Tablets for a better hospital experience

Tablets have already made a place for themselves in healthcare as doctors use them to upload information to patient electronic health records. Successful pilot programs have proven that there are even more benefits to be realized from putting tablets into the hands of patients. 
Read about two successful pilot programs in 

Tablets for Patients: Pilot Programs Demonstrate Benefits

For more ways in which such technology can be tapped to improve the patient's hospital experience, see 

Tablet Computers: The Way Forward for Better Patient Experiences

Behold, no w!

Today I read part of a Smithsonian article. It lost me when it got to the quote that began, "Low and behold." That was almost as painful to read as "it's" standing in for the possessive form of the pronoun. It's not "low" but "lo" in the context of the expression. Ah, but you might say, "lo" is not a word. True, we don't use it, but in the context of the expression, it's a shortened form of "look." That's the explanation offered in http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lo-and-behold.html:
" Lo in this and its other meaning, which is more akin to O!, has been in use since the first Millennium and appears in the epic poem Beowulf."
It also offers the first written record of the full phrse, "lo and behold"  in an 1808 letter in theCorrespondence 1787–1870, of Queen Victoria's lady of the bedchamber - Lady Sarah Spencer Lyttelton:

"Hartington... had just told us how hard he had worked all the morning... when, lo and behold! M. Deshayes himself appeared."

3D printing goes live

Within a generation, we likely will not just hear of things like 3D-printed hearts serving as models, but as real, functioning organs.

The world of 3D printing possibilities keeps expanding, from the purely ornamental to the truly useful. This technology has already made a difference in healthcare with prosthetics and replacements for bones, and even models of patients' hearts that improve the outcome of surgery. In the future, the 3D-printed heart may itself be alive, as researchers have now discovered how to print living tissue.

Read more in 

It's Alive! The 3D Printing of Living Tissues

Data for doctors: should there be limits on it?

This summer, Carolinas HealthCare System made the news rounds as a warning of the new levels of data mining available to healthcare companies. In Hospitals Are Mining Patients' Credit Card Data to Predict Who Will Get Sick, we get a very Big Brother type of picture of the invasiveness of such data mining with an illustrative picture showing a doctor saying, “Don’t lie to me, Susan, I know about the 2 a.m. Papa John’s deliveries.”

 It makes for dramatic copy, but it’s still in the realm of fiction rather than fact, as I found our when  I contacted Carolinas HealthCare and got a response from Jason Schneider, Director, Clinical PR. He explained that the article “focused on how providers could use data for in the future and didn't include details what data we are currently using and how we are using it.”

The data they are currently using does not follow an individual’s consumer trail but looks at things like socio-economic circles, neighborhood limitations, and cultural affiliation that could shape one’s access to healthcare. One example of that was identifying why patients in one particular area were not coming in for regular doctor’s visits. It turned out that it didn’t have reliable public transportation to a doctor's office. After identifying the geographic problem, Carolinas HealthCare set up a doctor in the neighborhood itself.

As the person quoted in each of the articles on Carolinas use of data is Dr.  Michael Dulin, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research at Carolinas, I contacted him and spoke with him on the phone. He explained that Carolinas has a decade of experience in using data to improve healthcare by identifying individuals within contexts that could pose obstacles to care.

Read more in 

More Info in the Name of Better Healthcare

Accurate monitoring woven into a shirt that's washable

Marketing to seniors no longer shows them as helpless peopel who have fallen and can't get up but as active people who take control of their health and monitoring. They are enabled to do this with an  "hWear" shirt that has built in sensors. It's made by HealthWatch, an Israeli startup with the slogan, "Weaving Health Into Everyday Life."
Read more in 

This Shirt Could Save Your Life

Productivity boosts

The clack of a typewriter, the soft clinks and conversation of coffee shops, the sound of music, or plants? What do you add to enhance productivity at work? Read more in 

The Sounds & Sights of Productivity

SaaS for smoother college applications

Students have just gone back to school, but seniors already have to start thinking about the next step: applying for college. One of the newest programs in the space is Edswell, which publicly launched its platform early in September. It can help students and those who guide them through every step of the application process, including the dreaded essay.

I contacted the company's founder and CEO, Alex Thaler, to get the inside story on this SaaS platform, which is currently used in by students in a number of cities, including Beijing, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Thaler explains that, although there are already SaaS programs designed for college counselors available, such as Naviance and Career Cruising, Edswell is unique in offering "support for the application essay, the most time-intensive and anxiety-provoking part of the application process."

Read more in 

Cities Smooth the College Application Process

Better together

Some things are good on their own but really great when paired with something complementary -- like cookies and milk, wine and cheese, or perhaps a firewall and SaaS security. Read more in 

Cloud-Based Risk Assessment Meets the Firewall

What tech can do for your teeth

Have you been to your dentist lately? If so, you may have noticed that the office has some new machines that are transforming traditional dentistry. Tech-savvy dentists are adding 3D imaging systems that let them create custom caps for their patients in a single visit. Those of us who have had caps done years ago can appreciate the difference between the experience then and now.

When I had to get a tooth capped seven years ago, I had to schedule two dental visits a couple of weeks apart. During my first appointment, I had to have an impression made to serve as the mold for a cap to be created in a lab. I also got a temporary cap that had to last until the real cap arrived and could be cemented into my mouth. My dentists favored a particular lab in California, so the cap took close to two weeks to arrive. Once it was at the office, I was able to come in for my second session. The temporary was removed, and the final cap was installed.

What a difference a few years can make!
Read more in

Technology You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Giving the green light to emergency responders

No one likes to be stuck in traffic. Time is money, after all. But what represents an inconvenience or even loss of income for most of us can turn into a much more serious loss for emergency response workers. Read more in 

Technology Gives Emergency Crews a Green Light

Making supply chains sustainable with lean thinking

Nigel Southway is a productivity consultant and the co-author of Cycle Time Management, a guide to applying lean thinking to organizations to maximize efficiency. His perspective is informed by his first-hand observations of economies in Europe and China, as well as in the NAFTA region. Read more with additional insight from Nigel Southway in the comments in 

Lean Thinking for Sustainable Supply Chains

SaaS for Clinical Studies

"As a single system made up of many components, iMedNet EDC "can be configured [any] way you want." It offers drag and drop options for setting up dashboards and to-do lists that help users keep their studies on track. It also has options for individualized levels of access; each user gets his or her own ID and password that can be specified to a very detailed level for what the user can access and upload."
Read more in 

Seeding SaaS to Speed Up Clinical Studies

RX for Prescription Errors: Big Data Analytics

We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the doctor with bad handwriting whose prescriptions are all but illegible. While the use of electronic medical records (EMR) eliminates that chicken-scratch problem, it unfortunately doesn't fix other, often fatal, errors.

(Source: Carbon Arc)

In fact, EMR's introduction has made “new and alarming types of errors that didn't exist in manual records” creep up, says Dr. Gidi Stein, co-founder and CEO of MedAware, a startup using big-data analytics to combat the problem of prescription errors. Automatic selections are faster and neater than individual writing, but they also make it possible for doctors to put in errors they wouldn't have made on their own.

As reported in "Medical Errors: a Report by the Staff of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer" (available in PDF format), prescription errors account for many of the 210,000 to 440,000 deaths in America each year that result from "medical errors and other preventable harm at hospitals.” 

read more in 

Analytics Startup Prescribes Fix for RX Errors

Big Data Analytics for Better Results in College and Job Recruitment

Students are not the only ones who go back to school. We can all come back to learn about ways to direct our efforts more productively. Predictive analytics can show the way. Whether applied to university recruitment or corporate hiring, whatbig data reveals can show us that our assumptions about what works are leading us in the wrong direction. 
Read more in 

Back to School With Big Data Analytics

Getting to really know your customer requires managing a lot of data

Socrates considered "know thyself" the objective of wisdom, but in business, the key to success is knowing your customer.

A customer's relationship with a brand is much more complex than some people assume. As shoppers, we don't just come on to a site and buy what it sells out of the blue. We may get there by clicking on an ad, clicking on a promotion in an email, or by remembering a positive experience we had with the business when we called and chatted about an order. There are many different channels involved, and each one only shows one aspect of the total customer experience. So how do you really get to know what your customer is responding to?

This past June, Israel-based, NICE Systems introduced the NICE Customer Journey Optimization solution to just that problem.  Read more here: 

Planning a supply chain for space

photo from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Carina_Nebula_composite_of_visible_and_infrared_light_(captured_by_the_Hubble_Space_Telescope).jpg

The replicator that can produce food, clothes, and other necessities on demand is familiar to all devotees of Star Trek. That device was actually essential for the Enterprise's extended mission, to keep the ship properly equipped without having to pack along whatever the crew might need at some point light years away from a home planet. Though such replicators are still in the realm of science fiction, we are getting closer to the point of extended space trips.

Going back to the moon and maybe even Mars
NASA just finalized a $2.8 billion contract with Boeing Co. to produce the Space Launch System (SLS). SLS is a rocket powerful enough to carry astronauts where no human has gone before. That includes exploration of asteroids, the moon, and, ultimately, Mars. The first test flight is planned for 2017, and the first manned flight for 2021.

While Boeing is working on NASA's rockets, MIT is working on supply chain management that solves the logistical challenges inherent in extended space travel. 

Read more in 

Space & the Supply Chain

Happiness is a blue blanket

For many of us, the words happiness and blanket together inevitably bring to mind images of the "Peanuts" character Linus clutching his favorite comfort object. Perhaps because the comic strip is an American creation, British Airways didn’t make the connection when it created its “Happiness Blanket.”
Read more here

The role 3D printing can play in Canada

According to Nigel Southway, the real transformative power of 3D printing  lies in its potential for engineering more efficient tools of production. Read more in 

3D Printing Might Bring Manufacturing Back to Canada

Biometrics for voice to prevent fraud and save time on calls

The eyes may be the windows to the soul, but people's voices are what belie their emotional states and even identities. For businesses, that type of insight can help authenticate callers and prevent fraud. Making it work in real-time allows businesses to save time on calls without compromising security. Read more in 

Detecting Fraud With Voice Analytics

Going green from the roof down

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center with living roof (photo by Ariella Brown)

What could be a more fitting setting for green design than a botanical garden? Or, in the case of New York City, two gardens that went for the gold -- and platinum -- standards by going green from the roof down. Read more in 

New York's Green Botanical Centers

Analytics that improve your game

Got game? Analytics can help you get it, whether your sport is tennis, golf, or baseball. The trick is tracking your swing. Read more here. 

Location, location, location moves to the cloud

Location, location, location. That's the answer always offered for the three key components of real estate.

When it comes to managing information on the business end, the same formula for success calls for a SaaS solution that allows information from all other sources -- lead generation, CRM, website activity, and mobile apps -- to come together to yield optimum insight and predictive analytics.

Read more in 

Case Study: SaaS for Home Sales

From the army to the big city, 3D printing can be a real game changer

3D printing has great practical potential for the supply chain, as shown by the US army. Jerry Castanos saw its military application on his tour of duty in Afghanistan. That inspired him to open his own 3D printing business in New York City, 3D Heights, which offers 3D printers, related accessories, and lessons in using them. His goal is to be "the first" successful 3D printing retail store in the city. I spoke to about the confluence of his army experience with supply chain management and the uses for 3D printing.

Car with 3D printed metal body photographed by Ariella Brown at the Javits Center

Read more in

Army to Big City: 3D Printing Reshapes the Supply Chain

A soft sell for sensors

Wearables go where no devices have gone before when designed to fit wherever one wants them on  the body.  Fitting the device to the body, rather than the body to the device: that’s what defines the technology developed by MC10.  This privately held company partners with well-known brands, like Reebok, to bring its technology into the consumer space.  I spoke with Elyse Winer, Manager of Marketing & Communications at MC10 about the company’s innovative products. Read about it in  A Soft Sell for Sensors

How to manage editors, Russell Baker style

In Making Masterpiece: 25 Years Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! 
  (p.129), Rebecca Eaton includes a facsimile of a note on New York Times stationery that  Russell Baker wrote to her regarding his scripts for introducing Masterpiece Theatre on January 10, 1997.
It says:

Dear Rebecca  _
These can be cut, sliced, pared, slashed, canned, pruned, trimmed, condensed, abridged, curtailed or sheared, if you want me never to speak to you again.
Yrs
Russell

[Note: Baker didn't use the Oxford comma, so there's something for those who oppose it to point to.]

The quantified swoon, or how readers fall for Mr. Darcy

Personally, I've never had a crush on Mr. Darcy -- in book or film form. But I see I'm very much in the minority here. You just can't argue with data. 

I wrote about the kind of data Oyster Books and similar services pick up on their readers a little while back in Reading & Being Read by E-Books
Now Oyster is sharing its data to track readers' fascination with Mr. Darcy. Here's the infographic that was shared by Huffington Post:

Related posts: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-big-bow-wow-bit-of-ivory.html

When seconds can mean the difference between life and death

MARVLIS presents geographic and EMS call data plotted on a map

Though we tend to equate being predictable with being boring, in the case of optimizing emergency response, it is actually a virtue.

n emergency situations, response time can make the difference between life and death. 

Since it deployed the Mobile Area Routing and Vehicle Location Information System (MARVLIS) in 2008, Jersey City Medical Center EMS says it has better-than-average response times and markedly improved survival rates. MARVLIS combines geographic information system technology, wireless communications, and a global positioning system to produce real-time information that enables emergency response teams to get to their destinations faster.

Read more in

Analytics Speed Up Response Times for EMS

Highly detailed 3D printing in NY

Photo from Mini 3D Me

There are only four of these 3D printing systems in the world, with two of them in the United States. That one of those two should be in New York is not remarkable. But the fact that it is not in the Big Apple itself, but in Westchester County is somewhat surprising. How did the combination of a Pro Jet 660 3D printer and Artec scanner, which combined carry a 6-figure price tag, end up in Yorktown?  Find out in 

Advanced 3D Printing in New York

More efficient recycling with 3D printing

We generate so much plastic waste today that it has become a serious environmental problem. Some of us do put aside our plastic bottles for recycling, but even that endeavour requires energy consumption just to get the plastic to a recycling centre. Even more energy is needed for the actual recycling. There is a better way to reuse the plastic, and 3D printing makes it possible.Read more in

3D Printing Plastic — Distributed Recyling and Distributing the Benefits

Joshua Pearce holds a DremelFuge chuck made from shredded plastic milk jugs.

3D printing at MAD

My first-hand account of the 3D exhibit at MAD
Living in New York is wonderful for a number of reasons, but high on my list is access to so many great museums. Not only do we have world-famous museums, like the Met and the MoMA, but we have small, specialized museums that offer unique exhibits focused on innovations in art and technology. The Museum of Art and Design’s Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital, on view through until July 6th, is definitely worth a visit for anyone interested in digital design and production.

Read more in http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/03/17/3d-printing-review-mad-exhibition/

Related: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-moma-goes-mobile.html

How am I tweeting?

NewTwitterAnalytics  offers answers. Almost every business has a Twitter account, but many fail to take full advantage of Twitter's many add-on tools. What's holding them back?
Perhaps it's just a matter of not knowing how to measure their impact and figure out how the tools contribute to their goals. Twitter solves that problem with its new Analytics for Twitter Cards service.  Read more in

Twitter Analytics Puts Cards on the Table

What were you hired for?

This is my rejoinder to "Don't ask me to think. I was hired for my looks."

British slang

from http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g186364-d213579-Reviews-Police_Box-Sheffield_South_Yorkshire_England.html

The list of terms is at http://www.effingpot.com/slang.shtml. 

I've picked up some British slang just from context. So this wasn't all new to me, though there were a few surprises, particularly the compilers' own perception of of American usage, perhaps that's due to limited exposure to some friends who are not familiar with all expressions.

What  could have been left out

I never thought of DIY as a British term; it's one Americans use regularly.

Also most Americans (apparently, excluding the friends of the compiler) understand that "piece of cake" means  that something is easy, though some, for some reason prefer the term "cake walk." You could also say "easy as pie" here, though I don't know if they would get the gist of that over the pond. . 

We also say "haggle" and are not too likely to say"dicker." 
Also Americans tend to say "excuse me" both for things like burping and to suggest that someone move out of their way far more often than "pardon me," so the distinctions the list presents are not exactly accurate. 
Oh, and some of us do use the -ly ending for adverbs, thank you very much!

What  could have been included
terms like "brill" is mentioned in passing, though it doesn't have its own entry. It could have been included because the word "brilliant" does have different connotation in British usage than in American usage. Over here, people use it primarily to mean really smart but not as the equivalent of "terrific."


Other regional differences? 
Perhaps it has something to do with focusing on strictly English slang rather than some that may extend to other parts of the UK.  Here's  the entry on "cracking"  -"If something is cracking, it means it is the best. Usually said without pronouncing the last "G". If a girl is cracking it means she is stunning."  From what I recall there's another slang meaning for "crack," though that may be more strictly speaking Irish usage. It appeared several times in a novel I once read and clearly meant talk, chat, of the variety one expects to have in a pub. 

Still it's an entertaining read. 

Photoshop in 3D

We may not yet have the Star Trek "replicator," but we're coming pretty close to wonders with recent advances in 3D printing. It's no wonder that Adobe sees this as the right time to introduce 3D printing capabilities to its Creative Cloud."

No longer limited to hobbyists printing out plastic shapes, 3D printing can now be used to produce ceramics and metals, increasing its functionality for engineers as well as artists. TheCES show in early January had 28 exhibitors for 3D printing. This past October, Gartner predicted rapid growth for 3D printers, anticipating that this year "spending will increase 62 percent, reaching $669 million, with enterprise spending of $536 million and consumer spending of $133 million."

That's a substantial enough amount to attract the likes of Adobe, which announced its foray into the 3D printing industry on January 16 with the new release of Photoshop CC.

Read more in

3D Printing From Adobe's Cloud