The Five Stages of Innovation

1.  People deny that the innovation is required.

2.  People deny that the innovation is effective.

3.  People deny that the innovation is important.

4.  People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it.

5.  People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it to people other than the innovator, and deny the existence of stages 1 to 4.

Fitting a Smartphone in Your Mouth…

Let’s end the week with a video that serves as an excellent reminder why most of us got involved in HC IT in the first place – helping people to become and stay healthy.

I love the new technology aspect in this video – utilising Smartphone technology within mouth guards for American football players. After an on-pitch collision instant information about the force of impact, and likely effect on the brain is transmitted to a pitch side computer allowing instant analysis of likely concussions and brain damage.

Fascinating stuff…

Have a search on YouTube – a lot of these Cleveland Clinic videos are well worth a watch.

It’s also interesting to have a browse through their website – very accessible in relation to patients and their EHRs.

Not New, Not Innovative – Still Amazing…

Thinking about Comic Relief today I’d like to talk briefly about technologies and procedures we consider to be extremely common place but in developing countries are rare and life-changing.

In Africa, one child in every five children dies before their 5^th birthday - and many of these deaths are from preventable diseases such as malaria. Over 781,000 people die every year from malaria.  That’s one child death every 45 seconds from something that is incredibly preventable – nets, testing kits and emergency drugs are the things that make the difference. 

In Africa alone, 300,000 children under the age of 15 are blind, and when these children lose their sight there’s a 50% chance that they will be dead within 2 years.  Yet 80% of the blindness that occurs in developing countries is from totally treatable infections.  £5 can provide a treatment for trachoma – an eye infection that turns the eyelashes inwards, causing rubbing on the cornea and ultimately blindness – but can, unbelievably be treated with antibiotics or a simple 15 minute operation to the eyelid.  We all know someone who's had their cataracts operated on - but although this is one the primary causes of blindness in developing countries and is relatively simple to correct, many people do not know how to get help, or even that help exists

It’s hard for us to fully comprehend these sorts of issues when we can pop to see the doctor, go to A&E or search for our symptoms and find advice and support online.

The great thing about Comic Relief is that it doesn’t only hand out malaria nets, antibiotics and kits – they aim to support the greatest change through improving primary health care - with improvements in both preventive and curative work - using funding to encourage the public and those in power to get behind campaigns to reduce the numbers of preventable deaths - particularly among women and young children.

Comic Relief funds organisations who work both with health providers and those who use healthcare services - as well as the voluntary and local organisations which often bridge the gaps between the two.

I talk a lot about patient-centric healthcare – and this really is an area where the idea of putting the patient at the centre of the process takes a backseat to simply making the patient part of the process at all.  But by long term and considered investment, in reducing infant mortality so these children have a chance, training proper midwifes and local people to treat minor infections – we must be taking the first tiny tiny steps to levelling the playing field.

Glee! Home of the latest Healthcare Innovations!

Any fans of Glee will have had an undeniable teary moment when watching Monday’s show “A Very Glee Christmas” when wheelchair-bound Artie had a walk round the rehearsal room in the Israeli designed ReWalk.

The ReWalk is the ARGO Medical Technologies’ flagship of innovative development for walking restoration devices for people with lower limb disabilities. The product offers an alternative to wheelchair users, enabling paralysed people to stand, walk, and even climb stairs. 

The ReWalk is a wearable, motorised quasi robotic suit that provides user-initiated mobility. Through leveraging advanced motion sensors, some sophisticated robotic control algorithms, on-board computers, real-time software, actuation motors, some composite materials, and good old fashion rechargeable batteries, the ReWalk creates movement through subtle changes in the user’s centre of gravity and upper-body movements.

There have been suggestions that this could truly represent the one-stop product for patients with lower limb disabilities in the future - no more need for stair lifts, bed winches and standing devices.

 As the Re Walk costs over $100k – it stretches the bounds of believability somewhat that a US high school football coach could pop down to the shops and pick one up, as per Glee, but that is surely a great aspiration for the future.  And we should give some credit to the show’s producers for bringing new healthcare technology to such a wide audience.

 

Social Media – Get On Board or Get Run Over

One of the fastest developing areas in healthcare communication is social networking and social media. So - how can an EMR/HIS vendor use this as an advantage together with organisational IT healthcare delivery guys?

I was at a conference Thursday and Friday last week, of leading German Hospital managers, and a particular discussion with the CIO of one of the leading hospital groups could summarise his thoughts as thus:

• A year back I thought this twitter stuff was unimportant
• A few months back I was of the belief I would have to fight it and shouldn’t allow it
• Now I’m starting to contemplate how to use it, and I feel unsupported in my efforts as the EMR vendors won’t or perhaps can’t provide me with any way to hook this into their systems, with the aim of making it a whole ecosystem including and accommodating social media

And my view:

• Since today’s discussion about social media I know instinctively if we, IT professionals in healthcare, won't do anything about it, it will be done via the consumerism of IT anyway – by our users and without us…and it will kill classic healthcare IT.

Have a look at healthissocial.com – one of the new websites totally dedicated to social media and communication in healthcare.

In particular there is a point I’d like to reproduce here – that as essential as it clearly is for us, as healthcare IT providers to get on board with social media or get run over by it – the basics of communication and appropriate communication must still be fundamental to our approach.

Phil Bauman – as part of his blog “Things that matter in Healthcare social media” makes the following point:

“Silence Communication isn’t always a good thing. During conflict, for instance, communication at the wrong time can intensify violence. An angry patient might go ballistic via social media because her father died of sepsis at a mediocre hospital. “Engaging” with her at that moment might not be helpful. We don’t always have to talk. There is strategy in silence.”

So I suppose – to close – we in IT healthcare clearly have “miles to go before we sleep” if we are going to get ahead of the curve with the integration of social media – but the implementation and expectation should be both measured and balanced.

On the Spot Access to EMR

I talk a lot on this blog about the potential growth and needed development of EMR technology within hospitals, surgeries and clinics.

This interview with Cliff Reid made me give some more serious thought to the possibility and potential benefits for the rescue services via mobile technology.  EMR access at the point of emergency interventions would be incredibly useful – highlighting allergies, additional medications and contraindications, you name it...

At the moment only a few EHR/EMR technologies are in use for on the spot trauma purposes…

CSI technology - it's here!

For anyone who's a fan of CSI or the film Minority Report - you'll love this video of touchscreen functionality - taken to a totally new level.

Watch it now!

The most obvious healthcare usage would be in hospitals - as a virtual whiteboard in OT and ward management.  How many years away are we?  That's anyone's guess!