It turns out the current financial crisis in the US is creating one boom market – online business social networks. Sign-ups and usage of LinkedIn (or as I explain it to people, “Facebook for business people”) is soaring as people who are afraid they will lose their jobs enrol and update their CVs. Apparently LinkedIn is up to nearly 30 million members, mainly in the US, while German-based network Xing has hit 6.5 million members.
18 September 2008
That’s why those wankers get paid so much
Pardon me while I go on an off-topic rant. Who can understand the machinations of global financial markets? Can someone, anyone, please explain to me why it is that when the US financial system has its worse week since 1929, while the effect on Australia is relatively mild due to our stronger economy and well-capitalised banks, the Australian dollar tanks against the US dollar? I have a personal stake in this argument as I have a couple of children about to embark on a gap-year sojourn across the US and their dad is unable to explain why their trip just got a hell of a lot more expensive. If the US economy is in the toilet, why has its currency strengthened against the A$? All I can say is that if stockmarket and investment gurus can understand this, that must be why they make such obscene fees while intelligent, passionate, caring schoolteachers, etc. are driving around clapped-out Holdens. Feel free to give an Economics 101 lesson via the comment facility.
17 September 2008
Thumbs up for online medical education
From today’s Australian Doctor:
“Online medical education is as effective as traditional methods, a meta-analysis suggests.
“Internet-based education had become an increasingly popular approach to medical education, the authors said, but concerns about the effectiveness of online learning had stimulated a growing body of research.
“The meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (10 September) found internet-based learning was associated with large positive effects compared with no intervention and had a similar effectiveness to traditional methods.
“’Internet-based education permits learners to participate at a time and place convenient to them, facilitates instructional methods that might be difficult in other formats, and has the potential to tailor instruction to individual learners’ needs,’ the authors said.
“Professor Ian Wilson, professor of medical education, University of Western Sydney, said the internet was an effective teaching tool, but the medium worked best when used in conjunction with face-to-face teaching.
“Although the online environment had improved markedly over the past five years to play an increasingly important training role, he said the quality of the education provided on the internet was sometimes inadequate.
“’Sometimes people get so enamoured with the technology that they forget about the underlying education principles,’ he said.
“Internet learning was more suited to some areas than others, Professor Wilson said.
“’Certainly online learning packages that work in isolation work much better for knowledge-based material,’ he said.”
8 September 2008
From Medical Director to Microsoft – another Australian e-health delay drama
From today’s edition of 6 minutes:
“A pharmacy-driven electronic prescribing project announced with much fanfare earlier this year has hit a setback with one partner, prescribing software company Medical Director, going cold on the project.
“In March the Pharmacy Guild announced a ScriptX project to start in October which would allow GPs to create electronic prescriptions on a central encrypted hub that any participating pharmacy could access and dispense.
“But the project’s creators, pharmacy software company Fred Health, now says it is looking to work with new partners such as Microsoft to develop a similar system, known as eRx Script Exchange, to start next year.
A spokesman for the company, Mr Paul Naismith, told 6minutes that their original partners HCN, the vendors of Medical Director, had decided not to go ahead with the SciptX project as planned.”
Is this the precursor to Microsoft launching its HealthVault product in Australia? Meanwhile, no great surprises that HCN/Medical Director have backed out on the project; if a teacher was to give a report card on HCN, it would no doubt include the comment, “Does not play well with other children”…
6 September 2008
UptoDate swallowed by Wolters Kluwer
UptoDate, one of the last independent publishing initiatives in the healthcare arena, has been sold to publishing giant Wolters Kluwer. UptoDate gained a big following with doctors around the world, including Australia, for its online clinical diagnosis service. Just type in a question and it would come back with a search of the evidence to help doctors make a clinical decision. While the technology has moved on since it first came on the market, it was so simple that it gained a strong loyal following that has stayed with it despite the improvements of its competitors. Will be interesting to see if they become any easier to deal with under their new ownership – they have a reputation for being prickly and narrow-minded when it comes to talking to anyone about what they do. I was organising an overseas trip for a client and had pencilled in a trip to Boston to speak with them about their business and they refused to give us contact details for anyone in their HQ. Anyone have their own stories about dealing with UptoDate?
