Archive for the ‘healthcare’ Category

iPads for medical students

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Medicine students starting at Stanford University School of Medicine will this year be given an iPad as part of a trial programme in integrate the mobile device into medical education.

Stanford will distribute iPads to its incoming class of 91 first-year medical school and master’s of medicine students during orientation later in August.

The prestigious medical school aims to use the iPads to give its students flexible access to the content they need, this will range whether it is a virtual cadaver in dissection lab, annotated lecture slides and videos in the classroom, or journal articles for evidence-based practice in clinic. Read full article here

Nintendo Wii, Digi pens for hospitals

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

NHS East Berkshire is to trial technology to allow patients to carry out rehabilitation exercises at home without needing to see a physiotherapist, as part of the launch of O2 Health.

The technology will allow patients to return home and carry out pre-determined rehabilitation programmes shown on a TV screen and have their progress monitored remotely via movement sensors.

Data will be captured and communicated back to a physiotherapist for ongoing evaluation to make sure the patient is carrying out the correct movements..

Read full article here

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust is set to roll-out digital pens to more than 130 staff across its community midwifery department.

The trust believes it was the first in the country to pilot the digital pens, which have been developed by digital pen providers Anoto and PaperIQ together with BlackBerry.

It will now roll-out the system over the next two weeks. Midwives will be able to visit mums-to-be in the community and digitally record information. The data will then be sent back to the trust using a BlackBerry device.

Read full article here

The Doctor Will See You Now. Please Log On.

Monday, May 31st, 2010

ONE day last summer, Charlie Martin felt a sharp pain in his lower back. But he couldn’t jump into his car and rush to the doctor’s office or the emergency room: Mr. Martin, a crane operator, was working on an oil rig in the South China Sea off Malaysia.

From thousands of miles away, Dr. Oscar Boultinghouse checks the eye of a patient. He could, though, get in touch with a doctor thousands of miles away, via two-way video. Using an electronic stethoscope that a paramedic on the rig held in place, Dr. Oscar W. Boultinghouse, an emergency medicine physician in Houston, listened to Mr. Martin’s heart. “The extreme pain strongly suggested a kidney stone,” Dr. Boultinghouse said later. A urinalysis on the rig confirmed the diagnosis, and Mr. Martin flew to his home in Mississippi for treatment.

Mr. Martin, 32, is now back at work on the same rig, the Courageous, leased by Shell Oil. He says he is grateful he could discuss his pain by video with the doctor. “It’s a lot better than trying to describe it on a phone,” Mr. Martin says.. Read full article here

FutureCare, a Tour of Healthcare Initiatives @ CeBIT 2010

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

FutureCare 2010 will demonstrate the vital role of IT in optimizing healthcare delivery on the basis of real practical examples.

The FutureCare 2010 tour embraces seven different areas ranging from home care situations and general practice through to casualty and emergency hospital admissions. One of the highlights will be the ADAC air ambulance, complete with telemedical equipment. Following the successful approach adopted for FutureCare 2009, this year will again see experts accompanying a tour of best-practice cases of IT applications in healthcare. The themed tours will showcase applications of telemedicine in different scenarios – for example, from primary prevention aimed at a health-conscious person to tertiary prevention in the case of a chronically ill person.

FutureCare 2010 offers solutions and ideas for IT experts and decision-makers in hospitals, medical insurance companies, medical associations, etc., and also affords a meeting-place facilitating dialogue between the health care community, politicians and science.

Is bug free application a myth

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Is is said that Microsoft has the greatest of resources and can possibly hire the cream of the brightest programming brains on this planet to work on the best possible technologies, guided by the best system architects and project managers and yet the product stability and security vulnerabilities are often being questioned. Windows XP recently released service pack 3 (a.k.a bug fixes). Microsoft still has some way to go in stability and performance before they do a catch up with open source community supported Linux platform.
 
There is always this race to do things better and technology keeps changing all the time (change is constant) Applications are becoming complex with more lines of code being written and it gets even more difficult to test these applications.
 
New tax laws by the government bring about new requirements which need to be incorporated "yesterday" for some clients.
 
Now we deploy programs that does testing of our products, which has reduced our version release cycle from 2 weeks to 2 hours. However well we follow these testing procedures, we still end up with rare reports about complex bugs that appears in the application at customer locations.
 
It is a cat and a mouse game which we have been trying to master. The first time we built a product, we perfected it in 7 years, by then we realised that technology had changed and we were back on the starting block.
 
We have new norms in place for breakdown response starting 1st April. There are dedicated broadband support helpdesks to your assistance to cut on travel time and fatigue. We are proud of our current 99.5% uptime record for all installations.
 
We have started offering dedicated IT resource management services from 1st April. These services would augment staffing at your organisation in case you do not have a dedicated EDP personnel. In an ever changing environment, we often see that staff turnover at front office is alarmingly high in most organisations and we are sure that our value added services would be put into use to train your people – as they are the key to the success of any service organisation. There are a few clients who have been using these services for over a year.
 
Soon, we would also be providing healthcare consulting and training services.
 
We have also introduced new modules for SMS communication, operation theatre, blood bank, fixed asset management etc, the full list is available on the website
 
We look forward to your comments and suggestions as to how we can service you better and invite you to visit our office at Kozhikode.
 
Happy to welcome our new clients to this newsletter

IRDA – New treatment norms

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

With the increasing cost of healthcare in India, there is good news for consumers

hospital – vendor rating

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
Being in the business of providing consulting services for hospitals (We also make hospital Software), customers often ask about facilities for vendor rating.

Here are some clues.

The FIVE 'R'

Right source
Right quantity
Right quality
Right price
Right time

For continuous supply of all types of materials/medicines required by the hospital. It is important at this stage that the hospitals undertake vendor analysis and keep the list of vendors rated on a muti-parameter rating.

Vendor Analysis must take into account the factors like quality, quantity, pricing, reliability, speed, financial position, production capacity, process capacity,and transport facilities available with the vendors.

COMPANY          

Size/Capacity
Financial strength
Operational profit
Manufacturing range
Research facilities
Geographical location
Labour relation
Trade relation                    

PRODUCTS

Quality
Price
Packaging
Uniformity
Warranty   

SERVICE

Delivery on time
Condition on arrival
Number of rejections
Follow-up instructions
Technical assistance
Handling of complaint
Emergency aid
Supply updates

Regulatory provision for healthcare providers

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Doctors or medical practitioners in India may have to meet stringent regulatory provision before being given licence to run neighbourhood health clinics. The centre is planning to create a regulatory body to set up minimum standards for different kinds of healthcare providers. The proposal has already received the prime minister’s approval and likely to be announced in December as part of the medium-term health policy of the government.

The provisions of the new legislation would be applicable for all clinical establishments including diagnostic centres and private testing labs.