Android's Google Reader App Gets More Muscle

Author: Mehdi Rais, M.D.

Last week, Android’s Google Reader app received some dynamic updates that bring the app closer inline with the online experience, and in some ways now exceeds the web version.  I lean on this app to keep up with over 225 news feeds a day ranging from Health IT to technology to emerging clinical best practices to a myriad of other topics.  Among the updates to the Android version of Google Reader include:

• Unread Count Widget: any feed can be chosen within your Google Reader (labels, person, specific feeds, or all items.)  You’ll have a pulse on developments in your reader inbox as they happen.  Clicking on such feeds will send you to the respective feed.

• News Ticker Widget: any feed within Google reader can cycle through those headlines and stream on the homescreen. Much like the previous widget, clicking on a given article will take you to the article.

• Mark previous as read: this feature isn't available in the online version; currently you can only mark a time period (last day, week, etc.) as read, not everything prior.  In your reading list view, you can simply press “Mark previous as read” to mark feed listings above the screen as read.

These developments are right in line with the spirit of Google Reader's aim to streamline your online browsing experience.  Have you made the leap yet to Google Reader?

About the author:

Mehdi Rais is a physician, medical lecturer, medical writer, and self-proclaimed “tech nerd.” When Dr. Rais isn’t honing in on his trades, he spends his time scouring publications and the web for the latest trends in technology in the medical field, new applications in Health Information Technology, and emerging legislative & regulatory changes in medicine. 

Dr. Rais' interests are greatly focused in the realm of mobile computing and the use of cell phone technologies in the clinical setting.  He received his Medical Doctorate from St. Christopher’s College of Medicine after spending his undergraduate years at the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Dr. Rais can be reached on LinkedIn or followed at his blog here. Look for him on Twitter @DrMedBlog.

EMR = MSQ (A Massive Security Quagmire)

With the emergence of electronic medical records, the amount of intimate data being stored on any given patient is enormous.  This begins with identifying information such as age, race, sex, social security information, billing information, etc.  Such data is invaluable to identity thieves and marketers alike. Last week it was reported that a group of hackers broke into the Emory Health Care System and stole the records of at least 77 patients at an orthopedic clinic.  

Alarmingly, the hospital IT department did not detect nor identify any security problems.  The security breach was picked up by an ongoing case being pursued by the FBI.  In a statement by a hospital spokesperson for the Emory Health Care System, the intentions of the thieves were revealed, ”According to the IRS this information appears to have been subsequently used for the filing of fraudulent federal tax returns with the intent of collecting associated tax returns."

Despite the perception of being a secure network, I find it amazing that such security breaches could occur without any clue of its occurrence by the IT department. This event speaks volumes as to the distance we have to go to prevent the compromise of highly sensitive patient data.  

As I continue through my HITECH program, I learn every day about a new creative way hackers have accessed such sensitive data.  Creating a secure system truly is a monumental task requiring both education of health care workers, increased hardware and software resources, and a better trained more prepared IT team. Along with creating a unified language as being one of our nation's largest hurdles for system-wide EMR implementation and adoption,  top-rated health IT security will prove to have an equally immense resource cost.  

EMR: No Shortage in Standards

As we transition to a full EMR system, one of the largest current challenges to our health care model is the need to share information at different sites: hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, tertiary care centers, etc. To help facilitate this interoperability between health care sites, standards are needed to guide us towards this end.

Even to begin to set such standards and/or goals towards interoperability, there first must first be a focus to aggregate patient data towards a unified standard. In setting the stage for this ‘consensus’ standard, all stake holders who represent some specific arm of medicine must come together and define the standards that allow them to work together across sites and distances.

Many of these respective groups that create standards have a tight relationship; some have absolutely no connection whatsoever. Thus, it’s easy to see this creates an inherent redundancy in standards in some areas of gap in others. Such redundancy and scattered coverage in standards have created the need for harmonization.

 

The graphic above represents the 43 major international health care standard developing organizations (SDO's) that are working together to create seamless interoperability. Many of these organizations have a need for assistance, and are free to join and have openings for volunteer opportunities. If you are interested in breaking into HealthIT, anyone of these organizations could mark the start of your transition towards this career.

As I continue to navigate through my HITECH program, I will continue to highlight many of these organizations and give you a bird's eye view of their role in the EMR interoperability equation. If you'd like to learn more about EMR transition and the mountain we are facing, click here.

About the author:

Mehdi Rais is a physician, medical lecturer, medical writer, and self-proclaimed “tech nerd.” When Dr. Rais isn’t honing in on his trades, he spends his time scouring publications and the web for the latest trends in technology in the medical field, new applications in Health Information Technology, and emerging legislative & regulatory changes in medicine.

Dr. Rais' interests are greatly focused in the realm of mobile computing and the use of cell phone technologies in the clinical setting. He received his Medical Doctorate from St. Christopher’s College of Medicine after spending his undergraduate years at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Rais can be reached on LinkedIn or followed at his blog here. Look for him on Twitter @DrMedBlog.

EMR Transition: It's all in the Words....

Seamless care through EMR requires establishing interoperability between different systems (i.e. organizations, hospitals, clinics, networks, etc.)  The starting point for achieving this interoperability is producing a controlled vocabulary to input within a database.  Naturally, over time development organizations have created such data sets in vocabulary for the specific aim to explain a specific arm of medicine.  Gradually, these organizations have broadened their purpose to encompass all medical terminology.  With this in mind, it is important to note that none of these initial data sets were ever intended to cover all of medicine and thus the reason we have overlap in terminologies, descriptions, etc.

If one were to simply take a look at a single term/data set and the variance in definitions of this term, it would be easy to see how the transition to EMR could effectively come to a grinding halt in its attempts to achieve complete interoperability.  A recent study examined the term myocardial infarction (MI). We all have our own conceptual model of MI and a respective qualitative/quantitative description to fit this model. The study I am referring to found 60 different scientific definitions of myocardial infarction.  Take this example one step further, and imagine the EMR interoperability nightmare if the records of one MI patient had to seek care or advice from a different institution. The flow of that data set from one institution to the next would immediately be severed simply because of the differing definitions and descriptors given. Now multiply this problem by every diagnosable disease.  The thought of standardization of language and disease description becomes a staggering one, and here lies the mountain of work we must climb to achieve seamless EMR interoperability.

To put this into further perspective, the following table elaborates the choices in terminology for specific recordable data sets and the respective organizations that are attempting to develop a controlled language.  While there may be overlap in some of the language in one or two of the systems, there is by no means a consensus language. 

 '+' represents the amount of use of a controlled terminology set within the U.S.; '$' represents a respective cost to the end user.

Having said this, clinicians cannot sit back and simply think that EMR transition will be done by IT people alone.  Definitions and vocabulary are the back bone of this system. Such terminology can only be given by clinicians.  Currently the Office of the National Coordinator estimates 50,000 people will be needed to assist in this effort over the next 4-5 years to reach our goal of 100% transition to EMR.  

I for one had no idea of the scale of the interoperability problems without having started the HITECH Workforce Program only a few weeks back.  I look forward to presenting many more of the big issues that we are facing during this EMR transition in the coming months.  

About the author:

Mehdi Rais is a physician, medical lecturer, medical writer, and self-proclaimed “tech nerd.” When Dr. Rais isn’t honing in on his trades, he spends his time scouring publications and the web for the latest trends in technology in the medical field, new applications in Health Information Technology, and emerging legislative & regulatory changes in medicine. 

Dr. Rais' interests are greatly focused in the realm of mobile computing and the use of cell phone technologies in the clinical setting.  He received his Medical Doctorate from St. Christopher’s College of Medicine after spending his undergraduate years at the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Dr. Rais can be reached on LinkedIn or followed at his blog here. Look for him on Twitter @DrMedBlog.

Blood Pressure Showdown: Withings vs iHealth

You've read a few reviews on iOs enabled blood pressure cuffs breaking into the market (here, here, and here.)  I was interested in taking a closer look at the devices available and their respective hardware and user interface.  In the following chart, you'll find some pretty big differences between the offerings of the two main manufacturer's (iHealth and Withings) in terms of power, user interface, ability to share, analytical capabilities, and more....

SPEC COMPARISON

With Specs in mind, let's take a quick glimpse at the hardware package and UI.

WITHINGS BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF & APP: 

A look at the size and portability of Withing's product.

UI while acquiring blood pressure

Blood Pressure results display

Graphical results of blood pressure readings

iHealth's BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF, BASE & APP:

Despite the base station, iHealth's offering is still highly portable.

UI while acquiring blood pressure. 

Blood pressure results

Graphical interpretation of blood pressure data. 

Determining a champion in this showdown is really a matter of personal preference.  If you or your patients need a product that offers dynamic avenues to share, Withings is your product.  If you need a more robust and appealing UI and user experience, iHealth gets the nod.  At the end of the day, you can't lose with either product.  

Which one will you be advising your patients to grab?

Android Releases More Honeycomb Details

Author: Mehdi Rais, M.D.

I previously highlighted the upcoming Android release of the Honeycomb platform (version 3.0).  Android's latest rendition is primarily aimed to work on larger screens such as tablets.  Google has promised big changes to the UI design, a more robust multitasking engine, more widgets, and greater capabilities in customization.  Yesterday, the Android developer team released some early screen shots of things to come. Here are a few of my favorite updates to the platform.

UI Overhaul

The Android Developer team has long sought to make the user experience more intuitive with less effort.  To do this, they have drastically made changes to the core UI design.  In all applications at the bottom of the screen, the user will have quick access to system status notifications and a soft navigation button in the system bar.  At the top of the screen in every application, an action bar will have contextual options, navigation, widgets, and alternate content in an action bar. 

Home is where the hearts are

One of the complaints of Android’s current platform (version 2.2) is a single home screen, which leaves the user with a very restrictive experience due to the limited number of readily available functions; the user is required to navigate through multiple menus and screens to reach a desired function.  While this seems to work fine on a smaller device such as a cellular phone, the tablet does not seem to not take full advantage of the additional screen space and hardware capabilities. 

To remedy this, the user will have five customizable home screens in Honeycomb.  Furthermore, the user can spatially arrange widgets, app shortcuts, web pages, search boxes, and wallpaper to their own desire.  These home screens will dynamically change according to the orientation of the device.

Multitasking Wiz

The system bar has a nice added feature coined the Recent App List. The user can access recently opened or closed apps and jump to them quickly and painlessly.

Redesigned keyboard and text function

• Keys were redesigned and positioned to make for a more intuitive and accurate experience.
• New keys were added to increase efficiency of input (i.e. Tab key.)
• Users can toggle between a text and voice input mode.  Not much more information was given by the Android developer team, but I am highly interested in seeing this demonstrated.
• Android promises a better copy and paste experience.  Users can press and hold a word then adjust the selection by dragging floating arrow boundaries around the desired text; the selected text can then be copy and pasted within the text box, sent to the clip board, or pasted to a web or local search.

These early previews are very compelling.  I can’t say for certain if this experience will be as fluid and dynamic as the iPad experience, but I can say the folks at Android are definitely pointed in the right direction.

About the author:

Mehdi Rais is a physician, medical lecturer, medical writer, and self-proclaimed “tech nerd.” When Dr. Rais isn’t honing in on his trades, he spends his time scouring publications and the web for the latest trends in technology in the medical field, new applications in Health Information Technology, and emerging legislative & regulatory changes in medicine. 

Dr. Rais' interests are greatly focused in the realm of mobile computing and the use of cell phone technologies in the clinical setting.  He received his Medical Doctorate from St. Christopher’s College of Medicine after spending his undergraduate years at the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Dr. Rais can be reached on LinkedIn or followed at his blog here. Look for him on Twitter @DrMedBlog.

Qualify to Become a Medical Science Liaison

I recently took a snap shot of the top 10 posters for MSL (medical science liaison) positions on Monster.com, Hotjobs.com,  and CareerBuilder.com.  After boiling down the job descriptions for core qualifications of MSL job posts, I found a consistent list of attributes employers are seeking in candidates.  

By no means is this an end-all list for guaranteed employment as an MSL.  Consider this a starting point.  Acquiring these attributes and exhibiting them purposefully in your CV will only help increase your chances of breaking in: 

• Education: MD, PharmD, PhD
• Skills: Clinical presentation, medical education development, and an overall thought development leader. Individual must have solid computer skills (spreadsheets, word processing, database, internet research and other applicable software programs.)
• Experience: 3-5 years in a specific area with strong knowledge of the treatment landscape for one's field of specialty.
• Personal Attributes: leadership, interpersonal, analytical and problem solving skills. Candidate must be energetic and possess excellent communication skills (oral and written.) In addition, he or she  must be  highly self-motivated such that he/she can work in an independent environment.
• Social Attributes: membership into the national society of preferred disease specialty. Individual will be able to demonstrate a well-established network in this specific network.
• Travel: 6 weekends a year up to 80% travel. Most are required to live within a given territory.

If you are trying to break into the MSL field, do you qualify?  If not what are you doing about it?