Assessing the value of an innovative startup in healthcare: updated scorecard

Our departure point is that in healthcare the products/services will have to survive in a unique ecosystem with unique challenges and unique opportunities. Excellent outline of some of these challenges and opportunities can be found in this Harvard Business Review article by Clayton Christensen, Richard Bohmer, and John Kenagy.

Therefore, while the basic principles for startups, customers and investors apply (and here’s a fresh example), there are additional considerations that are very important for healthcare startups.

With that in mind, our objective is to create a simple, straightforward scorecard specific to the healthcare sector that would allow a potential customer or investor to quickly evaluate a startup along the criteria that matter to such customer or investor.

Read more @ HealthStartup.eu

Develop a simple, straightforward indication of the impact and viability of innovation in healthcare

As we are preparing our first HealthStartup event on October 5, we receive quite a lot of questions on how we plan to evaluate the participating projects – and how we plan to measure the output of the event.

Our goal is to develop a tool that would give buyers of the startups’ services – as well as potential investors – a simple, straightforward indication of the project’s impact and viability. It should also be useful as a guideline for the startups themselves in evaluating potential markets, raising funds, and communicating with various target audiences.

With that in mind, we’ve started developing a “project scorecard” which will include three aspects of an innovation and produce an overall score indicating the viability of a project.

The scoring on a simple numeric scale (1-4) will be carried out by participants during the event; scores would be tabulated and communicated after the event.

Attached is our initial thinking on the parameters within the scorecard. We would very much appreciate your input, any additions (or reductions) to the list of the question, clarifications, etc.

 

So, please read through the article at HealthStartup and leave your comments!

Will we get the healthcare ecosystem to collaborate on improving mankind?

We have very high development cycles of devices and techniques (18 months or less) AND an industry moving at a ludicrous speed.

We have an enormous amount of incompatible data, coming from: 

• different devices, 
• via different systems, 
• via different (mobile) OSs

Despite great efforts of organisations like Continua Health Alliance, it's an illusion to think that -someday- we will be using the same (open) techniques/standards worldwide to collect and combine health-data.

Striving towards compatibility and interoperability is essential, but I believe this should be complemented by focussing on efficient ways to aggregate all that incompatible data (the equivalent of Friendfeed) and display it as a coherent stream in a personal health record. 

Fusion with data from energy-sources, city- & home-services and social media will further leverage the potential of the collected data.

Extra advantage is that the collected data can be searched upon anonymously. Possibilities to improve mankind by developing cures & remedies faster, improving diagnoses, improving adherence, ... and at the same time lowering the (healthcare)costs and giving more opportunity for 'face time'.

Good examples are:

http://www.data.gov/health

http://www.numerahealth.com/

http://www.gravityeight.com/

http://www.scanadu.com/

http://www.runkeeper.com

Will we find good plumbers to connect the different data-pipes? 

Will the diameter of the data-pipes be wide enough to cope with an enormous data-flow?

Will our buckets be big enough to store collect/store the data? 

Will we find enough good craftsmen to visualize and interpret that flow? 

Will we get the ecosystem to collaborate on improving mankind? 

Slide from 'mhealth is huge' preso at MoMoAMS.

5 Healthcare challenges summarized in 1 image

5_healthcare_challenges.pdf Download this file

Attached an older 1-page depiction I made to illustrate the 5 challenges in healthcare.

I post it here because several people asked if they could use it (YES you can!).

Other reason is that I'm bored by presenters spending 10 minutes explaining these challenges (WE KNOW! move on!).

Assessing healthcare innovations in ICT: the society scorecard

What's the real worth of an innovation in healthcare? 

What's the impact on a society?

Preparing for Westartup healthcare, I dug up a simple scorecard I used to determine the impact of an ICT - innovation in healthcare.

The scorecard gives a score, based on questions from 5 different angles:

Care organisation

What's the ROI? (workflow, efficiency and general cost reduction) 

Does it have a quantifiable impact on marketing and recruitment?

Will it simplify making business/management decisions?

Is it interoperable with other aspects of the healthcare ecosystem?

What are the costs to train people to work with the product/service? How simple is it to use?

Care consumer

Does it offer convenience? Will it allow to reshape healthcare to fit people's lives (and not the other way around)?

What about participating in the process? Will it help the consumer to interact?

Exactly how does it improve the quality of the treatment from a consumers perspective?

Will it offer peace of mind?

Is it easy/simple to use?

Care practitioner

Can you quantify the improvements on efficiency, workflow and time?

Is it user friendly? Is it simple to use? Is it intuitive?

Will it enhance interaction with other practitioners?

How interoperable is it with the other tools I use?

Can it simplify decision making?

Taxpayer

Will it lower healthcare costs? Will it lower reimbursement costs by lowering re-admission, enhancing adherence, ... or by lowering efficiency in workforce and processes? 

Does it improve the quality of treatment?

Can it speed up developing a cure?

Business

I can haz 458 Italia?

The weight of the 5 scores might differ for each product/service, but calculating an overall result is feasible and meaningful.

Suggestions on improving this simple model are welcome!

Will the iPod Nano watch impress the healthcrowd?

Easy to use
Easy to wear
Convenience for the win.

And it doesn't look like a medical (or other stigmatizing) device. Acceptance is guaranteed because such a shiny device is a 'wannahave'.

I wonder how long it will take before you can use Facetime on it.
With a GPS inside you will 'warned' when a friend is near, when you should get medicine from a nearby pharmacy, which subway to take, ...
You could communicate with relatives, doctors, ...
Notifications will appear when to take your medicine, when to go to the doctor, ...

And the real winner would be to integrate different monitoring solutions.

Source: GottaBeMobile -> iPod Nano as a watch is awesome, but does not impress the ladies

What damage could a Healthphone do?

If Garmin can sell a GPS that can do voice too,

alas not very successful,

what are the chances of a health monitoring device 'that can do voice' too?

I imagine a ruggedized device with long battery life,

large + bright touchscreen, a decent camera, accelerometer, GPS 

and -most important- the equivalent of a Swiss Knife in connectivity: bluetooth, zigbee, ant, IR, Wi-Fi, NFC, barcode, RFID, ...

Should consider the device as a medical Toughbook, but vastly improved and much smaller.

I'm on the lookout!

Image -> Imprint Talk (have a look at their tripple flip design too)

WESC or Louis Vuitton in the wireless sensor industry

Recently I was looking at 2 mhealth business plans, in particular the parts about sensor design.

The sensors should be wearable to guarantee permanent monitoring.

What struck me was that both companies were looking at "patient acceptance" as a HUGE hurdle for sensor sales.

Looking at the design of their devices, I understood their problem better: "They are UGLY!!!".

The devices had that typical "designed by a medical professional from the former USSR" signature.

If you want to solve patient acceptance, let Louis Vuitton or WESC take care of your design.

The burden of being sick and the necessity to be monitored can be worsened by making you wear ugly or uncool devices, especially with children.

Parents want their sick kids to grow up like 'normal' children.

If you can give these children a sensor that is cool to wear, this coolness might even 'lighten' the situation a bit for that child.

All types of wearable, unobtrusive sensors will have a great future because of simplicity and ease of mind.

Nick Hunn already gave fine examples like doorknobs and toothbrushes for monitoring, but why don't we also use helmets, clothing, wigs, earphones, scarfs, seats, ...?

I'm convinced that if you trow in more designers, this will make the sickness easier to wear (ha!).

Fashionistas for healthcare!

Freemium in care: Zorgbeheer care-platform looking for webdev

Zorgbeheer (dutch for 'care management') is a platform for Flemish care-managers since 2006.
It grew from a small private communication platform for carehome owners to a communication platform for the captains of care.
The website has about 5 to 600 unique visitors a day.
There's a strong demand for further development, which should take the platform from it's current situation (stage 1) to a perpetual stage 3.

Stage 1

Mostly inspection, supervision and small improvements of the current situation.

Stage 2

Major overhaul with open source CMS (Joomla, Drupal, ...) or own development.
Improvements in matchmaking
Offering mobile content

Stage 3

Crowdsourcing care professionals for needs and building web and mobile apps to fill those needs ... and offering the apps for free.

Where's the money?
First two stages will be paid by commercial revenues (ads).
During the last (perpetual) stage, the webdev company can develop apps for individual care organisations too. The webdev business card being a solid (and proven) reputation as Zorgbeheer-platform-builder.

Why in English? It's a site in Dutch!
As far as I know, there are no platforms offering the stage 3 solution; improving care by offering web and mobile tools for free.
This format might be interesting for international development.

Requirements

• Good knowledge of Joomla CMS (in stage 1)
• Proficiency in mobile development
• Experience with mapping, communication and community (matchmaking) tools
• Determined to produce apps that are Fisher Price easy.

You can improve care AND earn a living.
Win-win!
Contact: bart at mhealth BE

2011 Predictions in Medicine, Healthcare, Technology and Innovation « ScienceRoll

2) Curation -> will there be a market for RSS-feed experts, offering you a tailorfit newsoffer?
4) Mhealth will be a entire ecosystem (identification, payment, location, monitoring, etc.). Lots of apps will try to ‘plug in’ to EHR’s, which will leverage their usefulness enormously. Question here is: “Can mobile operators cope with the sudden increase in 3G/4G data usage?”.
6) The importance of ‘voice’: i fully agree. But don’t underestimate the imortance of interface design (simplicity – i like the term ‘fisher price design’)
12) Will we also see patients that are so empowered that they will be doing live reporting from the hospital? Or broadcast an ‘investigation’ in realtime?
14) SoMe presence in pharma … but also in care-institutions. Mainly deployed for recruitment purposes, painting a pleasant SoMe environment.

If i may add 2:
explosion of tech for boomers
data-mining of health data

via scienceroll.com

Mobile health and geolocation

Presentation for Flagis about mhealth and location / gps.
Small intro on care & mobile trends.
A lot of practical uses of mobile phones in healthcare, with the emphasis on location based applications.

Mhealth : location based apps

View more presentations from Bart Collet.

Might be a bit too Flemish/Dutch for most English readers, despite the absence of text.

Feedback is always appreciated!

mHealth is HUGE (MoMoAMS #14 about Mobile Health)

Preparing for MoMoAMS #14, jan 25, 2010, I made a modest overview of the mHealth scene.

Thanks to the great comments i got on- and offline, i was able to create the actual presentation.

Bart Collet - mHealth is HUGE

View more presentations from Mobile Monday Amsterdam.

More info

You can look at all the presentations here: http://www.slideshare.net/event/mobile-monday-amsterdam-14-mhealth/slideshows

Pictures here:

Check out the MoMoAMS website, one of these they will broadcast all events: http://www.mobilemonday.nl/

An arm and a leg for

• The impressive organisational talents of the MoMoAMS team (in particular @mdbraber) and their expertise to produce a full circle 360° overview mHealth program.
• The insights of Nick
• The friendliness of Robert (sure we'll meet soon + frequent)
• A night in an Irish pub in the company of David (anytime! anyplace!)
• The relaxed coolness of Jeanna (don't want to play poker with you though ;) )
• The drive and optimism of Ivor (TOP presentation!)
• The style, 'gentlemenness' and creativity of Fabio (no one noticed Steve Jobs is a Fabio look-a-like!)
• My first psychedelic mushroom experiment in the company of Jen, joining me in this experiment (need someone to take notes!!)

Other excellent blogposts

http://ivor-kovic.com/blog/?p=442

http://3gdoctor.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/mobile-monday-amsterdam-14-mhealth-review/

http://www.nickhunn.com/index.php/archives/520

http://www.mobilecowboys.nl/mobielinternet/11505

http://www.mobilecowboys.nl/mobielinternet/11507

http://www.mobilecowboys.nl/mobielinternet/11508

Online video of the presentations

http://www.mobilemonday.nl/category/events/14/14-talks/

MoMoAms Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/momoams

MobileMonday Impressions (compilation): http://www.mobilemonday.nl/news/impression-of-momo-14/

Posted via email from bart is cooking healthy tech

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

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

• Danbury Hospital Terms and Conditions http://www.danburyhospital.org/body.cfm?id=1607
• Here are the @mayoclinic social media guidelines http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/guidelines/for-mayo-clinic-employees/
  
• http://twitter.com/dhs_tittle
• Personal hands-on experience with social media, try SMUG http://social-media-university-global.org/
• Sharing Mayo clinic : http://sharing.mayoclinic.org
• http://wthashtag.com/Bbmtehc
• http://www.spezify.com/
• http://www.icerocket.com/
• Here is a summary of Mayo Clinic social media activities #bbmtehc http://bit.ly/43Sbqc
• Slides of ROI of social media in healthcare here http://www.bigbad.com/exchange/bbmtehc/

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

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?

ROI of WIFI: Nintendo DS light in Healthcare?

Follow-up on a previous article about DECT versus WIFI in healthcare.

What are the main criteria for going for WIFI?

1. Lower communication cost
   
2. Wireless care registration
   
3. Wireless flexibility needed
   
4. Hardware flexibility needed
   
5. Communication flexibility needed
   

Lower communication cost
If your telephony costs are skyhigh, WIFI can surely lower them. Especially in situations with subsidiaries and international communication. VOIP-solutions are evolving rapidly, your organization and your customers will benefit from that evolution.
Wireless care registration
I can't see any reason why you should not switch to VoWIFI if you have already chosen for wireless care registration. Alternatively one could also state that one should not choose for WIFI if you are not going to implement wireless care registration. I would go for wireless registration because of the improved customer service and because of the lower labor time and stress. Scrupulous vendors will subsequently not hesitate to argue that, if you do not choose for WIFI, your organization is not patient-centered or employee-friendly.
Wireless flexibility needed
Lot's of changes in your building, rooms with different functions, flexible workstations, ... lots of cabling continuously needs to get moved?
Hardware flexibility (connectivity) needed
Need to couple WIFI-enabled devices and streaming audio/video? Need the freedom of choice in choosing (different) WIFI-devices from different manufacturers (Nintendo anyone)? Need to trace devices/stock/people (cfr. RFid and such)? Need to couple devices with extensive features like camera, digital pens, bluetooth and iR? WIFI can offer these convenient possibilities and offer a tailor made solution.
Communication flexibility needed
More efficient handling of calls, more possibilities to route communication to email, SMS, web, ... Coupling webtechnology is native. More choice in software solutions. WIFI is not a propriety system like DECT.

Hey, you left out "internet for customers"!
Internet for customers also offers extra headaches for security, QOS, bandwidth, configuration, invoicing and paperwork. And what about concurrent users in central parts of the building, will they encounter the bottle neck on the transmitters? There are too many hidden costs in this service. I suppose that customers/patients who really want to be online continuously already have a wireless subscription of some kind. I don't think this to be an completely pro-argument as this service has many contra's as well.

What about improved team-communication?
Sure, (unified-)messaging, limitless routing possibilities of data, availability of data, design (userfriendly visualizations) will enhance communication and productivity.
But beware of userfriendlyness of the tools and technicality of the applications. In the "ideal" situation the cellphone/PDA should handle: voice, messages, alarms and care registration (I even leave out other functionality). I haven't seen one solution yet that doesn't require employee training. Technicality might be a big cost, technicality might be the cause of faulty registration or interpretation. I would suggest taking some of your staff to a demo and let them respond voice-calls and handle alarms without training or instructions, let them think, observe how they do.

Doubts taken away:

• Quality of voice-calls is impeccable.
  
• Handover (going from one transmitter to another) is seamless
  
• Transmission is secure. I checked 3 manuals and all could provide strong security (reminder: stay away from basic WEP or easy WPA-PSK passphrases)
  
• I can't say I experienced interference. But I haven't really tested that item thoroughly. Otherwise I can't imagine that interference could be an issue, because WIFI solutions have been widespread in different offices.
  
• I still haven't got a 100% guarantee that no alarms (like fire) will be lost. But such doubt could be cleared within a SLA.

Calculating WIFI ROI in a healthcare setting

1. Write down a description of current call- and care-handling in a IF -> THEN way, followed by the needed time to perform that handling.
   
2. Write down the ideal handling of call- and care-handling. See what you can improve. Brainstorm with your staff. Write down the findings. Compare times.
   
3. Now talk your findings over with two or three WIFI-companies. Check feasibility, ask for further improvement. Make final comparison of times for handling.
   
4. Compare hardware costs.
   
5. Compare calling costs.
   

Frustrating in this exercise is that there is no way you can quantify the convenience of flexibility. It is certain that your initial hardware investments will be higher. It is also certain that your future investments and communication costs will be lower (compared to DECT). WIFI-receiving devices are more mainstream, cost is definitely lower.
Uncertain is how much you will actually save because of the future freedom in choosing the best possible solution for your organization.
Clarification: I do NOT want to cut labor time because I want to lay off staff. Cutting time is essential in allowing care-staff to spend more time on the patient/customer ... instead of loosing time with old-fashioned communication. Lowering labor time and stress in healthcare is a major issue. Also frustrating is the fact that it is nearly impossible to compare current and future employee absence caused by stress. You have to rely on your gut feeling here.

Hidden costs

• Employee training needed for working with devices.
  
• Employee time lost by devices that are not userfriendly.
  
• Power consumption of the devices (more transmitters + more devices + more battery charging)
  
• WIFI technology is newer, you need more specialized and trained experts. This will result in greater costs
  

WIFI touchscreen questions
I'm on a quest for a basic wall-mounted touchscreen with identification, browser, onscreen keyboard and WIFI. I already had contacts with Panasonic and Mobilevision but the cost of those devices might be too steep for use in elderly care (about 2.000,00 EUR/piece).
Onboard sound (speakers or headphone in) is a plus, power consumption and absence of moving parts (like ventilation) are very important features.
Such touchscreens could be easy-to-use care-registration and care-consulting devices in homes for the elderly and service-flats. They should be installed in every room, price is essential (read: low). In my humble opinion the screens of domotics, Blackberrys or even PDA's are way too small and do not offer a decent solution for interaction (FTR: SMS on a 12 button phone is not a decent way to interact!).
Maybe the cost could be lowered by a using a fingerprint protected USB-stick with a small operating system on it.

Might also write Nintendo for a more ruggedized version of the Nintendo DS Light for care registration in healthcare.

WIFI brands
http://www.ruckuswireless.com/
http://www.trapezenetworks.com/
http://www.merunetworks.com/
http://www.extricom.com/

thanks to Steven De Keyser and Lien Vleminckx from Ascom, staff at Witte Meren, Luc Thierens from Multicap, Christof Delsupehe from Avaya, Peter De Baets from Newtel, Evert Bopp - Wimaxxed, Naima Messoudi from CLB-Belgium, Stefaan Delagrange from Telecom-IT, Dirk François from Essec and Ivan Gerard from Eyepea

WIFI in healthcare = too many arrows

updated: 2008-10-13

Never in my life i have underestimated a buyers decision more than the one I am facing right now. This decision is about replacing the current PABX business phone system in a home for the elderly.
As we are building new rooms for new customers, we will have to change the current system as it's maximum capacity will be exceeded.
Replacing the current PABX/DECT solution by a new one seems most obvious. But I am frustrated by the high costs, the limitations and inflexibility towards rapid evolving technology. It is very difficult to add value (through improved team-communication, better response to customers, better logging, better compatibility with third party software, etc.). Buying a telephone solution with PABX/DECT looks like trowing away your money.
Wading through enormous piles of information and brochures, I quickly understood that WIFI gives me the best (future-proof) possibilities and added value. Team communication can be optimized (imagen an interface like MSN/Gtalk/AIM), data and voice is integrated (and coupled) in one system, integration of WLAN and web-based applications, ... flexibility galore, without expensive cabling! Moreover I can improve communication for elderly customers: big button WIFI-cellphones, big screen devices, softphones, message boards (kiosk), free possibilities like Skype, Netmeetings, etc.

The theory is obvious, the practicalities not. I spoke with 9 firms, some once, some 3 times. Each firm contradicting the opinions of their opponents, some firms making mistakes in areas/technologies they are not familiar with, each firm giving more questions and doubts than answers. As a customer I'm forced to study the possibilities and impact of the technology for an objective view.
In this study it's very easy to get completely lost in information overload. As a technical minded user it is very easy to get blinded by the thrill of the chase of new technology.

Bottom line is that WIFI is entangled in so many disciplines within my care organisation that I end up with too much different technologies, too many questions, too many sales reps, too many technicians, ... each defending their technology. I have too many arrows on my diagram ...

WIFI Plus

• No slowly dying technology like DECT. "It is clear that VoIP technology will replace traditional circuit-switched telephony in the enterprise. It is no longer a question of if, but when enterprises will migrate to IP-based telephony solutions. This is where WiFi holds a clear advantage over DECT, or any other proprietary TDM-based wireless solution. WiFi allows for end-to-end IP telephony making it the most elegant — and cost-effective — technology for enterprise wireless in the long run."
• Connectivity: all WIFI devices can be connected (no propriety installation like DECT)
• Compatibility: all (current + future) applications can be coupled to this one voice + data-highway
• Limitless configuration- and management- possibilities
• Flexibility: end solution being *exactly* what a customer wants, dataflow (like for example UMS) can be tailor made
  
• Possibility to add "tracing" to your network
• Cost of communication will go down as more people will use VOIP (instead of landlines)
• No expensive wiring.

WIFI Minus

• Battery-life of mobile WIFI-devices is 8 hours maximum. In a care-environment this could be insufficient.
• Range of WIFI-transmitters is smaller than it's DECT counterpart. You need more transmitters (about 30% more).
• Maximum length of an UTP (cat 5) cable is 100 meter.
• What if the switch has a defect? Default backup-solution is essential.
• Power-out = no communication possible.
• Cost of installation (a lot higher than traditional solutions, although no cabling is required)
• No completely integrated and proven solution in a healthcare-setting. Where can I personally witness a working WIFI-installation and ask for user-feedback?
  

Questions

• Is quality of voice communication with WIFI inferior to other solutions? As i've used different Java-communication-apps frequently, I can't say I've ever experienced any quality loss though. But this situation is a single user situation.
  
• Is it possible to have different ringtones on a DECT-phone. This is, can the receiver perceive a distinction in ringtones on a mobile dect-device, if it's origin differs. Origin could be: inbound call, room service, fire-alarm, etc.
• How much will internal WIFI communication cost? I fail to see any costs, 3 sales reps claim the opposite.
• Is seamless handover (from one transmitter to another) guaranteed with WIFI-handsets?
• Alarms-handling: How are alarms handled? Is it possible that a certain alarm(-signal) gets lost?
• Is WIFI secure? This is the communication itself, access to the network and usage (bandwidth).
• How much capacity should the switch have? How many lines are needed for, as example, 10 staff people and 70 customers?
• Will WIFI-devices interfere with one another?
• How much different actions do i have to perform to make an internal call, to accept an alarm, to put calls through, ... how easy can regular users perform these everyday actions?
  

Good Reads
http://www.howstuffworks.com/search.php?terms=voip&x=0&y=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip
http://www.pcmech.com/article/taking-your-phone-line-online/
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/0205/WiFi-Telephony-All-Grown-Up.htm
http://www.intel.com/healthcare/ps/mca/index.htm?iid=healthcare_mcadevelopers+tabs_overview
http://blog.abptech.com/blog/the-dect-versus-wlan-wifi-debate/
http://blog.voipsupply.com/mobile-voip/dect-vs-wi-fi-death-match%E2%80%A6who-will-be-victorious
http://www.chcf.org/documents/chronicdisease/HealthCareUnpluggedTheRoleOfWireless.pdf
http://www.texting4health.org/slides/Landscape%20of%20Texting4Health-R%20Adler.pdf
http://www.ehealth-connection.org/files/conf-materials/mHealth_%20A%20Developing%20Country%20Perspective_0.pdf
Considerations for deploying Voice over Wireless LANs (25' webcast registration required)

Thanks to
Nextel http://www.nextel.be/
Essec http://www.essec.be/
Telecom-IT http://www.telecom-it.be/
Newtel http://www.newtel.be/
Avaya http://www.avaya.be/
Televic http://www.televic.com/
CLB http://www.clb-belgium.be/
AMR-ICT http://www.amr-ict.nl/
Tadicom http://www.tadicom.com/

Follow-up article: http://zorgbeheer.blogspot.com/2008/11/roi-of-wifi-nintendo-ds-light-in.html

Google Maps and carehome locations

Just finished working on Google Maps application that shows locations of carehomes (homes for the elderly) in Flanders.

Info that will be added later (fase 2):

• contact data
• capacity
• service offered
• data of carehomes in the Benelux
• search-function on different criteria
• mouse-over info function
• graphical display of homes with vacant rooms
• comments, reviews, press, ...

Article (Dutch) on Zorgbeheer.com: here

Dipity for healthcare

Dipity for healthcare

First in a series of random deep thoughts on opensource, mashups and healthcare.

Wouldn't it be great to have your personal health records organised like in dipity.com?

• visits to doctors (+ findings),
• drug prescriptions (+start- and finish-times),
• X-rays,
• results of blood-tests, sugar/diabetes, pulse, weight, ...,
• treatments of osteopaths, dentists, physiotherapists, ...

Visualising this data would enhance the diagnose

• What about have a drug described on a foreign trip and you are unsure about what that drug does and what that strange looking doctor murmured to you in engrish? Take a picture of the drug and upload it to your Flickr-health-account, which displays on the Dipity-timeline. Await your doctors advice. Same goes for that strange rash you got in some tropical forrest.
• What about inserting your personal RSS-feed (maybe about your sport activities), conversations with whatever practioner on Twitter, ...
• What about diagnosing problems if they occured in a certain location if people's data is geotagged? That could improve upon the speed of treatments for larger groups of people.

Strong points

• Personal interference and commenting
• Visualisation on a timeline
• You can zoom in on an overview for the last couple of days, or zoom out for a broader overview
• Allow adding different sources
• Invite editors (caregivers) to your medical timeline
• Having an exact timestamp on an entree in the timeline
• Possibility to have your exact location added
• Accessibility
• Sharing information

Probably you can add more possibilities