Category: opinion

  • An experience with US health care

    I’ve always been curious about the US health care system, particularly in terms of how it is similar and different with the Canadian system. Last night, I had a chance to experience the US system first-hand. A few of us went out for dinner and on our way back home, one of the members slipped…

  • Disruptive changes coming to medical care?

    Over at HBR.org, there’s an interesting post titled “Disruptive changes are coming to the delivery of medical care” by Stephen C Schimpff based on his book titled “The future of medicine: Megatrends in health care that will improve your quality of life“. In this post, Schimpff highlights the following areas that might significantly affect delivery…

  • Who is health care’s Steve Jobs?

    With all of the hype surrounding the release of Apple’s iPad, I came across an interesting post on CNN titled “the iPad and the failings of the computer industry“. It’s an interesting view on an apparent lack of visionary, inspirational leadership in the computer industry. The author wonders why no other computer company, let along…

  • Securing health data – just another challenge in moving towards a modern health system

    Not sure if this is news to people regularly involved in IT, but securing the increasing amounts of electronic health information will be a major issue as organizations move to adopt electronic health records (EHRs). The scary thing is that the perception is that health care organizations are behind the current best practices (yet again)…

  • Interactions with the health care system – a visit to the doctor’s office

    I was doing some exercises Monday night and I tweaked my wrist during a moment when I lost my focus (and balance). After a night of discomfort and pain, I decided to try and see my doctor to rule out anything serious. I did some searching on the internet and found a good article titled…

  • Making sense of revenues and profits in health care

    I read this post on the Health Beat titled “Advice to hospitals in a downturn: Market the high-margin service” and I’m trying to come to grips with it. Don’t get me wrong, the content itself was pretty much straight forward in that it provides advice on how to increase revenues. But, what I’m trying to…

  • Health care of the future?

    There was a very interesting series of posts at HBR Insight Center which focused on health care, specifically health care innovations. In the main post titled “Health Care of the Future“, the author presents a list of 10 innovations believed to have big impact. Checklists Behavioral Economics Patient Portals Payment Innovations Evidence-Based Decision Making Accountable…

  • The “y” in GE Healthymagination

    During the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I noticed a series of advertisements being played repeatedly promoting GE Healthymagination. The ads themselves were fairly well done and seemed to do a good job of conveying the message that GE is serious about health care and about being an innovation leader. Each time I watched the ad, I…