The doctor is out... of the province #nlpoli

Health minister John Haggie announced on Friday that doctors in the province could now start seeing patients remotely either by telephone or using video conferencing.

Kinda bizarre, though, given that some doctors in the province have already been doing this.

In any event, using technology to see patients remotely is a good idea not only now but in the future.

It allows doctors to treat patients in remote areas where there is a constant turn-over of resident doctors.  Last year, SRBP wrote about the potential for technology to help with the supply of family doctors

Meanwhile, last week Shoppers Drug Mart also quietly rolled out a service in conjunction with a cash-for-service doctor company called MAPLE. 

This is “virtual care”  - a truly hideous term - as well but it comes with a big twist people need to watch out for besides the cat MAPLE isn;t covered by MCP. The same twist will affect any local patients who are in Newfoundland and Labrador but wind up being treated by doctors living and working outside the province using remote communication technology.

Under a new policy established in March 2017,  the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Newfoundland and Labrador has decided that care takes place where the doctor is, not where the patient is.  Under the old policy, CPSNL held that care took place where the patient was.

Under the new policy,  a patient in Comfort Cove who sees a doctor via Skype while the doctor is in British Columbia will have to complain to the BC College and deal directly with the BC College about it.  CPSNL will pass the complaint along but after that the patient is must find their own comfort.

The policy doesn’t just cover Canadian doctors, whose licences incidentally, the local College doesn’t recognize as valid anyway.  Same thing applies for a doctor living anywhere in the world.  You see, the CPSNL policy states that the “College considers the practice of medicine to take place in the jurisdiction in which the physician resides and holds a licence.”

So if the local patient winds up dealing with a doctor in the United States,  Mexico, Sri Lanka, or India, the complaint will have to go to whatever country the doctor is in.

These days, technology allows doctors from anywhere in the world to treat patients anywhere else.  It’s a common practice in commercial shipping where doctors work for international contractors.  Got a problem on a rig offshore or a ship at sea and you could find the captain calling a doctor in Europe whose company has the contract to supply health care to the ship owner’s crews. 

But people living in Arnold’s Cove are not used to that.

Patients need to look closely at the contracts they sign for medical service under virtual care by doctors not living in Newfoundland and Labrador.

And, of course, no one from the provincial government or the College of Physicians and Surgeons has told the public about this let alone warned them of the implications should something go wrong.  

After all,  there really isn't anyone in the province responsible for protecting the public in these sorts of things, is there?

-srbp-

Junkyard wars

Syrian rebels have been using modern technology in the simplest of ways in their war against the Assad regime in Syria.

In the picture at left,  a rebel crew are shown using an angle meter app for the iPad to check the alignment of a mortar barrel before an attack.

According to a story in the Daily Mail last September,  the photo shows members of the 'Ansar Dimachk' Brigade, which operates under the Free Syrian Army, using a tablet "to help fire a homemade mortar towards a battlefront in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus."

The rebels have also been using iPads for other purposes as well, as the following video shows.

-srbp-

Nano UAVs #nlpoli

Let’s take a break from politics and have a look at the amazing way that technology has developed in the past decade.

All those small radio controlled helicopters you see in the stores these days?  Yeah well, they  - or ones very similar  - are already in use for  keeping an eye on things in the military.

Here’s a brief video about one such very small remotely piloted vehicle in use by the British Army in Afghanistan.  Tough out the fusilier’s thick Geordie accent.  What he is says is that he and a section of a soldiers (about eight) can use these tiny Black Hornet cameras to scout just a few metres around their location to spot any problems. 

Pushing buttons: technology and campaigns

While most candidates in the St. John’s municipal election have embraced some form of technology to support their campaign, the level of usage and the sophistication varies widely.

On one end of the spectrum you’ve got Ward Three candidate Bruce Tilley and his Web 0.5 beta site that looks like it was left over from the days when the Internet ran on vacuum tubes.

There’s no one who has fully embraced Web Campaign 2.0, but some are pretty close.

Like Shannie Duff and Simon Lono. Both have the social media add-ons like Twitter and they update them frequently. Both are also using videos through youtube to help spread their views. 

Those are just two;  their are others like Sheilagh O’Leary or Debbie Hanlon who are making maximum use of the facebook space to keep their network of dedicated supporters informed an up-to-date.

Others have got the look down, but the content is lacking, like any of the mayoral contenders or Keith Coombs.

Doc O’Keefe has a really expensive electronic brochure but then again that’s what you get when you hire an advertising agency. It’s all non-threatening designer beige and even the photos of the candidate are retouched packages of pure crud. 

Human beings simply do not look like this.  Borg have healthier skin tones.   There’s a calculated effort here to be inoffensive but the effect is so calculated and so miserably executed that it comes off being offensive and obnoxious.

 Ron Ellsworth’s site looks good, but there are some inconsistencies in the content that mar the overall package.  He has a section called “My approach” and the sub-headings are about “Our” this and that.  There are plenty of these jarring internal contradictions in Ellsworth’s campaign.  Think a plan where the first action item is to develop a plan. Altogether, these suggest Ellsworth hasn’t got his political shit together or his campaign team is so inexperienced or otherwise incapable that they can’t get a bit of focus to the message.

Take Twitter as another example. Ron’s got it, but one suspects he’s got it because someone told him that’s what campaigns need to look good.   But Twitter is the sort of thing that hyper-caffeinated hamster people with crackberries use to keep people notified of the bathroom habits or random firings of the few synapses left in their brains.  Some of them are so wired they are proof  a monkey can sometimes luck out and type a coherent sentence with just their thumbs.

Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

But when a guy uses Twitter like a stone tablet in cuneiform – google it, people on your iPhone -  you know that  Ellsworth can talk about engaging people but he has no idea how to actually do it. 

But if you want to get a taste for raw energy and the sort of straight-up presentation the Web 2.0 technology can deliver, check out Lono’s virtual door-to-doors. 

Specifically have a look at the one on community, taxes and services.  It should raise a few hackles but it speaks very loudly and very deliberately to a raft of voters in the west end of St. John’s.  Curb-side recycling is funny but the humour is an entree to a simple message about the need to just get on with better waste management.

The two that are getting the most attention are two you might expect to, though.  Bally Hally speaks directly to an election issue and one that will face the next council.  Lono makes his position clear. Lono’s call for a municipal auditor general seems to have struck a nerve with people too, if the number of visitors is any indication.

There are plenty of ways to use technology in political campaigns. You can see the full spectrum in the St. John’s municipal race.

-srbp-

How old is your cell phone?

Try 1989 for customers of Central Telephone in the United States. 

That’s the date on this video from youtube and it looks to be about right.

There’s another video dated 1986 but the thing lacks any voice over or other identifying marks to suggest it is either an ad or something from about 1986.

The cell phone itself dates back way before that  - try 1973 - with the first commercial product entering service in the mid to late 1970s.  of course, with a handset going for about US$4,000, there weren’t a lot of them on the go.

As with home computers, consider the capabilities of cell phones back then and what they do today.

-srbp-