I believe in cloud computing and think that this model will soon be embraced by most industries, with the probable exception of healthcare, and will also rapidly become the norm for personal computing. I have posted a number of notes about this topic. I have also posted a number of notes about smart phones, viewing them as types of mini-computers, and emphasizing their role in e-health and m-health, with the latter "m" standing for mobile (see: Making e-Health Information Accessible with Smart Phones, The Mobile Web and the Future of eHealth).
Nearly all of my own daily computing work takes place in the cloud and I have never worked more efficiently in my life. All of these ideas coalesced in my mind when I heard Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, utter a simple statement in a podcast that I listened to recently (see: The Future of Microsoft, The Future of Technology). He said the following in a lecture at Stanford: the future of computing involves three screens and the cloud. The three screens to which he refers are PCs, cell phones, and televisions. Azure is Microsoft's platform for the cloud on top of which new applications can be built in this new environment.
For me, It's relatively easy to predict that the healthcare industry will be the last to embrace the cloud. Past history suggests that healthcare has always been last in the queue to adopt new concepts in IT. The reasons for this are numerous and include the fact that the industry is highly regulated, conservative, and suffers serious penalties for mistakes. However, it's still interesting to speculate about changes that may be encountered in, say, hospitals when the norm for computing consists of "three screens and the cloud." The first type of screens that popped into my head in healthcare were the ubiquitous TVs in patient rooms.
Such TVs, wired to provide web access, could provide an opportunity for inpatients to review parts of their own medical records. I would advocate perhaps a 24-hour time lag for patient access to, say, pathology, lab, and radiology reports. This "period-of-grace" would provide the hospital clinical staff a 24-hour window to present critical data to patients prior to their ability to access it. Such access could serve to engage more patients in their own care processes while hospitalized. Consider also, for example, the benefits of allowing patients to view the list of medications they are currently taking accompanied by pictures of the pills. I believe that the error rate when dispensing drugs in the patient care units could decline rapidly if access to such data was available.
T.V. screens inside patient rooms being used to interact with customers/patients seems interesting.
With the new e-generation entering retirement,the generation known for a unquechable thirst when viewing graphics and information. their feeedback could be a shot in the arm for hospital IT relationship.
Posted by: John Kelly | April 22, 2010 at 03:02 AM