Wednesday 16 December 2009

Overview of non-invasive mhealth solutions + trends

Preparing for MoMoAMS #14, I made an overview of non-invasive mHealth devices and services.
Thanks for the feedback and the RT's of the community!
Special thanks to David Doherty (3GDoctor) for pointing me to several great companies in the EU.

Still have questions:
  1. Is mHealth going to be a succesful export product of developing countries?
  2. I have undoubtely overlooked companies and services, which are they?
  3. I certainly should have incorporated mobile medication checks and alerts, any pointers?
  4. If wearable solutions are the outcome, can i take them to the drycleaners?
  5. If devices evolve from medical ones to consumer goods, will the pricedrop be sufficient to overcome reimbursement problems?
  6. What policies are needed if everyone starts spreading and sharing information?
  7. How long it will take before specific medical ringtones are developed (or even mandatory)?
  8. Are hospitals and practioners ready to handle the amount of data coming their way (with current hard- and software)?
Love to hear from you!

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Saturday 5 September 2009

Jplan is an online employee scheduler for small to medium sized businesses

Download now or preview on posterous
jPlan_ENG.pdf (231 KB)

This application includes a secured login (user/group-based), management of employee data, rotations per employee, 24/7-planning and scheduling (interim workers and volunteers included), vertical verification, flexible reporting (iReport), controlling fixed and variable payment-options, rollback and easy export to payroll.

Most scheduling software is geared towards larger companies (+100 employees) with a proper personnel department. Small businesses cannot afford a proper personnel manager, let aside complicated software, licenses, training- and installation costs.

The application is written in Java (build to Maven, persistence layer = Hibernate with Spring framework), running on a Tomcat server, coupled to a MySQL database. Backups are done with an Ant-script. Jplan is perfectly scalable and 1 single server can easily host about 100 companies. Hosting costs are relatively small (2.500,00 EUR, incl. hardware) and maintenance-costs minimal.

Jplan has been intensively used for 5 years in a home for the elderly with 30 full time employees. In such a 24/7-environment with irregular services, mainly part time workers, frequently changing planning and flexibility, intelligent reporting and ease of use are an absolute must.

Almost all designing-efforts were geared towards user friendliness and native use. No excessive amounts of buttons, tabs, windows, shortcuts, ... but simplicity as basic principle (less=more). Rapid insights and excellent support for planning and business decisions is guaranteed with the use of web-technology, variables, colors and graphs.

Main advantage when using Jplan is time profit ... during training, while scheduling, when looking up data, when comparing, when making decisions,...
Maximum duration of training is 30 minutes for regular users/planners, 1 hour for administrators. Compared to more advanced spreadsheet solutions, the planner gains about 20 minutes per employee, per month. More important is that efficiency plus intelligent reporting results in very cost effective decisions.
Payroll-firms and their help desks gain time also because, the easier the application, the less questions will be asked, the less staff is needed.

Market potential: When strictly used for homes for the elderly and service flats in Belgium, the potential is about 1.200 organizations (total Belgium = 1.750), these are care-organizations with an employee number between 10 to 70. Two larger Belgian payroll-firms confirmed they could cater about 400 potential customers in this specific category.
However, if this application would be partly re-written, it could be used for no matter which small to medium sized business.

Development time: Start-up took place in September 2003 (writing down specifications, design and choice of open source engines). Version 0.4 was implemented on the work floor in December 2003. From then on the application was continuously developed, together with a professional programmer, until the last update, version 6 in 2008.
Total-spend-time was not stop-watched, but modestly estimated at about 3.000 hours.

Property rights: During meetings and demo's with colleague-entrepreneurs, all where immediately prepared to pay 1.000,00 EUR on a yearly basis, only for the use of this on-line application. I consider this price as an easy-to-use minimal pricesetting.
Due to the simplicity of flexible scheduling employees and the low price setting, a target of 500 Belgian and 700 Dutch firms is realistic.
Jplan saves me about 8 hours administration a month (compared to an elaborate spreadsheet-solution) and the clarifying planning economizes about 25,00 EUR a month, per employee.

Currently looking for investors and/or companies that can further develop, deploy, sell and maintain this application

Contact: b@zorgbeheer.be
Dutch brochure available

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Monday 31 August 2009

Increase possibilities of independent living by technology

Ambient Assisted Living
CAALYX aims at increasing older people's autonomy and self-confidence by developing a wearable light device capable of measuring specific vital signs of the elderly, detecting falls, and communicating automatically in real time with his/her care provider in case of an emergency, wherever the elderly person happens to be, at home or outside.
TRAIL In TRAIL, we develop innovative research that explores the implications of these changes and how they can promote sustainable collaboration between public, private and voluntary service providers. We utilise academic, business and community partnerships focused on participative research and design, encompassing living lab and open innovation methodologies and practices.
PERSONA aims at advancing the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence through the harmonisation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and concepts for the development of sustainable and affordable solutions for the social inclusion and independent living of Senior Citizen, integrated in a common semantic framework.
Grand Care The GrandCare system supports standard protocols which means that the list of supported sensors will continue to grow. Depending on the situation, we will provide sensors based on wireless X10, powerline X10, Zwave, or Zigbee standards. You can always start small and add new sensors as the situation requires.
eNeighbor (Healthsense wi-fi) Healthsense Integrated Solutions offers completely integrated systems including: Wi-Fi Wireless Nurse Call, Remote Monitoring, Telehealth and campus-wide Wi-Fi communication. These systems are scalable, flexible, and based on proven open network communication standards.
Fall prevention
Artesis + VUB Accelerometer based gait analysis
myHalo is a step ahead for you and your caregivers and it brings the future home. This is the only system offering automatic 24/7 vital signs and activity monitoring, including advanced fall detection. That means, you don’t have to push a panic button, because the system already knows when you have fallen.
U.Va.'s School of Engineering Wireless body sensor networks that monitor gait, being developed by University of Virginia researchers, could offer a solution on both fronts.
GE Ecumen Quietcare Video shot at Ecumen's Lakeview Commons community in Maplewood, Minnesota, was shown at GE and Intel press conference announcing proactive health technology partnership between the two companies. 
GeriatricAssistant (bug labs) This application is the combination of various geriatric assistance ideas(two to be exact). The first function of the application is a more modern “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” device which actually attempts to detect when a fall has occurred using the Motion/Accelerometer module. If a fall is detected, a log is posted to a tumblr account complete with an image which pin-points the location of the fall based on the GPS coordinates retrieved from the GPS module. The second function of the application is used to help people with memory issues (Alzheimer's patients, etc.) by recording images throughout the day and allowing them to review those images in rapid succession before they go to bed, which has been proven to help increase their recollection of events.

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Thursday 23 July 2009

ROI of social media in healthcare #bbmtehc

ROI

  • Volunteers / Fundraising / Charity
  • Get media coverage (= also reputation?)
  • Expectancy / Reputation / Credibility
  • Patient guidance + empowerment
  • Blurring lines of geograpical borders / limitations (= also reputation?)
  • Follow up negative comments + conversation in general (= also reputation?)
  • Teaching / Education
  • If someone is searching for you on web, and doesn’t find you, you don’t exist! Ditto w/social media
REMARKS
  • Four primary social media tools for hospitals--Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, and blogs.
  • Doctor engagement when low cost in terms of time (flip video in stead of blog postings)
  • ROI <-> ROC =Return on Connections
  • Not focus on 1 medium, fast switching (ex. from MySpace -> Facebook)
  • "Social media is the 21st century evolution of Word of Mouth." -@LeeAase
  • "Our first step (at MD Anderson) was to think about identifying our audience. What content are they interested in?" -@JennTex
  • @JennTex - your hospital's target audiences will influence or dictate which #sm aand #hcsm sites & tools you will use
  • Loss of "control" difficult for many #hospitals to accept
  • The end of traditional "Push-only" Web sites
  • One great idea, use unique 800#s to measure interest from Social Media channels
  • should use more than just number of friends to track success, but use landing pages ie. specific url's to drive traffic and measure / Using a landing page in a tweet allows you to track the users activity on the site after they've followed the lead
  • How about Cost Of Not Investing in social media? / What's the "Return on Ignoring"? ==> 40% decrease in visitors after stopping sm activities
  • HIPAA is concern in tweeting medical and surgical procedures; but not significantly differ from video and articles from procedures
  • Love use of the word "moderate" rather than control. Too many ppl feel the need to control SM
  • Most effective videos come from simple cameras, person telling story in powerful, honest and truthful way. No polish.
LINKS

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Only 98 emails in 2 weeks: Gmail filtering and labeling minihowto

Yep, only 98 emails to respond to after two full weeks of holiday.
Took only 4 hours to handle them all ... inbox back to zero.
These are *cough* important *cough* emails, emails that demand some kind of response from me.

All other emails are filtered away (out of my inbox) and given an appropriate label. These emails are not essential stuff and clutter my inbox. This group of emails consists of newsletters, notifications, updates, news from different social networks, ... after two weeks I had 900+ of them. I should read/handle most of them, but there is no pressure/urgency to do such.
I use Gmail filters and labels to make these -less important emails- skip my inbox and drop them in a labelled "folder".
Your filters/labels could look like this:
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "NEWS"
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "DEV"
  • Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "BIGBOOBIES"
To filter on multiple email addresses you can simply add "OR" between them (my newsletter-filter contains more than 100 email addresses). You can add a wildmark like "@newsletter.com" in your filter to grab all mails coming from a certain source. You can find other search/filter - operators here.
I admit it took quite some time to set this system up and produce the needed filters. I estimate the setup time (from scratch) at about 5 hours.

The filtered setup boosted my email handling efficiency enormously and greatly improved my focus while working. Furthermore I saw a light at the end of the (email-)tunnel ;)
Another advantage is that I consult my email more via the smartphone. As only stuff that matters comes in my inbox, it makes reading/responding much easier.
I estimate the ROIT (return on invested time) at about 1 month.

No rocket science here, just a very simple little triage that saves me A LOT of time.
Do not forget to backup your filters! (labs -> Filter import/export)

If you know other easy and simple tricks, please let me know!
Thanks!

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Google mapping links, tools and healthcare use

Mapalist is a wizard for creating and managing customized Google maps of address lists

KMLCSV Converter is a free open source software that enables you to convert Google Earth KML file to a formatted CSV file (and vice versa). This CSV file can then be uploaded into your Garmin GPS by using Garmin POI Loader, which can be downloaded for free. This allows you to easily plot all custom point of interests (POI) through Google Earth first before transfering them into your Garmin GPS. For further instruction in how to use to do so, please refer to the Tutorial.

Use Yahoo pipes to display a Google calendar in Google Maps. Praise for Tony Hirst

XML to XLS conversion is easiest with Excel

Examples
New York citywide hospitals: here
Belgian carehomes (dutch): here
Google maps H1N1 Swine Flu tracker: here
Health Informatics Events calendar KML file (copy link and paste it in the Google Maps search window): http://is.gd/1kSGj

If you know more examples, please add.
Thanks!

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Monday 29 June 2009

Ten Principles for an “iPhone­-like” Platform for HIT

Ten Principles for Fostering Development of an “iPhone­-like” Platform for Healthcare Information Technology

http://www.chip.org/platform

  1. Technology platforms that support substitutable applications should be promoted.

  2. Messages and protocols for data exchange should be allowed to emerge on demand in a market-driven approach, and specified transparently at every level.

  3. Protocols and application programming interfaces should allow the possibility of multiple platforms co-existing.

  4. Application programming interfaces should be open.

  5. Substitutable application or platform vendors should not have control over what is installed on the platform.

  6. Application installation should be turnkey.

  7. The intellectual property of platforms and applications should be kept separate.

  8. All applications should be removable and none should be required to run a platform.

  9. The platform should have a highly efficient delivery mechanism for applications.

  10. Certification requirements for platforms and applications should be kept minimal to maximize substitutability.

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Saturday 27 June 2009

Updating blogs with mobile

Using a Nokia N97 and the new functionality of Posterous, which is autopostr.
This is no 'groundbreaking' technology, but I only want to stress the ease of use. The very simple keyboard (which allows reasonable fast typing) of the N97 and its 5 megapixel camera are the base for this lightweight type of communication. The posterous autopostr updates posterous + blog by sending ONE email. Can't get any easier then that.
Could use a spellcheck though.
Produced in

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Friday 26 June 2009

DIY Telemedicine for at home monitoring

I think there's giant market for DIY wireless healthcare monitoring @ home. 
Call it a Nokia Sports Tracker framework, with additional health monitoring functions and professional follow up.
People with broadband routers can buy devices (fitness, weighing scale, heart monitor, glucose meters, accelerometers, ...) that interconnect with the router via Wi-Fi.
Companies can offer:
  • non-expensive devices that are easy to use and install
  • services/platforms for interpretation of the data (and sharing?)
  • guidance/advice for end-users
  • alarm-procedures/interventions
Simplicity = key

What effect will this have on government spending?

Posterous autopost strongly recommended by moi

How does autoposting work?
Just set up your other accounts here. The next time you post to posterous, we will instantly autopost everywhere else:
  • Facebook profile newsfeeds will be updated each time you post to notify your friends. You can also autopost photos to your photo album and embed your blog directly in your profile.
  • Twitter messages will use the title of your post up to 130 characters, and then append a shortened post.ly url.
  • Flickr photos will be put automatically in your photostream. If you attach multiple photos, we'll post them all in the order we receive them.
  • Blogs will be updated with the full content you send us. We'll host your images, music and files, so you don't have to lift a finger.
You control where we post.
Just email the right address and we'll do the right thing.

You can also address an email to #{text}@posterous.com and it will post to any site where the url contains that text.

#apple@posterous.com will go to apple.wordpress.com and flickr.com/apple, but NOT banana.blogspot.com.

LINK: http://www.posterous.com/autopost

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Thursday 23 April 2009

Attempt at a Nexthealth definition


Nexthealth is the entire array of inexpensive and pragmatic (userfriendly + down to earth) technology, methods, techniques and systems that offer practical solutions to cope with:
  • increasing aged population and chronic diseases
  • increasing regulation, complexity and administration
  • altering patient expectancy towards healthcare delivery
  • decreasing workforce
  • decreasing means