 had changed in 2003. The extreme success of the company in all modes really changed the type of organization SAIC was, and for me, my excitement to build and create went away. I left all the business in healthcare with my managers and my employees, shook hands with everyone and walked out of SAIC without a job after nearly 2 decades.

    After a year of general consulting, I opened a company named Apogee Informatics Corporation with another ex-SAIC employee who is a physician. We proposed and won work with Vanderbilt University Medical Center to measure patient flow in their emergency departments and after 2 years developed and patented a patient flow simulation product named OpenED. Our simulation and real-time instrumentation provides U.S. emergency departments with advanced knowledge of patient flow blockages, and provides them the ability to simulate scenarios to determine the benefit of changing processes intended to clear the blockages. The merging of decades of missile system simulations approaches with physician based knowledge of patient care provided Apogee the ability to unwind and re-assemble healthcare processes providing input to administrators when they need it.

    Overcrowding problems are plaguing America’s emergency departments. When hospitals get overcrowded, they must close their doors to incoming ambulance traffic and divert patients to peer facilities. This problem is much more than a financial issue to the hospital – it is a matter of life and death to the patients on those ambulances.

    As our product emerges from its incubation period, our owner funded company is being supported by several large hospitals including Vanderbilt and St. Luke’s Health System in Kansas City. Today, our company is being evaluated by many large IT vendors and dozens of hospitals are negotiating with us to gain access to this technology. For us – it’s an exciting time. We believe we are not only are heading down a good path with our company, but we also feel that we are going to help healthcare perform and save lives.

    I apologize for the lengthy text. I thought you might be interested to see how a lowly engineer working a job for a great company can one day change the way patients gain needed access to healthcare. Thank you for your efforts in developing the type of organization that not only trained me, but also prepared me for going outside the walls of comfort to take the next step and to try something new.

    Andy Laidig
    Chief Operating Officer
    Apogee Informatics Corporation
    http://www.apogeeinformatics.com

  2. 2 Ed Rumble

    Dr. Beyster,

    As a follow-on to a Week 28 post and your reply on Dec 21, there is considerable new nuclear power plant activity in the US by 2 consortia (NuStart and UniStar) and other companies. Here is a list of organizations that have announced specific plans, the proposed site and also the state in parenthesis:

    Dominion – North Anna (VA)
    Duke – Cherokee (SC)
    Entergy – River Bend (LA)
    NuStart – Bellefonte (AL)
    NuStart – Grand Gulf (MS)
    Progress Energy – Harris (NC)
    South Carolina E&G – Summner (SC)
    Southern – Vogtle (GA)
    STP Nuclear – South Texas (TX) (about 90 miles from Houston and adjacent to an existing nuclear power plant facility)
    UniStar – Calvert Cliffs (MD)
    UniStar – Nine Mile Point (NY)

    In addition, Browns Ferry 1 – TVA (AL) is scheduled to restart in 2007 after it was shutdown since 1985 and Westinghouse recently announced they won a competitive bid to build 4 new plants in China for $5.3B.

    The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided financial incentives to build nuclear plants and this has helped encourage a number of companies. The US will need to start building these new nuclear plants just to maintain its 20% share of electricity generation and a great effort will be needed to efficiently license and build them by an industry that has had a long construction hiatus.

    Sincerely,
    Ed Rumble

  3. 3 Gael Tarleton

    Happy New Year to you and your family, Dr. B! 2007 will be a year to remember with the long-awaited book finally delivered! Thank you many times over for deciding to tell the SAIC story.

    I loved reading Andy Laidig’s story about his technology transfer from defense to civilian sectors, all because his SAIC managers were willing to take a chance on an entrepreneur and his entrepreneurial idea that was not part of their core business.

    In 2006, I launched three new grass-roots initiatives: The American-Russian Partnership Advisory Council, a collaboration of 6 non-profits in Seattle as founding members with several affiliate members in D.C., to create more informed insights about the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship in the coming decade; the Pacific NW Branch of Women in International Security (WIIS), a D.C.-based national, non-profit for women and men committed to advancing professional opportunities for women in the international security field – my co-founder of the NW branch is a colleague at Pacific NW National Lab (nuclear energy expert who negotiated the closure of Chernobyl with Russian and Ukrainian governments); and finally, the American Citizens Forum, a discussion group where I lead small roundtables with ordinary citizens around the country to hear how the American people and communities are thinking about U.S. national security interests in an era of terror. Most of my collaborators around the country – people who have volunteered to organize and host the American Citizens Forum roundtables when I visit – are former SAIC colleagues.

    I’m funding all these initiatives out of my own pocket. I never would have done this were it not for the SAIC experience – taking the risk that your own ideas may just offer the problem-solving approach that will work.

    Hope to see you in San Diego sometime this winter – Have to visit for my real job!

    Gael Tarleton
    Special Assistant Global Strategies
    UW Office of Global Affairs

  4. 4 Randall Czerniec

    Hi Bob,

    Hope all is well. I’m in AZ now working on other ventures; but I will be back in San Diego on Jan 22nd and would like to catch up with you. You”ve taught me alot over the years. Let me know if I can buy you lunch while I’m there, just so we can catch up. Moira always knows how to reach me.

    All my best,

    Randy

  5. 5 William L. Weeks

    Dr. Beyster,
    I’m s sorry that I’ve been away for so long. Last time I posted, you asked about our entrepreneurial pursuits. We have a company (Southern Pacific Group) that provides your favorite type of consulting: Management and IT. However, the consulting that we do so well is just a transitional activity to build a war chest that will be used to startup other businesses, fund acquisitions, and invest in other startups. We have started to execute our long-term plan by investing a small publishing company that will introduce a children’s book this summer. The book development is complete; printing will be done over the next 3 months and it should be on shelves by late June or early July. Your BLOG helped me think about the process of taking a book from concept to reality. Thank you very much. We are currently considering our approach to engaging a Publicist.

    Warm regards,
    Bill


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