talkingDigital

New technology has been the catalyst for positive change in numerous industries. One that’s benefited immensely is the medical industry, because practitioners are better able to provide their patients with excellent care while increasing efficiency at the same time.

Electronic health records are an example of cutting-edge technology that’s being widely implemented. Here are some specific examples of how both physicians and patients can benefit.

English: Electronic Health Records flow chart.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Real-time information

When treating a patient, it’s crucial that a doctor has access to up-to-date information that’s also highly accurate. Any missing or outdated information can hinder a doctor’s ability to diagnose and treat an ailment effectively.

Traditional paper files can be an issue because they sometimes lack key pieces of recent information. When this happens, that can reduce the odds of a quick recovery; at worst, it could be life-threatening.

Electronic health records are better because all information that’s input by one physician can immediately be viewed by any other physicians the patient visits. This ensures a higher degree of safety and reduces the likelihood of a medical error occurring.

Enhanced doctor-patient communication

Rather than communicating through phone calls as they did in the past, electronic health records allow doctors to send information to their patients electronically through email. Physicians can also send links to helpful online resources so patients can obtain information about after-care and learn more about their illness.

This enhanced patient participation can be beneficial for equipping patients with the knowledge to treat their ailment better so they can recover quicker.

Better overall efficiency

Another problem with traditional paper medical documents is that not everyone’s handwriting is perfectly legible. A hospital billing department might not be able to read the cost of a particular treatment accurately and bill a patient more or less than the actual total.

This can be highly problematic and lead to unnecessary complications that upset the flow of operations. By using the digital format of electronic health records, discrepancies should be significantly cut and different parties can stay on the same page.

Financial savings

Finally, a significant amount of money can be saved by storing information electronically. Just the costs of paper alone can really add up over the course of a year. Combine this with the cost of printing equipment, and doctors and hospitals can easily save thousands each year by using this type of technology.

Related articles

• Improving the doctor-patient relationship with the patient portal (PHR)
• What are the benefits of electronic health records (EHRs)?
• The Atlantic shares more on what EHR adoption will mean
• Physicians face challenge to share electronic health records, meet impending federal regulations

Project management in and of itself is a complex process. When an organization’s responsibilities include oversight for an entire portfolio, the process becomes even more sophisticated.

Why? Because the goals of project portfolio management (PPM) have to layer in scheduling, delivering, operations, and financial considerations, just for starters, while also keeping a focus on customer relationship management and external real-world factors.

Using a cloud-based interface adds additional degrees of complexity. Here are some factors for small- to mid-sized companies that may be tackling this management strategy for the first time.

Essential buyer’s guide for PPM

Getting the lowdown on the terminology and basic best practices used by other companies in your field is recommended. As one the top on-demand PPM solutions firms, Daptiv is a good place to start.

Their Essential Buyer’s Guide for PPM is a free download guide that will walk you through business justifications, assessments on your company’s maturity level, and industry trends and solutions for today’s digital age.

Setting priorities

You should decide on which initiatives are best aligned with the company’s mission statement and basic principles at the outset. According to InformationWeek contributor Frank J. DeLuca, “even with an engaged executive team, you will still need a PPM champion,” who should be an IT leader ideally, since a number of the initiatives will be technologically based.

To the cloud, my friend, to the cloud

Cloud-based project management has been inevitable for some time now. Cloud-oriented solutions are easier to manage because it’s there where a company can manage Big Data and take advantage of web-based scheduling tools that are no longer dependent on a single platform — and can also interface with evolving mobile environments.

Some of the tools PPM teams should consider are Microsoft’s Project Online with Office 365, ProjectManager.com, Write, Gantter, LiquidPlanner, and AtTask.

Accessing APIs in the cloud

Addressing API needs as they pertain to security, flexibility, scalability, performance, governance, and interoperability will indicate options for you that are currently available in the cloud. Andi Mann’s post, titled “Harness APIs to Deliver Competitive Applications in the ‘Cloud of Clouds,'” is a wee bit too detailed for the beginner, but it’s full of valuable information that pertains to APIs in the cloud.

According to Mann, if you do a formal analysis of your portfolio, you should be able to the cloud service that would be the best for your needs. It may not be one of the “usual suspects” such as Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Force.com, or Google App/Compute Engine.

As 2013 winds down and 2014 looms, it’s a perfect time to start something new. For small-to-mid-size firms, getting involved in PPM right away will point you in the right direction to become more competitive in the years to come.

If you don’t jump on board, you’ll see you’ve missed the boat as the blogosphere generates more analysis pertaining to the management of Big Data. Good luck, and happy sailing into those clouds.

Related articles

• Scaling Quality Content
• Project Management Software That Is Essential To Increase Productivity & Streamline Communication – Daptiv.com

The real estate industry seemed to go an entire century with very little change to the way it fundamentally operated. If you wanted to get a new place, you found a real estate agent, drove to see apartments or houses, picked one, and sealed the deal.

If you wanted to sell that place later, the same agent helped you by putting it on a listing exchange. But times have changed … and they’re still changing.

Here are three technologies that are driving innovations that have occurred in the real estate industry, or are on their way here!

1. Smartphones

It would be hard to narrow down smartphone functions to one word, because the many ways that smartphones have disrupted the real estate market are vast. You can walk past a property, search for it with a mobile application, find photos of the interior, and dig up former sales prices, tax assessments, and sales contract status — all online.

You can call the agent as well, although in this app-crazed world, many people seem to have forgotten that functionality!

2. Digital signing

First there was the fax machine, which drastically reduced the time it took to conduct real-estate transactions. And though fax machines eventually achieved a network effect that drove high usage rates, they’re becoming obsolete, thanks to digitally signed documents.

Now it’s as easy as signing the screen of your smartphone to buy, sell, or lease a property.

3. Blogs and content

Blogs are hugely abundant and constantly growing, so content is becoming more focused. Thanks to blog frameworks that are easy to replicate, the time it takes to set up a blog has diminished to the point where it can be done in five minutes.

Content creation, as a result, has exploded. And when there’s more content, the nature of competition dictates that consumers will expect a higher quality and more relevant content from the blogs they choose to follow.

A great example of this can be found in the Clinton Hell’s Kitchen real estate website that’s operated by a local office of Keller Williams. On this site, you’ll find not only real estate listings for the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, but all kinds of specialized content that should be helpful to consumers who are considering a move to that neighborhood.

When websites were harder to build and information was less connected online, this type of content would be fairly rare. But today and tomorrow, we should expect this type of excellence in every real estate market in the developed world!

Related articles

• 5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Real Estate Agent
• Five Ways to Mobilize the Real Estate Business and Close More Sales
• 90,000 Keller Williams real estate agents go mobile with Google Apps