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2013 WCSU Macricostas Entrepreneurship lecture to focus on healthcare and Internet


DANBURY, CONN. — According to Internet expert John Patrick, today’s health care cannot have down time and that’s why digital technology has become so important to its future — and ours.

Patrick, a former IBM vice president, will be at Western Connecticut State University later this month to share his thoughts, knowledge and experience in a lecture titled, “A Visionary Look at Where Technology is Headed.” The discussion will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 25, 2013, in Room 125 in the Science Building on the Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. Free and open to the public, the lecture is funded by a grant to support entrepreneurship from the foundation of Brookfield industrialist and philanthropist Constantine “Deno” Macricostas and his wife, Marie.

Patrick focuses much of his talk on the medical profession, saying that the dawn of the Internet age affected health care by accelerating diagnoses, improving quality and patient safety and making information and health records more readily available and searchable. He will also speak about the power and potential of the mobile Internet, cloud computing and social media as well as the opportunities and potential limitations of the Internet. In Patrick’s vision of the future, life beyond the Internet as it is now known will allow businesses and institutions to empower their employees to achieve new levels of productivity and health.

Since the early 1990s, Patrick has dedicated his time to fostering Internet technologies; his successes include his role as senior marketing executive for the launch of the IBM ThinkPad brand. “Business 2.0” named him as one of the industry’s most intriguing minds, “Industry Week” named him one of the top 30 people who drive innovation and provide the initial spark to economic growth and “Network World” called Patrick one of the 25 most powerful people in networking.

The founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994, Patrick is on the board of directors of WebMediaBrands Corporation, Knovel Corporation, Danbury Health Systems, Inc., Founders Hall and OCLC. His book “Net Attitude” paints a vivid picture of the future of the Internet and the attitudes needed to capitalize on it.

For more information, contact Elizabeth McDonough at (203) 837-8754.

 

Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York. Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England’s best small private universities.