Skip to main content

Search

Items tagged with: Health


This morning, I took my wife to the hospital for routine blood tests that had been scheduled for some time. Everything was going smoothly: check-in, number, waiting room. Suddenly, everything came to a halt and shut down. I was connected to the hospital’s public Wi-Fi and noticed that my connection also went down.

Having managed a couple of similar facilities, I immediately understood what had happened. I saw the staff panicking and calling the technicians, but they quickly reorganized within 10 minutes. They managed to process everyone who already had a number and then proceeded with the others in the order of their arrival. Despite the ten-minute delay (even though people started complaining right away), they were extremely efficient.

I later confirmed that the entire booking, check-in, and queue system is “in the cloud.” The hospital experienced a connectivity interruption, and all related services stopped. The staff no longer had access to anything, so a technician sent the lists to a manager via another channel, and everything resumed manually.

For years, I’ve insisted that certain things MUST be local. The healthcare facilities I manage have all the necessary systems for the operation of the facility internally, including patient records. External services like websites, emails, etc., are secondary.

Everything essential must always be accessible locally and, in special cases, it should be possible to physically access the servers and connect directly to them, bypassing any network/switch failures.

There has been only one interruption in the past, due to human error. Today, we have redundant servers (not HA on virtualizers, but two machines running the same software with replicated databases - on separate power lines) so such an issue shouldn’t happen anymore.

Not everything can be anticipated, but history is a great teacher. The Internet connection will eventually be interrupted :-)

When it comes to the health and survival of people, there are no compromises.

#IT #Internet #Networking #Outage #Health #HA #Cloud #CloudComputing #OwnYourData


New #Biden Administration Rules Aim to Hold Insurers Accountable for #MentalHealth Care Coverage
==

The regulations will force health insurance plans to collect and report more data on how they limit and deny mental health claims. ProPublica’s reporting has found that insurers regularly shortchange patients seeking treatment.

#News #Health #Insurance #Regulation #Government #Therapy

propublica.org/article/biden-a…


This #Mississippi Hospital Transfers Some Patients to Jail to Await #MentalHealth Treatment
==

Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto doesn’t have a psychiatric unit, so it sends patients elsewhere for mental health treatment.

When publicly funded facilities are full, some patients go to jail to wait for help.

One doctor said that’s “unthinkable.”

#News #Health #Healthcare #Hospital #CriminalJustice #Law

propublica.org/article/baptist…


Hard water has health benefits, like extra magnesium and calcium (even if it’s bad for your pipes)

theconversation.com/is-hard-wa…
#health #water


Philips Agrees to Pay $1 Billion to #Patients Who Say They Were Injured by Breathing Machines
==

The proposed settlement will effectively end more than 700 #lawsuits filed after the 2021 recall of millions of the company’s widely used sleep apnea devices and ventilators.

#HealthCare #Health #Recalls

propublica.org/article/philips…


It's Monday, and if you're like us, being online for work and fun can be a literal pain in the neck. @pocket_recommends has a great collection of stretches for the very online, and this week we're giving seated neck stretches a try: prevention.com/fitness/g204300… 🪑

How do you all remember to stay limber in front of your keyboard, whether it's at your desk or on your keyboard? 📱 ⌨️

#Productivity #Thunderbird #Health


Social media can put young people in danger, U.S. surgeon general warns npr.org/2023/05/23/1177626373/… #SocialMedia #health #safety


Our #health #software team at #Apple is #hiring ! We’re looking for an #ios engineer - please consider joining us to work on products that literally save lives.

jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/2…


Wow… this is a mass-scale health data grab (DNA, etc.) by industry if ever there was one.

inkl.com/a/bvAAPoILNmL

Just look at how it’s funded and the people running it: ourfuturehealth.org.uk/about-u…

Also looks like the Silicon Valley/Stanford/startup folks have finally well and truly got their nails into the NHS after constant lobbying and facilitated by folks (useful idiots or accomplices?) like NESTA.

CC @glynmoody

#ourFutureHealth #uk #surveillanceCapitalism #health #BigData #peopleFarming


Members of German Chaos Computer Club (CCC) have demonstratively patched "highly secure" VPN-routers encrypting medical data
in order to enable the use of updated encryption certificates.

Router manufacturers had provided devices without a certificate update option.
The hack could save health insurances & their customers from up to 400 mio €€€ of extra cost for new hardware.

Press release (German)
ccc.de/en/updates/2022/konnekt…

/2

#medicaldata #encryption #hack #health #vpn


Grand #funding.. Wellcome supports #research with the potential to transform the way we understand #life, #health and #wellbeing.

wellcome.org/grant-funding


Fascinating website on air pollution. addresspollution.org/ Put in my current postcode here in Cambrian Mountains- 1st percentile (phew!)
Previous address in Bucks 81st percentile! Previous address to that in Bristol was 64th percentile. So Bristol was actually cleaner than rural Bucks! Who knew. #environment #pollution #Health