A couple of weeks ago my father was rushed to the local emergency room. First things first, he will be okay, but he spent a good week in the Intensive Care Unit. While he was there I really needed a diversion so the waiting and concern wouldn’t consume me. Being the geek I am, I occupied my time asking attendants about the way the hospital is using new technology. Much to my delight, I learned that my local, small-town hospital has come a long way over the years.

Let’s start with digital imaging. It is not a new concept; digital mammograms and x-rays are becoming more mainstream, CT and PET scans have been around for years. What is new is that there is no longer a long wait for someone to read and interpret the images. We experienced it first hand, getting test results in the same amount of time that it took to bring dad back to the room from the imaging department. The process is outsourced to an expert who accesses the images over the Internet. I have mixed feelings about that – after all, what do I know about the person reading the image on the other end of the wire? Then I realized: what the heck did I know about the poor overworked local physicians that always used to have stacks of images in front of them, waiting to be read, with people breathing down their necks and urging them to hurry? Nothing. I just have to hope in both cases the hospital has done due diligence to screen doctors and vendors. But wow does the new process speed up diagnosis. It is a follow-the-sun model, with doctors available 24 x 7 to read images; no waiting for the on-call physician to come in, no expensive overtime. Faster and cheaper, thanks to the Internet.

Next is the technology available in the ICU. There is a now a remote camera on the wall opposite the hospital bed, and there are speakers built into the ceiling. Since there is no guarantee a doctor is available to treat every emergency in ICU, there are doctors available remotely. The ICU team can enable the system and get a doctor on the other end of the wire pretty much instantaneously. According to the ICU staff, the remote doctor has controls that allow him or her to swivel the camera, zoom in to extreme close-ups, and provide instructions to the staff that come down from the speakers like the voice of God. Again, would I prefer someone local and in person? Absolutely. But in the event of an emergency, do I want to wait until a doctor is free to treat my father? No way. The new model is cheaper than scheduling extra physicians to be on standby, and faster treatment during busy times and emergencies, thanks to the Internet.

And it’s not just the way the hospital has leveraged technology in the treatment of patients, it is how the hospital has embraced technology to make the overall experience more bearable for the family. Remember the early days of cell phones, when you could not pass through the hospital doors with your cell phone on? Not only could I use the cell phone, the hospital has a Wi-Fi hot spot. In ICU. It was just outside my father’s treatment room door. For a week I sat watch, nearby for doctor’s meetings, available when either of my parents needed me. In the old days I would have spent hours staring at the wall, trying to get lost in a book, and worrying. Work is a wonderful distraction, and while it was difficult to be very productive, I could keep tabs on what was happening in the storage world, keep up with the news, and I even took a couple of conference calls in my little ICU work area.

The sign over the chair indicates the Wi-Fi hot spot. I was about to take a picture of the camera in the treatment room when a doctor came in to discuss treatment options – common sense won out over geekiness and I never got that shot.

So thanks to the staff and team that took such good care of my father – you know who you are. And thank you Tim Berners-Lee and Vinton Cerf. I don’t think they had these uses in mind when they did all the work that led to the modern internet. This is exactly the adaptation of technology Steve was discussing in his recent blog about adapting to the future. We’re seeing new uses for Internet-enabled business every day, but those are subjects for future blogs. Are all these adaptations better than the old ways of doing business? It depends – in this case the question is: do you prefer the comfort of a face-to-face interaction or the speed of instant access? For this use case I’ll take the speed every time.

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Tags: Internet, New Business Models