Occasionally, a company may face a disruptive market shift that forces it to adapt in order to remain competitive (think Blockbuster). But seldom does an entire industry experience multiple simultaneous game changers, like those that the health insurance market faces today in the US.

Beyond the looming uncertainty of the Supreme Court’s pending rule on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there are several other seismic catalysts forcing private payers to reevaluate the ways they service their customers.  The most obvious of which is the customers themselves.

Evolving expectations are dictating that companies in most industries shift resources to account for new “always connected” stakeholders. As digital consumers, we have all grown accustomed to conducting business our way, on our terms. And why should the business of healthcare be any different?

When implemented properly, digital marketing aims to identify personal interests and trends, and deliver unique experiences that resonate with each customer across multiple channels.

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But unlike most other industries, health payers also have a vested interest in education and member outreach (some would argue that it’s actually a responsibility), since the offline lifestyle decisions of their consumers directly impact their bottom line. In a nutshell, acute medical emergencies are much more expensive than preventative health maintenance.

Additionally, the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) provision of the ACA stipulates that insurers shall spend at least 80-85% of their premium income on healthcare claims and quality improvement activities.  That leaves 15-20% for administrative expenses, including marketing.  In fact, it is estimated that private payers who fail to comply will issue consumer rebates totaling over $1 billion by August. So, now more than ever, it is imperative for payers to internally optimize efficiencies and develop effective marketing strategies that deliver measurable results.

In the long run, these changes are expected to result in affordable care for a healthier population. And as other provisions of the ACA significantly expand the pool of new customers for health insurers, the most successful organizations will be those who effectively navigate the changing landscape to build relationships with their customers, rather than continuing to simply facilitate transactions.

Tell us what you think. Drop us a line anytime on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeDigMktg.

Adobe Government Assembly (AGA) is our premier corporate event to demonstrate commitment to the US Public Sector community, announce product launches/pipeline, and highlight collaborative successes with our partners across the country in federal, state, and local markets.

This year, with speakers, panelists, and customers representing almost every segment of the US Public Sector, the 2012 AGA in Washington DC proved to be a dynamic forum for exploring trends that are clearly driving the federal government’s innovative technology agenda, including ‘cloud-first’ policies, Analytics for Measuring Agency Performance, data center consolidation initiatives, and Mobile Government.

AGA session tracks were designed around the following three pillars of relevant challenges that government agencies face day-to-day as well: engaging communities through new technologies, achieving efficiencies during a time of significant budget constraints, and the threat paradigm of data security.

For example, I spoke on a popular panel that delved into the topic of improving agency efficiencies by automating mission-critical business processes.  John Montel, a co-panelist from the US Department of the Interior, detailed how DOI recently implemented Adobe solutions to modernize ways citizens interact with his agency.

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Other AGA highlights included an insightful keynote presentation from LtCol Greg Reeder, Director of Marine Corps production for the US Marines, in which he demonstrated how the Marine Corps is leveraging Adobe technologies for apps that engage a new generation of service members, veterans, and prospective recruits.

From policy makers to agency executives, AGA 2012 offered something for everyone involved in government technology. We offer our sincere appreciation to all customers, partners, and attendees who made AGA 2012 the best one yet. And based on the incredible feedback, we’re already looking forward to repeating our success next month in Ottawa at the 2012 Canadian AGA.  See you there!

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Scroll to see the full US AGA 2012 agenda and links to several of the event’s most popular sessions:

Track 1: Engaging Communities – The Soldier, the Veteran, the Citizen

Connecting with citizens, soldiers and constituents is no longer about connecting anything – not telephones, computers or even devices. As federal agencies integrate new technologies like mobility and web analytics into the fabric of their infrastructure, they are breaking past the old paradigms of communication to reach people wherever they are – connecting the mission to those that make it happen.

Session 1-1: The Next-Generation Mobile Government Experience Part II

Session 1-2: Measuring Agency Online Presence to Improve the End User Experience

Track 2: Achieving Agency Efficiency

With the federal government facing unprecedented budget strains, the call to “do more with less” is becoming deafening. As the prospect of cuts accelerates, agencies are now turning to technology to bridge the gaps. New tools are enabling collaboration on an unprecedented scale, from the desktop to the battlefield, while advances in areas like training are redefining how agencies prepare their employees for the future. But these developments are not limited to internal stakeholders; citizens are reaping the benefits of more efficient data processing and forms management, cutting out the time and the paperwork that stands between them and efficient delivery of services. The sessions in this track will explore this new definition of efficiency and how significant savings can result from real performance improvements.

Session 2-1: Bridging the Divide: Collaboration and Training

Session 2-2: Reforming Forms: Accelerating Agency Performance with Data Management

Track 3: Content-Centric Security – Defining the Next Threat Paradigm

Securing information has always been a mission of government, but keeping data behind lock and key no longer cuts it. The value of information is now defined as much by how it’s exchanged as where it’s locked away. That’s why sharing information securely – across the agency, across the government or even across the world – and ad hoc analysis to identify a particular threat, have emerged as the most critical elements of today’s security challenge.

Session 3-1: Unknown Unknowns – A New Class of Analytics

Session 3-2: IT Security is Who You Are, Not Where You Are

Re-visit the most popular sessions. To see the full archived videos, log in as a guest:

• Leveraging Digital Media
• Content-level Security
• Analytics 2.0
• Performance-Enhancing Data Management
• Mobile Government
• Maximizing Online Presence

Adobe LiveCycle ES3 was recently released and contains several new features that will appeal to customers in both federal and state & local government.  Full resource documentation for ES3 is available here. This post will focus on the new features that will be most interesting to government customers.

CRX – Content Repository Extreme

Adobe LiveCycle ES3 foundation now comes with a full implementation of the CRX.  A Java Content Repository (JCR) based on Apache’s Jackrabbit. (http://jackrabbit.apache.org/)  It implements the JSR 170 and JSR 283 specifications.  This is a great solution for storage for customers who don’t want to purchase or don’t already have an enterprise content management (ECM) solution in place.

There are also operations in the LiveCycle Workbench for reading from, writing to, and managing the documents in the CRX.

Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES3

There were several updates to the Adobe LiveCycle Designer that will make the lives of form designers much easier.  The first is the ability to create and apply styles to objects in forms in much the same manner that CSS is able to style HTML elements.

The next new feature is added support for bulleted, numbered, and nested lists in text objects.  This is an update that was requested time and time again, and has now made it into the product.  The final added feature is support for the right to left languages, Arabic and Hebrew, which is very helpful to specific government agencies.

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES3

Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management has been a great tool for governments to protect personally identifiable information (PII) of the citizenry as well as classified documents.

There are numerous new features in Rights Management with the release of ES3. The Microsoft Office plugins now support Windows 64 bit systems and also include added support for Office 2010.  The login dialog to authenticate to documents is now customizable, including the ability to implement wizards for multi-step authentication.  Authentication was updated to allow for additional authentication instruments including single sign on through SAML and header-based SSO.

Another frequently requested feature was the ability to use DRM in custom applications.  With ES3, a portable protection library has been introduced which allows developers to work with the management of rights, as well as rights managed documents, into their application. Also, the event tracking capabilities have been expanded upon.

Correspondence Management

Any government agency sending out a lot of correspondence to constituents should really take a look at Correspondence Management.  There were some significant changes that occurred to Correspondence Management in ES3.  The entire UI of the system was updated to make them more user friendly and efficient.  Features like spell checking and keyboard entry allowing for better navigation were added. Support for bulleted, nested, and numbered lists were also added, as well as the ability to use tables.

The system was built around the CRX which greatly improved performance and made the auditing of assets easier as well.  The ability to make more intuitive templates was made possible by support for complex and inline conditionals in text modules.  Template assets were also updated to allow for more control through specific public or retire dates and the ability to retrieve templates that were active in the system on a specific date.

Overall the Correspondence Management solution had big improvements made that makes it even more attractive for agencies seeking to streamline and save money on their correspondence. For more information on Correspondence Management, head to http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/correspondence_management/.

Odd and Ends

While the above features fit into nice little categories, there were some features that don't, but that certainly bear mentioning and will be of interest to government customers.  First, the ECM Connectors were updated to support IBM FileNet 5 and support for Microsoft Sharepoint deployed in farms.  For archival purposes, document conversion now supports the PDF/A-2b standard. Finally, the PDF Generation Windows based OCR service now supports multiple threads and conversion of Office 2010 documents is now supported through the addition of Acrobat 10 support.

Overall, the Adobe LiveCycle ES3 release added lots of new features that should interest government customers to help them streamline their processes dealing with documents and their interaction with the citizenry.

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Combining several of my favorite topics, including healthcare and technology, the 2012 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition continued its streak of record-breaking attendance with a final count of just over 37,000 like-minded attendees last month in Las Vegas.

Demonstrated even today, as the US Supreme Court begins to hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act, this past year has brought a relentless pace of change throughout the healthcare ecosystem. However, since most stakeholders agree that Health IT can save lives, improve the experience of care, and reduce costs, HIMSS provided a welcomed opportunity for stakeholders from all segments to come together, learn and share. But then they took it a step further by indulging specific interests within those broad topics.

For example, is Social your thing?  “There’s a pavilion for that.”

Interested in business trends and policy updates within the federal government? “Here’s your workshop.”

Responsible for improving clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness?  “Check out the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion”

Driving efficiency through medical device connectivity? “The Interoperability Showcase is for you.”

I could go on, but let’s just say this was one of those weeks that I particularly loved my job. It was simply MU-tiful (sorry, -inside joke for my fellow health IT geeks).

And it was especially rewarding to highlight the significant role Adobe technologies played in many of the featured products and solutions at the world’s largest Health IT conference.

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Healthcare agencies, payers, providers, and partners worldwide trust Adobe to securely drive customer engagement, optimize workflow efficiencies, and measure overall effectiveness.  And HIMSS is always a great place for us to demonstrate our commitment to them, and to just say thank you.

Drop us a line anytime on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM.

South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW) began nearly 20 years ago as an annual music festival in Austin, Texas. The event has since evolved into an incubator for all things digital, now featuring five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new web technologies, video advancements and startup ideas the “interactive” community has to offer.

From hands-on training to a big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW has become the place for thousands of attendees to experience a preview of what is unfolding throughout the world of technology. In fact, Twitter and Foursquare both gained initial traction at SXSW in years past.

As public sector enterprises aggressively strive to offer citizens and inter-agency customers a digital experience that rivals that of their private sector counterparts, events like SXSW are becoming more relevant to them as well.

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We recently hosted the daylong Adobe Creative Camp onsite at SXSW 2012 to delve into a long list of trending hot topics from web-to-mobile development, to providing sneak peeks at the next generation of Adobe creative solutions.

If you were unable to join us, check out the following links for a sample of what you missed…

The Future of HTML5 Motion Design

HTML5 and CSS3 are hot, driven by an explosion of new, Internet connected devices. While they offer many new features that should allow you to do the types of things that you previously did in Flash, actually making it happen is really hard. Until now.

The Page Is Dead: Responding to the Responsive Web

Responsive Web design is changing the definition of a “page,” as it aims to address the growing variety of device form factors and locations where content is consumed. Additionally, as the Web evolves, rules and limitations must be better understood in order to create truly unique content. This session focused on design philosophy and development techniques to create and adapt your content for maximum impact, regardless of where and how it is consumed.

Boost Your Mobile Workflow with Adobe's Newest Product

Provided a Sneak Peek at Adobe Shadow, a new inspection and preview tool allowing front-end web developers and designers to work faster by streamlining the preview process, making it easier to customize websites for mobile devices.

We'd like to thank everyone who joined us in Austin, and ask how you will apply any of the technologies you learned about at SXSW. Let us know on Twitter at @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

A funny thing is happening on the way to health reform; the business of healthcare in the US is gradually coming of age. Although not without its share of trials and challenges, a developing trend of comprehensive outcomes-based models are now shedding light on age-old issues like care delivery and payment structures.
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These new “shared savings” models, which in the most basic explanations are simplified as “pay for treatment quality vs. quantity,” aim to motivate providers who voluntarily differentiate themselves by shifting focus to improving patient care while reducing avoidable costs over time, and away from being solely incentivized on a fee-for-service basis. The models, including Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMH), and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), offer the potential for transformational change through connected health. They each subscribe to the concept that coordination of all available resources will keep the patient as healthy as possible while significantly bolstering efficiency and strengthening the physician-patient relationship.
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The ACO model, for example, establishes a team of primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals that ensure patients receive the right care at the right time while reducing acute episodes, avoiding unnecessary duplication of services, and preventing medical errors that often result from miscommunication between providers. Then, any resulting savings are shared among each of the participants, so long as pre-established benchmarks for quality are achieved.

In order to deliver such measurable results, however, it is imperative that all stakeholders share clinical and case management data for better informed decision making. Coordination of comprehensive healthcare services across the care continuum, particularly for chronically ill patients, must also be implemented.  To that end, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 authorizes Medicare to contract with ACOs in a Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Adobe recently sponsored the 2012 Accountable Care and Health IT Summit in Miami to facilitate open dialogue and explore the technology requirements for delivering on such an innovative concept.

The summit provided a dynamic forum for policy makers, leading Health IT strategists, and ACO early adopters to share critical insights into the process automation and integration of clinical documentation, financial systems, and payment workflows across multiple digital channels.

We extend thanks to all who attended and contributed to making the summit an overwhelming success.  As always, we’re interested in your perspective.  Tell us how your agency or organization is preparing for the era of Accountable Care.

Drop us a line on Twitter at @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

At Adobe, we are inspired by purpose-driven creativity. Through our technologies, software, and business practices, every day we enable millions of people across the globe to change the world around them for the better, regardless of the industry in which they work.

The above video is an excerpt from a larger “Behind the Splash Screen” video series on Adobe TV that focuses on one member of the core Photoshop engineering team, John Penn II, and his shifting of career focus from core product development to one of cooperation, dialogue and assistance to the US Law Enforcement community. John specifically represents Adobe with agencies like NCMEC and ICAC that work tirelessly to safeguard children from predation and exploitation in the real and digital domains, working closely with imaging, intelligence, investigative and forensics experts across State, Federal and International boundaries to understand and bolster their unique workflows, challenges and needs.

As a father of three small children who are utterly immersed in mobile, networked, “always-on” digital technologies, I certainly perceive the demand for Law Enforcement agencies to stay “up to date” on the latest technological threats to families and communities, especially when it comes to child exploitation, and to continue a high level of dialogue with industry leaders, like Adobe, whose tools and technologies form a critical part of the arsenal. I am extremely proud to count John Penn as an Adobe colleague, a friend, and someone who is helping secure and safeguard the next generation of digital citizens.

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Whether it’s for telework, town hall meetings, e-learning, telemedicine, continuity of operations, or mission critical collaboration, many civilian and military agencies rely on Adobe Connect.  To learn what’s to come in 2012 for this best-in-class solution, we had the opportunity to talk with Guillaume Privat, Director of our Adobe Connect business.

Q: 2011 saw several large government agencies adopt Adobe Connect or expand their deployment. What can you tell us about the plans for the solution in 2012?

A: In 2011, we rolled out Adobe Connect 8, which focused on ease of use and the ability for users to access their meetings, webinars or virtual classrooms on any smartphone or tablet.  2012 will the year of Adobe Connect 9.  We recently announced we were opening up the beta for Adobe Connect 9. We looked at how our customers are using the product and it’s clear that ‘screen sharing’ is not enough.  They are looking for solutions to their business problems.  How can they train faster and measure the effectiveness of that training?  How effective are their town hall meetings or citizen outreach campaigns?  Should they spend more or less money on these activities?  The focus for the future release is to create these end-to-end solutions that will help government organizations measure and report on productivity gains or cost savings.

Q: Are you going to continue your focus on mobile?

A: Yes, a key value proposition of Adobe Connect is its ease of access from virtually any device.  With Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7 released last fall, we offered the ability not only to attend meetings from mobile devices, but also to host meetings, webinars or virtual classrooms on iOS devices, Android and Blackberry PlayBook.  Along with the Adobe Connect 9 beta, we also launched the beta of our mobile applications version 2.0, which will push the envelope even further.

Q: In November 2011, Adobe announced some major strategic decisions that will focus the business on opportunities in Digital Media and Digital Marketing.  How does this impact the Adobe Connect business?

A: As I communicated in my blog post in November, we’ll be providing even more focus with Adobe Connect on key vertical markets like Government.  Otherwise, the main changes to the business were with our commercial go-to market, which we’ve organized to be channel centric.  Our agility to innovate and to release new versions of the product remains.  What our customers can expect is to see more innovation, such as leveraging unique capabilities from our Digital Marketing Suite for reporting and analytics or Web Content Management.

Q: Can you tell me more about Adobe Connect’s focus on government?

A: Over the years we have built a unique ecosystem of resellers and solution partners that work alongside our direct sales and support team to ensure the success of each of our customers. This ecosystem enables government to have the flexibility to purchase an off-the shelf-product but customize it quickly to meet unique requirements they may have, like FISMA compliance.  As the product continues to evolve, we are paying close attention to some of the challenges government organizations face in order to secure the private information of citizens.  We offer each of our government customers the choice to host their solution in a public cloud, in a private cloud, or behind their own firewall.  This choice of deployment options is unique to Adobe Connect, and designed to balance the government agencies’ budget constraints with their security and confidentiality mandates.

How do you Connect? Let us know on Twitter @AdobeGov and @AdobeCEM, or on Facebook.

Please join Adobe for its annual Adobe Government Assembly, February 8th, at the National Press Club.

The AGA is a forum for federal, state and local IT, acquisition and security professionals to discuss strategies and actionable tactics for meeting today’s challenges and revolutionizing tomorrow’s government operations. You’ll hear from public sector leaders and industry experts on the key issues of advancing citizen engagement, implementing innovative technologies and protecting critical information.

Keynote speakers include GSA’s David McClure, Associate Administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, and best-selling author Peter Sims.

Click here to register.

There is no shortage of issues for American voters to consider when casting their ballots in this year’s presidential election. In fact, all the candidates (including the president himself) have been working hard to ensure their positions are clear and their messages resonate as they plead their cases to be commander-in-chief for the next four years.

However, campaign speeches and heated debate performances sometimes contain rhetoric that is sprinkled with embellishments and vague inaccuracies. Regardless of political affiliation, most people agree that it’s impossible to make educated decisions without fact-based research.

To help weed through the maze of politicians’ attention grabbing sound bites and unsubstantiated claims, countless voters have turned to PolitiFact, a non-partisan journalistic organization whose mission is to use the Web to help citizens “find the truth in politics.”

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2009, PolitiFact has surged in popularity. In turn, they looked to Adobe technologies to extend their online reach and enlighten the masses through data visualization and an engaging mobile experience for iOS, Android, and the Blackberry Tablet OS.

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“The new PolitiFact Mobile app repackages our extremely rich data to present it in creative and helpful ways,” says Bill Adair Editor, PolitiFact, and Washington bureau chief, St. Petersburg Times.

And in June 2011, PolitiFact was named the #1 news app in the iTunes store; proof that more than ever, in the hands of the people (across multiple digital channels), knowledge is power.

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