Terms of Use
I’ve tried my best to keep this site free of “corporate speak” and stick to providing news, analysis, speculation and opinion on workflow automation in health care, medical device connectivity and related topics.
Most websites have terms of use, and in general they’re upheld by the courts. So here are the Terms of Use for this site, MedicalConnectivity.com, and any associated content including email and RSS. By reading, linking to, quoting, printing out, or in any way making use of this weblog’s content in any means, place, or forum, you agree to the following:
- All original content of MedicalConnectivity.com is copyrighted by Medical Connectivity Consulting’s owner, presently Timothy C Gee, and is not to be used without permission except as provided herein. “Medical Connectivity Consulting,” “MedicalConnectivity.com” and “Connectologist” are trademarks belonging to Timothy C Gee. In using MedicalConnectivity.com you recognize that MedicalConnectivity.com is primarily a source of news, analysis, speculation and opinion on workflow automation in health care, medical device connectivity and related subjects, that all content is provided on an as-is basis, and that no factual statement on this site should be relied upon without further investigation on your part sufficient to satisfy you in your independent judgment that it is true. These terms of use are subject to change, and should be reviewed regularly.
- Permission is granted to read, quote, cite, link to, print out or otherwise use MedicalConnectivity.com content, so long as you comply with the terms below.
- All quotations from MedicalConnectivity.com will include credit to MedicalConnectivity.com or to Tim Gee and, wherever practicable, a hyperlink of the form “http://MedicalConnectivity.com” to the site.
- In exchange for the access to MedicalConnectivity.com content described above, you agree not to sue MedicalConnectivity.com for its content, whether original or linked or quoted from another source, in any court, on any grounds whatsoever in law or equity. Should you violate this agreement by filing such a lawsuit, you agree to pay MedicalConnectivity.com’s owner or owners the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) as liquidated damages, in addition to all attorney’s fees, court costs, and other expenses associated with this litigation, and to indemnify and save harmless MedicalConnectivity.com and its owners from any damage award made against them in such an action. Should this agreement not to sue be held unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, you agree to binding arbitration, with all arbitration expenses to be paid by you. The arbitration panel shall be composed of three (3) weblog operators selected by MedicalConnectivity.com’s owners or operators from those in the Google Reader displayed on the home page under “Connectologist’s Shared Items” on the MedicalConnectivity.com site. The award in such arbitration shall be limited to (1) a monetary sum not to exceed $10; and (2) the publication of a retraction on the MedicalConnectivity.com site. Should this arbitration provision be held unenforceable in a court of competent jurisdiction, you agree to accept as liquidated damages in any lawsuit against MedicalConnectivity.com the sum of ten dollars ($10), and you agree that you will be entitled to no other relief of any kind in law or equity. You agree that all disputes concerning these terms of use or the content of MedicalConnectivity.com.Com are to be resolved in the courts of Washington County, Oregon, under the laws of Oregon and the United States of America.
- You agree that efforts to obtain MedicalConnectivity.com content in violation or circumvention of these terms of use constitute a violation of MedicalConnectivity.com’s copyright and you understand and agree that (1) by virtue of this agreement you are estopped from arguing otherwise: and (2) such violations may lead to civil or criminal penalties.
- If you are a corporation, you agree to provide, upon the filing of any lawsuit or the mailing of any letter threatening legal action, a bond in the amount of one million dollars ($1,000,000) as security against the liquidated damages provided for in paragraph 2.B. above. If you are an attorney or law firm representing a party filing such lawsuit or causing such a letter to be sent, you agree to provide a bond in the same amount as security against the liquidated damages provided for in paragraph 2.B. above unless you have never accessed, viewed, read, or otherwise made use of MedicalConnectivity.com content in any form.
- If you do not agree to these terms of use, exit the site immediately, destroy all copies of MedicalConnectivity.com content remaining in any form on your computer, any other computer or network device under your control, in print form, or on any information storage or retrieval device that you possess or control. Then execute the following affidavit and send it by certified mail to MedicalConnectivity.com.Com, Legal Department, 7250 SW 154th Terrace, Beaverton, OR 97007:
Affidavit
I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that I possess no copies of the MedicalConnectivity.com website in any form whatsoever; that neither I nor any employee or associate will access that site in the future in any form whatsoever; that I will immediately destroy any copies of MedicalConnectivity.com content that happen to come into my possession. I understand that action contrary to these statements constitutes both perjury and a violation of the MedicalConnectivity.com Terms of Use, subjecting me to possible civil and criminal liability.
___________________
Signed (include date)
___________________
Witnessed (notary)
Notary Seal:
My commission expires: _________________
Privacy Policy
Privacy is important to everyone, and since sites like this one are new to the health care market I thought I’d post a Privacy Policy for the site.
Public Nature of Content Submitted to This Site
The nature of blogging is to reach and interact with a public audience. Please be aware that any information that you submit to MedicalConnectivity.com, whether through comments, forms or email, including personally identifiable information, may be publicly displayed at http://MedicalConnectivity.com/, or on websites not within my control. If you don’t want others to see such information, don’t submit it.
Some of the interactions published on MedicalConnectivity.com are anonymous. The degree of anonymity granted to sources of information on MedicalConnectivity.com is at my sole discretion, and under no circumstances prevents me from disclosing information to law enforcement authorities or outside parties seeking information through the legal process. If you want to be anonymous, use an email account from Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail – and don’t use your name.
No confidential information covered by the terms of a Nondisclosure Agreement (NDA) executed by Medical Connectivity Consulting is disclosed on the MedicalConnectivity.com site. Information gained through consulting engagements, but not covered under NDA will not be published on MedicalConnectivity.com without prior permission from the client.
Forms and Content
To use some features of this site, you may be required to submit an email address and other personal information. Your email address and other personal information will not be disclosed to third parties, except in situations described in the Disclosure of Information to Law Enforcement section below. Your address may also be used to send you email bulletins from MedicalConnectivity.com to which you subscribe, or to attribute comments or posts to you.
If you contribute content, such as writing posts, articles or discussion comments, your contribution may be publicly displayed including personally identifiable information.
MedicalConnectivity.com allows outside search engines, indexes and third party sites to scan the blog, create hyperlinks to individual blog entries or pages or distribute it further via feeds. Each time I update MedicalConnectivity.com, it may also send pings or feeds to sites that index or track newly updated blogs. These sites may publicly display a hyperlink to MedicalConnectivity.com and the time that it was updated. Because this site publishes XML feeds (also known as RSS), content from or links to my site may be publicly displayed on third party sites.
IP Addresses and Referrers
I may publicly display the IP addresses of visitors and contributors to MedicalConnectivity.com.
I may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with my server, to tailor site content and to format the site and software to user needs, and to generate aggregate statistical reports. I may use aggregate visitor data to prepare publicly displayed reports regarding the traffic on this blog, site popularity rankings, and referrers that visitors use to access this blog.
Cookies
If you visit my web site, I may use session cookies while your browser is open, or while you are logged into our site. To facilitate compiling visitor statistics, I may use cookies to recognize you when you return to my website.
Server Logs
MedicalConnectivity.com’s servers automatically record information when you visit this site, including the referral URL, the URL of the page visited, and your IP address, geographic location (latitude and longitude represented on a map), display resolution, browser type and language, and the time and date of your visit. This is basically what techies call “log files†and is a basic feature of all web servers. This information is used for auditing, research and analysis to improve this site’s performance and content.
Disclosure of Information to Law Enforcement
Available log records, and all data stored on my servers may be accessed by me at any time. It is MedicalConnectivity.com’s policy to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the detection, investigation, and prosecution of unlawful activity. If I receive a warrant or subpoena for user information, I may disclose requested records to law enforcement authorities or outside parties seeking information through the legal process.
Links to Independent Websites
MedicalConnectivity.com links to independently run web sites outside of the http://MedicalConnectivity.com/ domain. MedicalConnectivity.com is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such web sites.
Contacting Me
If you have any questions about this privacy statement or the general terms of use of the site, you may contact me by email at info@MedicalConnectivity.com or by post to:
Webmaster
Medical Connectivity Consulting
7250 SW 154th Terrace
Beaverton, OR 97007
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Well, that's it for me for the week. Posting will be light next week as I'm taking some time off. Over the next week or two, you can expect some changes to the site – hopefully improvements, but I'll have to depend on you to let me know about that. Thanks to everyone who's visited the site, especially my regular readers, those who've left comments or emails, and my fellow bloggers.
Best Wishes!
Health Care Blogging Interview with Shahid Shah
Here's an interview of The Healthcare IT Guy at backbone media, a web marketing firm. Shahid gives the health care IT vendors some grief for not getting with the blog program, and rightly so. Although I can understand why FDA regulated companies have yet to attempt blogging. The FDA considers anything published by a regulated vendor as “labling” and thus subject to regulatory oversight. This goes beyond brochures and sales materials to include web content and would certainly include web logs.
You can check out backbone media's study on corporate blogging here. There's a great round up on blogs here, and you can read more on blogs here, here, and how not to do it here.
Wireless Pressure Sensor Used to Detect Stent Leaks in Aneurysms
After FDA approval in November, 2005, Endosure sensors are now being implanted in patients a the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms are the third leading cause of sudden
death in elderly U.S. men and the 13th leading cause of death in the
United States.
The device, made by CardioMEMS Inc., is implanted in the aneurysm sac.
When activated by an external device, it transmits information about pressure inside the aneurysm.
According to Division of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular
Therapy of Emory University, which tested the sensor, aneurysms are
typically repaired by inserting a stent into the affected blood vessel.
This takes the pressure off the aneurysm by creating a new route for
blood to flow.
But since the stents can leak and cause the aneurysm to
rupture, they require regular check-ups. The sensor, which is implanted
into the aneurysm sac, provides a new way to monitor the pressure.
Developer of the Endosure is CardioMEMS (the MEMS stands for MicroElectricoMechanical Systems) in Atlanta. CardioMEMES uses manufacturing techniques from the semiconductor industry to make micron scale devices that incorporates both mechanical and electronic components. Here's a blurb from their web site about the technology:
conducting plates separated by an air gap. The plates are electrically
interfaced with an inductor/antenna. This circuit has a known resonant
frequency. Pressure changes alter the distance between capacitor
plates which changes the resonant frequency. An electronic monitoring
device detects this change in the sensor's resonant frequency and converts
it into a pressure change. The wireless radiofrequency
(RF) technology in the monitoring device is proprietary.
It looks like they've got a wireless congestive heart failure (CHF) sensor in development.
