WirelessDoc

Can IT Save the Healthcare Industry?

This article by Jeffrey Rothfeder, on the CIO Insight Web site, talks about the trend to give bonuses to doctor who use electronic records systems and clinical decision-making tools.

        A healthcare industry consortium in California may have discovered the perfect way to convince physicians in the Golden State to provide high-quality healthcare: Pay them bonuses to do so.

In 2003, under a program that has spawned imitators nationwide, the Integrated Healthcare Association, which brokers partnerships among medical providers and payers, debuted a program in which six health insurers, representing 7 million patients, measured the level of medical care doled out by 45,000 doctors, based on a set of performance measures.

The IHA program has increased the weighting for using IT from 10% to 20% in determining the ranking of the physicians.

PdaNet for Treo 700w now available

TreoCentral is reporting that PdaNet (remember PDAs?) is available for the Windows-based Treo 700w. This software allows the Treo as a wireless modem, typically when connected to a laptop compute. Considering the Treo is accessing Verizon's EV-DO highspeed wireless cell network, this is quite a feature for the mobile professional.

It's important to be aware that this may incur additional monthly fees if the carrier detects excessive usage from the device.

Anonymizer for the PC

I had a chance to download and try out the two Anonymizer software packages, Anonymous Surfing and Anti-Spyware, by loading them on my PC. The real news is that these can be run on the new U3 thumb drives, which I'll review in the future.

Anonymous Surfing (click on graphics for a larger view)

This is the control panel, and you can see in the lower right the main feature of this program. Your IP address is substituted with one from a pool of thousands of IP addresses on the Anonymizer's servers. The options on the left are for SSL encryption to provide extra security when using a Wi-Fi hotspot, and the Web site filtering is meant to detect those sites that contain spyware or other malicious scripts.

Using this software, you're immediately aware that Web sites load slower. But chances are you'll only turn this software on when you want to mask your IP address when accessing a specific site or when you're at a company doing research on a competitor's site.

I did encounter problems when trying to create this post on my TypePad account, and had to turn the software off in order to upload the content.

There were no problems installing or using this software, and it took a total of 4 minutes to complete a Smart Scan of my hard drive (80 GB).

I did receive a prompt when I tried to visit one Web site saying that there was potentially dangerous scripts, but I'm sure whether this was the Real-time protection with ActiveX Shield feature of this program or the filtering function of the Anonymous Surfing program. And, I didn't this test this software against the better anti-spyware programs.

All in all, I can the installation process for both of these programs was non-problematic. It is easy enough to use the control panel to turn these on and off, or to initiate a anti-spyware scan. And, you can reliably (so far as I've tested) depend on your IP address being masked when you so desire. I wouldn't leave this feature on all the time when doing general Web surfing because it does slow down the loading of Web pages, but it's  useful when you need to do some anonymous research. You have to be aware, however, that if a Web site has placed a cookie on your computer, you will be identified.

Sandisk joins with Anonymizer

Sandisk is now offering a 30-day trial of Anonymizer for its U3-compliant thumb drives.

The Anonymizer was previously featured on the StealthSurfer thumb drives which typically retail for $180 for the 512 MB version. Now, you can buy a 512 MB U3-compliant drive for about $70, and then add the software you need. The yearly license for Anonymizer is about $25 per year.

For this yearly fee, all your html requests on the Web are routed through the servers at Anonymizer.com. They maintain a pool of dynamic IP addresses that they change daily for consumer accounts. It also prevents the phishing, pharming and spyware mischief the may occur on your PC.  Also, if you visit other companies and use their PCs, all evidence of your Web surfing remains on the thumb drive. You might also want to mask your company's IP address if you're doing research about a competitor's Web site.

Of course, this opens up the possibilities for those who wish to post messages anonymously on message boards and blogs. This is the downside of this technology, which occurs with every new increase in capability. But these sites could very well stipulate that they only receive posts from verified users with consistent IP addresses. (Does anyone use dial-up anymore?)

I hope to be able to try out this service soon with my PC, as I wasn't able to purchase a Sandisk U3-compliant drive this afternoon at BestBuy. To find out more about the U3 capability for thumb drives, you can visit the U3.com Web site.

IP3 Security Seminar to be held in Brooklyn

(A sunny, cold morning here in B'klyn shot with a Nikon Coolpix S4.)

The IP3 network security seminar is being held nearby at Polytechnic U. on Jan. 23 to 24, so I think I might check it out. Ken Kousky, CEO of IP3 Inc. gave me the rundown about the digital lifestyle and how it applies to network security in a long e-mail. Then, I started receiving numerous calls on my cell, so I figured I have to mention this event just to reward his company's persistence.

My concept of the "digital lifestyle" includes everything that you own and use, both software and hardware, to research and process information successfully. It starts with the gadgets that I carry around (I'll photograph and talk about the things I use when I get and chance).

Handheld Devices Come to First Responders' Rescue

This is about vendors producing custom hardware and software for first responders:

More than 20 first-responder organizations in Washington state, including hospitals, fire and police departments, and decontamination units, now are able to track patients in disaster areas and transmit critical information to healthcare providers via a mobile, electronic communications system.

The agencies, mostly in the Seattle-Tacoma area, are the beneficiaries of a new partnership between mobile computer manufacturer Hand Held Products (Skaneateles Falls, N.Y.) and Seattle-based software company Iomedex, maker of a system called Mobile Incident Response Information System (MobileIRIS).

These devices support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular internet access. The units "essentially are ruggedized Pocket PC-based personal digital assistants with color touch-screens and alphanumeric keypads."

U.S. Emergency Medicine System Near Breaking Point

There continues to be much talk about the use of wireless networks for first responders in the case of a a disaster, but from this report from the American College of Emergency Physicians we can see the current state of affairs for the nation's ER facilities:

The state-by-state evaluation awarded poor or near-failing marks in emergency medicine to 41 states and a grade of C- to the country at large. No state failed completely, but none earned top marks, according to the National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine, published by the college.

American Health Information Community Meeting on January 17th

Via an e-mail from AHIC (created under the auspices of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology [ONCHIT]):

 

The next meeting of the American Health Information Community (the Community) will take place January 17, 2006 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the following location: 

The

Hubert

Humphrey

Building

200 Independence Avenue, SW

Room 800

Washington

,

DC

20201

This meeting is open to the public and advance registration is not required.  The agenda for the January 17, 2006 meeting of the Community is attached.  The meeting will be web cast at the following address: http://www.videocast.nih.gov/

The future dates for the Community meetings are listed below:

Dates:             March 7, 2006

April 25, 2006

June 13, 2006

August 1, 2006

September 12, 2006

October 31, 2006

December 5, 2006

There is bound to be talk about the strategies for the possible H5N1 flu epidemic, as well as efforts to create the nationwide electronic patient record.

Netomat launches free mobile phone to PC networking service

I This is something else that will require some investigation and evaluation.

From their press release:

[N]etomat hub seamlessly integrates multiple essential services for real-time group communication. This includes picture and text messaging with presence, trusted social networking, RSS syndication, digital photo storage and update alerts - as richly on mobile phones as on PCs.

I'm a big proponent of the use of RSS, so this is worth a try. I'll report back after I take it out for a spin.

UPDATE: No support for the Treo!

The 9th Annual Distributed Medical Intelligence Conference and Exposition

Subtitled, "Disaster response and preparedness from hurricanes to infectious disease," this conference to be held this April in New Orleans is being sponsored by DMI9.org (I can't find any information about this organization at their Web site).

From their executive summary:

International catastrophic events have heightened the awareness of the need to prepare and rapidly respond to any disaster, especially those with mass casualties.  Key elements of effective disaster response are surge capacity, medical triage, pre-hospital care, rich communications with the public health community, and long term emotional and psychological support services.  Distributed Medical Intelligence principles and related technologies offer the potential to improve community readiness and provide the situational awareness necessary for efficient resource sharing and effective incident command and control.

I'll see if I can find out more about this organization.