Ramblings: House

Before I start, I must put a disclaimer – I am not affiliated nor paid to endorse what I’m about to write in this post.

I’ve spend my afternoon watching “House” (in addition to performing some minor house repairs) and why and I blogging about this? Because I think the show is very educational on the medical aspects of things.

For those who are not aware, I don’t usually watch TV. I was introduced to “House” back in my previous job by my staff (a biomedical engineer by training) on how educational this TV series is and recently, by an existing colleague. When the opportunity came, I bought the DVDs for season 1 -4 (I understand that season 5 is currently being aired).

So what are my (humble) verdicts? Well, I’ve only watch 5 episode of season 1 and I must say it has improved my understanding of how certain things work in a (US) hospital, even though I’ve personally worked in a radiology department for 4.5 years. It has definitely imparted some knowledge to me and I hope that by the end of watching season 4, I would have gained more. 

For the interested, check out the official website here.

Ramblings: Asian Oceanian Congress of Radiology (AOCR) 2008

“Meet the Future of Radiology with AOCR”, that’s the congress theme of the 12th Asian Oceanian Congress of Radiology (AOCR) that is being held in Seoul, Korea from the 24th – 28th of October 2008.

For some reasons (logistic and materials related), my company ‘cancelled’ the booth for AOCR and that resulted in me cancelling my trip for the congress.

Ah well, its sad in a way but glad in a way as I have tons of emails and followup during my recent business trip (I leave Singapore for 2 weeks and the local guys went berserk).

So long AOCR.

Siemens eyes digital pathology with BioImagene investment

Just caught this on Healthimaging.com.

“Siemens Venture Capital has invested in BioImagene, a provider of scalable digital pathology solutions, following a recent closing of a $26 million series D financing round led by Burrill & Company.

Additionally, Ajit Singh, PhD, from the Image and Knowledge Group of Siemens Healthcare was appointed CEO of BioImagene following the financing round.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based BioImagene said it will use the investment to scale operations and accelerate the adoption of digital pathology with continued product development and expansion in the European and Asian markets.

BioImagene provides digital pathology solutions for acquiring, viewing, managing, analyzing, reporting and sharing images in the pathology laboratory. Additional investors in BioImagene include Ascension Health Ventures, Artiman Ventures, Burrill, ICCP Venture Partners and National Healthcare Services, the company said”

This

AHIMA Approves New Data Analyst Certification

AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association), the professional society that represents more than 52,000 specially educated HIM professionals who serve healthcare and the public by managing, analyzing and utilizing data vital for health system management has voted to develop a new certification for health information management professionals.

According to the Chicago-based organization, the new certification is designed to provide practitioners with the expertise to analyze, manage, interpret and transform data into accurate and timely information.

In order to meet initial criteria required to take the examination, candidates must either have a Baccalaureate degree or higher and a minimum of five years of healthcare data experience, or Healthcare Information Administration credential (RHIA) and a minimum of one year of experience.

Ramblings: I’m in Hanoi, Vietnam

I’m in Vietnam now but PHEW, what a week it has been for me back in Thailand. I had an average of 2.5 meetings every day with (different) hospitals, both public and private and numerous meetings with local distributors and telephone conferences with colleagues throughout Asia.

Just another week at work? Not really. But is it motivational? Oh yeah. Why? Well because of the ongoing adoption of healthcare informatics in the region to improve patient care.

Thailand is not new to the concept and benefits of implementing digital modalities, PACS, HIS, EMR and telemedicine, the introduction of radiology informatics back in the last 5-10 years had driven healthcare informatics adoption (mainly in the private sector) as medical tourism took a rise in Thailand.

Of course, there are still a (huge) need to raise the awareness and knowledge level on the subject in Thailand and I hope to utilise both binaryhealthcare and CHIU to achieve that.

Excited to join me in this exciting journey? Think about it.

Ramblings: Off on a business trip in Thailand, followed by ACC in Vietnam

Yes, I’m going on another business trip, this time will a week in Bangkok, Thailand (someone has to bring in the revenue for the company) followed by Vietnam for the 17th ASEAN Congress of Cardiology (ACC) at Hanoi.

What really excites me is the official launch of CHIU (Committee of Healthcare Informatics User) during ACC (the inaugural dinner will be on the 19th Oct) and for the official launch, IBM will be our official launch partner.

In addition, our media partner will be covering the event so if you are attending the dinner, do dress up and prepared to be famous

While my schedule looks rather pack during the entire trip, I reckon I will try to update you folks on whats going on (there is a lot of interesting activities happening in the region concerning healthcare informatics).

So stay tune for more updates and insights!

U.S. government taps IBM for telemedicine outreach in Pakistan

This is an excellent initiative by the U.S. Department of State and IBM.

Together with;

• Wateen Telecom
• Motorola
• Medweb
• USAID
• U.S. Department of Defense Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center
  (that’s a mouthful)
• Pakistani Government,
• the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi and the District Headquarters Hospital in Attock.

They are initiating a public-private partnership to implement a telemedicine system in rural Pakistan by seeking to connect technical capabilities at a hub, or a central coordinating hospital, located at the Holy Family Hospital in the city of Rawalpindi, Punjab Province, with the spoke hospital with limited resources in District Attock.

“The Pakistan Telemedicine Project is providing expanded medical care—pre-operative planning and follow-up; cardiac assessment; ophthalmology, radiology, infectious disease and peri-natal evaluations; and medical triage for traumas and acute illnesses. Another aspect of the project is building capacity for healthcare services via virtual clinical grand rounds for medical education.

The partnership combines an Internet-access portal providing interactive collaboration tools such as secure email, voice and video conferencing on a secure telemedicine network with medical peripheral devices, including portable ultrasound, digital cameras, EKG, stethoscope and x-ray machine.”

I personally think that the project covers the essential medical needs via Telemedicine, lets hope that (in the near future) this model can be extended to some other countries in need.

NEJM: Single CAD reading could replace double mammo readings

“A computer is as good as a second pair of eyes for helping a radiologist spot breast cancer on a mammogram, one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer-aided detection found. “

Like spell-checkers looking for mistakes, the computers flag suspicious areas on X-rays for a closer look by a radiologist. Mammograms are used to screen women for early signs of breast cancer but the tests aren’t perfect. In the U.S., the X-rays are read by a single radiologist and cancers are sometimes missed.”

Computed Aided Detection or CAD has been around for quite some time but it has been used (if adopted at all) more for a second (or third) opinion, never really used as the primary screener due to the ‘miss rate’

Now, a new study conducted by British researchers are reporting results from a randomized study of 31,000 women to compare if a single expert aided by a computer could do as well as two pairs of eyes. Mammograms in Britain are routinely checked by two radiologists or technicians - which is thought to be better than a single review).

The results? – they found that computer-aided detection spotted nearly the same number of cancers, 198 out of 227, compared to 199 for the two readers. Not too bad eh.

The original article has all the details here.

Enjoy

Ramblings: A little PACS history

I’m sure all you imaging informatics enthusiasts are familiar with Dr David Clunie’s blog so I’m not going to waste your time introducing him, I’m a personal fan of David (take some time at his web portal, you will understand why).

But this post today is not to ‘declare my love’ for David, rather, its about one of his recent blog post title ” A little PACS history“. It seems that David is starting a pet project to retrace the history of PACS – starting with an RFP document dated 28 March 1990 which present a good “snapshot” of features is available in the military specification for the MDIS (Medical Diagnostic Image Support) system.

The MDIS later became the Siemens Gammasonics, Lockheed Martin, Loral and finally GE PACS – the precursor of the first “Centricity PACS”. You can find a link to a scanned, OCR’d copy of the MDIS RFP at David Clunie’s blog entry.

I personally think that this is a great initiative and I urge all readers with similar ‘historical’ documents to help David in his pet project by sending it to him. After-all, we are in a very noble profession and I reckon we should at least know when this great revolution started (in greater details )

Ramblings: I’m awarded the Top Health Blogger status

I’ve been awarded the Top Health Blogger status by Wellsphere and I must say I’m pretty honored.

So what is Wellsphere? Well its an online community focused on helping millions of people live healthier, happier lives by connecting them with the knowledge, people and tools they need to manage and improve their health and to achieve that, Wellsphere build the largest and highest quality network of the web’s leading health writers – Websphere’s HealthBlogger Network,

The HealthBlogger Netowork is one of the Highest-Quality, Fastest-Growing, Largest Health Blogger Network consisting of a highly selective group of the leading minds in medicine, brave patients who daringly share their stories of struggle and survival, and healthy living professionals helping people live healthier everyday.

To be admitted to the network requires one to be a “caring, knowledgeable, an excellent writer, and passionate about helping others.”. It really made my day just reading that criteria because a quick review on the existing members includes some very well respected healthcare informatics bloggers.

In addition, I got a nice badge to reflect my new-found status. Industry evangelism does have its perks eh

Adam Chee Healthcare Industry & Policy Community