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Another experience at the ER November 18, 2008

Posted by Hans in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so far

Unfortunately, I had another experience with the health care system recently - well, not me, specifically, but my dad. He was taken to the ER and so I spent a few hours waiting with him.

The interesting thing was to see Credit Valley Hospital’s new ER. As always, they had the mobile computer stations, but what was fascinating was how little the nurses used them. The nurses spent most of their time documenting on coloured forms which were either stapled together or kept together via clipboard.

Some of the biomedical devices were fascinating too. There was a device that monitored the blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and a few other clinical measures that I couldn’t make out. My dad had something connected to his index finger with some sort of light/laser that presumably measured blood sugar. What was most annoying was that some sort of alarm on the device kept going off every two minutes or so. I tried to make sense of the display, but to my untrained eye, many of the values weren’t very meaningful. I had a chance to watch a few nurses make adjustments to the device and it was very interesting to watch the nurses navigate through the multiple levels of menus using a dial. My friends and colleagues at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation might be interested in some of the usability/human computer interaction issues. Nevertheless, the sad thing was that this biomedical device was a stand-alone device not connected to any other (as far as I could).

The staff were all very nice, but having worked in the ehealth area for quite some time, I wonder how we can get the indivudal clinicians involved with ehealth. One of the challenges that seem very apparent to me is that using technology is foreign to the daily work process of the clinical environment. Seems like there is much work to be done to get clinicians to adopt ehealth.

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WHO definition of health August 29, 2008

Posted by Hans in : Uncategorized , add a comment

For your information: a link to the WHO definition of health.

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Reference info:

Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.

The Definition has not been amended since 1948.

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When ehealth is not ehealth August 5, 2008

Posted by Hans in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Now that I’ve had a few weeks under my belt in my ‘industry role’, I’ve been able to do some more thinking about my previous post.  Here are some of my thoughts:

  1. ehealth is NOT ehealth:  Industry and government operate using a completely different definition of ehealth than what was used in the academic circles I was in.  For me, ehealth was a concept; it was (and is) something that requires investigation.  Perhaps that’s why the systematic definition that I conducted a few years back is so important.  We were able to catalogue the different definitions being used.  To government, ehealth is a term used to describe large-scale information technology/infrastructure projects that happen to occur within the health care sector.  It’s not wrong as these provider agencies have different responsibilities than the researchers.
  2. Research is the thing that academics do:  When undertaking projects, decisions need to be made.  Because of the time constraints, people seem to search for a few short time to compile all of the information they can to base a decision on.  In a sense, people conduct a review except that it’s not systematic.  I am surprised by the attitude that academics live in some fantasy land doing research while everyone else is doing *real* work.  Sure academics operate under different constraints, but they have contributions to make too.
  3. Academics/Researchers need to get more involved:  Some of my research colleagues may disagree with me on this point, but I believe that academics and researchers need to get more involved with the world.  There is so much that needs to be done that people need help.  I’ve seen examples where some engineering professors partner with an industry group and both sides benefit.  For the professor, he (or she) can find opportunities to conduct more research and/or find projects for students.  Students get opportunities to learn, while the industry partner(s) benefit from the expertise of the professor and also get a chance to assess potential future employees.
  4. Patient?  What patient?:  Maybe I’m a bit cynical, but I’m worried about the patient.  No-one talks about or considers the patient.  It’s always about achieving a project deliverable and coming in on budget and getting the clinicians (i.e., physicians) on board.  I understand that finances are important and that clinicians play an immensely important role, but who speaks for the patient?  Patients and regular people need to get more involved in the entire ehealth agenda (be it from a research perspective or from an industry advocacy perspective) or else they/we will be left out again, just like during the early stages of when the health systems were being developed.  This is a perfect opportunity to make real change.

I’m thinking that this experience will be an interesting one for me as I navigate between these two worlds.

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