IT and Your Health

You hear so much bad news about big money and scarce resources being wasted on mega health projects that it's nice to get some good news about IT and your health. It's particularly nice if that good news affects your own life for the good.

To begin with, a good search engine now knows more and can tell you more than your doctor can, with whatever concerns you, either preventive or remedial. You are your own best doctor. So between you, your doctor and the Internet (and it might be a good idea to include God as well), you should be able to optimise your health situation.

And of course, not forgetting a healthy diet and exercise - on which you can also get the best advice through a good search engine. For example, it was on the internet that this writer discovered the amazing health benefits of sprouted seeds. They contain much needed enzymes to keep the stomach and digestion healthy, and are an organic, ever-fresh source of nutrients which are about 40 times more nutritious than ordinary, fresh vegetables.

But getting more specific on technology, if you have ever had to wait interminably for X-rays to be processed, or in some cases having them get lost, then the good news is that old-fashioned photos and use of snail-mail are going out.

Instead, some hospitals are now scanning the image straight into a central radiology database and making it instantly available across and between hospitals and consultants. Not only that, but because the images are available on high-resolution screens, it does make it easier to scrutinise the image and make a diagnosis.

Also, speech recognition is being added for the radiologist, so as to reduce writing, typing and transcription errors, and the time involved.

The x-ray images are input, along with any drawings made by the doctor, consultant or specialist, and get integrated into your electronic patient record.

In addition, with wireless networks, it means that bedside input & output to/from the patient record becomes feasible.

It means no more lost records, more reliable data, and much faster response to patient needs.

At least this is what it means in theory. The other factors, apart from the technology, are the people, process, organisation and management (PPOM) factors. These things, more than the technology itself, are the priority for getting things right in Health Care.

P.S.
Systems Thinking; treating everything as a system, within a system, within a system, is the key to getting PPOM right, and a future article will focus on Systems Thinking.

Innovation through Customers

About a year ago Dell Computers launched a community site aimed at interactive feedback with customers, for the purpose of improving products and customer service, and responding effectively to customer needs by using this Web 2.0 technology.

The site is called IdeaStorm and, judging by the comments and interactions so far, and especially the rapid response to customers enabled by the site, it seems to be a great success.

The site is powered by SalesForce.com, a SaaS purveyor of Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRM), and is based on their own Ideas Exchange.

Standing back and taking the Big Picture view, what's happening here is improved innovation and product leadership through collaboration with customers through a fairly new technology tool.

It represents innovative synergy between (a) the business organisation, (b) its customers and (c) information & communications technology (ICT). The prediction is that it will benefit the Business in achieving competitive advantage, provided Dell continue to innovate, and tie in its Business Processes with the site.

How did this innovation come about at Dell? Was it a top-down thing, or was it bottom-up? The guess is that it was a bottom-up idea and, if so, it gives an object lesson in using IT and people in achieving competitive advantage.

The people at the bottom, or more correctly at the Coal face, were empowered to innovate, and the people at the top provided the Governance that explicitly or implicitly laid down the principles and set up the organisation structures to make it all happen.

This use of ICT to bring customers into the innovation circle is predicted to grow, according an article in the December, 2007 McKinsey Quarterly.

And it's a good example of what this very blog site is all about.

T5: Lessons Learned

What actually went wrong in the catastrophic and highly publicised opening of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow? Was it another systems project failure, but this time a high-profile one?

The impact was first upon people; the passengers whose lives were at the minimum disrupted and at worst seriously blighted.

The impact on British Airways (BA) and British Aiports Authority (BAA), was likewise disastrous, not just in terms of the millions of pounds lost, but in lost reputations as well.

At top-level the cause was reported to be the Baggage Handling System; thousands of pieces of baggage piled up with nowhere to go.

However, reading in and between the lines of Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick's 31 March statement in Parliament, the failure was due to a number of things:

• A glitch in the software.
• Lack of coordination between BAA and BA.
• Lack of training.
• Poor planning.
• Lack of people integration on the ground.

Of these, web chat sites have blamed lack of training as the biggest reason for the failure.

It's significant that, out of the five reasons, only one was technology.
The others were down to people, organisation and management.

You can learn a lot from blog sites & comments, one such being Joolie Atkins, who specialises in IT training issues, and whose site with its comments gives us further reasons & insights for the T5 Failure:

• The Big Bang Approach; it should have been phased.
• Inadequate User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Lack of Systems Thinking; seeing the Big Picture.
• Lack of senior management involvement.
• No rehearsals; no process testing.

Again, only one of these had anything to do with Technology, which was the UAT - if this can be considered Technology.

So the T5 disaster appears to have had little to do with IT!

One commentator pointed to the re-opening of St Pancras Station (a beautiful example of Victorian architecture in London), and the Eurostar Service to the Continent, which was opened by H.M. The Queen, and went without a hitch. So it can be done, even when you have no option but to use the Big Bang Approach.

So what, as Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick asked in his statement before Parliament, are the Lessons To Be Learned?

There is only the space to summarise - what to do next time:

1. Senior management governance & involvement.
2. Join up Business and IT.
3. See the Big Picture.
4. Assure & test the end-to-end business process.
5. Provide quality & early (not tacked-on at the last-minute) training, and on what people need to do the job well.
   

Winning the Email Battle

The first thing to do in winning the email battle is to decide to do something about it; to decide to win.

That done, you'll invest a bit of time in winning the battle.

In fact you had better do something about it now, because:
The amount of information is increasing exponentially year by year!
What will happen if you don't do something about it?

Your productivity & performance will continually worsen,
and your increasing stress level will make you ill & angry!

Here's what needs to be done:

1. Use the Software
   Make sure you have the best system for email overload.
   Turn off the Alert.
   Use the Spam Filter.
   
2. Get Training
   Get quality training on how to effectively use your email software, and get more general training for yourself and colleagues (the people from whom you're likely to receive emails), on how to use email effectively.
   
3. Make Sure it's Relevant
   Work out your:
   - Explicit Goals & Objective (EGOs).
   - Critical Success Factors (CSFs).
   - Critical Current Issues (CCIs).
   - Knowledge & Competency Areas (KCAs)
   - Underlying Aims & Interests (UAIs)
   Although subject to change, this is your Relevance Base.
   It's only these things in which you're interested.
   Delete everything else.
   
4. Be a Good Sender/Giver
   - Is it relevant for and needed by the target recipient,
   and those copied?
   - Avoid sending a Victorian Novel!
   - Have a succinct, pithy, stand-alone, action-oriented heading.
   - Not more than five paragraphs, and keep them short.
   - Use good English. Make it easy to read & understand
   - Review for logical sequence and errors before sending.
   - Never send anything angry, impolite, confrontational or insensitive.
   - Action orientation: what do you want the recipient to do?
   - Minimise "For Your Interest".
   - Put yourself in the target recipient's shoes.
   
5. Use Information Net-Value
   Use Info Net-Value and evaluate each email; what's the cost v. benefit of receiving it?
   What's the cost v. benefit for the recipient of those you send?
   What's the cost v. benefit of social chat and news groups?
   
6. Manage the In-Box
   Manage your In-Box through the following:
   - Look at emails not more than four times per day.
   - Review for urgent and/or easy-to-deal-with according to the subject heading or sender.
   - If urgent and/or easy to handle, do now.
   - If not urgent or easy to do look at later, and handle all of these in chunks - not one at a time.
   - By end of day should not have more than ten open items, and these not because of delay but because of needing further information before replying or actioning.
   - All the rest should be deleted, filed or archived.
7. Assure Security and Regulatory Needs
   Delete anything from unknown sources unless you're sure it's
   (a) relevant, and (b) not malware, spam or phishing.
   Don't open an attachment unless you're sure it's
   (a) legitimate, and (b) needed.
   Don't delete anything that may be needed later on for regulatory reasons.
   

Lastly, don't be over-reliant on e-mail. It's a double-edged sword. People like the personal touch, and it may be a lot more effective if not enjoyable. Use the phone, or go and see, or write an old-fashioned note.