Subjective News

Healthcare Password Survey I conducted a small survey last month. It's been quite revealing; the results aren't a surprise, but the scale of some of the biases revealed are. I'd love to redo this properly - countrywide - though I doubt that there would be that much of a difference.  Total responses were 207. Here is the breakdown -  Do you use least one username and password to access systems at your work? Yes 202 96.7% No 5 2.4% The vast majority of healthcare workers obviously need access to computer systems as part of their jobs. Everything is becoming electronic, or is already (or should be!).  Number of Username-Password combinations? 1 10 4.8% 2-4 87 41.6% 5-7 59 28.2% 8-10 23 11% Over 10 20 9.6% This is an interesting result - 48.8% of responders have 5 or more username-password combinations to remember and almost 20% have 8 or more! That's a lot of co...

Wearable Tech in 2015  I attended the Wearable Tech Show 2015 on March 10th at the ExCel in London, just for one day. Let me start by saying that the ExCel is an okay venue and I’ve been there before. I don’t understand the logic of shutting over half the places that serve food midweek when there are clearly more than one event going on. Anyway… I was on a fact finding mission and so visited almost every stand. In the end I got a little tired as it was all much of a muchness. There were certainly some interesting products and ideas on display although about half of them looked like they were products looking for a use and another quarter were ideas and tech that will presumably be subsumed by some larger tech corporation like Samsung or Apple. Someone should have warned me to expect the trackers though. Trackers. So many trackers. Trackers Everyone is selling a health tracker of some sort and they all have some interesting or really boring USP. Worryingly, I had to explain ...

Pre-flight Check Anaesthetic Reference Cards, a new Subjective Effect app, is out now on iTunes and Google Play . The support site, with instructions, can be found here . I was approached (electronically, natch) by a consultant anaesthetist who thought the physical cards he'd been involved with producing would make a nice app. He was right. It's a simple app for anaesthetic novices and as such has probably been released too early. When the new intake starts in August perhaps they'll find their way to it. Oh, it's my first Ionic app. More to come. Ionic and on an on Speaking of Ionic; I wrote a relatively well received piece over on Medium  which is partly intended to be really useful for Ionic beginners and partly my own notes, for me, posted online so I can get to them any time. Have a read .

Duolingo Anyone who has used Duolingo  for any amount of time will tell you - it's wonderful. Why is it wonderful? Well, it teaches you a foreign language and you can tell its working because you progress. There comes a point where you're typing (or swiping) whole sentences and you just get it. It starts to come together. Suddenly you can say "Our cat does not eat cheese" and then "His trousers are red" in another language. Your pronunciation is probably awful but so what? The thing with Duolingo is this; it doesn't just  teach you, it gamifies the teaching. Each lesson is packaged into little chunks and for each chunk you have 3 hearts, or lives. You can fail but you can't fail too many times. It's a bit like R-Type in that sense, and you can buy power-ups and extras (though I can't find the heart refill anymore, sadly). There's even a timed practice that really puts the pressure on. So as you can tell, if you've ever thought...

I'm on the way home from the Ionic UK launch at Skills Matter in London. It was a interesting meet-up for sure and some of the technical chat went a little over my head. Most of it made sense and it was really heartening to see so many other people involved and excited about something I'm so keen on - it's going places. There were a few stand out moments for me personally. All the people were really friendly and approachable and I had a small chat with Ryan from Sworkit . That's a really cool app that one guy made. Impressive. But the big thing for me was something I'd never really thought about before. When you develop a website, or a web app, you do it with the aim of deploying once and your app or site being accessible and functional from any browser. This is even more true if you have a fully responsive site that works on mobiles and tablets. Developing native apps for mobile is a different thing altogether. Not only do you need to use a different langu...

Yes, 4500. That's some type of milestone because it's taken ages for the numbers to rise from about 4300 users. There were a few dips where I lost users but no matter - the point of Resus Algorithms is to get those algorithms into the hands of those that want and need them. The story on iOS is a little different. In the Google dev console I can see downloads AND current installs. On iOS I can only see downloads so I've no idea how many people are still using using Resus Algorithms. On iOS there are 4910 downloads. On Android there are actually 7570 downloads. 3000 people uninstalled Resus Algorithms on Android. Can I accept the same proportions on iOS? I'm going to assume, for arguments sake, that all 4900 iOS downloads represent users. The latest NHS numbers, from this link - http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs - state there are 518864 doctors and nurses in the NHS at the moment. So I have 1.81% penetration of my potential users...

I've been busy with my other outfit - EtherWare  - working on something (else!) exciting for anaesthetists. EtherWare recently released Drug Cards  , a cross platform (iOS & Android, natch) app for doctors and nurses who work in emergencies, theatres and ITU, and anywhere really (if we're being honest). Medical staff really need something they can get their teeth into and the BNF doesn't really cut it. It's massive and comprehensive, in terms of the range and number of medications listed, and we all love to have one (or the app) to hand. It doesn't give you the type of salient and to the point points we'd like though - hence Drug Cards. A large component of drug cards is the pharmacology and effects section. We think we've done a good job but get in touch, here or on EtherWare, if you have suggestions, praise or criticism. You'll notice there is a Pearls of Wisdom section that is empty for many of our drugs; this is for you, the user, to sugges...