Focus

This is just a brief observation …

It seems that there are so many great apps/software/devices coming out in the medical field.

All of them offer some sort of connectivity or paradigm shift in the way things have traditionally been done. The main trend, is that everyone is very focused … they focus on one or two key things and attempt to do those things to the best of their abilities.

While this is great, the biggest challenge moving forward for any large scale hospital IT department is going to be figuring out how all these separate parts can be combined, especially since no one single solution does everything well.

Is it acceptable to have 8 different applications do 8 different things, which leads to 8 different databases storing information on one person?

Is it up to the app/software/device vendors to create an all encompassing solution or is it up to the departments to figure out how these pieces all come together? Perhaps these vendors could agree on standards that should be incorporated into all devices/software/apps that would allow everything to communicate seamlessly …  just thinking out loud.

Video: An overview and walkthrough of eTrending’s cloud-based graphing software

Hi All,

Just another quick update.

We’ve been really busy working away on extending the capabilities of eTrending and implementing new account management and user profile features.

But … during a little downtime, we were able to to put together an overview video that highlights how the system works along with an actual walk-through of the software.

We will put this on the website next week, but thought we would share this right away through our blog. Hope you enjoy.

Happy Trending!

How Choice is Slowing Advancement in the Medical Industry

The new era of apps and technology have somehow slowed the technical progress of the medical industry … it sounds absurd, but please here me out.

For the purpose of this argument let’s just look at smart phones.

It seems that we can’t go anywhere today without hearing about the latest new mobile device, running the latest mobile operating system that promises to have thousands if not millions of apps. Even among the established two (being iOS and Android) the choice of applications is dizzying in its enormity. A quick search through the Android Market produced over 1600 results for “medical apps”, and the Android market is considered to be the least established of the two. Then you have the “other” mobile operating systems, each promising their own app stores (Microsoft, Blackberry, and HP/Palm). (That’s just smartphones, we haven’t even discussed all the newer wireless medical devices that transmit data through wifi, Bluetooth, cellular communication, or near field communication. Throw that on the pile and what we have are a lot of technical advancements with lots of choices to be made.)

With all these advancements and choices it has now become exceedingly difficult to actually choose. While there are a few medical apps that most users consider to be essential there are many others that people are either unaware of, or are being developed right now. Couple all this with IT departments trying to upgrade legacy systems, to enable digitized health records, telemedicine, etc. and what we have is slow forward progress.

IT departments have to first sift through all the available options, bearing in mind that in a few months a newer better option may exist. Then they have to determine how these options fit into their current architecture, or whether or not they fit at all. Also how do they migrate the existing data, into these new systems … Finally there is the “fear”. With the currently available platforms/software/apps, how does IT know which ones will last and advance? Which ones will become obsolete?

It’s endless and time consuming, and with the current speed of the development we have a lot of advancements with no choices being made.

It’s not that people don’t want to adopt these new technologies; it’s really just that there are too many choices, with no clear consensus on standards or how everything will work together. This is why a majority of the “popular” medical apps usually are reference applications that do not actually harness the full power of the mobile device.

That’s why although we are now designing and building tech, and medical tech at an accelerated rate the actual adoption and advancement of the industry has slowed.

How is one supposed to choose when there are so many choices?

Updates and Private Beta

Hi all,

Well I thought I would take the time to update everyone about updates and how things are progressing over at eTrending.

First off some updates. We’re moving along incorporating some changes that have been suggested by our private beta users. The key changes have mainly been regarding the reports (adding new fields, as well as clarifying a few others), as well as to the consistency of the application in terms of matching the front end site, and adding more information, especially in terms of reference materials regarding events, desats, and calculations.

While most of the changes have been pushed, we are planning on taking some more time to improve the navigation of the application, as well as updating some icons, and adding some video to the help section. We’ve already improved the feature page detailing how one would go from pulling the data off their device to uploading, analyzing and eventually producing a report on that data set. We have also taken the time to rework some of the navigation menu to help streamline and organize the site.

In the pipeline … besides all the enhancements some of the other things we are looking at are adding the cooperative group setting with an administrative section to allow teams to easily share and score data together. With this we also plan on reorganizing our home page to display the shared studies and patients in a more coherent manner. Finally we plan on reexamining our charts and stats to ensure that we provide more useful information to you the user.

In the meantime we are still looking for more Private Beta Users. The feedback we have received so far has been invaluable, and so we would like to acquire more as we believe its really helping us build a stronger and better application. If you are interested please go to www.etrending.com and fill out the sign up form on the “Sign In” page. The account is free, and if you have any questions someone is always available to help.

We are excited about the progress we have made so far and look forward to the coming months.

Until then keep trending!

The Proliferation of Medical Apps

Medical Applications or their slimmed down cousins known as apps are exploding all over the internet.

The ability of medical professionals to get together with app designers and build useful, clinical applications that can actually aid in the diagnosis and monitor the treatment of diseases, etc. is astounding. While there are still many general applications that simply list symptoms or act more as a resource; with the maturation and development of app markets, we are finally beginning to see complete software applications that behave like apps, yet provide more useful real life clinical functions.

Applications like AirStrip are showing that as we move forward doctors and hospitals both see the benefits of the app nature of software. The benefits of applications that reside on mobile devices or that are accessible via the cloud are finally beginning to crack the locked down and isolated silos of medical IT structures.

Easy to Deploy
Medical apps are incredibly easy to deploy … as a matter of fact since the apps reside on a physician’s mobile device, they can be easily managed and installed according to the user’s need. In the future perhaps each organization will have an approved list of apps, allowing the doctors to pick and choose which ones they require.

Mobile
Apps are meant to be smaller and more portable in the sense that you no longer need a full PC to run the application. This coupled with the fact that smartphones are becoming increasingly more powerful has allowed developers to isolate key functionality from software applications and apply them to a smaller package. This lets users receive and use their information on the go, from a device that everyone carries around, allowing doctors to be connected even when not at his/her office.

Always up to date
The final key benefit of apps and cloud based software is that it is always up to date. As new devices, functionality, or bug fixes are released, they become automatically available to the users. No longer do users have to wait for the IT department to download and install the update, instead the doctor is simply notified and can install the software themselves. In the case of cloud based software, most of the upgrades are on the backend letting the developers upload the changes eliminating the need for the user to carry out the update process.

As devices become more powerful, and as organizations begin to see and embrace the benefits of apps, I believe the functionality of the medical apps will become more and more advanced allowing for users to perform all their duties, monitor situations, or make diagnoses while remaining mobile.

(for a study that looks at the accuracy of apps in diagnosis click here)