Ramblings: SingLIVE 2008

One other event that I would be participating is SingLive 2008 on the 5 – 9 March 2008 (well, the exhibition is from 7-9 March) except for this time, I am going to participate as a vendor (with an exhibition booth).

SingLIVE is an annual conference on live interventions and vascular endotherapy that focuses on coronary, valvular and peripheral interventions, with live demonstration of the latest devices and techniques. It also happens to be one of the most premier interventional meetings in Asia.

As the Product Manager of a leading Cardiology Informatics company (in the world), it is only natural for me to be there to share the benefits of my solution to the attendees, if you happen to be attending SingLIVE 2008, do come to booth B8 and look for me.

Ramblings: CIO Summit Asia 2008

As a member of the Australia Computer Society, I was extremely fortunate to be selected to attend the CIO Summit Asia 2008 (held in Singapore on the 3 – 4 March).

The funny part is, the event is also endorsed by the Singapore Computer Society (these are the only 2 endorsing societies) which I’m also a Full member but I got ’sponsored’ by the overseas society to attend the local conference instead. Funny how things works.

Extracted from the official website,

” The CIO Summit Asia 2008 is a unique event for IT Leaders from all industry sectors. With the roles and responsibilities of a Chief Information Officer constantly changing this Summit is designed to address the most topical and relevant issues to a growing organisation. The format allows a IT Leader in 2 days to gain the information that will give their business competitive advantage and longevity through a series of keynote speakers and on-to-one business meetings with suppliers, which are relevant to their business models and needs.

OsiriX to host first European user group at ECR 2008

The first meeting of the European User Group for OsiriX, an open-source PACS workstation DICOM viewer for the Apple Macintosh operating system, will take place at the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) 2008 in Vienna, Austria, next month.

The group will discuss the future of open-source imaging and the capabilities of the newest version of the OsiriX software, the 64-bit version 3.0.

Interestingly, Apple is technology partner for SingLIVE 2008, I think I’ll visit their exhibition booth to see OsiriX in action for coronary angios, multislice CT, PET, MRI and other DICOM compatible files.

OsiriX’s offical web portal is www.osirix-viewer.com.

Open Source is taking over Healthcare !!! ….. just joking Microsoft.

Merge Healthcare to cut almost 30% of workforce

In a bid to save $11 million to $12 million in expenses, Merge Healthcare (Merge Technologies) plans to eliminate 28 percent of its current workforce by March 31.

According to the news from HealthImaging.com; “The Milwaukee, Wis.-based company, with approximately 600 employees worldwide, said 160 employees will lose their jobs by March 31. Of the 160, approximately 45 layoffs will be in the United States and Canada, while 115 will be offshore in India.  The company said another 20 employees are expected to leave the company through attrition during the year, for a total reduction of 180 employees for 2008.”

Personally, I am quite disgusted that see people losing jobs because the company wants to save money by outsourcing those jobs but from a business point of view, I guess this is a viable option to stay afloat. I just hope that those people find a new job soon.

Microsoft Announces the Amalga Family of Health Enterprise Systems

Microsoft has officially announced the “Microsoft Amalga Family of Health Enterprise Systems”, which will be demonstrated publicly for the ‘first time’ at HIMSS 2008.

Now the name Amalga is actually preserved from the RIS/PACS solution of GlobalCare Solution (GCS), the new name is now Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS and I’m actually quite proud to say that I know the person who came up with the name ‘Amalga’

The new Amalga family of products consist of 3 products;

Microsoft Amalga (Data Mining)
The new version of the product formerly known as Azyxxi, Amalga is part of a new software category called Unified Intelligence Systems that allows hospital enterprises to unlock the power of all their data sitting in isolated clinical, financial and administrative systems. Without replacing current systems, it offers an innovative way to capture, consolidate, store, access and quickly present data in meaningful ways for use by clinicians and executives of leading-edge institutions. Amalga is designed for hospitals and health systems that have invested in a diverse set of IT solutions.

Microsoft Amalga Hospital Information System (HIS)
 The new version of the product previously named Hospital 2000, Amalga HIS is a state-of-the-art, fully integrated hospital information system designed for developing and emerging markets. Amalga HIS is built around an electronic medical record (EMR) with complete patient and bed management, laboratory, pharmacy, radiology information system and picture archiving and communication system (RIS/PACS), pathology, financial accounting, materials management, and human resource systems.

Microsoft Amalga RIS/PACS
The new version of the product formerly known as GCS Amalga is now available as a stand-alone system as well as an integrated component of Amalga HIS. The integrated architecture means that a radiologist can use a single application to manipulate and study images and access the patient medical record. The workstation interface is optimized for radiologist workflow, including support for predefined templates, an intuitive report editor and voice recognition capabilities.

When I first saw the news, I called up an old friend (and mentor) from GCS (well, he’s with Microsoft now) to find out more about the changes (and also to catch up) and while I’m very excited that Microsoft is now offically going to venture into the Healthcare Informatics arena, I’m also glad that they do not have a Cardiovascular Solution yet (else they would be my direct competitor! )

Now I wonder if my “Certified PACS Administrator” certificate from GCS will be worth something in my resume… 

Microsoft gets serious about health

“Healthcare is all about information at the point of care and making it available” and “The healthcare group of Microsoft is growing fast” says Dr Crounse (MD), Microsoft’s senior worldwide director of health.

I’m not going to ramble more on what I think about Microsoft’s entrant into the healthcare informatics sector, constant repeating might give the impression that I’m being paid to say it.. and I’m very eager to see what Microsoft has in store for the healthcare market in Asia.

More of Dr Crounse’s interview can be read here.

SIIM announces educational efforts, new web pages

Looks like our ‘cries’ have been heard, the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine has expanded efforts in imaging informatics, especially the the need for educational resources and study materials for imaging informatics professionals.

The society has established an educational advisory network and has developed educational courses and materials. The SIIM board of directors has approved and released a position statement on IIP education and ABII certification.

An article from pacsweb, SIIM and ta collaborative educational advisory network team has completed educational learning objectives for each of the 10 domains of the test and will increase the amount of information about each domain as part of educational efforts. More details can be found in the society’s new Imaging Informatics Professional section on the SIIM website.

My only ‘displeasure’ is – why is the educational advisory network limited to only US and Canada professionals?

Clinicians press for more standard CD-ROMs

Now why isn’t this a surprise

It comes as a huge disappointment that PACS users today still face problems with CDs or DVDs that are brought by visiting patients, especially CT and MRI. The article lists several other issues faced by physician on the same topic, including

• Anti-Virus restricting the launch of the CD (this really is a catch-22 issue)
• Images contained in the CD are JPEGS instead of DICOM (or another proprietary format)
• Lack of tools on the DICOM viewer included in the CDs (e.g Ability to perform window and level of images)

And I’d like to add a few of my own (from experience)

• The lack of a DVD drive (Hospitals administrators, don’t ’save costs’ by crippling efficiency
• Burning the CDs at a higher speed and older CD-roms cannot read them
• CDs not auto-launching (and radiologist having no idea what icon to click)

I’m sure there are more horror stories out there but I’ll leave it for now and instead encourage vendors (or even you- the reader) to come up with a better system for sharing images with referring physicians / fellow radiologists.

Cheers

Happy Chinese New Year

 

Ramblings: Resuming my studies (v2)

Back on Nov 2007, I mentioned that I’m resuming my studies and as part of the graduation requirements, I’m have to complete a research project and what better focus is there than Cardiology informatics in ASEAN

My paper will be “Industry Research – Cardiology Informatics” (more information here, I back dated the post so it does not appears as a ‘latest’ blog entry) and I will author an article on the topic once I have sufficient data (aren’t you folks lucky )

I hope to warp up this project (and the entire MSc) by June 2008 as I might embark on another Master programme in (perharps) October, more details to be shared later.

Wish me luck (and lots of ’spare’ time to blog)

 Cheers