New Blogs to Check Out
I have encouraged many people whose insights and opinions I value to start their own blog. As easy as blogging is, it seems to take a certain kind of person who really likes to do it. Recently two new blogs have hit the Internet, John Zaleski's MedicInfoTech blog, and Vince Kuraitis' e-CareManagement blog.
John Zaleski is a long time connectologist working in the health care IT division at one of the “big three” medical device vendors. Just reviewing the patent work that he's done is impressive. My expectations are high for John's new blog – I know he has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share.
The other new blog is from one of the God Fathers of telehealth. Vince Kuraitis has been publishing a news letter for some time, but just switched to blogging. Of his recent posts, I really liked this one: Five Lingering Questions Holding Back Remote Patient Monitoring Adoption. Any vendor thinking about entering (or staying) the remote monitoring market should read this sobering post.
I'll be adding both these blogs to my blogroll in the right hand column. Be sure to visit them often.
Medical Emergency Team 3rd Annual Conference
I’ll be attending the international conference focused on pre-attack intervention of at-risk patients in an effort to reduce adverse events and eventual failure to rescue. Here’s how the conference describes it:
Rapid Response Systems (RRS) / Medical Emergency Teams (METs) are a preplanned
group of health care practitioners who respond to acute patient deteriorations in hospitalized patients. They are usually identical to hospital “code” teams, with the exception that they respond prior to patients’ developing cardiac arrest. This recovery
response has been shown to decrease unexpected hospital mortality by some 30% in hospitals in the United States, Australia, and Great Britain. Even though the system has been reported since 1995, few hospitals have knowledge of or experience with METs.
The conference course director is Michael DeVita MD, with UPMC, and will be held in down town Pittsburgh. I’ll be blogging from the event, and gathering info for my story on monitoring unmonitored patients (along with a sidebar on this conference).
Improving patient safety and outcomes is not easy and there’s not an abundance of medical devices to support increased nursing vigilance, especially in noisy and chaotic care environments. There’s growing vendor interest in new products that could support caregivers and rapid response teams in hospitals, and there seems to be growing interest in buying such new products.
Thanks to reader Steffen Schmitt for sending me the link to this conference. Pictured right is a rapid response team drill held at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital in the Portland, Oregon metro area.
In the Mail: Hidden In Plain Sight
Hidden in Plain Sight explores innovation in a way that seems very relevant for health care. The approach to innovation presented in the book is described as demand-first innovation and growth.
I've got many hours of travel time this next week, so I hope to have an update soon.
Yet Another UMPC Spec from Intel
Right on the heels of the Menlo platform announcement, Intel has released a new UMPC (ultra mobile PC) spec called Moorestown. From DailyTech:
Before Menlow devices make it to the mainstream, Intel this week announced another major milestone for its ultra-mobile platform. Called Moorestown,
Intel revealed that by roughly mid 2009, we will be able to see devices
that consume 20 times less power than devices available in 2006.
According to Intel roadmaps, Moorestown devices will be able to last a full day's of mixed productivity and leisure activities — approximately 24 hours.
What sets Moorestown
apart from previous processors is the fact that it combines CPU, GPU
and memory controller functions into one chip. Essentially, this is the
same intention that AMD has with its Fusion program. AMD's Fusion
also encompasses mobile devices as well as desktops. It is only a
matter of time before we see the same idea from Intel in the desktop
space being applied to devices such as thin clients and budget PCs.
A 24 hour battery life would break a major barrier for a practical nurse-carried mobile device. Pictured right is an example of a Moorestown based device.
[Hat tip: Gizmodo]
