Medigy Logo The Healthcare IT Guy
Person name
Managing Editor
@ShahidNShah

Guest article: Information Therapy

Dr Aniruddha Malpani, MD, an IVF specialist (Malpani Infertility Clinic), is an ardent patient advocate. He is the founder of what he has dubbed the world’s largest free patient education library, HELP (Health Education Library for People) in Bombay, India; and has authored the book, How to Get the Best Medical Care. I invited him to write a guest article here to talk about Information Therapy; he believes healthcare is too important to be left completely up to the doctor and I found his ideas intriguing.

Shahid N. Shah

Where can we get gigs of easily accessible storage for RIS and healthcare images?

If you’re looking for Inter-Enterprise storage of large files such as RIS images (where images need to be securely shared between organizations), check out Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). This inexpensive service may have the right mix of price, performance, and scalability take care of your requirements. Here’s what Amazon says about it: Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.

Shahid N. Shah

Try Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) for cross-org messaging, RHIO, NHIN data

One of the foremost requirements of an Inter-Enterprise data interoperability (sending data between organizations) solution like a RHIO or even NHIN is to have a solid messaging service or technology. Buying a messaging engine for inside the interprise is fairly easy but setting one up for cross-organizational use is not trivial. One of the services that Amazon offers, called the Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), is a great option for multiple organizations that want to share data but don’t know how to do reliable messaging.

Shahid N. Shah

Let’s take off our ties and attend “Games for Health”

What can the healthcare industry learn from the gaming industry? Plenty. Tiny, superfast computers with 3-D technology, highly usable interfaces, and the fact that almost anyone can play even complex games can teach us a thing or two. The Games for Health 2006 Conference, being held near me in Baltimore, is the third annual installment of the gathering that is is designed to strengthen the intersection between health care and gaming.

Shahid N. Shah

Open source complex healthcare event/stream processing

If you need to process business rules or triggers based on large amounts of data that stream in from one or more sources, you probably need a tool like Esper. I’ve followed their development for a while and friend of mine just reminded me about its use in healthcare. Here’s what Esper does (from their website): Complex Event Processing, or CEP, is technology to process events and discover complex patterns among multiple streams of event data.

Shahid N. Shah

Another healthcare-specific search engine

Tom Eng, founder of a the health search engine company Healia, recently informed me that his new service has launched as a beta site. Tom said Healia is different from other search engines because: 1) it only provides high quality results, 2) it lets you filter your results to fit your profile and needs, and 3) it shows relationships among medical terms to help you search more accurately. Of course, the definition of “high quality” and results “fitting your profile” are subjective but it looks like a good start.

Shahid N. Shah

SmartDraw, another tool for healthcare diagrams

Last year I wrote about ConceptDraw, a diagramming tool for creating healthcare graphics. I just ran across another tool, The SmartDraw Healthcare Solution. It could certainly use a more catchy name but it seems pretty nice. It provides over 50,000 ready-to-use graphics, including over 3000 medical illustrations from Lippincott and 50 Netter images (which seems unique to them since ConceptDraw I don’t think has those). It’s only a few months old but it’s worth checking out if you’re getting tired of Visio because you have to hunt for your own healthcare-specific images.

Shahid N. Shah

I’ll be speaking at the Healthcare Blogging Summit 2006 in DC

Dmitriy over at The Medical Blog Netwok, an excellent blogging netwok for healthcare professionals who want to reach consumers, has been hard at work setting up the Healthcare Blogging Summit 2006. He asked me to join a panel on Strategy & Tactics and I said “of course” mainly because I believe in what he’s doing but of course also because it’s in my backyard. I think it’s going to be a great event and I look forward to seeing you guys there.

Shahid N. Shah

Taking The Pulse Of The Healthcare Blogosphere

For the past few months I’ve been doing consulting to help healthcare and other firms get started with “Corporate Blogging” and it’s been a great ride. One of the missing pieces has been statistical and detailed polling on the healthcare blogosphere so Fard over at Envision Solutions is running a survey to help fill the gap. If you’re a blogger in the healthcare space, please take a few minutes to participate.

Shahid N. Shah

Patient-centric devices in hospital rooms

This morning I interviewed Michael O’Neil, the CEO of GetWellNetworks, and he’s got a pretty interesting story to tell. A few years ago Michael was recovering from surgery to remove a malignant stomach tumor and spent many days in a hospital bed unable to do much other than stare at a TV up at the wall. He wanted more information about his condition and to communicate with his friends and family but felt helpless as he could do nothing more than wait for visitors and hope that he was getting better.

Shahid N. Shah
Prev Posts
Next Posts

Medigy Innovation Network

Connecting innovation decision makers to authoritative information, institutions, people and insights.

Medigy Logo

The latest News, Insights & Events

Medigy accurately delivers healthcare and technology information, news and insight from around the world.

The best products, services & solutions

Medigy surfaces the world's best crowdsourced health tech offerings with social interactions and peer reviews.

© 2025 Netspective Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Built on Mar 12, 2025 at 5:07am