On Monday afternoon my wife was speaking with my 82 year old father-in-law, when he began speaking in word salad – not slurring his words, but clearly speaking words that made no sense. He had no numbness or weakness, no confusion, and no change in consciousness. After 5 minutes all symptoms resolved.
Life as a Health Care CIO
Google Glass – the details
Wearable computing at BIDMC
Over the past few months, Beth Israel Deaconess has been exploring the use of wearable computing.
In the Emergency Department we’ve been evaluating an early unit of Google Glass, a high tech pair of glasses that includes a video camera, video screen, speaker, microphone, touch pad, and motion sensor.
Standards for patient generated healthcare data
At last week’s Meaningful Use Workgroup meeting, Leslie Kelly Hall and I reviewed the HIT Standards Committee recommendations for patient generated healthcare data from online applications and devices.
Management lessons learned from A Game of Thrones
A Game of Thrones is the first novel in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of high fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin.
I rarely watch television, but for Christmas, my wife bought me Season 1 of Game of Thrones, the HBO series inspired by the novels. Don’t worry, this blog post will not contain any spoilers.
The year that was 2013
As the year drew to a close, I was interviewed by many trade publications about the key themes that shaped 2013. Here’s my own version of the notable events of 2013.
1. Meaningful Use changed the EHR landscape
Regardless of your political affiliation, there is little debate that EHR adoption in the US achieved a tipping point in 2013.
Google Glass progress report
Our teams continue to work on Google Glass applications for Emergency Department workflow improvement. Here’s a photo of our team at work with a stealthy startup developing healthcare solutions on Google Glass.
Lessons learned from the health insurance exchange launch
CIOs face many pressures – increase scope, reduce timelines, trim budgets. After nearly 20 years as a CIO, I’ve learned a great deal about project success factors.
When faced with go live pressures, I tell my staff the following:
"If you go live months late when you’re ready, no one will ever remember.
What keeps me up at night – Fall 2013
Now that Labor Day has come and gone, I’ve thought about the months ahead and the major challenges I’ll face.
1. Mergers and Acquisitions
Downtime in 2002 versus 2013
On November 13, 2002, the network core at Beth Israel Deaconess failed due to a complex series of events and the hospital lost access to all applications.
Patient and family engagement in ICUs
My father died 2 months ago and now with a bit of distance from that emotional event, it’s time to further reflect on technology to support patients and families in ICUs.
BIDMC has been speaking with a major foundation about creating a cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional, open source application to turn critical care data into wisdom for patients and families.
How might it work? Let me use my father as an example.