I recently read a New York Times blog post about how mobile technologies and cloud-based computing are changing the way companies in nearly every industry do business. The writer pointed out that tech firms are adapting, both in how they package and market their offerings and by creating new products to suit corporations’ evolving needs.
For me, it was yet another reminder of how emerging tech is reshaping our work in health care and at Johns Hopkins, something that I think about often.
In my own department, we use data-visualization tools to better understand our potential patients’ needs and to take a deeper look at how to positively affect population health. The speed with which we can do this today is unprecedented. The Department of Medicine uses those same tools to display patient flow throughout the hospital, watching bed capacity and demand in real time.
Some of our caregivers now work with smartphone apps to support on-the-spot clinical decisions, calculate dosage and research drug interactions.
And, we have talented teams of clinicians, engineers, designers and developers creating their own apps to help patients. One for example, helps non-specialists diagnose sleep disorders, and another is a virtual game to help people recover motor function after stroke. The list goes on.
There are so many ways, in fact, that technology transforms our efforts at Johns Hopkins, that I knew we needed to share those developments with our employees and the world. I also saw a real need to help inform our people on how to incorporate appropriate tech innovations into their work. So, we recently launched a website and publication under the name Insight with those aims in mind. We do all of this, of course, to better serve our patients and their families, and to improve our lives in the workplace. I hope that you will enjoy reading Insight as much as we enjoy creating it!
Out-of-the-Box Perspectives 