The Digital Beyond

The Digital Beyond

I found this article while thumbing my way through an issue of Popular Science magazine. At first I thought it was just funny, but upon reading through the article, I realized its potential seriousness. 

What happens to your digital data after you die?

     “We’re just starting to figure that out. The companies that keep our data on remote servers have inconsistent, confusing or nonexistent policies for what happens after a customer passes away. As a result, many “digital estate” services are popping up that can help you plan ahead.

     The first step in managing your digital afterlife is to name a digital executor – some who inherits control over your online information – in your will along with a regular executor. But don’t list passwords there; wills become public documents after death and available to would – be thieves, explains Evan Carroll, co-founder of the digital-existence clearing house The Digital Beyond. He recommends the services of estate planners such as Entrust (entrustet.com), which feature password vaults as well as secure online storage for valuable files and encryption keys.

     If you want to preserve your entire digital existence, use Backupify (backupify.com) to create a searchable archive of all your files in Amazon’s cloud. Every few months, download it to a hard drive, and include the hard-drive password and your Backupify password in your estate plan. 

     If you’d rather erase your digital life, you need help from your executor, who can use tools such as Entrustet’s Account Incinerator to earmark e-mail accounts and other memberships for deletion. For accounts that require deeper purging, like Facebook and Twitter, your executor can sign up at suicidemacine.org, which removes data from your profile bit by bit until it’s completely gone.” ( Pacella, R., 2010).      

    

 

Reference

Pacella, R., (2010). What happens to your digital data after you die? Popular     

     Science.  Palm Coast, FL.   

Second Life Therapeutic Applications

Module 3 Assignment - Second Life^TM

Second Life is entirely new to me, and I must admit I am fascinated by its potential.

 
An article caught my attention;

Brain-Computer Interface for Disabled People to Control Second Life With Thought Available Commercially Next Year

     An Austrian medical engineering firm called G. Tec has developed a brain- computer interface for disabled people to navigate within a 3D world in Second Life.  What is amazing is that the interface is controlled by the user’s thoughts.

     At this point the system is slower than a mouse driven system. There are both chatting and searching commands. But according to the researchers, the user appears normal in Second Life even if completely paralyzed. The system allows the disable the ability to experience traveling to different location and flying while being totally housebound.

     Guger see other medical applications as well; as a tool to evaluate if a patient is still engaged and for the measurement of performance. The system allows for access to a wider range of personal contacts. This system may allow greater communication and counseling benefits to the patients with autistic and ADHD tendencies. Interactive games may be the key to increased therapeutic communications with these patients.         

     For those interested a more in depth article can be found at the New Scientist; Control Your Home Alone with Thought.

     On the other hand; while development is progressing, the use of Second Life will apparently take time to become a familiar educational and therapeutic tool.

     I have asked around work to see if people that I know are acquainted with Second Life. So far the results have been 50/50. But of those that are familiar with Second Life, most just had a passing experience with Second life. So far the folks in my hospital setting are only vaguely familiar with this technology as patient education or therapeutic tool.   

     “ There is also a considerable turn-over in the popularly of media. Web-rings, one of the earliest forms of social networking on the web, have largely fallen out of favor, although a few health-related rings survive (www.webringcom). Conversely, the Second Life virtual environment, created in 2003, was only beginning by 2009 to make a significant impact in health-related areas such as patient education, health promotion, training and so on (Beard, Wilson, Morra and Keelan, 2009).” 

References

Graham-Rowe, D. (2011). Control your home alone with thought. New Scientist.

July 5 2011 Issue 2819

Guger, C. (2011) G Tec 

Robinson, L. (2010). Understanding Healthcare Information. Facet Publishing, London, UK.

Module Two

Healthcare Technology Trends form HIMSS 11 

The HIMSS 2011 conference was held in Orlando, Florida this year during February of 2011. Health care service providers displayed their latest technology developments to the interested, from EMR software to mobile application devices.

The reported from IT Solutions blog reported on four of what he considered the hottest trends for the year.  

Trend # One

Visualization and Business Intelligence

Software vendors have taken the critical measures of an efficient hospital and created dashboards to give the service providers a visual representation of where things are in real time. A business intelligence metrics will show the status of the time it takes to complete a task within the hospital system.

How long is the average wait time in the ER? It’s a dashboard on your screen with a gauge showing acceptable waiting times displayed in varying colors; green, yellow and red.   

When questioned how long patient remain in the ER awaiting placement on medical floors, time is variable during the season of the year. This system would certainly help reduce waiting time and increase efficiency. 

Trend # Two

Collaboration, not Just Communication

Today’s healthcare communications are about workflows and how groups can collaborate on providing the best care. It involves messaging of nurse assignments, push to talk technology for emergency assistance, quick conferencing with the response team, and different types of communication based upon the level of emergency. Some systems have even integrated location technology so that you know the closet available resource help.

This trend is now available within the hospital that I work in, I can see that we were ahead of the curve.

Trend # Three

Intelligent Mobile Devices

Today’s hospital environment contains many different types of mobile devices, some stationary and others mobile. Every device can have intelligence build into it. Infusion pumps have Wi-Fi chipsets that upload data as well as show the location using Wi-Fi-RTLS.  The trend is to upload test results directly into the patients EMR, thereby helping to reduce medical errors. 

Want to check the weight of a patient? The hospital bed shows you in real time and the data is automatically uploaded to the patient’s medical record, over the hospitals wireless network.

The system is installed in our hospital, but I am not sure that it is fully operational. But I an see this coming. It’s funny that I overheard the staff talking about this particular subject this week. If the bed could weigh the patient, it would often times save the labor of two additional staff to weight patient who are deconditioned.  

Trend # 4

Healthcare Technology is about Integration 

If you are going to mange a hospitals networking environment, you will have to pull together different platforms of technology together. These systems are to be linked together into one system. The biggest challenge for healthcare tech will be the ability of healthcare providers to pull all different systems together in one working platform.

One such vendor is SecurEdge Networks which designs, deploys and supports large scale mobile infrastructure to help healthcare providers manage all of these mobile initiatives.    

IT Solutions Blog

By Philip Wegner 2/25/2011

Module One

The Internet and the Future of Patient Care

Module One

My blogspot site has been activated.