Uses of Second Life™ in doctor-patient relationships

Am glad to have taken this class, because I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to experience Second Life, and I must admit it was quite an experience. Am not a video game fun and though I enjoy playing around with flight simulators, Second Life is a virtual world like no other. It took a while to get used to the environment and though I thought I was comfortable with it, I still got lost during the seminar. I have been playing around with it since then, and it’s still difficult to introduce objects. Flying around the Island feels strange and while am more comfortable walking, I don’t seem to get very far without bumping into some wall.

I found the presence of all the other avatars very distracting. Some were flying, others trying to sit down and others completely blocking my view while others were constantly typing IMs. In a doctor –patient interaction, would the doctor have a private Island with just one patient, or will there be many doctors and many patients at any given time?

Can Second Life be used in a doctor –patient interaction? I don’t think this will happen any time soon .Since Second Life is a virtual world, I think it will be best used in “simulating” real life medical situation and I think it will be greatly used for sharing health information and a learning environment for medical students. But I cannot visualize myself as a patient meeting my doctor as an “avatar”. It will not feel real and is a little disconcerting.

I think it’s a great place for health professional to share information and simulate various scenarios, especially medical scenarios that have worked elsewhere, and may need to be replicated somewhere else. Since SL can be accessed world wide, this would be a great place where psychiatrist, surgeons and others from different parts of the world can meet, and literally perform some medical procedures, outcomes determined, before applying them to real life situations.
Security-One thing that I got concerned regarding SL is that I was able to teleport to other Islands and I didn’t need any security authentication. I could listen into the conversations, and while I understand that there are some private islands one cannot access unless invited, I wondered whether some determined hackers out there can assume a patient’s or a doctor’s avatar for the fun of it or even for some more sinister reasons

Application of Health Informatics in managing Alzheimer's Disease

On October 18, 2010 ABC-Good Morning America –presented a study led by the First Lady of California Maria Shriver in association with the Alzeihmer society titled “A woman’s Nation takes on Alzheimer.” It focused on how to care ,reasearch and look for a cure for this disease. Part of its emphasis was a look into how alzheimer affects those who take care of the patients. This got me wondering on how technology can ease the 24/7 caregiving for alzeihemer’s patients. Person taking care of people with Alzheimer's disease require access to high quality medical, personal, practical and financial information.

Recent developments in information technology could offer assistance to AD patients in ways that could supplement the loss of biological function with mechanical functions. In the series there was this teenage girl, whose father has the illness, and the only way she could get her dad’s “mind back” is by singing a specific song. Sometimes she had to sing it several times for her father to just recognize who she was or to just say “I Love you”. This got me thinking how, using informatics tools, such a song could be recorded in her voice and replayed several times a day to assist the patient with some form of cognition. A computer could also be used to keep records of the family members to help them remind the patient about their past. A computer small enough to fit into someone's eyeglasses, coupled with voice and image recognition technology, could provide AD patients with the kinds of information they need to continue to function. This, along with drugs could slow the process and potentially provide a treatment that could restore a quality of life to the patient in a way that is currently unavailable.

Information technology could be used to help the caregivers with the responsibilities of monitoring the AD patients as well as informing the caregivers about AD and answering their questions. A tele-health system could be used to assist the healthcare provider with monitoring the patients in their home setting. On the other hand it can engage the patients in many different activities to reduce the caregivers stress.

Scientist Hans Moravec has suggested that someday, entire human brains and the consciousnesses they hold will be able to be downloaded into a computer. This would avoid the problem of neuronal deterioration, and provide for the time and opportunity to conduct research that would provide information that would allow AD to be livable and/or curable illness.

Use of Internet and HITECH as a disruption tool.

I am a Project Manager (PM)/IT consultant with extensive experience in IT project management in the financial and government sectors . I have no experience in the health industry but I believe the issues faced in the implementation and integration of IT systems are very similar across all industries.

I plan to use this blog to share my PM experiences, and learn from my classmates especially those in the health industry, incorporate their challenges in the use and implementation of EHRs, and provide a future perspective of EHRs as the norm not exception. It is my hope that through the blog and the health Informatics course I will get more insight on how the Internet is going to be a part of the healthcare disruption process.