Evernote meets scansnap
For those who love paperless filing, and Evernote, you will be pleased to know that Evernote now talks to Scansnap scanners (the most excellent scanner, which I use daily). This is particularly useful given Evernote’s fancy text recognition. If you have a Fujitsu ScanSnap
(and why don’t you?), you want to know about this.
Running Melbourne
I rarely use this blog to beg for money, but I am choosing to on this one occasion. I am an unfit person, and I have been recently working on improving that. My current fitness goal is to run a 10km fun run. I have chosen Run Melbourne, which is in a few weeks time on the 28th of June. I am not a natural runner, so I assure you I will not do it fast. But my aim is just to complete it without walking.
I am working hard to make this possible. I am doing specific personal training sessions aimed at improving my running, and they are seriously awful. Last week our task was to run alternating fast and slow laps for 60 minutes. And then we did interval sprints. And yes, I am paying for this.
As an added bonus to this experience, I can dedicate my run to a particular charity and ask friends and family to support me. I have chosen Breast Cancer research. I have treated a lot of patients with breast cancer, and I know small advances in treatments will help a lot of people. If you feel like helping support this cause, please head over to my fundraising page. Donations close on the 28th of June, when the run is over.
End marketing drive.
(Crossposted at Scalpel’s Edge)
More Simplicity in Medicine
I have written about the need for more simplicity in medical careers and the reasons we get too complicated. I am planning to explore this topic in more detail. These posts are more brainstorming than advice, and I encourage everyone to share their thoughts in the comments.
Zen Habits have published a list of techniques for achieving a more simple life and how to edit your commitments, which are worth considering in a medical context. My thoughts are in italics.
- Simplify work tasks
- Learn to say no
- Limit media
- Purge your stuff
- Free up time - cut out time wasters, eliminate stuff you don’t like
- Spend time alone
- Be present, live in the moment
- Streamline your life
- Create a simple mail and paperwork system
- Clear your desk
- Establish routines
- Time to eat and exercise
- Simplify your goals
- Accept what you have
- Have an inbox
- Don’t accept stuff in. 1 in, two out
- Find simple systems in the things you do, not complicated systems
- Don’t consume advertisments
- Carry less stuff
- Live closer to work
Set up protocols for oft-repeated tasks. Automate things that you repeat often. Make sure there are no tasks that you do that are irrelevant to making decisions.
Choose one service task that you love - such as education, examining or research, and limit everything else that you feel you “should” do. Don’t get trapped into administration just because you get asked (unless you want to).
Media includes free magazines, laden with advertising. It also includes journals, particularly if you don’t read them.
Book in work time to do things that you need to do, like charting. Don’t get trapped doing it at home. Booking in work time will mean you sacrifice outpatients or meetings to get it done, not family time.
I find I need to write every task, and every worrying patient down. If I know I keep track of everything, I can focus on the present.
Digital systems might help here, but the aim is not the system, but the ability to handle every piece of information only once.
A clear desk helps define boundaries and protect patient information. Leave it clear at the end of the day.
Doctors in training and allied health staff rarely have their own space, so have no inbox. This means “stuff” can attack us from any angle. Creating an inbox substitute or process, like an “infolder” or a”indropbox” could make a huge difference. (You could store your pager in it and only come back to it when you felt like processing it…)
Advertisements clutter medical life more than most other things. We not only have junk mail and junk media, but also junk appointments and junk presentations. This is life clutter.
I always carry too much stuff in the hospital. Aim to only carry as much as you need to be in control.
What are your suggestions for a more simple medical life?
Could tablet computers be the future of EMRs?
Houston Neal wrote an interesting article about the rumour of a Mac tablet computer, and it’s implications for healthcare, particularly EMR:
Mac Tablet? - The Ultimate Device for EMRs?
He claims Apple has an opportunity to position themselves in the health market, if they create a reliable tablet interface.
I am not convinced that Apple is creating a full-sized tablet. It seems more like they are creating an iPhone “super” with a larger touch screen interface (They would come up with a cooler name, of course). This would run the same operating system as the iPhone and have a similar interface, but would obviously be more suited to word processing and data-work, on a double or triple-sized screen, with a bigger keyboard. (All guesses, no insider knowledge)
If they created that piece of hardware, I would buy it. How perfect would that be for a hospital laptop?
- Able to be carried easily in one arm to make notes on ward rounds.
- Slips into a smaller bag, so you are not lugging a full-sized laptop around.
- Big enough to study with, so you can avoid dealing with computers that others provide.
- And then docks into your macbook, or iMac of an evening and syncs, dropbox style.
Can I even hope for built in wireless data? Of course not. But that imaginary computer would be very cool for desk-less residents.
Anyway, read Houston’s article and let us know what you think. What is your ideal EMR/ward/clinical interface?
Simple file management with Fresh
The makers of Leap (who I have no commercial affiliation with, review here) have recently released a access level tagging program. Fresh is a useful document utility, which has three main functions:
- Tracking “fresh” or most recently used documents
- Tagging files (searchable by spotlight)
- Document launcher, or shelf for frequently accessed files
File access
Your seven most recently accessed files, and seven files/folders of your choice, are available at a keystroke. As you would expect, they can be dragged and dropped. The interface also works with “open file” dialogues in a lot of other mac software. Importantly, you can nominate any files that you don’t want to see in the interface. This is handy to prevent your itunes library showing up song by song.
The second section in the main HUD is a shelf of files that you choose. They can be any sort of file, and can therefore be quickly accessed to open, email whatever.
Tagging
Files in the fresh or cooler portion of the interface can be tagged with a right click. Other files can be dropped on the side of screen active tab.
According to Ironic Software:
“Fresh write OpenMeta Tags which can be seen by
Spotlight. In Leap you can do Spotlight searches which exposes files
tagged by Fresh.”
The cool stuff
- Plays well with others. Interacts with Dropbox, and Spotlight. You are not stuck if you choose to uninstall.
- Simple. This is definitely a good option for digital filing for those who are not interested in all the bells and whistles of Leap. What you get is what you need.
- Cheap. This program is under $10. This is great value for a program you may end up using every day. All of these functions are available in other programs for free. But if this works how you want, it is a bargain.
- Unobstrusive. Dropbox on the side of the screen and keystroke to pull up the HUD. The interface is similar to dashboard in concept - covers up everything you are doing when you need it, then gets out of the way.
- I get the impression these developers use their programs, so things tend to make sense.
- Rapid updates. There have been two updates for bugfixes since release. This is not the sort of program that is about to stagnate.
My issues
- Working with Leap and Fresh is patchy:
- The drop zones for both programs are on the same side of the screen, and can’t be customized. They overlap, but are not blocked by each other
- Fresh tags don’t show as Leap tags. You can do spotlight searches within leap and still identify those files, but they will not integrate with your Leap tags. This is important for me, as I use Leap as my digital filing solution. So it means files tagged with Fresh will not turn up in the right “filing folder” in Leap.
- You have to manually add stuff to the Cooler (the shelf). I mean, this makes sense, but I have been using this program for a week, and there is still nothing on the shelf.