Saturday morning coffee [November 16 2013]

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” – Charles Bukowski

So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

Eighty-three percent of adults in America drink coffee. It’s the world’s second-most traded commodity. (via ListVerse)

Thor was #1 at the box office last weekend. My family and I saw it. It was good, not Avengers good, but it was good. Loki steals the show.

The most visited post at jerryfahrni.com over the past 7 days remains Why pharmacy continues to fail.

The Garage – Episode 2 is up here and here.

I’m sure you’re all aware of the healthcare.gov fiasco. It was a good idea, but the execution fell short of expectations. It’s unclear as to what went wrong, as it’s obviously not that hard to build such a site. Just ask the three guys in SF that built thehealthsherpa.com. According to CBS News “with a few late nights, Ning Liang, George Kalogeropoulos and Michael Wasser built “thehealthsherpa.com,” a two-week-old website that solves one of the biggest problems with the government’s site. Liang showed CBS News how it worked. “You come to our website and you put in your zip code — in this case a California zip code. You hit ‘find plans,’ and you immediately see the exchange plans that are available for that zip code.” – Check it out, it’s pretty slick. As I’ve said time and time again, it’s important to remember that the U.S. government brought us the DMV and the IRS. What made you think they could do this right? Seriously, think about it for a moment.

CyanogenMod has released an Android app that will walk you through the process of installing the CM ROM. It’s a really cool idea. Unlocking and rooting your Android device isn’t as easy as many people make it sound. At least for me it wasn’t. This app should make things a little easier. With that said, I downloaded the app and tried to install the CM ROM. I failed.

FierceMobileHealthcare: “A study at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio found that residents did not attribute high value to the Apple iPad as a clinical rounding or educational tool, according to a study in the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine.” – I’m not surprised by the numbers, which you should read for yourself. The iPad offers a very limited range of functionality in the clinical setting. I found this out for myself a few years back when we tried to use iPads to replace tablet PCs. Didn’t work.

I am constantly reading about ultrabooks and tablets. In fact, I have a running list of devices that I’d like to own. A personal top 5 in each category if you will. The Sony VAOI Flip 13 and the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 are both on that list. Which one would I buy first? Impossible to say as they’re very different machines. Would I carry both? No way, too heavy. Anyway, Lisa from MobileTechReview did a fantastic video review of the two machines, and I put it here for your viewing pleasure:

Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) may sound like a funny thing, but if you’ve ever talked with someone with the condition it drives them crazy. A study recently published in The Lancet Neurology discusses the use of opioids as a viable treatment option. The article found that “Prolonged release oxycodone—naloxone was efficacious for short-term treatment of patients with severe restless legs syndrome inadequately controlled with previous treatment and the safety profile was as expected. Our study also provides evidence of open-label long-term efficacy of this treatment. Opioids can be used to treat patients with severe restless legs syndrome who have had no benefit with first-line drugs.”

There’s a good review article on Circulatory Shock in the October 31, 2013 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine. It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed circulatory shock. Turns out not much has changed. The key to treatment remains “correction of the cause of shock and hemodynamic stabilization, primarily through fluid infusion and administration of vasoactive agents”. Been that way for years.

Finally pulled the trigger on a new smartphone. I custom built and ordered myself a Motorola Moto X. It should be here some time next week.

Gmail now offers a really cool feature that allows me, the user to save attachments directly to Google Drive folders. Found out completely by accident.

Medical Xpress: “Diabetic patients treated in the emergency department who were enrolled in a program in which they received automated daily text messages improved their level of control over their diabetes and their medication adherence, according to a study published online today in Annals of Emergency Medicine (“Trial to Examine Test Message Based mHealth in Emergency Department Patients with Diabetes (TExT-MED): A Randomized Controlled Trial”).” – Something as simple as a daily text message. Seems pretty simple to me, and totally worth the effort.

I’ve been working on a DoseEdge implementation for the past couple of weeks. Actually the company calls what I’m doing at this moment “pre-implementation” work. I’ve found everything about the process to be overly complex and labor intensive. I think there’s a more detailed blog post brewing.

The ultimate utility of a tablet comes with the ability to utilize a stylus, i.e. a pen to take notes, draw, etc. That’s why I was excited to see an announcement for the NVIDIA Tegra Note 7. So far it’s the only real option to the Galaxy Note 8.0 for devices with screens smaller than 10-inches. Check the video below. It looks like the company has put a fair amount of thought into the pen functionality. Cool stuff. You can read more about the tablet at SlashGear. If you’re really in the mood to pre-order one you can head on over to Newegg and grab one for $199.

I’ve been using MedInfoNow for a couple of years. The service provides a weekly email of relative new articles for subjects and journals that the user selects. The company was in the process of making some significant changes to the service over a year ago, but I haven’t seen anything from them in a while. Anyway, my subscription came up for renewal and I simply had to let it go. Would love to hear from anyone that continues to use the service.

Fast Company: “Developed by entrepreneur Isabel Hoffman and York University math professor Stephen Watson, TellSpec is a raman spectrometer that uses an algorithm to calculate what’s in your food. In sum, the laser scans food and measures the light that’s reflected back. That information is sent to a smartphone app that uses TellSpec’s algorithms to measure the qualities of what’s in the food. Hoffman says it takes about 30 seconds on average to get a reading, though some dark foods take longer.” – Neat concept for finding out what ingredients are in a drug, no? I took an idea like this to some “high level” executives and an engineer a couple of years ago. They said it couldn’t be done. Guess what boys and girls, someone’s doing it. In your face shortsighted, unimaginative people.

Has anyone else noticed how crappy TV has gotten lately? I sure have. I’ve given up on several programs that I used to look forward to. I used to love watching Sons of Anarchy (SOA) and The Walking Dead (TWD) for example. Both turned to unwatchable garbage. Really SOA, episode after episode of prison rape scenes to start a new season. What the heck is wrong with your writers? And TWD became nothing more than the same episode over and over again. Anyway, I waved them off in favor of other things.

On a positive note I’ve been quite happy taking in a lot of football. Between the NCAA and NFL I can catch football on Sunday, Sunday Night, Monday, Thursday, sometimes Friday, Saturday, and finally Saturday Night. In the time between football I’ve become fond of shows like Elementary, and watching shows like Homeland and House of Cards from the beginning. Dude, aren’t services like On Demand, Amazon Prime, and Netflix simply incredible? Of course they are.

UCLA beat Washington last night is a pretty good game. This puts UCLA is a great position to vie for the Pac-12 South.

Here are some college games worth watching this weekend: 1) #12 Oklahoma State at #23 Texas, 2) #1 Alabama at Mississippi State, 3) #5 Stanford at USC (really looking forward to this one). Amazing how USC starting winning after they let Kiffin go. Food for thought.

College football not your thing? No problem, the NFL slate looks pretty good too. NFL games worth watching: 1) Redskins at the Eagles (hate the Eagles and the “spread offense”), 2) 49ers at the Saints (Solid defense against crazy offense, something’s got to give), 3) Chiefs at the Broncos (see comment for item #2).

Have a great weekend everyone.