North Coast Connections

It's safe to say that with minor exceptions, every field of endeavor has been deeply changed by technology. This is especially true in the medical field. This is not a blog posting about the good or evil of biotechnology, DNA mapping or Frankenfoods ... look for future coverage of these fascinating topics down the road. This is about day-to-day, routine medical services in regular practice in hospitals, medical clinics and with first responders.

First, let's put in perspective why Med Tech is so important to our lives locally, aside from the obvious life saving aspects. It is a relatively new phenomenon (in the past 5 years or less) that healthcare has surpassed timber as the largest single private sector employment industry in Humboldt County.

Speaking strictly from an economic development standpoint, the recent financial troubles at local hospitals is increasing the possibility that government, out of necessity, may eventually take over this private sector industry. I only mention this because currently, government combined (federal, state and local) still constitutes the largest single employment base in Humboldt County. All things being equal, a robust private sector economy is better than a public sector economy, but sometimes all things are not necessarily equal.

On the Med Tech issue, some things are standard operating procedure. First, take the patient's vital signs: blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and check to see that they are breathing. But how these things are done has changed dramatically.

BLOOD PRESSURE
Taking someone's blood pressure meant using a "manual" machine called a "sphygmomanometer." Today, this contraption is an automated cuff, inflation and measuring device that can even be left on a patient who is unattended, and staff is only notified when the readings exceed a pre-set standard.

TEMPERATURE
Mercury oral thermometers? Forget about it! Anal thermometers? Are you kidding? Now we have digital reading devices that can use the mouth, ear or armpit to monitor body temperature. Not good enough? How about adhesive tape strips applied to the forehead that show the temperature according to colors (green, yellow and red).

PULSE AND BREATHING
OK, digital pulse regulators have been out for a long time, but monitoring someone's breathing simply by looking at their chest or putting mirror under their nose doesn't tell you how much oxygen they're getting. A simple finger clamp now shines a light to measure the blood color and gives an amazingly accurate reading of the blood oxygen count, which is the pre-determinant factor in deciding whether or not to administer oxygen.

SURGERY AND TREATMENT
On the "getting you started" side, heart defibrillators are literally improving by the day. So much so that they are now placed in major public gathering places as commonplace as fire extinguishers. On the surgical and treatment side, the array of technological medical advances is mind boggling. X-rays are still useful, but they are augmented with ultrasound, CAT scan, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and other means of looking into your body before "exploratory surgery" is needed. Prostheses; heart monitoring and stimuli; cancer treatment; orthopaedic surgical devices; and even cosmetic surgery have made huge advances ... so much so that past practitioners would have to be practicing regularly to keep up with the changes.

Of course, the surgeon is still the top of the medical food chain. But increasingly, medical technicians, healthcare professionals and IT staff are VITAL players in the healthcare industry, and just as necessary as a competent doctor to keep a patient alive and well.

Coming from a medical family (and being a major klutz as a child and adult), I deeply appreciate our doctors, first responders, nurses and healthcare professionals. It's not just mastering the tech, it's a deep and abiding culture of helping others, sustaining life and "doing no harm," that elevates the cause above the technology.

If you should suffer the misfortune of an accident or contract a congenital disease, your chances of (literally) getting out alive are far better today than they were only a few short years ago. The caring and dedication of our doctors, first responders, nurses and health care professionals is only matched by the current and developing advancements of the tools they have available to use.

We all owe them a heartfelt debt of gratitude.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 05:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (251)

Everyone's a comedian. Apparently, this includes my word processing spell checker. Here are a few funny examples:

FROM AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION ONLINE JOURNAL
* A witness was named Mr. Piscatelli. The spell checker changed the last name throughout the document into "post-coital."
* Some newspapers automatically track "today", "tomorrow" and "yesterday" by tagging the text to the day of the week. Right before Easter, one story appeared with references to Holy Yesterday and Good Today instead of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
* A legal secretary who didn't know the proper name used "Dear Sir or Madam," but the autotext feature turned it into, "Dear Sir or Madman."
* Spell-check suggested changing a first name of Myron to "moron."
* "Incontinence" instead of "inconvenience" as in: "We sincerely apologize for any incontinence caused by our delay."
* I had a client with the first name Trish. My spell-check kept trying to tell me that it should be "trash."
* While drafting a demand letter for a nonpaying client, to my amusement, spell-check always attempted to replace the customer’s name—Rodney—with the word "rodent."
* In the early days of voice-recognition software, the program had faithfully replaced the dictated "Alzheimer’s disease" with "old-timer’s disease" throughout the report.
* When "does not" was typed "doe snot," our spell-checker let it through without question. Of course, that may be because we are in the middle of deer-hunting country.

FROM OTHER SOURCES
I was surprised that a Google search didn't turn up any other sources of spell check humor except for one or two isolated rants. Who knew that the king compilers of this brand of techno humor would be lawyers? What's next, hip hop accountants? The only isolated item of interest I could find was some Microsoft conspiracy theorist who claimed there was an Easter Egg hidden inside of MS Word that you could find by typing "zzzz" (without the quotes) and right clicking on the squiggly red line. It didn't work. In fact, Word recognized zzzz as a legitimate word and didn't even flag it.

FROM SLINKYCITY.COM
OK, my Google search did turn up this spell check poem that is listed on dozens of sites. Since Slinkycity came out on top of the Google-heap, they get the credit:

This Spell Checker Poem ...
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

* * * * * * *

Sea hew lighter !!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everyone I know is bombarded by loopy email spam trying to sell everything from property in Costa Rica to sexual enhancements. Some of these emails may be legitimate businesses, but too many are not. I can't believe that despite extensive media coverage about email and Internet scams that the all time king of fraudulent fleecers is the Nigerian "419" scheme in which some bogus local operative claims that they need a bank account number in order to transfer $XX million dollars, and for which a commission will be paid of varying amounts of money. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, this bunko scheme bilked Americans out of an all time high of $183 million in 2005 alone, a rise of 169% from 2004. WOW!!

But bogus email scams don't have to be so far fetched as some African money transfer scheme. "Phishing" has become the Internet crime of choice, and it is increasingly difficult to spot real emails coming from a bank or financial institution from a fake. I wrote three separate Times-Standard Tech Beat articles on this in the past year. The first and second articles addressed phishing particularly, while the third one talked about emails in general.

Fred Mangel's Humboldt Blog (web log) mentioned a new scam that appears to come from a court needing information about your jury duty. Since I work in courts, I knew about this one from a Court Technology blog maintained by the National Center for State Courts. In it, someone calls claiming to be from the court asking why you didn't appear for jury duty. When you say you never received the notice, they ask for your Social Security number, drivers license number, etc to check their records.

The wackiest jury scam I heard was in Albuquerque where some chap would call prospective jurors and offer to serve in their place for $50. Setting aside the moral aspects of this dilemma, you are never assured he would show up when promised.

Yet another nasty scam looks like it comes from the Internal Revenue Service. YIKES!!

OK, listen up class ... too many rats are out to steal your identity so they can then steal money from you. So here are the rules:

RULE # 1 - NEVER respond to an unknown email, telephone call or mail asking for your personal information, bank account numbers, Social Security Number, or date of birth unless you absolutely and positively know who it is. Better yet only give this information out over the Internet if YOU initiate the contact and you are absolutely positive about the website you are using. Look to make sure it is an encrypted site and has a little lock icon.

RULE # 2 - if someone sends you a link purporting to be from a bank or other institution, run your cursor over it (don't click) and read the address. It should be something familiar like www.BANKOFAMERICA.com and not http://12345.678910/ or some other screwy address. Better yet, see rule #1 and don't ever click on these.

RULE # 3 - report the rats. If a phishing scan is coming from Chase Manhattan Bank, report it to them. Also report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center and send a copy to reportphishing@antiphishing.org.

RULE #4 - monitor your credit using Equifax, Experian or Trans Union. It is worth the expense and a valuable early alert if someone starts opening accounts in your name.

RULE #5 - don't be stupid ... no one is going to give you something for nothing.

You be safe out there, you hear?

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

From small acorns grow mighty oaks ... in the 1990's, the Redwood Technology Consortium used to be an excuse to drink beer and talk geek with a few local techies. Don't get me wrong, this was fun and the group did accomplish a few tasks. However, the RTC has now grown into a full fledged community member and resource for economic developers looking for ways to harness technology to drive community and economic development. Its members are tech business owners and individuals who share common interests. One of these interests is improving our local telecommunications to make high speed Internet connectivity more stable and accessible. The second annual Broadband Forum (BFII) held on April 5-6 was an opportunity for RTC to join with the Redwood Regional Economic Development Commission and the new kids in town, the Redwood Rural Action Committee, and address this issue head on.

The three R's (RTC, RREDC and RCRA), convened a group of community leaders and government officials to explore regional options to address these telecommunications issues:

REDUNDANCY
SBC (now at&t), deserves kudos for stepping up to the plate and completing a fiber optic connection from (roughly) Willits in Mendocino County to Humboldt County in September of 2003. DSL and increased broadband access is now available in Fortuna, Eureka, Arcata, Rio Dell and some surrounding communities. However, because it is the only line, it is subject to service interruption due to severe storms or an errand backhoe. Moreover, prices for bandwidth are higher than out of the area, so redundant fiber would also mean increased competition and lower prices. The BFII heard a consultant's report outlining the costs and options of building and operating a second fiber optic line, most likely over the Trinity Alps connecting to the Redding Area. This is an enormously important issue that now has actionable project plans from which community stakeholders may choose.

DISTRIBUTION
Even with a redundant fiber optic line, we need to do a better job of spreading bandwidth into the community. One of the choices may include wireless applications to cover wider geographic areas, and maybe whole cities. The 2nd day of BFII was a hands-on workshop for community members and government officials wanting to put specific plans in place for wireless hotspots.

OVERARCHING GOALS
The overall goals for Broadband in Humboldt and surrounding areas are:
Planned Regionally - while a particular city or community may want to implement a wireless project or other telecommunications improvement, it is vitally important to plan for broadband accessibility on a regional basis to ensure there is an adequate infrastructure and lessons learned can be shared.
Available to All - The "digital divide" is real, and access to broadband is an important element to success in combating poverty and lack of education, while improving economic opportunities.
Affordable - While it's important that broadband be available, it should also be affordable, so that we do not discourage economic growth and create a community of digital "haves" and "have nots." A redundant fiber connection will increase competition and therefore lower prices for bandwidth.
Reliable - A major justification for redundancy in fiber optic connectivity is to provide a back-up plan in the event of service interruption.
Used by gov't, education, businesses, health and residences - Having access to broadband is different from using it ... it is important to take steps to: improve healthcare by use of telemedicine; improve educational opportunities by harnessing distance learning and web resources; improve government services though e-government initiatives; expand business opportunities by effective use of technology; and provide choices in arts and entertainment at home and in the community at large.

The RTC did a good job in the early 2000's by staging annual Tech Expos to bring together education and business to showcase local technology. However, by redirecting its energy to a Broadband Forum, the RTC and its partners (RREDC and RCRA), a focused effort is now developing plans that will affect this community in a positive way for decades to come.

I'll toast to that !!

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (63)