e-HealthExpert.org - Primum non nocere

If you're looking to hire a System Administrator to your healthcare organization, you might need to rethink your hiring guidelines and practices and hire a Linux System Administrator (SysAdmin). Few information technology professionals can appreciate the skill, knowledge and experience required to administer Linux servers and workstations.

Converting NT and UNIX SysAdmins to Linux, fails more often than not. In general, a Linux SysAdmin has an easier time working on Microsoft and UNIX operating systems than the other way around. The Linux SysAdmin could also help your organization to complete projects in time and within budget.

A well-known and highly documented process called "skunk works" gives us a hint at why Linux people can accomplish so much in such little time.

See the full story at: Linux in Government: Linux System Administrators

IT professionals are well known for using annoying clichès. An article at the IT Managers Journal lists some of the most annoying:

1. At the end of the day
2. Solution
3. Thinking outside the box
4. Synergy
5. Paradigm
6. Metrics
7. Take it offline
8. Redeployed people
9. Core Competency
10. Win-win
11. Value-added
12. Get on the same page
13. Customer-centric
14. Generation X
15. Alignment

See the full story at: IT Managers Journal

BBC News, in its article "Doctor IT upgrade support 'falls'" published Tuesday, 8 February, 2005, says that the £6.2bn overhaul of the NHS IT system could be undermined by declining support among doctors.
According to a recent report just one in five GPs are enthusiastic about the upgrade - down from more than half last year. At hospitals doctors support also fell from 75% to 51% during the same period.

Is this the the raise of the Semantic Web?
This was seen on the European Comission IDABC site:
"Semantic interoperability is central to the implementation of pan-European interoperability. The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) defines it as on of the three main dimensions of interoperability - besides organizational and technical interoperability."

You may read the full text at: Content Interoperability Strategy .

Besides easing our everyday e-life, the Semantic Web will, most probably, also end the present day Babel Tower of Health IT intercommunication protocols (HL7, X.12, HXP and others).

Some of the concepts in the following article are not easy to follow, but they surely deserve some of your time. I wonder, why was the article's example taken from healthcare?

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001 .

Further reading and technical papers may be found at: The Semantic Web home at W3C

In April 2003, in Innsbruck/Austria, took place an Workshop
on "New Approaches to the Systematic Evaluation of Health Information Systems" (HIS-EVAL).
From that workshop resulted a declaration - the Declaration of Innsbruck - with a set of definitions, observations and recommendations focusing the need to systematicaly evaluate the Health Information Systems.

This article was once available at: http://www.umit.at/efmi/reports/HIS-EVAL%202004.pdf
As of 2005.03.06 that link seems to be broken.
If you know a new one please report it to us (the email address is at the bottom of this page).

Prof. Scot Silverstein's, an experienced medical informaticist, has a web page named: Sociotechnologic Issues in Clinical Computing: Common Examples of Healthcare IT Difficulties. In that page he presents a clear insight on the sociotechnologic issues in clinical computing, giving real life examples of dangerous, common, costly, preventable healthcare information technology failures.