Ran across an interesting article over at The Oil Drum: Europe that defends wind energy as a viable option for our energy needs. (As a side note I’ve been working on a longer entry about some of the stuff we learned about the economics of wind power that hopefully I can get finished this week.) Anyway, I found this chart comparing the growth of nuclear energy in the 60s and 70s to the growth of wind over the last 15 years particularly interesting:
Interesting.
One of the things we’ve talked about a fair amount with GE and on the blog is our desire to see more people (especially kids) get interested in science and want to become scientists.
Well, it looks like we should also be thinking about how to get more kids to think about becoming doctors. This from Slate:
Obama-administration officials have reportedly become alarmed by doctor shortages, especially since millions of previously uninsured people would gain coverage—and therefore increase demand—if the president manages to pass national health care reform. To make up for the physician shortfall, which several studies suggest could reach 100,000 over the next 20 years, the Association of American Medical Colleges is recommending a 30 percent increase in med-school enrollment.
They then proceed to go through all the reasons why this is the case at the moment (more patients, doctors working fewer hours, etc.). I wonder if this isn’t another goal we can consider when we’re thinking about how to help communicate what GE is up to in the health world.
Update (4/29/09): J makes a good point in the comments: “Are you sure there’s really a shortage of students that want to become doctors? Looking at these numbers – looks like each school accepts far less than 10% of applicants. I realize that some are not qualified, some go to other schools, etc… but is it possible that there’s no need for encouragement? The demand is there – its just the supply that needs to be increased.” While this is true, I guess the flip side is that the schools need to keep their admissions low to keep the talent level high. Or maybe not, I’ve heard of colleges keeping admissions artificially low for rankings. Interesting.
There’s a nice Fast Company article this month that goes through four innovations in the world of health. Here’s the description of a world that includes all of them:
Think what happens when you put these things together. You can see your doctor immediately without wasting time in a waiting room. A robust database helps your physician make more accurate diagnoses. Advances in robotics cut your recovery time after surgery — and could even lead to operations assisted by remote experts. This is the vision of the medical system of tomorrow. And it’s emerging today.
So I may be a little obsessed with behavioral economics, but this article about how Obama is using it had some gems for both energy and health.
Which message would persuade homeowners to save electricity: a call to their environmental conscience, or an appeal to their wallet? Cialdini tested those approaches in a San Diego experiment, and the answer was neither. What worked was an appeal to conformity. Residents used less power when they were told their neighbors were using less power. We’re a herdlike species, more likely to be obese if our peers are.
Interesting to think about, especially as part of smart-grid applications. Maybe just showing savings isn’t enough.
And this quote about health data, while not exactly about behavioral economics is worth sharing/thinking about:
More information can make us healthier too, which is why the stimulus poured $1.1 billion into “comparative effectiveness” research. Orszag has reams of charts showing that medical tactics and costs vary wildly across the country, with little regard for what works. He’d like to document best practices — from emergency-room to-do lists that dramatically reduce infections to protocols for when pricey tests and surgeries really help — and then have all medical providers adopt them. This approach has helped American anesthesiologists reduce deaths as well as costs.
How can GE help to make more of this data public, available and easily sharable between both medical organizations and individuals?
One of our stops at the Global Research Center, holographic data storage, got a little writeup in the New York Times yesterday as well as a nice roundup over at the Global Research Center Blog.
Here’s Brian Lawrence explaining “threshold recording behavior”:
You may be asking, “what is threshold recording behavior?” Well, it is a fancy way of saying that we are looking to develop a material that records data in a way that is similar to how other optical disc technologies (CD, DVD, or BD) record data. That is, when the optical drive is reading a disc, the laser power is turned down to relatively low levels. To record data the laser power inside the drive will be turned up to high power. This high power enables the laser to create changes in the recording layer of the disc. For example, a laser power of 1 mW might be used to read a CD or DVD, which is less than most laser pointers generate, but a laser power of 10 to 50 mW might be used to record. So to put it simply, threshold behavior refers to the low-power readout and high-power recording process.
I had never heard this term before we went to the hospital - Age of Majority. Basically, it means you are a legal adult – you can drink, smoke, vote, join the army, buy stocks, get married. Probably you can’t rent a car yet. In most of the USA the age is 18. As it relates to the medical profession, the key age it seems is 28. It is 28 because that is how long most hospitals keep records of a birth. Because if there was a criminal error during your birth and it caused problems later in life, you could sue when you are an adult if it is within a statute of limitations
To quote a government study about health related data retention:
AHIMA Standards and State Law Data: As a matter of professional practice, AHIMA has established the following recommended retention standards: 10 years after the most recent encounter (adult health records); age of majority plus statute of limitations (minor health records); 10 years after infant reaches age of majority (fetal heart monitor records); 10 years (disease, operative, and physician indexes); five years (diagnostic images such as x-ray films); and permanently (master patient index; registers of births, deaths, and surgical procedures).
I found this out when we were researching GE’s infant care products, and talking about Electronic Medical Records. Apparently, one of the compelling reasons for a hospital to switch to EMR is because they can gather more data, and it is easier to store for longer periods of time, so they can defend against lawsuits.
Now, this is not the only reason, practicing more accurate medicine is certainly important, but this seems to be a critical reason why hospitals will pony up the money to make the switch, because it could save them 10x the money in the long term. Digital insurance.
It seemed super messed up to me, until I found out that hospitals get sued enough that apparently some hospitals will not even give birth anymore, you have to go somewhere else. !! ! Now I don’t know enough to presume that this is because people are more litigious or doctors are doing a bad job, or how widespread this really is, but it sure put the situation into a different light for me.
I am constantly surprised that the medical industry is so backwards-seeming with regards to technology. Writing everything down on paper, storing it in a box for 10 years. Sending slides through the mail instead of scanning & emailing. But then I guess a hospital is a business, and if you are forced to think about the legal ramifications on a scale of nearly three decades for data retention/implementation, I can understand being slow to move on it.
So EMR solves some of the problem a hospital might have – basically covering their butt so they can stay in the baby business, and I am sure that having a more accurate process for record keeping saves TONS of mistakes due to human error, handwriting, etc. But again, thinking that choosing a hospital to give birth in is a unique chance to make a great first impression as a brand (both for GE and for the hospital) it seems like the pitch for EMR is kind of negative – do it because the industry is behind, or because there are errors, or because you might get sued.
Is there a positive way – can your baby’s medical records becoma keepsake, like how you can get those books printed from iPhoto , maybe a little timeline with ultrasounds and baby pictures that tie in to checkups? Or maybe this ties into your baby’s upcoming preventative health regime, depending on the results of the birth and tests, you get a booklet thats the start of your new child’s future health plans.
Back on the topic of making health fun (which we’ve been thinking of as life optimization), I ran across this article over at Technology Review about taking all those photos parents take of baby and making them useful. Basically the software asks parents to log milestones along with photos as a way to track development. As the article describes:
Researchers found that parents who used the program recorded nearly twice as many of these milestones as those who used a basic medical record-logging program instead. Pediatricians urge parents to monitor these milestones so they can be aware of early warning signs of developmental disorders, like autism or deafness.
But this was the real kicker for me: “Making medical record keeping more fun and less medical actually motivates people and can have positive influences.” Exactly!
MEMS are micro electromechanical systems. As I understand it, that pretty much means they’re tiny chips with moving parts.
The example the team at GE gave us to help us understand how and why they matter is circuit breakers. Think of the box you have at home that’s full of a bunch of black switches which trip if there’s some sort of surge. Those things take milliseconds to flip open and protect, during which time the current can rise to thousands of amps, which could short something. With a MEMS breaker, however, that time is limited to microseconds, thanks in large part to the fact that the switch just has less distance to travel (it’s the difference between turning a light switch the size of the one on your wall and one that would fit on a microchip).
Here’s the MEMS team explaining:
(If you are looking to learn more about circuit breakers, head on over to How Stuff Works, though I think I’ve done a fair job describing it.)
Where this technology becomes especially interesting is in large industrial settings where you might be dealing with millions of dollars of equipment. Frying something at that size can have a big impact on business. Craziness.
The team at GE explains:
When we went down to visit the Maternal Infant Care division we spent a lot of time talking about premature babies. These are the little guys you see in incubators at the hospital. (Before I continue let me say that I know almost nothing about babies. I don’t have one and spend very little time with them.)
Okay … So the thing that I found most interesting from the trip is why incubators exist (and specifically why GE has added some of the features they have to the products they make). So basically a premature baby is tiny, it was meant to spend some more time with it’s mother before it was ready to face the world on its own. Something happened and it wasn’t able to do that, so now all of a sudden it finds itself out of the womb, but it hasn’t yet developed to the point where it’s really ready to fend for itself.
So, part of the reason you put a baby like this in an incubator is to regulate it’s temperature for it. Basically, if the baby had to keep itself at 98.6 on its own it would waste a ton of energy. Because the incubator is doing the job the baby can focus those calories on other stuff, like growing. The same is true with moving a baby around: Every time you jostle a baby and they need to readjust themselves they waste those same valuable calories. 
Which is why GE added the Baby SusanTM to their Giraffe Omnibed (this is no joke, it’s really called the “baby susan” … see photo above). It does exactly what it sounds like, allowing nurses to get at babies without having to move them every time. Nice to see kitchen innovations making it into the hospital. In case you still want to learn more, here’s some of our GE hosts explaining this stuff: