September 2010
19 posts
How to Find Funding for Your Healthcare IT Startup →
Great advice from Ben Rooks, posted at HIStalk, my favorite healthcare IT blog.
If You Think You Know What “Granular” Means, You... →
Robert Lafsky, a gastroenterologist, has a vocab lesson for y’all:
General media people out there, if you mean “detailed,” say “detailed.” Leave “granular” for those that really need it.
It's Not Our Fault, But It's Our Problem →
Trey Lauderdale, founder of Voalté, on going the extra mile to ensure a great user experience with their product, even if it means solving a problem that isn’t their fault:
Luckily, the answer was much simpler. The nurse had her volume turned all the way down to zero. D’oh! While this issue certainly wasn’t our fault, it clearly soured the experience with Voalté. More importantly, it had...
NC Anesthesiologist Ignores the Facts About Nurse... →
North Carolina blogger Adam Linker on the unscientific arrogance of this editorial by an anesthesiologist who claims (without any evidence) that allowing nurse anesthetists to practice without physician supervision would “lower the standard of care” at NC hospitals:
So far I think the literature favors the nurses. I think everyone is willing to listen to the arguments made by...
6 tags
The EMR Nurses Need
Among the litany of complaints about the (un)usability of EMRs, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. More than the poor design choices and overall ugliness of existing software, by far the single biggest failure of HIT companies is that none of them has yet to produce an EMR that nurses actually need.
There is a huge opportunity being wasted here. Other industries have been able to...
Interview With Trey Lauderdale, Founder of Voalté →
Voalté makes a terrific VOIP + text message + alarm call solution for hospitals. Their app runs natively on iPhones and BlackBerrys. Trey Lauderdale, their founder, was interviewed in February by HIStalk on his vision for the company:
We talked to a lot of CIOs that I knew from my previous relationships at Emergin and we asked, “We’re a small startup organization. We’re building our company....
Dragon Medical Dictation SDK Allows Dictation... →
This is huge. Physicians’ resistance to EMR adoption is largely based on their frustration with how difficult it is to create meaningful progress notes quickly. Dictation has always been faster than typing. With this new SDK, Dragon Medical Dictation can be incorporated into any native EMR, obviating the burdens of either typed notes or full-time dictation staff. This is especially good news...
Steve Jobs Stopped at Japanese Airport, Ninja... →
It looks like this actually happened.
Tennessee Minister Burned the Qur'an →
Bob Old, a Springfield, TN minister who burned a copy of the Qur’an this week, rhapsodizing on religious freedom:
And when I say religious freedom, I don’t mean the right to serve any old god. Our nation was founded on the constitution, which was founded on the Lord Jesus Christ and the God Jehovah. We are a Christian nation.
No it wasn’t, and no we aren’t.
The Pleasant Austerity of Medical Fonts
Brief History of Late 20th Century Politics:... →
In the course of a book review on the rise of the financial sector as an enormous political entity, James Kwak summarizes the effect that the changes had on both parties:
Money pouring into lobbying firms, political campaigns, and ideological think tanks created the organizational muscle that gave the Republicans a formidable institutional advantage by the 1980s. The Democrats have only...
Early September News Round-Up
I’m a little late catching up on my Instapaper account, so for what it’s worth, here’s some interesting and immeasurably valuable, if belated, news passed on to you by yours truly.
+ Netflix gives their employees unlimited vacation time.
The Telegraph reported recently on their impressive vacation policy:
As the company explains in its “Reference Guide on our Freedom...
Apple Relaxes, Clarifies App Developer Policies
I couldn’t do a better job of summarizing what’s new than John Gruber, so I’ll just link to his post here. In short, Apple has removed the ban on using third-party development tools and clarified, in plain language, their app store review policies (“We don’t need any more Fart apps,”).
L0nger P@$$words @ren't M0re $ecure, They're Ju$t... →
Have you ever wondered why your employer requires you to have a ten-character email password with special characters and random strings of upper and lowercase letters, while your Amazon account lets you keep any six-character password you wish? Is Amazon any less secure, or is your employer’s IT department hassling you for no reason?
In a recent New York Times article, Randall Stross links...
Great 2010 Congressional Election Infographics →
The New York Times has some helpful interactive infographics on this year’s congressional elections. Notice how slim the margin is between a Democrat and a Republican controlled House. Also, despite how much their executives must despise the Internet for what it has done to the newspaper industry, the Times consistently makes outstanding use of this new medium.
Smartphones Will Outsell PCs Next Year →
Asymco calls it like it is:
If the 1 million/day benchmark holds, and all indications are that it will, then the total smartphone/iPad/touch market will be greater than the total PC market next year.
The healthcare IT industry seems oblivious to this seismic shift. Eclypsis, Epic, and Cerner are the only EMR vendors whose products really meet meaningful use criteria. How many of them have...
Racist TN Republican on The Daily Show →
Tennessee Republicans have been protesting the expansion of a local Islaamic center down in Murfreesboro on the grounds that it is a terrorist training camp in disguise. They actually believe this, as a Daily Show interview with local opposition organizer Laurie Cardoza-Moore reveals. Since appearing on the show, Cardoza-Moore claims that she’s been receiving death threats on her cellphone....
Apple Debuts New iPods, iTunes, Apple TV, and More
Apple hosted it’s yearly iPod event today from California, debuting lots of new products. Interested parties can visit Apple’s homepage to see it all firsthand. Here are the items that excited me the most.
iPod Touch: Thinner, Video Chat, HD Video/Photo Camera.
This is the christmas present this year. There are plenty of people you know who don’t want an iPhone but would enjoy...
Orange Introduces HD Audio Mobile Phone Calls →
Orange, a UK mobile phone carrier, has debuted a new high-definition phone service called HD Voice. Although the service requires that you purchase a new mobile phone, the calls themselves don’t use any hardware not already present in most phones. Orange has made HD Voice an open standard in the UK. I hope that something similar follows in the states.
I’ve been waiting for something...