On Monday afternoons, a group of elderly Greek ladies meets at my Peet’s. They roll in, one by one, leaning on their walkers and escorted by their daughters, caregivers of the driver of the senior transit van. They talk loudly, as the hard-of-hearing often do, so I feel like I’ve been part of every conversation…
Category Archives: technology
The Future of Computing
We went to the Apple store on Saturday, and as my husband handled his exchange in the back, the 3-year-old and I wandered around looking at the cool toys, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and the iPad. I have a theory that I shouldn’t push the life of my laptop much further than two…
The Cost of Readmissions
As politicians jump on the healthcare reform bandwagon, there is an increased and renewed interest in keeping costs low. When a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that approximately 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to hospitals within a month of discharge, it didn’t escape anyone’s attention. In the current model…
Making Headway On My Website
While I’ve done more than my share of web content, web design, development and coding make me crazy. Because I don’t do it often, my HTML skills are rusty, and PHP makes me downright insane. My previous website had been built with Joomla!, and I have to admit that I was frustrated with it and…
HITECH Puts New Emphasis on Healthcare Security
How safe is your patient information? According to Premier, Inc., approximately 10 million patient records were breached between 2005 and 2008. The average cost of each breach reaches into the millions. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) includes new provisions regarding protected health information (PHI). HITECH goes beyond the security…
Disruptive Innovation in Healthcare
I’m not, by nature, a germophobe. I am perhaps irrationally understanding of the number of creepy crawly germy nasties out there, and in general believe that my exposure to these germs makes me stronger, not weaker. The exception to this rule is the doctor’s office or hospital. It doesn’t matter why I’m there, I leave…
War: What is it Good For?
I was speaking with a cardiothoracic surgeon recently, and he brought up the topic of war. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “but it does wonders for advancing medicine.” It was a perspective that I hadn’t previously considered. Estimates suggest that greater than 90% survival rate for soldiers injured in recent combat. Compare that with…
Healthcare and the Elderly: Keeping Patients Informed
I got a call from my 90-year-old Nana tonight. She had a health scare last week. While waiting for the shuttle to take her to the supermarket, she passed out in the lobby of her assisted living facility. She is borderline diabetic (pre-diabetic) and takes medication. For reasons that they haven’t yet determined, her blood…
How to Anger Loyal Customers (I Can Hear Steve Jobs Laughing At Me)
I’ve been in the market for an iPhone. Even prior to the iPhone 3G announcement, I had decided that I needed something like it to enable me to keep up with email and clients when I’m offsite at meetings for half a day. Unfortunately, I made this decision in the days prior to the new…
Social Surplus
I found a fantastic speech that discusses the role of television and our collective available time as a society. People often ask me where I find the hours in the day for freelance work, parenting a toddler, contributing time to a nonprofit, exercising and reading books. The answer is that I don’t watch TV. Don’t…