Dr Watson - the return!

Check out this fantastic satirical video on Dr Watson's potential as a real-life clinician.

It's also worth checking out the iMedical Grand Rounds blog - that focuses this week on Dr Watson and all the potential and pitfalls many people have been blogging about.

Enjoy!

awesome analogy

the Kalahari, the Wildebeest and the EHR - great blog post by Paul Roemer

http://healthcareitstrategy.com/2011/04/12/ehr-strategy-the-wildebeest-postulate/

Tabletop Touchscreen Becomes Giant Microscope

This is really fascinating - although a relatively new technology in this arena - I'm sure we will see major new patterns emerging on usage, new metaphors with usability impacting adoption from single 'egghead' use to colleagues multi-touch interaction.

Mega-touchscreens like Microsoft surface may have limited utility for real-world consumers (unless you live in a sci-fi movie), but they're perfect for institutions like museums, schools, and laboratories. Now a team of Finnish scientists and technologists has done the obvious thing and created a huge multitouch microscope, so eggheads can blow up slices of mouse brain (or whatever they're studying) for closer scrutiny without squinting into a tiny eyepiece. Take that, iPad 2!  According to PhysOrg, the 46" screen displays biological samples after they've been digitized using a microscopy scanner. The touchscreen can display images up to 200GB in size -- detailed enough to blow up big enough to show "subcellular" levels of detail in the samples. In other words, you can shave off a slice of tissue, scan it into the image server, and then use your hands to zoom into it so far that microscopic details become as big as dinner plates.

 

The giant interactive microscope could be especially useful in teaching contexts between experienced scientists and their students: "like a combination of Google Map and the user interface from the movie Minority Report," in the words of Johan Lundin, one of its creators. Multitouch support allows several people to manipulate the image at once -- great for arguing over whether that dark blotch onscreen is cancerous or not! [Read more at PhysOrg]

12 Reasons Why EMRs Improve Patient Care

Check out this great blog below by Katherine Rourke

I particularly agree with her final point - we, in HC IT, tend to assume that everyone can see the obvious benefits of EMR - but in reality this is still an idea in progress for many clinicians.

"While HIT insiders and pundits take it as a given that installing an EMR benefits everyone, it’s not so obvious to some gun-shy practices.   Even researchers like myself switch gears every time I try to explain what EMR technology can do.

That’s why I was pleased to come across the following blog item. This piece offers a very solid list of twelve reasons why EMRs can improve patient care, including the following (in no particular order of importance):

*  EMRs are less subject to physical damage and data loss than paper records, as the data can be backed up and stored elsewhere.

* EMRs reduce wait times for patients, as there’s no need to wait for a receptionist to pull a chart and get it to the treating clinician.

* Data stored in an EMR can be sent more easily to other clinicians than when using a paper record. (This may not be true if the EMR is balky — in reality, only an HIE can really fulfill this promise — but it should be true.)

* EMRs that integrate e-prescribing reduce the risk that a  patient will get the wrong drug/dose, as poorly-written prescriptions stop being an issue.

The piece also notes that with an EMR in place, practices should have neater workspaces to use (no paper accumulation) and have better access to care documentation during emergencies.

Now, to inject a note of skepticism here, it’s unlikely that most practices will realize all of these benefits quickly.

In particular, I highly doubt that practices will be able to cut back on paper quickly, since if nothing else, they’ll have to do something with the reams of letters and faxes that other providers send to them, and possibly images as well. (It’s no coincidence that the author works for an HIT consulting firm.)

Still, it’s good to see a well-rounded wrap-up of how EMRs might support day-to-day patient care.  It’s easy to assume that everyone understands EMRs’ potential — but I’d argue that many clinicians are just beginning to draw these conclusions."