I could have sworn I heard her correctly. I had just sat through
a morning of 'induction'. These are the endless hours that every
doctor dreads at the start of a new job, being talked at by
everyone from the fire officer to the IT security manager. We all
say that nothing changes but the truth is that nobody is actually
really listening to know if anything has changed anyway. But I was
half listening and I was so sure that she actually said that the
final part of the induction would be a full day in Rio!
Now I'm well aware of how far away Brazil is but I'd be more
than happy to sit on the flight in work time if it meant we could
have 24 hours of Latino fun and games. Maybe I could tag a few days
leave on at the end and make a real party of it. Now this really
was the sort of induction programme I could pay attention to.
Unfortunately not. What she actually said was, "a full day of RiO
training". RiO is another computer system. It is a different way of
storing patient information. Different to the one the hospital
uses. Different to the one I use in General Practice. And it
requires a day of training to get used to it.
So rather than sipping mojitos or listening to the lapping of
waves on a sandy beach or experiencing the sounds and sights of
Carnival, I found myself in a small stuffy room with 5 doctors, 5
computer screens and an instructor called Ged. Ged tried his best.
He had a list of little jokes and gags along the way but it would
take a comedy God to raise a laugh during 6 hours of RiO training.
Ged wasn't a comedy God.
RiO isn't a bad system. The problem is that it is yet another
system. Oh for the day when all these systems can talk to each
other, when reading or writing in my patient's medical records will
be as easy for a doctor as looking up my bank records or my exam
results or my insurance application or any of the multitude of
things I do with sensitive data in my personal life that seems to
be completely beyond my wit in my professional life. Until then, I
will continue to turn up at induction days and look attentive as I
day dream about Rio. De Janeiro that is.
Interview with Dr. Jonathon Peter Shaw, Chief Technical
Officer and founder of DocCom.
Web site: http://www.doccom.me
Tell us who you are and your role in the
company:
Chief Technical Officer and founder.
What is your company's mission?
To become the leading global platform for healthcare
communication.
In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company
does:
DocCom is secure Enterprise Social Networking for healthcare and
improves communication, collaboration, efficiency and safety across
healthcare organisations.
Tell us about your Azure based solution.
DocCom have developed an Enterprise Social Networking solution
specifically for the healthcare sector. It is free for any
healthcare professional to use. It allows clinicians to communicate
securely and find each other easily without knowing or sharing
personal contact information or relying on poorly managed
distribution lists. Clinicians can join and create private groups
within healthcare networks in order to have secure conversations,
manage events and share documents and this can be accessed on any
device including a smartphone.
This platform also provides healthcare organisations with an
enterprise social network to enable them to engage better with
their staff and break down the silos that stifle corporate
communication and jeopardise patient care. Our cloud-based platform
solves clinical communication problems with a series of
healthcare-specific applications while at the same time, providing
rich business intelligence and insight into a healthcare
organisation's workforce.
How is Azure implemented in your solution?
Our solution now runs almost entirely off Azure. We have a
distributed architecture built on Asp.Net 4. We use both SQL Azure
for relational data and Azure Table storage for our NoSQL solution
and take advantage of Azure's blob storage for most of our content.
Azure AppFabric cache is used for caching database data and session
state. In addition to our web roles, we have worker processes for
indexing, notification queues, message processing, virus checking
etc. We use a Lucene library on Azure for search and SendGrid for a
cloud based SMTP solution.
How did you get excited about Azure?
It's funny but it was a potential investor that we met in our
early days of setting up the company that made me recognise the
importance of cloud infrastructure. In a typical VC way, he asked
how we could ever expect to compete as a small company and provide
the scalability and redundancy that we would need. That was when
the concept of today's cloud computing was in it's infancy and I
couldn't answer him well at the time. With the development of
Azure, I knew I had my answer.
What were the Azure features that prompted you to decide
to build on Azure?
Azure has been a great choice for us and is probably the most
advanced cloud computing platform out there. We have developed on a
Microsoft stack so it was already a natural choice but actually
Azure offers the richest set of tools and integration features of
any cloud platform. A good management portal makes it easy to
configure our VM roles, deploy rolling upgrades, manage staging
environments etc. We also take advantage of some great features
that fit well with our code base such as the AppFabric cache. We
are also using Access Control Services which provides industry
standard authentication for our solution as well as the ability to
federate with customer infrastructure. Finally, Microsoft is firmly
committed to enterprise grade security and compliance, which is
incredibly important to us.
What specific value are you getting from BizSpark beyond
the technology?
Bizspark has been a fantastic programme that I would strongly
recommend to any startup company. You get superb exposure to the
investor and startup community through numerous high profile and
international events and the programme provides some great
networking opportunities. The Bizspark team also recognise the need
to treat startup companies differently from corporate clients and
so they are able to find all sorts of creative ways to help and
support you as a company.
What has been your biggest "aha" moment since founding
your company?
When we realised we did not need to sell but instead concentrate
on just giving users something they needed. By solving the
frustrating problems in healthcare communication, we knew
organisations would pay for something that made them safer and more
efficient.
What advice do you have for companies that are thinking
about building in the cloud?
Think about it as early as possible and then build a distributed
architecture. Don't be afraid to take the leap, although there are
a few small development hurdles to overcome, it is then very
liberating knowing you have the scalability and redundancy offered
by Azure. Also the development pace of the Azure roadmap has been
pretty impressive this last year.
What is the one thing that you would like readers to
take away about your Azure app?
DocCom will revolutionise the way healthcare professionals
connect and communicate and by making healthcare organisations more
collaborative we can make them safer, better and more
efficient.
See original article here http://blogs.technet.com/b/bizspark_featured_startups/archive/2012/01/27/featured-bizspark-startup-on-azure-doccom.aspx
Jon and I have spent some time in the US recently and were
surprised by how much our respective healthcare systems have in
common. Both are struggling to get to grips with spiralling costs
in the face of growing demand and rising expectations and both are
struggling to make their systems safe.
At the same time they are pretty consistent in their views that
the solutions lie in driving change through payments based on
outcome and delivering more and more care in the community and
keeping people out of hospital.
There is no doubt there is urgency for both countries to work
out how to ensure that their citizens have an affordable and
sustainable healthcare system in the future however we witnessed
one important and major difference between our 2 nations; the
mind-set.
Nearly everybody who we spoke to in US healthcare talked
passionately about their strategies to improve the quality and
safety of healthcare. Nearly everybody we
have spoken to recently in UK healthcare has talked passionately
about saving money.
The money saving mind-set has infused its way across the
NHS. We have to change this and get our
priorities right. Were the events at Mid
Staffordshire not the wakeup call?
The Royal family is a touchy subject in our house. My
husband is French and doesn't get what all the fuss is about. He
thinks everyone needs to earn their position and be democratically
elected. I don't. I am staunchly royalist.
I know what everyone says about the privileges that the
family enjoy and the cost of security but, my view is that they
earn their cash. I can't imagine having to live with a permanent
police escort, and have to have toilets checked before I enter
them. I would hate to have my every move and expenditure
scrutinised and exposed in the dailies.
What I find fascinating is that, love them or hate them,
everyone is passionate about the Royal Family. Take this week's
visit by HRH the Duke of York to our offices in Bristol. Even the
hardiest of royal sceptics in the office were eager to join in the
banter and buzz around their arrival, were craning their necks out
the window to see the car arrive and wanted to hear in detail about
what His Royal Highness had said. In a dress down laid back tech
company, suits were donned, ties adjusted and briefings adhered to.
Such formality and adherence to rules is not familiar territory to
DocCom employees.
It seems that once Royalty arrive, everyone is sprinkled with
their magic.
Blog for DocCom
Dr Jonathan Fitzsimon
GP Trainee in Bristol
15 September 2011
Social networking for
doctors
The BMA have recently published guidelines on the use by
doctors and medical students of social networking sites such as
Facebook and Twitter. They (rather grandly I thought) called this
"Practical and ethical guidance". Is this just further evidence of
bureaucracy from administrators with too much time on their hands,
or some much needed direction through a modern minefield?
I have tried hard to keep medicine as just a part (albeit an
important part) of my life. I am always a doctor but that doesn't
mean that I want or have to practice medicine 24/7. After work I
lead my own life and have my own interests in sport, travel and fun
with my friends and family. I also think that it is important to
maintain a strong non-medical circle of friends. So I think that I
have just as much right as the next person to use Facebook, Twitter
and any other social media that I want to.
However, I did have a bit of a shock the other day. I saw an update
from an old med school friend who was clearly unhappy with events
from that day at work. It could be said that he was just letting
off steam after a bad day at the office. However, his rant about
the performance of a junior colleague (not named) was pretty close
to the wind as far as I was concerned. It really wouldn't have been
difficult for that doctor to identify themselves or (perhaps more
importantly) for the patient to pick up on the fact that they had
received (in the view of my old friend) substandard care.
Letting off steam in the doctors' mess with some colleagues is one
thing and many would argue that this should be actively encouraged
in order to help doctors cope with the stresses of our profession.
However, airing your thoughts on Facebook is not a closed shop and
in reality, you actually have very little control over who can see
what you post.
So I will continue to use Facebook but I will keep using it for
purely social reasons. Until I can be sure that anything I post
about work or medicine is strictly between colleagues, then I will
stay well aware that (as the BMA guidance points out), privacy
settings on most of the popular sites do not actually make what you
are posting strictly private.
Reference:
Using social media: Practical and ethical guidance for doctors and
medical students
http://www.bma.org.uk/images/socialmediaguidancemay2011_tcm41-206859.pdf
