Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

I will be attending the 2011 HIMSS national conference at the Orlando Conference Center in Florida in February.

There are approximately 20,000 people who attend this conference.
I am particularly looking forward to attending their sessions regarding HIPAA compliance issues and CCHIT and electronic health issues.

CCHIT is the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology. These are federal requirements for certification.

Therap is working towards 2011 certification.  We have announced that a conference for December 2011 in Florida which will cover Therap and Meaningful Use and CCHIT issues.

One of my favorite blog authors is Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com who also wrote “What Would Google Do?”.

He is now discussing a new book on his website called Public Parts.  The book is about “the benefits of publicness”.

On one hand there are clearly many benefits of publicness.  To some extent the movement from daily log books written by one person to be read by one person at a time – towards T-logs and daily progress notes mirrors some of his discussion about the change in printing due to the Gutenberg press.  Jarvis wrote:

before Gutenberg, scribes had long entered errors into books as they were copied and recopied. Printing, Eisenstein says, both multiplied errors in so many more copies and also represented a “great leap” toward standardization because the errors were easier to find

Jarvis then quoted a book “The Printing Press as an Agency of Change” by Elizabeth Eisenstein and blogged

So essentially before Gutenberg and the printing press – there were lots of errors and unless you were reading the exact version of what someone hand wrote – you didn’t know what it said or if there was an error.  So essentially daily progress notes written by hand in notebooks is a version of 16th century technology perhaps aided by copy machines or faxes which apply some mid to late 20th century technology.

Clearly there are Hipaa and privacy issues we need to be aware of.  But the analogies to the benefits to science and accuracy of information allowed after Gutenberg and the printing press compared with the benefits of using t-logs or other electronic documentation when replacing what is essentially 16th century technology that many agencies are using is interesting.

But this process of error was turned to advantage by some. Sixteenth-century editors and publishers, Eisentein says, “created vast networks of correspondents, solicited criticism of each edition, sometimes publicly promising to mention the names of readers who sent in new information or who spotted the errors which would be weeded out.” So publishing became collaborative; that’s what printing allowed

One risk with the printing press was that once a book (which is essentially a set of information) is printed – you don’t have a record of who saw it.  With Therap you have a time and date stamp for everyone who views or changes data.

When an industry can even be thought of in comparison to pre-Gutenberg days – it says something about the pace of change and the opportunities for efficiency and improvement.

Technorati Tags: T-logs, publicness, buzzmachine, Jeff Jarvis

When we started Therap in 2003  we said that computers with internet connections would be in group homes in the then not to distant future. I think that has pretty much been the case – that agencies are accepting computers and internet as a normal part of operations.

What we didn’t foresee was that cellphones would essentially become computers with browsers and internet connectivity.

We are starting to see a number of agencies using IPhones and other phones (come to Fishkill for the presentation by UCP Eastern Connecticut on how they are using IPhones).  However, there is still a large concern about the monthly cost of cell phones.

Today’s New York Times website has an article called “Google Appears Closer to Releasing Its Own Phone”.

The article quotes a twitter account called Great White Snark who has links such as

“RT @TechCrunch ZOMG The Google Phone Is “Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids” http://bit.ly/6MJc4q by @arrington“.  I can’t wait to find out how my kids will end up having to cite tweets like that  for school reports.
Anyway – I wonder what affect google will have on pricing of cellphones and cellplans and what affect that will have on agencies ability to provide  DSP’s and house managers with access to Therap through cell phones.  Google has historically provided low cost products backed by advertising.  Will that continue on their phone? Does that mean that basic phones for DSP’s will be essentially free? And what is the “price” of free in terms of time and watching ads?

What about the security of PHI?  Will google be accessing data to provide ads as they do with gmail?  Many agencies have a closed network and don’t allow staff to surf the internet or use a computer for non-business purposes. What will happen when google moves the computer and internet to the phone – and that perhaps becomes a very cost effective way of accessing the internet for community based staff and programs?

It will be interesting to see how this evolves and how it affects providers of service to people with developmental disabilities.  Many of the apps such as games or farmville may be distracting. But what affect will apps such as maps, lists of activities, community programs, directions and other service have.  Will agencies put certain policies on a phone?

Can there be just in time training?  Think about the cost savings  if staff can access training from a multi-media phone when they are waiting around – rather than getting training from specific in-service sessions they need to be paid specifically for.

Are any agencies starting to deal with these issues? What are you finding?