Ramblings: Neupert On Health

I’m sure that everyone who is someone in the world of healthcare informatics and related industry would know by now who Mr Peter Neupert is, after all, there are only so many individuals who testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Now Peter does blog (although not frequent – he’s a busy man) and his blog is called Neupert On Health. I do try to read his blog because I am interested in seeing what sort of developments and impact Microsoft is bringing to the Asia region, I personally think that Microsoft as a brand name  will have a bigger impact on the industry then anyone else would every have (well at least at this point in time, maybe Apple will bring in a sexier side of it)

One of Peter’s recent post is based on his observation during a recent trip to Asia (blog post here) and I personally think he has made some pretty good observation. I left my 2cents worth of comments for that blog post. I reckon he will most probably never reply to my comments but heck, whats there to lose

Maturing PACS market gravitates toward regional solutions

“Are there any limits to what can be achieved with new PACS technologies? Yes, of course. But sometimes it seems hat the only restrictions are those imposed by the scope of the human imagination. ‘”

Pretty motivational eh, well I think its rather reflective of whats going on in the real world (be it PACS or any other topics on technology, look at mobile phones)

The original article (here) looks at ECR’s technical exhibition and some of the latest innovation (although some innovation may not be so innovative but that’s subjective to everyone, isn’t it?  :)

Radiolopolis- The All New Radiology City

I got introduced by Dr Sumer Sethi to a new Radiology community called Radiolopolis.

As first sight, Radiolopolis looks exactly as it sounds, a whole ‘city’ dedicated the all things radiology, covering multiple aspects like education, research and practice. Created by Dr Roland Talanow, Radiolopolis aims to serve as a community platform for Radiology, where people from all over the world connect to peers, find information from colleagues and share their knowledge.

I’d say the idea is pretty cool, I might jump on the bandwagon to see how things work out there (it does look promising).

Do check it out at http://www.radiolopolis.com/

CD/DVD Recorders across the ‘Ologies’

“With the ever-increasing emphasis on integrating healthcare IT solutions across the healthcare enterprise, CD and DVD recorders with their widespread and evolving capabilities have managed to fill much-needed niches within various image-dependent departments—particularly radiology, pathology and cardiology.”

Interesting quote. With the proliferation of PACS, the demands for studies to be copied on CDs/DVDs (as a replacement for the traditional hardcopy film) raises because with every facility that has a PACS installed, several others without one exists.

However, this blog post does not look at that topic (but it is an interesting one though), instead, the original article (read it here) talks about the usage of CD/DVD recorders in different disciplines like Radiology, Cardiology, Pathology and why they are here to stay (at least for a while).

From an infrastructure point of view, it would be wise to adopt a similar type of CD/DVD burner or at least have them networked so there is a backup if  one of these little guy fails, the question is the embedded viewer provided with these CD/DVD recorders. Not all embedded viewers are the same.

Take for example -stress echos, launch these images with your typical viewer meant for radiology images and you are most likely going to find it incapable of handling the DICOM headers, but then again, stress echos are usually not performed in the world of radiology.

So what is the perfect solution? Well until PACS becomes an absolutely common in all imaging centres, the solution really depends on the workflow requirements and the creativity of your PACS Administrator / Manager.

Alternatively, send me an email

Updates: New Article – Taking a look at DICOM Structured Reporting

This article takes a look at DICOM SR and its intended features. While it is does not cover all aspects of this supplement standard, it does look at the pro and cons of its implementation and why it has not been adopted rapidly in clinical use despite it’s intended design.

Enjoy the article here.

Ramblings: SingLive 2009 – Day Two

The exhibition for SingLive ended yesterday at about 5 pm (phew).

It was a good day, lots of interest from delegates (spread throughout the region) on cardiology informatics, the benefits and how the technology works. I see this as an excellent indication on the raising awareness on both the relevancy and importance of healthcare informatics in the arena of cardiology for the Asia region, especially in comparison to previous events / congress / conferences, the interest and enthusiasm were never higher

I also managed to make sure I got myself educated on the latest offerings from monitoring equipment, modality, consumables vendors, I think it is important to be at least aware (and understand the basics) of relevant technologies, it really helps in workflow analysis and in turn, the solution designed.

I guess it was a event worth our time (well, at least mine) as I had first hand communication with the unique individuals all over Asia, understanding their needs, trends, made new friends while catching up with old ones. Establish commercial contacts and discussed potential partnership, obtained leads for potential deals, gathered market intelligence on competitors offerings and even took a cue or two on how to improve on the marketing and mar-com aspect of things.

I guess the time, effort and extreme lack of sleep was well compensated in some ways

Till SingLive 2010 next 21 – 24 January