I read with great interest a recent piece at FierceHealthcare. According to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, health apps aren’t living up to the hype. To me, the entire field has been overblown from the beginning. “A new UC San Francisco study … revealed nearly every participant who used health apps … Read more
My “swag bag†from the unSUMMIT contained an issue of Specialty Pharmacy Continuum, a throw-away pharmacy journal focused on specialty pharmacy practice. Like most throw-away pharmacy journals I read these days, I found the content timely and interesting.
One of the articles – Get Appy! New Tech a Bridge to Patient Care – discusses how Avella Specialty Pharmacy is using mobile technology to connect with their patients. Apparently Avella is pretty forward thinking.
The phrase “mobile computing†has been around for a long time. Remember the “Ultra-Mobile PC†(UMPC) movement back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s? That was an exciting time for mobile computing. Unfortunately the excitement was limited to a very small circle. Back then, the technology simply wasn’t ready for widespread consumer adoption. The machines were cool, but clunky, slow, and insanely expensive. People were not ready to embrace something that required more than a cursory knowledge of technology. Even though the technology was not anywhere near what it is today, I firmly believe that many of the concepts floating around during the UMPC days were fundamentally better than much of what we have on the market today. We’ve progressed forward in many ways, but slid backward in others. It’s unfortunate that society wasn’t ready for the concepts back then. Imagine where we would be today if we would have continued to develop the UMPC concepts and ideas from the 90’s.
I came across this app the other day and thought it was pretty interesting. The app, MediSafe Medication Minder, is part of the MediSafe Project. The website isn’t very informative, but it’s worth checking out. What’s the MediSafe app all about? Well, this pretty much sums it up: “It’s simple. When it’s time for you … Read more
I am the proud owner of a brand new Samsung Chromebook that my wife so generously left for me under the Christmas tree. Clearly I’m a lucky man, for more than one reason. There’s no shortage of Chromebook reviews on the internet, and you’re likely to get more out of them than you will by … Read more
Not to be confused with the Golden-Showers Headset (post for another time), the Golden-i Headset is a mobile computer worn by paramedics made by Ikanos Consulting, a Nottinghamshire, UK firm. The headset itself is butt ugly, but the functionality is cool. The headset can be controlled by both voice and head gestures. How many use … Read more
Motion has is a familiar name in the healthcare industry. Their C5 tablet PC used to be fairly popular among hospitals implementing BCMA. Not so much anymore.
Regardless of their current popularity, Motion has announced an update to a couple of their rugged tablet PCs, namely the F5t and C5t. I’m not a big fan of either as I prefer their J3500, but they’re still pretty slick machines.
I’ve been reading reports at various tech blogs that the new Microsoft Surface RT tablet due out in late October is going to be priced at $199. While I’d like to believe it, I simply think it’s too good to be true. At $199 the Windows RT version of the Surface tablet would be a no-brainer for anyone looking for a nice tablet with enterprise potential. Let’s face it, at that price I wouldn’t hesitate to grab one site unseen.
Remember when ultra-mobile personal computing (UMPC) was all the rage? I do, but it’s been a while. That was back in the day when you had machines like the HTC Shift or the OQO Microcomputer (Models 1-3).
You could argue that smartphones have become the new UMPC platform, or even perhaps the host of new iOS and Android tablets, but they’re really not the same thing. The UMPC movement involved computers that were designed, in concept at least, to give you the desktop experience on a machine that you could fit in your pocket. This included using an operating system similar to the desktop as well as a physical keyboard and the ability to dock the device and use peripherals like a mouse.
A perfect example of a UMPC device was the OQO Microcomputer. The OQO was a 5-inch computer with physical keyboard that ran Microsoft Windows. I wanted one so bad I could taste it. Unfortunately the OQO was a $2000 luxury that I simply couldn’t justify at the time. I did however get my hands on one for about a week. The experience was cool, but it definitely left me feeling like the device would be difficult to use as a true desktop replacement.
