Allscripts attempts at doing Viral Video

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I don’t normally respond to the many requests from PR companies that come to me looking for coverage on this blog.

In my experience, they still have a lot to learn when engaging with bloggers in general – I agree with most of Damiens bullet points on pimping stuff.

So this Youtube short from AllScripts breaks the mold just a little bit. As someone who has professionally created this type of material – my comments relate to the medium rather than the message.

  • an intriguing opening, a flaccid middle part and a strong ending.
  • at just over 5 minutes it’s too long; between 2-3 minutes would have been much better, particularly with the strong messages at either end.
  • with reference to the middle bits that flagged, the imagery was just overused; yes, i did like that that zooming in on the screencast, but half the time spent would have been enough. likewise with the medical records library shots.
  • I didn’t see any "patients" – and maybe that’s the difference between the Irish Health System and the US Model; all of those empty clinic seats freaked me out a bit!

Overall though – nice try.

Microsoft announce HealthVault

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Microsoft have today launched a beta Personal Health Record called HealthVault. The New York Times have a good writeup.

It includes health search, a personal health record, and the facility to upload data from compliant devices.

I wonder what Adam Bosworth, the former Google (and former Microsoft) exec, thinks of all of this? Over the past 18 months or so, all of the talk has been of Google and its work in this area. I was less than impressed by some of the screenshots of their efforts released during the summer.

On the other hand – first impressions of HealthVault (even though I have not yet even created an account yet) are good.

Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to do some reviews of these developments. I will include in this review, a recent invite I had from Israeli based iMedix (still in closed alpha) – haven’t forgotten you guys!

Healthcare ICT Supplement in Sunday Business Post

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Last year, I wrote a short post suggesting the Irish Healthcare system needed some positive stories surrounding the use of ICT. So it was with interest that I read through most of the articles in the Sunday Business Post  Healthcare ICT supplement last night.

It was good to see issues such as PPARS being discussed and dealt with head-on. The continuing impact of this project still reverbarates, and explains in part the 10 pages or so given to the Control and Sanction of HSE ICT Expenditure in the Comptroller and Auditor General Report for 2006.

Some good case studies were given on continuing work in the Mater and St James, and stalwart local  Irish companies  such as DMF Systems, Health One and dabl also had feature pieces.

On a personal note, it was also good to see that GP Messaging (which I project managed for a good number of years when it was a key project in HeBE) was singled out for praise by the HSE Director of ICT.

Mobile Phones in Hospitals – the one metre rule

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Science Daily report that cell phones should be kept at least 1 metre distant from hospital beds and equipment :

Dr Erik van Lieshout, lead researcher from the Academic Medical
Center, University of Amsterdam, said; "Our work has real implications
for present hospital restrictions of mobile phone use in patient
areas."

"It is unlikely that mobile phone induced EMI in
hospitals will be eradicated in the near future so the one meter rule
currently in place should continue, as it is relatively safe,"
commented Dr van Lieshout.

Critical condition for Irish healthcare?

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This was the title of a recent piece from Siliconrepublic.com talking about current technology and IT usage in the Irish Healthcare system. It notes that during the recent General Election in this country, there were occasional thinly veiled references to "value for money" from public sector projects.

Whatever you can say about the opposition parties during the campaign, I wouldn’t agree that their references to these projects, and specifically PPARS, were thinly veiled – quite the opposite actually in that they were gunning for it for a long time before and during the campaign.

As the writer correctly highlights though – elections are all about simple messages; in this case more beds, more frontline staff…and feck the technology.

The mantra for IT in healthcare has not changed, and it is very simple – it "is a drive to remove or reduce paper from the workings of healthcare."

Unfortunately, this would have been the mantra from the business community 10+ years ago. They have since moved on to improving/redesigning processes and creating new business opportunities.

Health has a lot of catching up to do.

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Cult of the Amateur and Medicine…oops.

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I can almost hear the howls of protest as the Irish Blogging community, if they did by chance hear the interview this morning with Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur; maybe not as loud as the howls from the Irish Medical community however. A medical student texting in to the programme claimed that over half of their class used Wikipedia as medical reference.

I’m really surprised that Ryan Turbridy would find this interesting – after all, he is a noted blogging and technology fan …8)

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24 years of progress?

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Nearly 2 months since my last post…

A 24 year old home computing magazine – Commodore power play from 1983 – ended this particular stasis. An article entitled "England takes the VIC seriously" (the VIC 20) reviewed some business applications for the platform coming out of the UK. Quoting from the piece

..the University Hospital in Cardiff, Wales, has been using VIC-FILE, and information-handling and record-manipulation programe, for some time in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetics. Patients are hooked up to a machine that monitors their blood-sugar level. If this falls below a certain figure, the shortfall is corrected by means of a quantity of insulin automatically administered intravenously.

Before VICFILE was purchased, the readings from the machine for each patient were written on paper. This not only used up a great deal of time and paper but was also prone to errors. The introduction of VICFILE also has allowed the readings for each patient to be stored on diskette. Therefore the physician can print lists of readings for each patient whenever they are needed, and can quickly assimilate the information and prescribe the proper insulin dosage.

A clever use of a piece of hardware, never intended really for business use given its massive  16k ROM – but here apparently used  quite effectively to solve a real problem; this would be the equivalent nowadays of an Excel/Access solution.

The VIC-20 may no longer be there, but the pen and paper certainly remains…

Medical tourism matchmaking site launches

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New Irish web startup RevaHealthNetwork.com describe themselves as a matchmaking site for those interested in having medical procedures in other countries. Users sign up to the website and enter details of the procedure they want to have carried out and the country to which they wish to travel to.

The site then matches the prospective patient with a suitable clinic in their country of choice. Clever. Funding comes from the backers of Newbay, Propylon and Hostelworld.

The last one there is interesting – a straightforward business opportunity or a complement to core business?

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