Merry Christmas from Santa, his Reindeer and Me

In what will probably be my last posting until the New Year I'm going to generously wish all readers a Merry Christmas by 'stealing' a message from someone else (let's call it 'social networking'). Anyway, this made me laugh and I love the mannerisms in these characters.

Merry Christmas

Tags: Christmas, Christmas card, greeting, music, song

British Computer Society Recommend CfH Changes

A report by the British Computer Society is being widely reported at the moment. I wish to do little else than add my voice to those who say "here here". I believe it is a very rounded review and I would urge anyone in the NHS, DH or Healthcare IT to read the full version- and not just what they read in the press.

The only thing I would add is that a move away from monolithic systems to interoperable standards will require an evolution in the maturity of healthcare IT (See There be Dragons in Phase 4). The commercial environment required to enable this out-of-cashflow investment would probably be too large to run alongside NPfIT. As expensive as it is, the systems being implemented through LSPs are only an incremental improvement at a functional level rather than a fundamental rearchitecting. We need to focus on some core areas and keep them simple if this is to work.

Tags: technology, healthcare IT, health care IT, IT, information technology, NPfIT, CfH, NHS, BCS, British Computer Society, IT architecture, interoperable, monolithic

New 2009 Ferrari Dino Spotted?

Have I spotted a prototype of the top secret 2009 Ferrari Dino? It is rumoured to be an "entry-level Ferrari to slot below the F430"- this would certainly be that. Or could it be the latest in a craze for ironic modifications to Smart cars in W1, London?

So hard to tell...

Tags: cars, automobiles, Smart, London, Ferrari, modified

NHS Cautiously Proceeds with Patient Records

It's been announced that Lord Warner has decided that the NHS should press on with the National Care Record System- albeit in a watered down 'summary' format and with the ability to opt-out and keep your data local.

I welcome the news. Well, I welcome the progress bit within the news. We're out of the gate. Personally, I'm happy for the brakes to be taken off the technology but the media suggests that the public thinks differently. This announcement leaves the path open to eventually extend the summary records into being more detailed and provides the opportunity for people to see the benefits. I want all of my medical records on line NOW and I want to contribute to it. It's my information and I feel that future clinicians I have the misfortune to need the services of will be able to serve me better if they have more information. The further away I am from my friends and relatives at home when I need that help, the more I want the information available to clinicians with my life in their hands.

Security? It's doable. What's more, do you know what they're doing now? When were you last asked for your consent? Believe me, technology will be better- it can be explicit. The problem with health care is that moral dilemmas are always a short step away which can bring progress to a stiffling halt. Am I the only person who wants to live longer and healthier?

And in case anyone asks... GPs do not represent me. The media keeps giving the GPs' opinion as if it is surrogate for the public. Not so. Ask me.

Tags: technology, health care, healthcare, IT, healthcare IT, health care IT, information technology, EMR, Electronic Medical Record, EHR, Electronic Health Record, NCRS, National care Record System, NHS, National Health Service, CfH, Connecting for Health, NPfIT, National Programme for IT

LinkedIn Upselling leaves something to be desired...

Now. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, but even I was left not in the least bit tempted by this attempt to encourage me to extend my professional network. With all due respect to my friends Liz and Bela, librarians are not the top of my list of "must network with". Where are the astronauts, lion tamers and QCs?

Tags: technology, Internet, web, LinkedIn, professional networking, social networking

Partying with Geeks is Fun

Next year why don't you come down to the British Computing Society Younger Professionals Group Christmas Party (BCSYPGCP for short)? This year's event was so much fun you might forget that most of the revellers are professional developers OR testers ELSE businessmen. The event was held at No.5 Cavendish Square- purporting to be a private members club, but seemed to me to be a night club cunningly dressed up as a members club. Nevertheless, we had a great VIP area, a modicum of champagne, nibbles and the opportunity to listen to the diverse careers of those present.

Many thanks to Mervin, Portia, Mark T, Phil, Ed, James, Mark and Abdullah for your company. Mark has even be set the challenge of trying to find this blog from what little information he gleaned from me- watch this space. Sorry to those I didn't bump into (or maybe you were lucky), especially the hostess Jenny, Nigel, Houston & Tom (keep the Brunel spirit alive).

Tags: technology, information technology, IT, BCS, British Computing Society, Christmas, party, younger professionals group, No.5, Cavendish Square, London, UK

Does IT Matter?

In May 2003, Harvard Business Review published a paper authored by Nicholas G. Carr titled “IT Doesn’t Matter”. A business partner of ours sent it too me and yes, it was thought provoking, and yes, it nearly made my blood curdle.

A Technorati search shows that the article has been widely reported on by AccMan and Navarik. The title isn’t a total red herring designed to hook you in before it makes some clever ironic play. The paper really does make the case that at a strategic level “IT Doesn’t Matter” because it is approaching commodity status. Quite simply- I disagree, especially in health care IT.

1. The article paints a static picture of any company’s IT investments. This is a war of continuous evolution rather than a battle between individual systems.

2. I would argue that the commoditisation of IT provides the opportunity for organisations to construct orchestrated solutions disruptive to markets and their competitors. Customers can apply technologies in ways that the creators of the building blocks had not imagined. This is a highly competitive capability which depends on organisation competence and agility.

3. The investment in IT is being painted in black and white. Because the customer was not intelligent, IT investment was focussed on features that solve problems without consideration of how the problems are solved. The “how” has become crucial because for features from many suppliers to work together requires an understanding of this architecture. I would agree there was overinvestment in features- but only now are we looking at the architecture.

4. You cannot compare, as Nicholas Carr does, IT to electric power or railways by analogy at almost any level. Information simply does not conform to the First Law of Thermodynamics. If the physics don’t stack up, nor will market comparisons. We’re talking about tools for knowledge workers, not core utility services.

5. Technology as a competitive factor in health care is only just beginning. We are along way off a sector with the characteristics this article is describing. Technology is still widely seen as a necessary evil in this sector which is amazing as few other sectors would benefit from computerisation more than healthcare. It is such a complex sector that control of information will make the controllers very competitive. The status quo suits only the incumbant. Managing vulnerabilities is important, but there is an opportunity for a health care IT company to be created out of the current climate who will lead us into the next phase of IT maturity.

*ClickRich’s New Rules of IT Management would therefore be:

Spend wisely, but large investment in health care IT is required to catch up.
Follow on core technologies, lead in how you apply them.
Focus on Opportunities if you are an emerging Health care provider.

Tags: technology, information technology, IT, healthcare IT, health care, Harvard Business Review, IT Doesn't Matter, IT strategy, IT architecture, Nick Carr, Nicholas Carr, HBR, IT management

Is Second Life the new Sharepoint?

With much talk over the last 5 years about collaborative technologies there has been a huge investment in portal platforms- from Microsoft's Sharepoint to Oracle's Collaborative Suite. These platforms essentially extend existing comms user interfaces into the browser, but are they about to be usurped by a game? Virtual worlds designed for entertainment are being turned to by corporates and institutions looking for a richer immersive collaborative experience. The most hailed is Second Life, from Linden Labs, which according to Forbes (and reported on FutureHIT), is used by about 40 companies- mostly for a savvy marketing prescence. Some, such as IBM are reported by Chris Edwards of the IET magazine to have 'secret islands' to try out concepts. Starwood Hotels built a concept hotel so they could gauge the feedback of virtual guests. Campus: Second Life is even structuring learning facilities for use by real life institutions with profiles for their students.

Will this become the norm around corporate offices? Induction Courses the world over will have to add the agenda item "Build Avatar".

Tags: technology, Internet, virtual worlds, Second Life, collaborative technology, Linden Labs, Microsoft, Sharepoint, Oracle, Collaboration Suite, avatar, Campus:Second Life

Get a Blog. Get 3 degrees of Seperation!

Read this amazing story about Jason Happe of GA who lost a Swiss Army Knife his grandmother had given him. Years later, a blogger called Rick Lee picked up the knife in the forest of West Virginia and posted it on their site. The site was seen by someone who'd served in the army with Jason and, via his father, the knife made its way home.

Fantastic. It just shows how a sense of community has grown around the blogosphere.

Tags: technology, Internet, blog, blogosphere, Jason Happe, Rick Lee, Swiss Army Knife

IE7... no, Firefox 2.0. No IE7... or maybe Firefox?

I've mentioned before how I'm broadly very pleased with IE7 to the point where it has retaken the mantle of "Preferred Web Browser, Autumn 2006" from Firefox2.0. I've not mentioned that this was largely on the strength of the "Feeds" feature.

I was interested to read in the Jan 2007 edition of PC Pro that they prefer Firefox2.0 so maybe I'm wrong? They clearly are paid to review products. I just fit this around a busy day job. What would I know?

Not only do they prefer Firefox2.0, but it is on the strength of the feed features! I looked into this a little further and they basically find my source of irritation with Firefox an improvement- that is the drawing of summaries into a live bookmark. The thing is, I was thinking that it's 'neat' for Firefox to have the feeds running off the favourites menu navigation, but I find it an irritation to keep returning there to flick through sources when IE7 can have the feeds pegged to the left hand pane. HOWEVER, being forced to reappraise my assessment and I can now see that you can do the same with Firefox2.0 from the View menu.

So, after all that, the debate is wide open again at ClickTowers. IE7 and Firefox2.0 are neck and neck, until I look into it again...

Tags: technology, Internet, Internet Explorer, IE7, Firefox 2.0, information technology, Mozilla, Atom, Microsoft, browser, RSS, feeds, live bookmarks

Internet Explorer 7 Choking on Technorati

I've been using IE7 for quite a few weeks now and it's managed to usurp Firefox 2.0 as my preferred browser for general web use. I still use Firefox but only for very specific things where it just pips Internet Explorer 7. However, IE7 does seem to have a problem with the Technorati site from time to time. It's not all the time, but at least once a day it downloads the page HTML and starts pulling down the images etc when it seems to choke on something "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site... Operation abandoned"

From this screenshot you can see that it might be the advertisment at the right hand side which is in Flash 9.
In terms of plugins, I only have the Google Toolbar running and I can't imagine that causing instability (the core of IE should be fairly immune to plug in vagries anyway?).

Has anyone else experienced problems?

Tags: technology, Internet, Internet Explorer, IE7, Firefox 2.0, Flash 9, Technorati, crash, Microsoft, browser

Boutique Cinema vs BIG Screen Experience

Last night I went to see Casino Royale. Great film. I had in mind a stroll down to Leicester Square for the definitive big screen experience. However, on the recommendation of a colleague I tried "The Screen on Baker Street", one of small chain of just 7 small boutique theatres called Screen Cinemas. What probably particularly grabbed my attention was the mention of comfy chairs and beer and wine. Further, on calling the booking line the Yorkshireman in me was singing from the moortop heathlands at the champion price of just £6.

OK, it wasn't a huge screen or ear drum thumping volume, but it was more than more than up to the demands of this action film. The seats were sure comfy (perhaps more protection from the rear would be appropriate for those unfortunate to be sat in front of us lanky streaks with wayward knees- sorry Mister). The beer was fine. The ice cream was suitably up class. The staff were marvellously helpful and even loaned me a spoon when my ice cream was found to be lacking the prepacked one. I sadly let down their hospitality by leaving the spoon at my seat despite promising otherwise. I hope they let me back in next time.

Unfortunately the bar was light on savoury options (just peanuts really) but hotdogs wouldn't have suited this classy joint. Tapas? Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it and will go back for more- with just two screens I might have to wait a while until they bring in the next feature or travel to one of their other two central London cinemas.

Tonight I'm particularly heartened to see that to have watched the same film, at about the same time, from a similarly positioned seat, on the same day at the Odeon Leicester Square would have cost more than twice as much. Oh, and from my experience there would have been more teenagers keen to impress their dates with how loudly they can shout.

Viva the boutique!

Tags: cinema, screen, film, The Screen on Baker Street, Casino Royale, James Bond, 007, Odeon, entertainment, London, boutique, W1

There be Dragons in Phase 4

Software Development organisations need to be very aware of the maturity model of their industry. Based on the forming, storming, norming, performing model of change management I've devised the following phased model of IT maturity. The bigger they are, the more aware the organisation needs to be because in Phase 4 lurks the small start up who wasn't even on your radar, but who will bring you down.

Phase 1 (embryonic)
-Niche technology pockets addressing specific challenges
-Feature focus. No one minds how you solved the problem, as long as you solved it.

Phase 2 (childhood)
-Technology pockets grow so as to bump up against each other
-Boundaries are created
-Interfaces cause unexpected complications that result in under delivery

Phase 3 (adolescence)
-Responding to the escalating costs and complexity, clients reduce the downside risk and consolidate suppliers
-Fewer boundaries
-Gorilla takes all

Phase 4 (adulthood)
-With benefits realigned with expectation, clients turn to maximising the up side and exploiting new generation technologies
-How you've been solving the problem becomes VERY important, because it needs to be consistent with other methods, frameworks and ecosystems
-Creation of platforms for effective competition
-People who can master taking the same components and reuse them in interesting ways will create new business models that redefine the market

Now we can discuss where your company or sector is, and where you're heading.

Tags: technology, information technology, IT, software development, maturity, model, IT architecture, software architecture, developer

Boost for Healthcare IT from Microsoft

Thank goodness Microsoft has finally published its Connected Health Frameworks. A whole toolbox for the healthcare IT sector.

This is a welcome announcement for a sector looking for an IT shot in the arm. I was privileged to see this a few months ago and am glad it’s now in the public domain so we can talk about it. It will be extremely interesting to see how healthcare IT organisations respond to the release. Which will crawl into their shells and which will embrace?

We need to see some maturity in this market. Consumers will expect it.

Tags: technology, healthcare, health care, healthcare IT, Microsoft, Connected Health Frameworks, IT architecture, information technology

Full Page Search Engine Ads in London Daily

If ClickRich was starting to look like a "Search Engine Special", with this being the second post on the subject today, then don't be surprised if it happens one day in the real world of publishing. This is because I was amazed to see Microsoft taking out a full page advert in this morning's Metro newspaper in London. A colleague tells me that they had a 'wrapper' advert yesterday. Incredible. The search engine wars are hotting up!

Only recently a friend was remarking how amazing it is that Google is one of the world's largest companies, yet he'd never seen an ad or met anyone who works for them. That could change quickly.

Tags: technology, Internet, search engine, Google, Microsoft, Live, Microsoft Live, London, UK, Metro, newspaper, advertising, advert

Google Threat to Technorati?

It was only a matter of time, but Andy Boyd seems to have spotted Google dabbling with integrating blog search technology into its heavyweight main search engine.

A bit of competition for Technorati will keep things interesting.

Watch this space.

Tags: technology, Internet, blog, blogs, blogosphere, search engines, Google, Technorati

Vacuuming whilst I Work

As I sit here in my office something amazing is going on in my living room. A robot is vacuuming the carpet for me. All I had to do was charge the iRobot Roomba and tell it to start and off it goes vacuuming, detecting and avoiding obstacles, concentrating more on the dirty bits and even getting under the sofa where my Dyson hasn't been in years.

With 120 minutes of battery life, I'm just leaving it too it. On the first use it needed emptying regularly (partly due to the small container and in part due to how long since the last vacuuming). However, the point is that you use it more regularly to keep on top of things. The results are great.

I still need the Dyson to help me do the sofa and curtains but when it comes to replacement, there's no need to go for the full blow-your-house-down model- a handheld should suffice. The future is here now. I'm only surprised this technology isn't more pervasive throughout the major players... in the same way that no one would have been impressed if I'd started this post with the statement that a machine is washing my clothes in the kitchen. Next up: Ironing (pleeease!)

Tags: technology, vacuum, vacuuming, Hoovering, iRobot, Roomba, Dyson, consumer electronics, robot, labour saving, automatic

PACS is dead. Long live PACS

It is my prediction that the days of the acronym "PACS" are numbered. Picture Archiving and Communications Systems are the hospital systems that store all those digital diagnostic images- X-ray, mammogram, MR, CT etc.

They need phenomenal storage capacity (Terabytes) and distributing those images (usually of the DICOM format) from the imagers to radiologists is therefore non-trivial.

When did you last hear an application based IT system have to define itself as a communication system? That's inherent in the fact that it is information technology. It feels illogical to make a big deal out of that, reflects challenges largely in the past and aspires to monolithic systems. I try and use the terms "DICOM Storage", "DICOM Viewer" and "Radiology Writer" to describe the constituent parts and apply as appropriate. Processes are being reengineered such that these elements are being reused in ways the inventing technologists hadn't imagined and the PACS term will itself be reengineered.

There's a lot of inertia in the acronym by virtue of the intellectual capital (deals, research papers, products, implementations) invested in it, so I don't expect a change any time soon... but watch this space

Tags: technology, medicine, medical, health, health care, healthcare, healthcare IT, Health care IT, PACS, Picture Archiving and Communications System, acronym, CT, MR, radiology, etymology, hospital, x-ray, xray, diagnostics

Google helps to Diagnose Patients

As a one time sufferer of the rare illness henoch schönlein purpura, I'm very familiar with the concern surrounding undiagnosed conditions. In my case it was the 80's and the efforts of a non-medically qualified, but very concerned, mother were more effective than the doctors in diagnosing an illness that aflicts just 14 people per 100,000.

So, I was very interested in how doctors are beginning to embrace the technology of the raging-consumer success that is Google. A British Medical Journal article reports on the success rate of search engines in helping unravel unusual and complex symptoms. Ironically, it is usually professionals that pioneer new technologies which subsequently filter into the high street and home. In this case it's been the reverse. Nevertheless, better late than never.

So, is this the end of doctors? Not really. Using Google, users successfully identified 58% of diseases published from a range of symptoms from The New England Journal of Medicine. It takes a qualified, intelligent human being to take that success rate beyond 80%. The computer is just doing what computers have always done well- to sift through huge amounts of knowledge (in this case pretty much the accumulated medical knowledge of the human race) and present it back in a prioritised fashion. You can't train a human to do that.

Tags: technology, medicine, medical, British Medical Journal, diagnosis, Google, henoch schönlein purpura, Internet, New England Journal of Medicine, search engine

Cisco to Invest in Demonstrator Baseball Stadium

You have to wonder how bleeding edge we still are with wireless technology when Cisco needs to take such a prominent role in a project to build a $400-500m stadium for the Oakland As. This implementation does sound jaw dropping but it tells me that clients, construction companies and even tech partners aren't ready to treat these technologies as business-as-usual.

Still, I'm feeling the 80 applications they've considered!

Tags: technology, wireless, Cisco, Oakland, As, Oakland As, baseball, bleeding edge, construction