SQL Server: We live it.  We love it.

When Jimmy May talks, I listen.  Not just because he’s a personal friend, but also because he knows what’s what, if you’ll pardon the expression.  So when Jimmy says “I believe xPerf will fundamentally change the way I do my job”, then I want to know what the heck this free xPerf management tool is and how I can best leverage it.  Check out Jimmy’s blog entry on xPerf here.

Devices & Gadgets: Usually making our lives better, sometimes not so much.

Ever wonder what’s inside one of those tiny USB hard drives?  No?  Not even a little bit?!?  When I started in IT, hard drives where as big as washing machines and cost $60,000 running at speeds in the 100′s of RPMs.  My how times have changed.  Here’s a fun hack of a USB hard drive – http://www.dansworkshop.com/electricity-and-electronics/usb-hard-drive-hack.htm.

Futurewatch: Important issues just over the horizon.

There are a lot of standard elements of society being rebranded as the “2.0″ version of itself.  The 2.0 moniker was first put forward by visionary Tim O’Reilly (blog | twitter), of the eponymous media company. Whenever you see the 2.0 moniker added to the end of something, most famously Web 2.0, then you know that it will include the characteristics of collaboration, interoperability, and user-centered designs.  So, whereas the first go at the web in the mid- to late-1990′s was about enabling information retrieval such as transforming printed catalogs into on-line catalogs, Web 2.0 enables all of its participants to comment on, review, rate, and otherwise participating with each other in the use of such a catalog.  In the last FutureWatch blurb, I pointed out work on Grid 2.0, centered on efforts to update the USA’s electricity grid.  I’m going to do a much more detailed post in the near future about emerging 2.0 efforts, but one to point out now is Gov 2.0.  Under this broad set of initiatives, governments from the lowest to highest levels of responsibility are opening up their public databases for consumption by the public.  An example of Gov 2.0 in action comes with the President’s SAVE Award, in which the public is invited to vote on their pick for the best money saving tip put forward by federal government workers.  Read all about this year’s SAVE Award here.

Humor: I haz da funny.

Weird products in Japan have their own name – chindogu.  Most of these are crackpot inventions that everyone knows will never see the light of day, such as these these featured here.  However, some of these products DO get marketed and, more amazingly, purchased.  Check out the product reviews of this totally bizarro chindogu here at Overstock.com.

Professional Development: Because there are two words in “database professional”.

There are mountains of great websites with tips on how to be a better speaker.  Some day, I’ll write a long blog post about my favorite sites for learning how to improve your oration.  But if you’re in a hurry, and who isn’t these days, then this blog post at TechRepublic succinctly sums up the advice you’ll find from many other web sites, articles, and blogs.

Society: Important issues to discuss with your friends and family.

One of the most remarkable things about the USA, as a rather biased citizen, is our ability to suck up our pride, admit a mistake, and try to prevent it from happening again.  One way that the USA tries to prevent future occurrences is to convene a commission of some kind.  I found this analysis by David Leinweber, a Haas Fellow in Finance and Founding Director of the Center for Innovative Financial Technology at UC Berkeley, on the commission studying banking market reform in the USA to be quite intriguing and, frankly, upsetting.

WorldView: If James Bond knows that the world is not enough, then so should I.

I’m always on the lookout for issues related to safe and clean water.  If you think people can be grumpy when oil is in short supply, imagine what it’s like when there’s not enough drinking water for everyone.  See how India is dealing with enormous water issues in this revealing article from the Economist.  And I’d be interested to hear what our Indian blogger friends thoughts are on this topic, folks like Rushabh Mehta, Jacob Sebastian, and Pinal Dave.  (Water issues have remained one of my passions ever since my years working for NASA developing the water recycling systems for the International Space Station, in which we made water of the H20 that passes through the human body re-drinkable.  And it tastes good.  Incidentally, all of the technology we developed for this project, as with all non-classified government projects, became public domain.  ECLSS technology is now used in hundreds of commercial products ranging from household detergents to commercial solvents to filtration systems.)

Thanks!

-Kevin

Twitter @KEKline

On the one hand, we have NDNQI, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI^®).  NDNQI is a repository for nursing-sensitive indicators collected at the nursing unit level.  Since it began in the late 1990′s, the program has added many hospitals as well as additional data points (that is, the quality indicators).  Lots of useful resources and good reading can be found here.

In addition to NDNQI, we have some excellent work being done by the Veteran’s Administration in their VANOD (VA Nursing Outcomes Database) project, which you can read about here.  VANOD is also discussed in a nice presentation by the program manager here. You can download the PPT file directly here.

By tracking health care practices in aggregate and monitoring their outcomes, we can find direct correlation or, even better causation, for better health of patients when multiple practices can be used.  For example, let’s say there are a few competing standard practices around the routine for taking the temperature of patients in a hospital – some take temperatures manually in the morning, some take temperatures manually in the evening, and a luck few who can afford the equipment take temperatures automatically through a sensor on the patient.  If the data in aggregate is able to show that the automated method yields a measurable improvement in outcomes, then that approach can justified against the expense because we know patients are doing better.  The American Nurses Association (ANA) reports on such progress here.

Additional technologies of interest are being reported, such as this article at www.SmarterTechnology.com and this article at www.InformationWeek.com.  In fact, in indication of the importance health care information technology, InformationWeek has a really good portal dedicated just to that at http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/index.jhtml.

Congratulations to the ANA and to the VA for transforming data into actionable knowledge!

Now, in the 21st century, information is increasingly used to drive business value.  In a sense, information is becoming an asset.  And as many of us have seen with the antics on Wall Street, any asset can be abused for personal and possibly unethical gain.  Legislative bodies around the globe have expended a lot of energy on regulating the use and access of health data, such as the well-known HIPAA legislation (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) here in the United States.  But despite the existence of this law, we’re still facing some huge hurdles.

First, HIPAA doesn’t handle all problems related to health data.  For example, new regulations need to be devised to fully protect individuals from exploitation of information stored their DNA sequences.  Just a generation ago, no one could possibly know if you held a genetic predisposition to, just as an example, renal failure.  Now, simple and quick tests exist to identify key genetic markers for such a predisposition.  Could this data be used to deny or charge exorbitant rates for medical coverage?  Life insurance? A job?

Second, health care (at least in the USA) is decidedly low-tech, despite much pushing and prodding from our government.  Overall, the health care industry (and doctors in particular) has been reluctant to cultivate the power of the Internet to deliver information to anyone, anywhere.  My wife was employed at one of the best hospitals in the southeast United States (Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital), where they needed large, redundant administrative staff to transcribe every thing about a patient’s visit into their medical systems.  Doctors refused to do it themselves (though younger doctors were noticeably less reluctant to use computers) and many important computerized medical devices (think of MRIs, CAT scanners, electrocardiograms, etc.) offered no integration at all.  Huge amounts of floor space are devoted to maintaining so much paper medical information that it could literally be measured in tons better than pages.

Whereas much of the recovery from recessions during the early years of both the Clinton and Bush II administrations were attributed to huge improvements in information technology, none of that has matured yet for the health care industry.  In fact, almost every business ecosystem in the United States has been revolutionized by information technology except health care! The system is, in effect, still a sick care system rather than a real health care system.  And efforts to computerize it are much the same as data processing activities of the 1960′s – taking easy, repeatable actions and having a machine do them at high speed.  But the real promise of IT has yet to be realized in health care.  Imagine a time when a data mining application could show the slow and steady development of a behaviorally-influenced disease, like Type 2 Diabetes or coronary disease or IBS, and provide plenty of early warning signs plus knowledge and support and tracking for convalescence and recovery.  As SQL Server professionals, we know that good data mining can reveal that sort of issue and one thousand more.  Conversely, consider the situation where an individual sees three different doctors for the same problem.  How do you know that you’re getting personalized and relevant information instead of the latest prescription drug brought in by the pharmaceutical representative?  I can tell you in my own experience with heart problems (first documented here) that I’d seen over a dozen doctors within five years time, and yet only the very latest doctor of the whole bunch pointed out the correlation between GERD, sleep apnea, and heart problems.

Add to this the fact that even those medical institutions that are using medical IT systems are firmly stuck in the 20th century.  I’ve seen a lot of medical IT systems and even the very best of them are still clunky, lame client-server applications that are very ineffective at modeling the business.  Many of them attempt to implement anachronistic and overweening standards like HL7, which is essentially analogous to commuting to your job in an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer.

I’ve decided to get ahead of this curve and I’m encouraging you to do the same.  Maybe it’s just my time as a community organizer for PASS, but my first inclination is to look for like-minded individuals who support the same goals and aspirations I do.  I suggest that you start with the Health Data Rights organization at http://www.healthdatarights.org/ – join the movement to own and control your own health data and make it work for your betterment.  Other places to begin your activism include http://www.google.com/health/ and Tim O’Reilly’s wonderful blog about Gov2.0 at http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/what-does-government-20-mean-to-you.html.

Let me know what you think!

-Kevin

Twitter @KEKline

More at http://KevinEKline.com