Today, at the HIMSS 2013 conference, Accenture released initial U.S. findings from an eight-country physician survey measuring the global use of health information technology. The results provide insight into where doctors stand in the ongoing transition to electronic medical records. Interestingly, the majority of physicians (82 percent) believe patients should be able to update their health record, such as demographics (95 percent) and family medical history (85 percent). Yet most doctors (65 percent) do not want patients to have full access to their electronic health record.

A new Accenture (NYSE:ACN) survey shows that most U.S. doctors surveyed (82 percent) want patients to actively participate in their own healthcare by updating their electronic health records. However, only a third of physicians (31 percent) believe a patient should have full access to his or her own record, 65 percent believe patients should have limited access and 4 percent say they should have no access. These findings were consistent among 3,700 doctors surveyed by Accenture in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States.

Patients Access to Records

While nearly half of U.S. doctors (47 percent) surveyed believe patients should not be able to update their lab test results, the vast majority believe patients should be able to update some or all of the standard information in their health records, including demographics (95 percent), family medical history (88 percent), medications (87 percent) and allergies (85 percent). And, the majority of doctors (81 percent) believe patients should even be able to add such clinical updates to their records as new symptoms or self-measured metrics, including blood pressure and glucose levels.

“Many physicians believe that patients should take an active role in managing their own health information, because it fosters personal responsibility and ownership and enables both the patient and doctor to track progress outside scheduled appointments,” said Mark Knickrehm, global managing director of Accenture Health. “Several U.S. health systems have proven that the benefits outweigh the risks in allowing patients open access to their health records, and we expect this trend to continue.” In fact, nearly half of doctors surveyed (49 percent) believe that giving patients access to their records is crucial to providing effective care. But, only 21 percent of doctors surveyed currently allow patients to have online access to their medical summary or patient chart, the most basic form of a patient’s record.

Perceptions of Electronic Health Records

More than half of doctors surveyed (53 percent) believe that the introduction of electronic health records has improved the quality of patient care, and the overwhelming majority (84 percent) say they are somewhat or strongly committed to promoting electronic records in their clinical practice. Most (77 percent) believe the right investments in adopting electronic records are being made and 83 percent believe they will become integral to effective patient care in the next two years.

Methodology

On behalf of Accenture, Harris Interactive conducted an online survey of 3,700 physicians across eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States. The survey included 500 doctors per country (200 from Singapore) and assessed the physicians’ adoption, utilization and attitudes toward healthcare IT. The research was conducted between November 2012 and December 2012.

Learn more about Accenture’s Insight Driven Health

Summit Healthcare Regional Medical Center (Summit HRMC), a full-service hospital in Show Low, Ariz. that provides comprehensive healthcare services to patients in the eastern and northern regions of the state, has selected Ingenious Med‘s impower charge capture solution to assist in reaching its documentation, communication and compliance goals.

The hospital recently launched implementation of empower in its hospitalists program, where there has been a demonstrated, critical need for consistent documentation of patient care and improved communication between physicians.

Summit HRMC previously contracted with a firm for inpatient management and later migrated to a web-based patient charge capture software, neither of which were satisfactory solutions, according to COO Doug Gilchrist.

“From a documentation standpoint, we face several challenges that are created simply by the nature of our hospitalists’ program structure,” he explained. “We needed a tool that would standardize documentation protocols from one physician to another so that both patient care and charge capture are more consistent.”

By implementing Ingenious Med’s impower charge capture solution, Summit Healthcare expects to reach the following goals:

• Collect satisfactory data and track physician productivity
• Meet or exceed ICD-9 coding compliance
• Capture patient charges accurately and quickly to eliminate billing delays and rebilling

“We’re excited to move away from a system in which we’re realizing and correcting mistakes after they happen,” stated Gilchrist. “With impower, we’ll be able to provide our hospitalists with the resources they need for coding accurately, right at the point of care.”

Self empowerment, self care, and remote care all hit the CES (Computer Electronics Show – one of the largest gadget get togethers on Earth) this 2013.  Remote physician kiosks hit the top of my list for a beta this year!

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., and ROCHESTER, Minn., Jan. 15, 2013 – Optum and Mayo Clinic today jointly launched Optum Labs, an open, collaborative research and development facility with a singular goal: improving patient care. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Optum Labs provides an environment where the health care industry can come together to combine information and ideas that benefit patients today while also driving long-term improvements in the delivery and quality of care.

Optum and Mayo Clinic will make their information assets, technologies, knowledge tools and scientific expertise available to organizations interested in pursuing practical new solutions to patient care challenges. As the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit medical group practice in the world, Mayo Clinic will also contribute valuable insights directly from patient experiences. Mayo Clinic’s extensive clinical expertise will be instrumental in guiding Optum Labs’ research agenda and applying research results and insights directly to the patient care environment.  Combining Mayo Clinic’s extensive clinical insights with Optum’s health care claims information will help doctors better understand all aspects of the patient care experience and refine approaches to care that consistently help patients achieve the best outcomes. Other Optum Labs participants will include academic institutions, life sciences companies, commercial and government payers, and other care providers.

“As the founding partner of Optum Labs, Mayo Clinic is excited to work with Optum and other organizations to address the challenges and issues facing health care in order to help us provide better care to our patients, and help lead improvements to the delivery of care,” said John Noseworthy, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Mayo Clinic. “Our strategic research alliance with Optum Labs will leverage what we believe to be the largest combined source of clinical and claims information, providing a more comprehensive picture of patients’ diagnoses, progression of diseases, comparative treatments and outcomes.”

“We are privileged to introduce Optum Labs in partnership with Mayo Clinic, which has been improving health outcomes for 150 years by continually researching, discovering and doing what’s best for the patient,” said Larry Renfro, chief executive officer of Optum. “Mayo Clinic and Optum are bringing together the best clinical insight, health information and research expertise to drive innovation that works for care providers and the patients they serve. We also welcome and look forward to the perspectives, ideas and contributions of future participants from across the health care system who share the goal of creating a better future for patient care.”

Making a difference in the lives of patients

With the combined insights of Optum, Mayo and other partners, Optum Labs will be able to support patient care improvements in many areas, such as:

• Finding optimal treatments for conditions in a given setting
• Understanding variations in care
• Examining the effectiveness of patient care programs and approaches

Using the rich data and other resources of Optum Labs, scientists will address a broad range of opportunities to improve care for patients.  Examples of the work of Optum Labs scientists include measuring the best treatments for the serious blood cancer chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), developing applications that measure the relative cost effectiveness of medical devices, analyzing how to improve the diagnosis of Hepatitis C, and increasing the understanding of health disparities among the elderly.

“By combining the Mayo Clinic’s robust clinical insight with Optum’s extensive claims information, we will be able to better understand health care delivery over time, compare the effectiveness of care we provide today, and analyze the total cost of care for specific procedures or diseases,” said Veronique Roger, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. “This will help provide better care to patients, and help the health care industry better define value through outcomes instead of volumes.”

“Bringing together in one location health information and insights from many contributors can provide a deeper understanding of important trends and patient care issues that no single organization could achieve on its own,” said Andy Slavitt, group executive vice president of Optum. “At Optum Labs, we have the opportunity to generate insights and develop practical innovations that care providers, life sciences companies and government agencies can begin using today to improve patient care.”

About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. The organization focuses a team of experts on one patient at a time, as it has for nearly 150 years. Its proven model of care makes Mayo Clinic a trusted leader in advancing medicine and solving complex problems.

About Optum

Optum (www.optum.com) is a leading information and technology-enabled health services business dedicated to helping make the health system work better for everyone. Optum comprises three companies — OptumHealth, OptumInsight and OptumRx — representing over 35,000 employees worldwide who collaborate to deliver integrated, intelligent solutions that work to modernize the health system and improve overall population health.

MediSwipe Inc. (www.MediSwipe.com) (OTCQB: MWIP), a patient security solutions and financial products company for the health care industry, today announced that it has provided over $500,000 in elective medical consumer financing for the month of December 2012.

“We believe this new vertical market will continue to become an important revenue stream for our company as it utilizes our unique and long time banking relationships. MediSwipe has the opportunity to become the ‘LendingTree’ for the elective surgery industry as our network can for the most part handle and get anyone approved for plastic surgery, dental work, Lasik, and numerous other procedures with less than perfect credit. In fact, we have an 80% approval rate or better from more traditional lending sources,” stated B. Michael Friedman, CEO of MediSwipe Inc.

“We have also received our first orders for our digital patient smart cards, which should begin to hit the market as early as March. First in the U.S., these patient smart cards will allow patients to upload their health records via a flash drive and carry their information with them in their wallet. Information may be accessed through our cloud-based storage and encrypted system anywhere in the world. We are extremely excited to be receiving real interest from not only our dispensary clients, but our medical practitioner client base as well. By leveraging our proven banking network to solve patients’ financing needs, as well as providing innovative solutions for patients with our new digital records smart card application, we believe we are a turnkey solution from patients to payments within the healthcare sector,” further stated Friedman.

London, United Kingdom, July 24 2012 – DNA Electronics Ltd,
a developer of semiconductor solutions for real-time DNA and RNA
detection, today announces that DNA Electronics Chairman and CEO
Professor Chris Toumazou FRS will be sharing his vision for the future
of the life sciences sector at the upcoming Healthcare and Life
Sciences Global Business Summit being hosted by UK Trade & Investment
(UKTI) at Lancaster House in London on Thursday 2nd August 2012.
Professor Toumazou will join other key innovators, dignitaries and
industry figures from the UK life sciences community who have been
invited to address delegates on the future of the sector.
For more information read the full news release here:
http://www.neondrum.com/public/public_release.php?id=1320

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center can now provide
employees with remote access to high-performance computing, data
analysis, and administrative resources thanks to NoMachine software.
NoMachine allows Center researchers to maintain rigorous research
schedules, no matter where they are located. The Center consists of
more than 3,000 staff, including world-renowned scientists and Nobel
Laureates, who are dedicated to understanding, treating, and
preventing cancer, HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases.
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, researchers are also spread out
at remote sites across North America and Europe. With NoMachine, the
Center can connect 250-300 researchers to the high-performance
computing (HPC) cluster, with up to 25 users connecting at the same
time.
For more information read the full news release here:
http://www.neondrum.com/public/public_release.php?id=1226

 PerfectServe, the leading platform for intelligent clinical communication services, today announced it has been included in the list of “Cool Vendors” in the Cool Vendors in Healthcare, 2012ⁱ report by Gartner, Inc. Cool Vendors are selected for being innovative, impactful and intriguing.

According to the Gartner report, Cool Vendors in Healthcare, 2012, written by Wes Rishel, Thomas J. Handler, M.D., Vi Shaffer, Barry Runyon, and Steven Lefebure, “It’s easy to slap a few healthcare terms on a snazzy new technology and call it innovation. Our Cool Vendors this year are true innovators that have found nuanced ways to apply technology to practical administrative, clinical and social problems of delivering healthcare.”

“We believe being identified by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” in healthcare confirms that PerfectServe is leading the clinical communications industry,” said Terry Edwards, chief executive officer of PerfectServe. “PerfectServe is proud of the work we are doing with leading health systems to help clinicians streamline communications and coordinate care. With a solid platform that gives doctors the opportunity to selectively filter and control how they receive clinical communications, PerfectServe makes the practice of medicine more efficient while improving patient safety and care coordination.”

About PerfectServe
Advancing care coordination across the continuum, PerfectServe’s intelligent clinical communication platform makes it easy to connect clinicians — and push relevant clinical information — to the right physician at the right time, in the precise way each physician wishes to be reached. Based in Knoxville, Tenn., PerfectServe processes more than 35 million transactions annually, connecting more than 20,000 physicians in health systems and medical practices across 154 markets in the United States. For more information go to www.perfectserve.com, visit Twitter, or call 877-844-7728.

The nations which constitute the 3rd world group are not in a very comfortable position with regard to many basic facilities including health care and medical technology.

Many of the ordinary facilities that are considered to be common place and even considered to be a necessity in the developed nations are still considered to be a luxury in the 3rd world nations.

Things have definitely changed and improved for the better over the years. Yet basic facilities and necessities like health care, vaccination and medical technology are all still in the very nascent stage, even while the rest of the developed world is heralding the 11th year of the 21st century.

Year 2005 and an open invitation by Bill Gates:

In the year 2005, Bill Gates did make an odd proposal to the scientists and researchers of the world.  He offered an open invitation to these highly qualified and reputed folks to put their brains together and work towards a common aim. This common aim was to create or invent or discover effective methods of vaccination for many of the diseases that were yet not preventable. The major diseases topping this list were the much dreaded killer disease- Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and malaria.

Issues with current method of vaccine administration:

He also requested them to find some viable solution to deal with the fact that the majority of the vaccines had to be administered via needles and syringes; which is obviously a painful process and deters many people from getting themselves or their children vaccinated.

Issues with current method of vaccine storage:

Many of the vaccines require being stored in refrigerators and ice packs. This is another hazard waiting to happen, because most of the developing and 3rd world nations experience frequent power outages and also may not have the proper refrigeration facilities. 

Outcome of these issues: …click here to read more

Joining today is Silvia Fazekas, Clinical Information Systems Manager at St Vincent’s Public Hospital. Silvia will be speaking at IIR’s Electronic Medication Management conference on 21-22 June 2012 in Melbourne.

Questions:

1. St Vincent’s have been using electronic medication management systems for some time now. Where are you in terms of full roll out across the hospital and what have been some of the key challenges faced?

2. What has the clinician uptake of electronic medication management systems been like at St Vincent’s?

3. Where do you see the future of electronic medication management systems?

Kickoff for the 16th Annual future of heatlh technology summit ( www.fhti.org )

Take a gander at the video series:  http://youtu.be/INr578ao06o

Let’s face it, ICD-10 is a HUGE impact to medical facilities.  You need to keep working on improving process and deploying software to be ready for this massive impact to your clinical business.

ACOs have received a lot of attention as the new model to improve quality and tie payment to healthy outcomes. States have been exploring the model to varying degrees and looking at what is required to be successful.

Join this lively panel discussion at the 2012 State Healthcare IT Connect Summit (June 19-21) to learn what an ACO is, what it will take to implement the model, and how states are using the ACO concept to tie quality and cost together, address quality measurement, and ensuring enhanced care coordination for society’s most vulnerable citizens.

Who: Join over 250 State HIT leaders from State Government, HIEs, Payers, Providers and Solution Providers
Where: Hyatt Dulles, Washington International Airport
When: Day 2 (June 19) 10.00 a.m. – 11.00 a.m. as part of the 3-day 2012 State Healthcare IT Connect Summit (June 19-21)

Panelists:
Ross Owen, Manager Care Delivery Reform, Minnesota Department of Human Services
Jed Ziegenhagen, Director Rates and Analysis Division, Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing
Natalie Ellertson, VP, Optum Government Solutions
 

>>Learn More 

>>View Full Agenda

Many older adults lose their independence as their health declines and they are compelled to move into assisted care facilities. Researchers at the University of Missouri and TigerPlace, an independent living community, have been using motion-sensing technology to monitor changes in residents’ health for several years. Now, researchers have found that two devices commonly used for video gaming and security systems are effective in detecting the early onset of illness and fall risk in seniors.

The folks who are hearing impaired are already suffering from a handicap. To add salt to injury; comes in the difficulty experienced in recognizing and interpreting what other people are trying to communicate to them. Most of these individuals rely only upon the art of reading the lips of the speaker to understand what is being said to them.

Problems associated with lip reading:

 The problem with lip reading is that, many of the consonants of English language; for instance consonants like p and b, may be quite tough to read accurately through watching of the lip movements. Striking up casual conversation with someone who is communicating through his or her lip movement alone, can be very much stressful; and call for a lot of concentration and paying of attention by the person who is hearing impaired.

Moreover a large chunk of the hearing impaired population may not even be able to afford other effective and less stressful options like cochlear implants, and this is truer in the lesser developed and under developed nations.

Now new technologies for the hearing impaired are being developed in order to relive these individuals of their woes. Let us have a look at some of these latest additions to health technology.

Tactile devices for the hearing impaired:

These devices do exactly what they signify. That means to say that these devices are capable of converting the audible sound vibrations in to tactile vibrations. When simply put, it denotes that the auditory sound waves get altered in to touch sensations that can be experienced by the skin. Though these tactile devices cannot be considered as a new invention, the latest development is aimed at making them more sophisticated and more competent in boosting the lip reading performance.

…click here to read more

Dr. Jelle Barentsz demonstrated this week how modern
technology, including NoMachine’s remote access software, can improve
physician collaboration and lead to better patient care at the
TEDxMaastricht “The Future of Health” event. Prostate cancer is the
second most common cancer in men worldwide. Dr. Barentsz, a professor
of Radiology and Chair of the Prostate MR-Center of Excellence at the
Radboud University Nijmgen Medical Center, and his team use advanced
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans as a critical step to more
accurate patient diagnoses. During his TEDx session, Dr. Barentsz also
proved how the sharing of these images between specialists is integral
to faster, better diagnosis and treatment of tumors.
For more information read the full news release here:
http://www.neondrum.com/public/public_release.php?id=1192

 PerfectServe, the leading platform for intelligent clinical communication services, has strengthened its national sales force with the addition of Jean Schat as regional vice president of sales for the northeast region.

In her new role, Schat will be responsible for growing PerfectServe’s hospital clients and health care partnerships within the northeastern United States. 

A registered respiratory therapist with more than 15 years of health care expertise, Schat has a proven history of record-breaking sales. She comes to PerfectServe from Curaspan Health Group where she served as northeast general manager and senior regional director.

Prior to her tenure at Curaspan Health Group, Schat was a northeast regional executive at CareScience, Inc.  She was also the northeast regional vice president at MediServe Information Systems from 2001-2005, and has held positions at Mallinckrodt/Tyco Healthcare, CliniComp, Intl., and Naval Medical Center.

Schat holds a bachelor’s degree in business information systems from the University of Phoenix.

DNA Electronics Ltd. a developer of semiconductor solutions
for real-time DNA and RNA detection, today announces that it has
licensed its ground-breaking Genalysis® technology platform for
rapid, lab-free DNA detection to geneOnyx, a company that is
delivering on-the-spot genetic analytics services for cosmetics and
skincare applications.
For more information read the full news release here:
http://www.neondrum.com/public/public_release.php?id=1161

PerfectServe, the leading platform for intelligent clinical communication services, recently expanded its suite of mobile access applications with full versions for BlackBerry® and Android™ smartphone devices.

The smartphone apps enable physicians to easily and securely contact any colleague, call patients without divulging personal information, easily manage on-call schedules on the fly, change call routing to different devices based on situation, like going into surgery, and keep track of and easily respond to all their inbound and outbound communications.

More than 20,000 physicians already use PerfectServe to customize their entire communications process according to their practice workflow and individual contact preferences. The enhanced mobile apps, in addition to PerfectServe’s iPhone app launched last year, give doctors another convenient way — beyond voice and web interfaces—to access the advanced communications platform.

PerfectServe was developed to address the communication breakdowns that can occur when nurses and clinicians need to connect with on-call physicians. PerfectServe solves the key issues of communication breakdown, which The Joint Commission has cited as the single greatest contributing factor to sentinel events and delays in care in U.S. hospitals. In a recent article published in Executive Insight, timely communication between clinicians was noted as essential for care coordination to improve patient safety.

Based on proprietary integrated messaging technology that is fully HIPAA-compliant, PerfectServe is the industry’s first clinical communication tool that eliminates unnecessary steps, hand-offs and decision points, which not only slow down or halt the process but also increase the likelihood of miscommunications. It gives doctors complete access and control over their professional communications with colleagues, hospitals and patients using any telephone, Internet-enabled PC or wireless device.

PerfectServe uses clinician- and hospital-provided information to integrate call schedules, contact preferences and workflow rules to create fail-safe, error-free algorithms that ensure each call, text, voice, email message, or page is sent to the right physician for that particular moment in time. It also gives physicians complete control over the inbound communications they receive and allows them to view and change schedules, status and contact information, all in real time.

PerfectServe’s iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry apps are increasingly popular with physicians who are turning to smartphones as their preferred device to manage work flow and save time.

“Reaching colleagues has been much easier with PerfectServe,” said Dr. Alan Kawaguchi, an orthopaedic surgeon at Alpine Orthopaedic Medical Group, Inc. “They respond faster, and I have the app, so I don’t have to go looking for colleague phone numbers.”

Health care is one of the basic requirements for any human society. Proper health and medical care, appropriate use of vaccination techniques to prevent diseases, and knowledge of other hygienic and safety procedures that help protect humans against disability, disease and death; should definitely be amongst the topmost priorities of any nation.

Pathetic health care situation in the 3rd world nations:

This should be the common criteria for every nation of the world; be it completely developed, developing or still underdeveloped and grouped under the mortifying tag of 3rd world nations. But sadly enough; this is not the situation that greets us in the actual and practical world.

Leave alone advanced technologies and innovations; even simple and rudimentary health care facilities like timely availability of medical attention or presence of a basic primary health care unit etc are being denied to the unfortunate members belonging to many 3rd world nations.

What has changed in the past decade?

But things seem to be improving a tad bit for the better, in the past decade. Yet, the most pathetic fact remains that any medical or health care technology if at all being applied in 3rd world nations, costs more than an arm and a leg for the government and thus tends to end up eating dust on the back of the shelves.

So this post is aimed at describing some of the technologies or innovations that work fine for these so called 3rd world nations, and do not cost much and hence are both applicable for practical use and affordable too.

1) Birth mat: …click here to read more

Microsoft Health has a very innovative idea, quit sticking your finger to get a blood sugar reading.  In this cross between really terrifying and just drop your pants cool, Microsoft is working on a contact lense with augmented realty that can also give you medical information.

Health care delivery has evolved in the past few years along with the demand of new medical technologies and more sophisticated treatment options. However, lapses in quality as well as skyrocketing costs have resulted to a number of negative responses from the general public. This in turn paved the way for an increase in new health care organizational models whose aim is towards the improvement of coordination as well as efficiency of health care delivery. It led the way towards the inception of accountable care organizations.

The Accountable Care Organization (ACO): Its Goals And Significance

The ACO has the ultimate goal of improving coordination among physicians, nurse practitioners, hospitals and other health care providers. An integrated medical group is identified as an organization within an ACO which is held accountable for care coordination, quality and efficiency.

There are at least 3 characteristics of an ACO and these are:

• Ability towards patient management and provision as well as care continuity across various institutional settings. This includes ambulatory and in patient hospital care and post acute care.

• Capability of planning budgets and resource needs.

• Sufficient size to support comprehensive, valid and reliable performance measurement (Berenson).

Owing to this the ACO can act as a reform tool for incentivizing more efficient and effective health care. The ACO can also help combat overutilization and overbuilding of health care facilities and technology.

Accountable Care Organization Models

Some types of practice arrangements which can serve as ACO models are the following:

1.  Integrated delivery systems – These involves common ownership of hospitals, physician practices and even an insurance plan. It is characterized to have aligned financial incentives, electronic health records and resources to support cost effective care.

2. Multispecialty group practices- These usually own or have affiliations with hospitals such as the Mayo Clinic. They do not have health plans but have contracts with multiple health plans in their area and are identified to have strong physician leadership and developed mechanisms that provide coordinated clinical care.

3. Physician-Hospital Organizations – These are subsets of a hospital’s medical staff. Some function like multi specialty group practices that focus on reorganization of care delivery to achieve cost effective coordination.

4. Independent practice associations – These are individual physician practices that come together for the purpose of contracting with health plans. Most of these evolve to network of practices that engage in practice redesign and implementation of electronic health records among others.

5. Virtual Physician Organizations- These are small, independent physician practices mostly in rural areas which come together to form virtual physician organizations such as the Community Care of North Carolina. They can provide resources, leadership and infrastructure to aid practices in developing disease registries, implement electronic health records and provide better coordinated health care among others.

The Need for Accountable Care Organizations (ACO’s) …click here to read more

Five new technology businesses walked away
as winners at last night’s finals of the Cambridge Wireless
Discovering Start-Ups 2011 competition. Advanced Balance Systems,
Blu-Wireless Technology, Mindings, Proxama and Qiqqa were selected
from 20 start-ups invited to pitch their innovative wireless
technologies and business plans to 25 leading venture capitalists,
angels and industry investors. Senior representatives from companies
including Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Qualcomm Ventures, Innovacom,
Broadcom, Orange, O2 Telefonica and ARM were there to judge the
finalists and provide expert advice.
For more information read the full news release here:
http://www.neondrum.com/public/public_release.php?id=1043

MacMall has announced a Medical Office Makeover Contest that has a benefit of $23,000 if you are the winning practice,

The Medical Office Makeover Contest features a prize for larger offices with 11 or more employees

valued at nearly $17,000, and a prize for offices with 1-10 employees valued at over $6,000. The highly

sought after products featured in the contest include Ergotron carts; HP workstations, monitors and

digital signs; Fujitsu scanners; Wasp time and attendance tracking; Nuance medical dictation, and other

high-value hardware and software from Xerox, Plantronics, Fellowes, ioSafe, Meraki, and Dymo.

More info at:  www.macmall.com/medicalmakeover.

5 Monkeys experiment:

I really really wish to the pastafarian Gods that this was not true in humans, but I can’t even count the number of times I have heard “but we have always done it this way”. 

This type of mindset gets in the way of progress.  We all need to battle this mindset (in ourselves and others) everyday.  Methods like LEAN, Six Sigma, Performance Improvement, and others all try to help us concuer our “inner monkey”. 

Battle on!