Speaking as someone whose hospital is now going through the transition from paper to electronic charting. I can tell you that for hospitals in our system, its going to be a 4 and a half year switchover done in 3 phases. The job involved is MASSIVE.
Because each member of the health care team needs to be able to chart in different ways and have access to different pieces of information without exposing them to more than required to do their job (part of HIPAA) (doctors, CNAs/PCTs, lab tech, RTs, OTs, PTs, nurses, pharmacists and pharm techs, social workers...),it's a huge chore to get all of this up and working like its supposed to be, because each member has their own portion of the software specifically designed for them. As someone who works day to day with the handwritten disaster that is a normal chart and can compare it fairly to the amazing repository that is an electronic chart?
I can tell you that there simply IS no comparison.
As for why hasn't this been done before? It simply comes down to cost of implementation. It's not just that you need to lay out for the software and the equipment to run it properly, you need IT staff to run it, maintain it, update it. You need IT/medical staff to teach people how to use it, (paying for a couple of days of training for everyone in the system isn't exactly a small financial burden either) and then theres time lost in the learning curve as well.
There's actually a TON of stuff that our system can do, its not just charting; its being able to pull up labs and other diagnostics at a moments notice, its having all of that information not only available in one place, but charted in such a manner that its very easy to spot trends. It will most certainly improve health care in the long run.
I'm not even sure about that, I tried Vista twice on an intel g965 based board with an e6600 and an 8800gts, not exactly ancient gear, with 3 gigs running in dual channel, vista was noticeably slower across the board, suffered from miscellaneous black screens and lock ups, occasionally even in the middle of booting! It's the most unpolished problematic version of Windows I've used since 95. (I never used ME).
Thats even with updated drivers across the board, and memory rated at 1.8 volts per Intel specs that passed 24 hours of memcheck. I did my homework to clear out any possibilities of broken hardware. I bought Vista specifically for that machine and installed it twice, once when I built the machine about 2 months after Vista came out, and again after SP1 was released. Want to pull your hair out? Do a fresh install of Vista, update everything so its nice and clean, download a 2 gig game demo from someplace and go to install it. I'll wait....Let me know when the machine relinquishes control to you again, should be about 20 to 30 minutes later when it decides its ok to install. Sorry to break it to you, Vista sucks.
Btw, the same machine with xp flies with 0 problems.
The guys a hardcore baptist republican from the south, like anything that was actually well reasoned would get any further.....but the original intent stands, if its worth replying to me, its worth sending him off an email to say, in effect, "No more Big Brother", even if its 'For the Children'.
Please keep in mind I write this as a former victim of sexual abuse. The internet is NOT child friendly and I for one, do not want a child friendly internet. If you want a child friendly internet, purchase your child a computer with a locked case and connect it to the internet through another computer that you run a set of white listed sites on. Keep your Big Brother schemes to yourself. Seriously, the government is already able to tap all of our emails, our phones, our bank accounts, etc for up to 4 months with no oversight what so ever due to the latest version of the FISA bill and the completely misnamed 'Patriot Act'. Our forefathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew how fast some of you 'representatives' insist on annihilating our rights. Someone screams 'For the children' and every lawmaker who doesn't have balls larger than a pea suddenly bitches out faster than a 18 year old skinny white boy in maximum security shower. You disgust me.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX X. XXXX, an Arizonan who will NEVER move to your state.....
The reason ETQW didn't sell was because it sucked compared to its ET predecessor. They modified the game from an FPS to a vehicular combat style of game. Then they dicked having equal player abilities for both sides. And finally, they messed up having a rather stunted looking walking/running animation that was an absolute lag fest. I had a friend BUY me the game and its still not installed. It's completely unplayable unless you play with a graphic nuking.cfg file
I didn't buy my eeePC to run photoshop or autoCAD. I bought it as a machine that would allow freedom while studying for nursing school. My XP based machine (with 160GB HD) came with Sunoffice installed. It turns out I also use it for a variety of other things, watching ripped movies from my DVD collection, FTPing stuff, surfing and even playing some Guild Wars (with 3D analyzer handling the shaders). In other words, its my (albeit miniaturized) DO everything machine.
All I've heard from the linux guys about the version of linux that comes with eeePC is that it sucks and that they 'blow it away' in favor of Ubuntu for netbooks, or debian or god only knows what other flavor they prefer. For me though, it didn't really matter, because I occasionally listen to the 'finally ready for the desktop' guys, install Ubuntu, eventually get frustrated when I have to sudo somethingoranother that refuses to install from the proper repository, stick it in the wrong place, can't use it, have to go to the ubuntu forums and search through a 119 page thread trying out various command lines that range from the mundane into 3 line Egyptian hieroglyphics and decide to go back to XP.
People don't just stick with XP because they are familiar with it, they stick with XP because it *works*. If people want something, they go online, they click a link, it downloads a program, they click the program, it installs and gives you a nice shortcut to find it. There isn't any enabling of multiple repositories that needs to be done in command line. There's no wondering if it requires a dependency that you don't have installed or that wasn't made for your version of Xflavor.
I highly doubt most people think that installing a program in windows is a pain in the butt, unless its in a repository (and sometimes even if it is!) you still have to switch to the command line in the most user friendly of distos, Ubuntu. How is that less work for the end user?
That said, when and if ReactOS ever becomes a reality, I will kiss XP and Microsoft goodbye forever.
BTW, I'm not a linux hater, I think its great for anyone who wants to surf, check email, play solitare and doesn't want to have to install anything. Aside from whats in the first enabled repository, anything beyond that turns quickly into a nightmare. Until linux does *everything* and I mean *everything, not just 90%* as easily and in a manner similar to what people who have been using windows for the last 20 years expect, it will continue to be a perpetual 'year of linux on the desktop'
BTW, Vista is similar enough to XP, it just plain sucks, I built a desktop solely for running Vista with all Vista CERTIFIED parts and its still a buggy mess of a disaster, I've rolled back to XP twice, once after Vistas launch, and the 2nd time after SP1 came out.
I usually install from a network drive or an image file. (and yes, I have a 1000h (xp) version of the EEE, I love it, I wouldn't trade it for a full sized laptop if it was offered tbh)
That being said, most people want something they can buy, take home and install their 9.99 bargain bin version of sudoku and a some goofy card making software on. Linux just doesn't work for the majority of people out there. Sorry, it doesn't. What the heck is the point of having a mini netbook, if the wireless adapter won't work? Or it *might* work, assuming you are using this version of this distro OR if you feel like editing registry files and installing wtfwrapper.
Not to mention, at this point in time. *most* people know at least or or two people who have been using windows for some time and can do some type of techinical support for them if they get into trouble. "Hey Sam, my printer isn't working...". How many average schmucks know someone who is a linux power user? Which means the only source of support they have is user forums and the IRC channel, and if you have no wireless adapter.....
Which is exactly why having access to all this information makes us MORE vulnerable to another terrorist attack, not less. Look at how much information the FBI already had on the 9/11 hijackers. They *literally* had the American populace calling them on the phone and saying "I think we have some terrorists here."
They still couldn't figure it out. Somehow now with a deluge of information of the sort they now have access to, they are going to do any better? Me thinks not...
Thats the way all the Nexon games work, and all of them are absolute hacker fests.....read the forums for any of their games, and you will see 75% of the posts on their forums are hacker issue related.
I dream of the day when an atheist/agnostic person can be elected to the presidency; when a candidate's religious orientation does not matter; when we can truly have separation of church and state.
Even in this age of non socialized medicine, your care provider can AND WILL fire you as a patient if you routinely disregard or go against medical advice. It's nothing new and certainly won't change if health care becomes nationalized, might it become more prevalent if those providers aren't compensated for their care? More than likely...
However, health care really isn't any different than any other profession. If I were to hire one of you to maintain my network and *CONSTANTLY* went against your advice and did things like, opened up the firewall so that my data got hijacked, let viruses propagate across the network, screwed something up so that the system routinely crashed simply because I was too stubborn to follow your advice, how long would you keep me as a client?
You have been banned from EAs forums for language stated as unacceptable in our TOS, your game accounts tied to this username are now unusable. Thank you for purchasing EA games.
I played WoW for about 6 months, leveled a character to 70, realized that end game sucked because I was paying a monthly fee to play a game where everything end game is on a timer....Wanna do X dungeon? Only once this week! Wanna make some material? Only once every 3 or 4 days...
Screw that...
Soooo now I'm playing a bit of Combat Arms which is a free shooter, but Nexon has implemented the micro-transaction system in such a way that its completely unappealing to attempt to "purchase" anything with game card cash. It would be one thing if I dropped 3 or 4 bucks on outfit or a weapon I got to keep for as long as I played the game. Nope...you pay real money to RENT outfits, guns and characters. 10 bucks a month to rent a character skin that gives you some hypersonic speed boost. There are some games coming out which promise that the microtransaction items are merely going to be cosmetic and game enhancing, not player ability enhancing....Im looking forward to those coming out soon, hopefully they will get the formula better....
But, if the currret trend is where gaming with microtransactions is headed? Count me out for them ever getting money out of me. On the other hand, if it really was a *micro* transaction (think 2-5 bucks an item), could be done with my debit card, I kept said item for the life of the game and and items weren't introduced that completely threw off the game balance? Then they might very well be looking at getting 20-50 bucks out of me if its a game I like..
This has 0 to do with the market and everything to do with the ELECTION. If gas was still $4.50 a gallon Obama would have way more than a 6 or 7 point lead over McCain. All last year and the beginning of this one we heard that prices were going up because of such a massive increase in demand and less supply, mostly due to the influence of the Chinese and Indians, it's pretty obvious, they aren't using any less, right? Last summer every time a hurricane even threatened the gulf, prices shot up 10-15 cents. There's been a gas shortage now in the southeast for several weeks because refineries were creamed and gas prices are *still* falling. Please, don't fool yourself into thinking this has ANYTHING to do with market forces at all.
You know, 10 years ago I used to be able to travel back and forth between Los Angeles and Tucson, stopping once (occasionally) at the border between the two so that I could tell some nice fellow I didn't have any fruit. The last time I went out there I had to go through 3 police/border patrol checkpoints on the way, bearing the scrutiny of them looking for who knows what?
My wife is hispanic and my kid tans easily. Whose to say that one of these days I'm not going to get asked for papers (No not actual papers but some sort of documentation that would prove who we are and allow us to travel on our way relatively unmolested), or for that matter, ordered out of the car under threat of being shot (think I'm being overdramatic? Try driving through a checkpoint and see what the response is, I'm going to guess something similar to driving through one in Baghdad.). Why? Because we might be illegals, we might be terrorists. RIGHT!
The right wing is so eager to flush all of our actual rights down the tubes its absolutely scary. All of the new laws enacted, and so far the only thing they have to show for prying into the business of the US citizens is a former New York governor and his whore. If you think for one minute this is about fighting terror as much as fighting those who would change the status quo, you're an idiot.
The simple fact of the matter is this, the authorities had all the puzzle pieces and information that they needed to stop 9/11 before it happened. They continually failed. Alert citizens notified them several times regarding suspicious actions of the highjackers and none of the leads were followed up on. Our authorities need better training and better inter relations, not a ton of information that they wont be able to put together unless leaned on from a higher source because he/she wants dirt on someone.
Thats just it, Windows Vista does not just 'work well'. I built a dual core duo machine at the beginning of last year with a Vista certified Gigabyte motherboard. I installed Vista Home Premium on it and removes it within 2 months because it was a memory hog, slow, and wouldn't install a downloaded demo program without hanging for 20-30 minutes while it was going through it bit by bit to determine its DRM status.
I went back to XP until SP1 came out. When it did I again loaded Vista on my machine complete with updated drivers. Vista hung randomly at any time, during bootup, while surfing, playing games, writing term papers. I am reformatting my desktop back to XP (again!) as I write this. Its the worst O/S from Microsoft I've used stability wise since Windows 95.
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Speaking as someone whose hospital is now going through the transition from paper to electronic charting. I can tell you that for hospitals in our system, its going to be a 4 and a half year switchover done in 3 phases. The job involved is MASSIVE.
Because each member of the health care team needs to be able to chart in different ways and have access to different pieces of information without exposing them to more than required to do their job (part of HIPAA) (doctors, CNAs/PCTs, lab tech, RTs, OTs, PTs, nurses, pharmacists and pharm techs, social workers...),it's a huge chore to get all of this up and working like its supposed to be, because each member has their own portion of the software specifically designed for them. As someone who works day to day with the handwritten disaster that is a normal chart and can compare it fairly to the amazing repository that is an electronic chart?
I can tell you that there simply IS no comparison.
As for why hasn't this been done before? It simply comes down to cost of implementation. It's not just that you need to lay out for the software and the equipment to run it properly, you need IT staff to run it, maintain it, update it. You need IT/medical staff to teach people how to use it, (paying for a couple of days of training for everyone in the system isn't exactly a small financial burden either) and then theres time lost in the learning curve as well.
There's actually a TON of stuff that our system can do, its not just charting; its being able to pull up labs and other diagnostics at a moments notice, its having all of that information not only available in one place, but charted in such a manner that its very easy to spot trends. It will most certainly improve health care in the long run.
I'm not even sure about that, I tried Vista twice on an intel g965 based board with an e6600 and an 8800gts, not exactly ancient gear, with 3 gigs running in dual channel, vista was noticeably slower across the board, suffered from miscellaneous black screens and lock ups, occasionally even in the middle of booting! It's the most unpolished problematic version of Windows I've used since 95. (I never used ME).
Thats even with updated drivers across the board, and memory rated at 1.8 volts per Intel specs that passed 24 hours of memcheck. I did my homework to clear out any possibilities of broken hardware.
I bought Vista specifically for that machine and installed it twice, once when I built the machine about 2 months after Vista came out, and again after SP1 was released. Want to pull your hair out? Do a fresh install of Vista, update everything so its nice and clean, download a 2 gig game demo from someplace and go to install it. I'll wait....Let me know when the machine relinquishes control to you again, should be about 20 to 30 minutes later when it decides its ok to install.
Sorry to break it to you, Vista sucks.
Btw, the same machine with xp flies with 0 problems.
The guys a hardcore baptist republican from the south, like anything that was actually well reasoned would get any further.....but the original intent stands, if its worth replying to me, its worth sending him off an email to say, in effect, "No more Big Brother", even if its 'For the Children'.
cecil.staton@senate.ga.gov
To the Schmoe Known As Cecil Staton,
Please keep in mind I write this as a former victim of sexual abuse. The internet is NOT child friendly and I for one, do not want a child friendly internet. If you want a child friendly internet, purchase your child a computer with a locked case and connect it to the internet through another computer that you run a set of white listed sites on. Keep your Big Brother schemes to yourself. Seriously, the government is already able to tap all of our emails, our phones, our bank accounts, etc for up to 4 months with no oversight what so ever due to the latest version of the FISA bill and the completely misnamed 'Patriot Act'. Our forefathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew how fast some of you 'representatives' insist on annihilating our rights. Someone screams 'For the children' and every lawmaker who doesn't have balls larger than a pea suddenly bitches out faster than a 18 year old skinny white boy in maximum security shower. You disgust me.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX X. XXXX, an Arizonan who will NEVER move to your state.....
There is a solution to this, just make sure you film all of your encounters ;).
So....the lesson here is? Don't fuck the underage daughter of local law inforcement when you are old enough to drink?
Ummmmmm no shit?
The reason ETQW didn't sell was because it sucked compared to its ET predecessor. They modified the game from an FPS to a vehicular combat style of game. Then they dicked having equal player abilities for both sides. And finally, they messed up having a rather stunted looking walking/running animation that was an absolute lag fest. I had a friend BUY me the game and its still not installed. It's completely unplayable unless you play with a graphic nuking .cfg file
I didn't buy my eeePC to run photoshop or autoCAD. I bought it as a machine that would allow freedom while studying for nursing school. My XP based machine (with 160GB HD) came with Sunoffice installed. It turns out I also use it for a variety of other things, watching ripped movies from my DVD collection, FTPing stuff, surfing and even playing some Guild Wars (with 3D analyzer handling the shaders). In other words, its my (albeit miniaturized) DO everything machine.
All I've heard from the linux guys about the version of linux that comes with eeePC is that it sucks and that they 'blow it away' in favor of Ubuntu for netbooks, or debian or god only knows what other flavor they prefer. For me though, it didn't really matter, because I occasionally listen to the 'finally ready for the desktop' guys, install Ubuntu, eventually get frustrated when I have to sudo somethingoranother that refuses to install from the proper repository, stick it in the wrong place, can't use it, have to go to the ubuntu forums and search through a 119 page thread trying out various command lines that range from the mundane into 3 line Egyptian hieroglyphics and decide to go back to XP.
People don't just stick with XP because they are familiar with it, they stick with XP because it *works*. If people want something, they go online, they click a link, it downloads a program, they click the program, it installs and gives you a nice shortcut to find it. There isn't any enabling of multiple repositories that needs to be done in command line. There's no wondering if it requires a dependency that you don't have installed or that wasn't made for your version of Xflavor.
I highly doubt most people think that installing a program in windows is a pain in the butt, unless its in a repository (and sometimes even if it is!) you still have to switch to the command line in the most user friendly of distos, Ubuntu. How is that less work for the end user?
That said, when and if ReactOS ever becomes a reality, I will kiss XP and Microsoft goodbye forever.
BTW, I'm not a linux hater, I think its great for anyone who wants to surf, check email, play solitare and doesn't want to have to install anything. Aside from whats in the first enabled repository, anything beyond that turns quickly into a nightmare. Until linux does *everything* and I mean *everything, not just 90%* as easily and in a manner similar to what people who have been using windows for the last 20 years expect, it will continue to be a perpetual 'year of linux on the desktop'
BTW, Vista is similar enough to XP, it just plain sucks, I built a desktop solely for running Vista with all Vista CERTIFIED parts and its still a buggy mess of a disaster, I've rolled back to XP twice, once after Vistas launch, and the 2nd time after SP1 came out.
I usually install from a network drive or an image file. (and yes, I have a 1000h (xp) version of the EEE, I love it, I wouldn't trade it for a full sized laptop if it was offered tbh)
How difficult can these things (Linux vs of EEE?)really be to find...
If you can get them at WALMART????
That being said, most people want something they can buy, take home and install their 9.99 bargain bin version of sudoku and a some goofy card making software on. Linux just doesn't work for the majority of people out there. Sorry, it doesn't. What the heck is the point of having a mini netbook, if the wireless adapter won't work? Or it *might* work, assuming you are using this version of this distro OR if you feel like editing registry files and installing wtfwrapper.
Not to mention, at this point in time. *most* people know at least or or two people who have been using windows for some time and can do some type of techinical support for them if they get into trouble. "Hey Sam, my printer isn't working...". How many average schmucks know someone who is a linux power user? Which means the only source of support they have is user forums and the IRC channel, and if you have no wireless adapter.....
Yeah.....
Which is exactly why having access to all this information makes us MORE vulnerable to another terrorist attack, not less. Look at how much information the FBI already had on the 9/11 hijackers. They *literally* had the American populace calling them on the phone and saying "I think we have some terrorists here."
They still couldn't figure it out. Somehow now with a deluge of information of the sort they now have access to, they are going to do any better? Me thinks not...
Thats the way all the Nexon games work, and all of them are absolute hacker fests.....read the forums for any of their games, and you will see 75% of the posts on their forums are hacker issue related.
I dream of the day when an atheist/agnostic person can be elected to the presidency; when a candidate's religious orientation does not matter; when we can truly have separation of church and state.
AMEN!..........Oh....wait....shit...
Even in this age of non socialized medicine, your care provider can AND WILL fire you as a patient if you routinely disregard or go against medical advice. It's nothing new and certainly won't change if health care becomes nationalized, might it become more prevalent if those providers aren't compensated for their care? More than likely...
However, health care really isn't any different than any other profession. If I were to hire one of you to maintain my network and *CONSTANTLY* went against your advice and did things like, opened up the firewall so that my data got hijacked, let viruses propagate across the network, screwed something up so that the system routinely crashed simply because I was too stubborn to follow your advice, how long would you keep me as a client?
You have been banned from EAs forums for language stated as unacceptable in our TOS, your game accounts tied to this username are now unusable. Thank you for purchasing EA games.
I played WoW for about 6 months, leveled a character to 70, realized that end game sucked because I was paying a monthly fee to play a game where everything end game is on a timer....Wanna do X dungeon? Only once this week! Wanna make some material? Only once every 3 or 4 days...
Screw that...
Soooo now I'm playing a bit of Combat Arms which is a free shooter, but Nexon has implemented the micro-transaction system in such a way that its completely unappealing to attempt to "purchase" anything with game card cash. It would be one thing if I dropped 3 or 4 bucks on outfit or a weapon I got to keep for as long as I played the game. Nope...you pay real money to RENT outfits, guns and characters. 10 bucks a month to rent a character skin that gives you some hypersonic speed boost. There are some games coming out which promise that the microtransaction items are merely going to be cosmetic and game enhancing, not player ability enhancing....Im looking forward to those coming out soon, hopefully they will get the formula better....
But, if the currret trend is where gaming with microtransactions is headed? Count me out for them ever getting money out of me. On the other hand, if it really was a *micro* transaction (think 2-5 bucks an item), could be done with my debit card, I kept said item for the life of the game and and items weren't introduced that completely threw off the game balance? Then they might very well be looking at getting 20-50 bucks out of me if its a game I like..
Take that you early risers! I always knew there was something wrong with you people.......
Excellent point! Still, the idea that oil prices are simply a product of supply and demand is a huge crock of s**t...
This has 0 to do with the market and everything to do with the ELECTION. If gas was still $4.50 a gallon Obama would have way more than a 6 or 7 point lead over McCain. All last year and the beginning of this one we heard that prices were going up because of such a massive increase in demand and less supply, mostly due to the influence of the Chinese and Indians, it's pretty obvious, they aren't using any less, right? Last summer every time a hurricane even threatened the gulf, prices shot up 10-15 cents. There's been a gas shortage now in the southeast for several weeks because refineries were creamed and gas prices are *still* falling. Please, don't fool yourself into thinking this has ANYTHING to do with market forces at all.
You know, 10 years ago I used to be able to travel back and forth between Los Angeles and Tucson, stopping once (occasionally) at the border between the two so that I could tell some nice fellow I didn't have any fruit. The last time I went out there I had to go through 3 police/border patrol checkpoints on the way, bearing the scrutiny of them looking for who knows what?
My wife is hispanic and my kid tans easily. Whose to say that one of these days I'm not going to get asked for papers (No not actual papers but some sort of documentation that would prove who we are and allow us to travel on our way relatively unmolested), or for that matter, ordered out of the car under threat of being shot (think I'm being overdramatic? Try driving through a checkpoint and see what the response is, I'm going to guess something similar to driving through one in Baghdad.). Why? Because we might be illegals, we might be terrorists. RIGHT!
The right wing is so eager to flush all of our actual rights down the tubes its absolutely scary. All of the new laws enacted, and so far the only thing they have to show for prying into the business of the US citizens is a former New York governor and his whore. If you think for one minute this is about fighting terror as much as fighting those who would change the status quo, you're an idiot.
The simple fact of the matter is this, the authorities had all the puzzle pieces and information that they needed to stop 9/11 before it happened. They continually failed. Alert citizens notified them several times regarding suspicious actions of the highjackers and none of the leads were followed up on. Our authorities need better training and better inter relations, not a ton of information that they wont be able to put together unless leaned on from a higher source because he/she wants dirt on someone.
Too late, I'm here already. I came from 100% natural egg. ;-)
Thats just it, Windows Vista does not just 'work well'. I built a dual core duo machine at the beginning of last year with a Vista certified Gigabyte motherboard. I installed Vista Home Premium on it and removes it within 2 months because it was a memory hog, slow, and wouldn't install a downloaded demo program without hanging for 20-30 minutes while it was going through it bit by bit to determine its DRM status.
I went back to XP until SP1 came out. When it did I again loaded Vista on my machine complete with updated drivers. Vista hung randomly at any time, during bootup, while surfing, playing games, writing term papers. I am reformatting my desktop back to XP (again!) as I write this. Its the worst O/S from Microsoft I've used stability wise since Windows 95.