WirelessDoc

Phone outreach raises minority cancer screens

This study, conducted by researchers at Columbia's Teacher College, examines the effect of using phone contact for education about colorectal cancer (CRC) screening compared with mailed material. The phoned cohort received an average of 5 conversations totaling 23.5 minutes over 6 months. This was directed to a mostly minority population. Of the 456 subjects, 288 were African American, 74 white, and 90 whose race was not specified0.

According to the press release, "Those who received telephone education were more than four times as likely to follow through with CRC screening as those who received printed material."

Other studies have shown the effectiveness of using telephone outreach to motivate people to participate in cancer screening, but this study shows its effectiveness in a predominantly minority population. These statistics point to its importance:

From 1992--2001, CRC incidence for black men was 13.2 percent higher than for white men and 21.7 percent greater for black women than for white women. Annual mortality was 34 percent greater for black men than for white men and 38 percent greater for black women than for white women.

I'd be curious to find out how this relates to the use of cell phones, or how other digital media could be produced and delivered in a personalized fashion. Would people object to giving up their cell plan minutes to here such educational messages? Would SMS be acceptable?

FDA request for comments on medical wireless tech

[via MedicalDesign.com] The FDA has issued a guidance document "to assist industry, systems, and service providers, consultants, FDA staff, and others in the design, development, and evaluation of radio frequency (RF) wireless technology in medical devices."

After quickly scanning this document, I see they have one section entitled, "The Least Burdensome Approach." They believe their guidance provides the least burden considering the scientific and legal requirements involved. "However, if you believe an alternative approach would be less burdensome, please contact us so we can consider your point of view."

The another section outlines the scope of this draft guidance:

This draft guidance document addresses issues and concerns pertinent to the safe and effective use of radio frequency (RF) wireless technology in medical devices, including:

• wireless coexistence
• performance
• data integrity
• security
• electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)

iPhone: visionary tablet device

I was writing a long post yesterday, then TypePad went down, and the post was lost. It was a recounting of the coverage by Engadget, and the coverage that didn't happen, in realtime at least, by Gizmodo. Luckily, a commenter to Giz, said that MacRumors.com was covering it live. So, btw Eng and MacR I got a pretty good sense of what Steve Jobs was up to with the iPhone.

First, it's not a phone in the sense that it's not a handset in the candy bar or clam shell design tradition. Even it's design history suggests that this was not the original intended purpose. It was meant to compete with the Tablet PC. This Time mag reporter relates the history according to Jobs:

The iPhone developed the way a lot of cool things do: with a false start. A few years ago Jobs noticed how many development dollars were being spent—particularly in the greater Seattle metropolitan area—on what are called tablet PCs: flat, portable computers that work with a touchscreen instead of a mouse and keyboard. Jobs, being Jobs, figured he could do better, so he had Apple engineers noodle around with a tablet PC. When they showed him the touchscreen they came up with, he got excited. So excited he forgot all about tablet computers.

Second, it's not a smart phone. Michael Gartenberg points out that it supports first-party software only, and cannot download other apps which makes smartphones adaptable and extensible. Engadget cites some other deficits in this same post:

• No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man. [Especially painful with the full-featured Safari browser.]
• No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
• No expandable memory. [Needed to storing movies.]
• No removable battery. [How good could the existing battery life be when you start using Wi-Fi?]
• No Exchange or Office support. [IMAP and POP]

Third, yesterday Jobs did some thumbboard bashing by showing a slide of the Treo, Moto Q, Blackjack, and then saying that hard plastic buttons take up too much real estate which could be better used for a larger screen. The reality is that these phones are very pocketable and allow pretty fast typing. The Treo's D-pad also allows pretty effective one-handed use.

The iPhone looks like you would need to keep it in a case to protect the screen, and it would require two-handed operation, especially to type. Type? This is a virtual, screen representation of a keyboard that uses the Multi-touch technology that Job says is unique with this device. (He claims that this device utilizes 200+ new patents to pull off its wondrous feats) This I can't judge until I get a chance to try this out, but I think I still prefer the thumbboard.

From watching yesterday's presentation, it appears that dialing phone numbers seems to rely mostly on speed dialing since the number pad is buried (?)

(to be continued...)

iPhone

This is the widescreen, connected device that uses Multi-touch instead of buttons for text input.

iPhone: GSM + EDGE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. And not 3G.

Hmmm, he's not showing how to input text--it's all menu driven up to this point.

I wouldn't call this a phone. As a commener said on Engadget, why do you have to sign a contract with a carrier, in this case Cingular, when all you want is a widescreen iPod PMP?

So we finally see the virtual keyboard.

For the Web browser, it uses Safari. They say it's the first fully usable HTML browser for a phone. Has push imap for e-mail like the Blackberry. Pop, too.

Eric Schmidt of Google shows up and talks about the browser's built-in Google search function, as well as preloaded Google maps. Says Wimax is coming.

I want to know about two things now: memory and battery life.

Jerry Yang of Yahoo shows up, too. They're providing free email. I guess they lost the mobile search battle for this device to Google.  They'll be providing something called Yahoo Go and One Search.

10:47 am	crowd says "awwww"
10:47 am	available: shipping in June
10:47 am	8GB model - $599
10:47 am	4GB model - $499

 

Widescreen iPod, mobile phone, internet communicator: iPhone

The feed from MacRumors.com

9:43 am	laughs
9:43 am	3g with rotary dial
9:43 am	shows comedy picture
9:43 am	they are calling it the iPhone
9:43 am	one device, not 3 separate
9:43 am	crowd goes wild again
9:42 am	3rd internet communicator
9:42 am	revolutionary
9:42 am	mobile phone
9:42 am	2nd
9:42 am	crowd goes wild
9:42 am	widescreen ipod

WSJ: Apple and Cingular could announce tomorrow

This is a similar situation to when rumors were flying around about Apple switching to Intel processors. When a confirmatory story was posted on the WSJ Web site last June 4th, many began to believe.

This evening, the WSJ is saying (behing the cash curtain):

Cingular Wireless is expected to provide wireless service for a new Apple Computer Inc. cellphone, people familiar with the situation say.

The launch of the new phone and service is expected to be announced as early as Tuesday, these people say.

This is a market that ships nearly a billion headsets a year, compated to the 70 million iPods sold over the past 5 years.

Cingular Wireless offered the first Apple phone, the ROKR, in September 2005, but it was an instant flop since it could only hold about 100 songs.

Mobile search wars

Google has announced that they are teaming with China Mobile, China's largest telecom, to provide online-search services for cellphones. Today at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Yahoo will announce software for mobile search and associated advertising in an attempt to prevent Google from dominating cell phone search here in the US. My particular interest is how these companies support the smartphone browsers. Now that broadband is readily available for these phones, the limiting factor is the capability of these browsers. When it gets to the point that they can run something similar to Firefox, then it will broadband experience will be much better.

Another consideration are the personal media players (PMP) with the larger screens and greater memory capacity that have wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi. Search functions will also be needed as these devices mature, and they become more like the UMPCs and small Internet tablets.

I did a quick test on the Treo 650 with its 320x320 65K color screen comparing Yahoo to Google. The first set of screens shows Yahoo's wap (the old wireless application protocol used in the pre-smartphone days) implementation which brought me to a wap version of the CTIA Web site, after I entered the search term "wireless."

The second set shows Google's results which brought me to the CTIA site optimized for phone browsers.

In Google, if you choose the radio button that says "Mobile Web (Beta)," you get a link to CTIA's wap site. I can understand why neither search service wants to use the archaic "wap," but this adds an extra layer of confusion that you don't need especially while trying to navigate on a smartphone.

Lack of HIPAA enforcement prompts fear of privacy erosion

An article (subscribers only) by Theo Francis in the  last month's Wall Street Journal, tells the story of a 51-year-old lawyer who has unsuccessfully fought to keep her psychotherapist’s notes from companies such as the health insurance carrier at her job. She was turned down for disability benefits based on these notes which he therapist assured her would remain confidential. Unfortunately, some of these notes were entered into her general electronic medical record, and despite her requests, will still remain there.

When HIPAA was written, it stipulated that psyche records should be kept separate and protected from access unlike the general medical record.

This article reports on the track record of enforcement of HIPAA complaints. While there has been a rising trend of medical-privacy complaints received by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), averaging about 600 per month in 2006, “it has not yet taken any enforcement actions against hospitals, doctors, insurers or anyone else for rule violations.” There have been about 24,000 privacy complaints since April 2003, with three-quarters dismissed, either because no violation was found or the situation was resolved with “informal guidance.”

MedInformaticsMD, a blogger at Health Care Renewal, responded with a letter to the WSJ, pointing out that clinical computing needs to be treated differently than business computing in order to preserve doctor-patient confidentiality; suggesting that an advocacy movement is needed here in the US, much like the one (The Big Opt Out) in the UK; and, warning "if you want to keep information secure, don't put it on a computer." This last point refers to the types of clinical data such as psychotherapy notes which need special consideration of privacy, security and confidentiality. He calls on the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONCHIT) in the Dept. of Health and Human Services to spearhead this strategy.