December 27, 2007
Problem of the Year 2008 Will Be Information Overload
According to research group Basex Inc., rather than name a product or person of the year, they decided to forecast "information overload" as problem of the year for 2008. Chief technology analyst Jonathan Spira, states that "it's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much lost time, and always too much of a good thing." The researchers conclude that it might be better to think twice before you copy someone on an e-mail or hit "reply all." Such practices have made today's workers less productive,
Information overload isn't exactly new, but the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. Having more information available, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine.
Workers get disoriented every time they stop what they are doing to reply to an e-mail or answer a follow-up phone call because they didn't reply within minutes. The researchers said that workers can spend 10 to 20 times the length of the original interruption trying to get back on track. It is estimated that such disruptions cost the U.S. economy $650 billion in 2006.
The study suggests a number of recommendations: Resist the urge to immediately follow up an e-mail with an instant message or phone call. Make sure the subject line clearly reflects the topic and urgency of an e-mail. And use "reply all" sparingly.
Source: Wired
December 22, 2007
Proteus Intelligent Clinical Guidelines
In Greek mythology, Proteus is the sea god who possessed the knowledge about everything and had the ability to change shape at will. Today, Proteus is also an Acronym - PROcesses and Transactions Editable by USers. Starting this month, Proteus tools are now Free/Open Source.
It is a software technology that allows creating clinical executable decision support guidelines with little effort. According to the company website, it is 'a software tool that allows creating and executing clinical decision support guidelines using the Proteus approach. The tool called Protean may be downloaded from here. Protean allows creating new guidelines or editing existing ones very easily. Much of the editing is done by dragging and dropping.'
Quick Overview
The Proteus guidelines are created with modular entities called Knowledge Components (KCs). Each KC represents a clinical activity and is available to the clinician as a module of executable knowledge with its own intelligence.
The KCs may be easily modified
The KCs may be reused
Experts at remote locations may manage individual KCs, keeping them in sync with the current medical concepts, while the clinicians automatically get the state-of-the-art executable knowledge
The intelligent decision-making in the KC comes from the Inference Tools in the Proteus approach
The KCs offer a template for capturing data pertaining to the clinical activity that they represent and serve as components of an Electronic Medical Record.
Since the KCs represent discretely identifiable clinical activities they also allow attaching related elements from the non-clinical processes of healthcare. Each such non-clinical process can be assigned a separate layer, with components within it communicating with a logically related KC in the clinical process.
December 04, 2007
New Rural Telehealth Program
Last week the FCC has initiated a pilot funding program to facilitate the creation of a nationwide broadband network dedicated to health care, connecting public and private non-profit health care providers in rural and urban locations.
From the FCC Press Release
Washington, D.C. – To significantly increase access to acute, primary and preventive health care in rural America, the Federal Communications Commission today dedicated over $417 million for the construction of 69 statewide or regional broadband telehealth networks in 42 states and three U.S. territories under the Rural Health Care Pilot Program (RHCPP).
Broadband deployment is one of the Commission’s top priorities – particularly in rural America. And nowhere is the need for broadband greater than in rural healthcare, where isolated clinics can save lives by using advanced communications technology to tap the expertise of modern urban medical centers.
The Commission’s RHCPP will support the connection of more than 6,000 public and non-profit health care providers nationwide to broadband telehealth networks. The health care facilities participating in the Pilot Program include: hospitals, clinics, universities and research centers, behavioral health sites, correctional facility clinics, and community health centers.
Telehealth and telemedicine services provide patients in rural areas with access to critically needed medical specialists in a variety of practices. Intensive care doctors and nurses can monitor critically-ill patients around the clock and video conferencing allows specialists and mental health professionals to care for patients in different rural locations, often hundreds of miles away.
More Information:
Rural Health Care Pilot Program Website