Well... it is damn sad and painfuly true that polish healthcare IT in XXI century (both staff, infrastructure and management) is still pretty lame...
The IT staff
Form my work experience in Poland the IT guys in hospitals are the most incompenent and most unpleasant kind of people. That is provided there are any, because there is often networking/database infrastructure that runs there by itself without much care or supervision (apart from some less ignorant doctors, who at least do backups (sometimes)).
Medical systems (databases)
Form my obsevation (however I'm not that much of an insider) there are almost as many different systems (like databases + applications) as there are hospitals * their departments. There is no consistency and no interoperability. These systems often don't even talk to each other despite standards like HL7, DICOM or even good old plain CSV. And a lot is "stored" on paper only (not also but only).
(Even more) Painful reality
Recently I've spent 7h waiting just to have a simple medical procedure performed on me.
They said it was going to be up to 4h wait, finally it took 7h, while the procedure itself took only 15 min.
Of which good several minutes was simply filling the paperwork. And it was filled on paper!
Also I was told I can't have the procedure performed by laryngologist without first having referral from first contact doctor. Why would I need a doctor to tell me that my ear is deaf? I know it alredy because I can't hear... Guess what? The only way to get help "quickly" was to go to the ER.
What a load of crap!
2012-06-20
2012-03-30
2011-12-07
More color, more images
I do realize that so far almost nobody is reading this stuff...
But here you go:
Enter when ready
Input failure
Industrial spaces #1
But here you go:
Enter when ready
Input failure
Industrial spaces #1
2011-12-06
2011-10-13
Deadlines
Lines of dead (bodies)? Like layers of lawyers (dead?)...
I do not belive in deadlines, deadlines are to be crossed.
It will be ready when it is ready....
"How do you come up with these arbitrary numbers?" as one Rodney McKay asked in "Stargate Atlantis".
I do not belive in deadlines, deadlines are to be crossed.
It will be ready when it is ready....
"How do you come up with these arbitrary numbers?" as one Rodney McKay asked in "Stargate Atlantis".
2011-10-11
Well...
Sometimes it is hard not to be a webmaster - http://bbx.art.pl/
Especially when one wishes to help a friend...
Especially when one wishes to help a friend...
2011-08-31
Some announcements
1. Button Generator - soon there will be dutch and french translations available.
2. STAT4U - just started rewritting everything from scratch - so there will be v3.0.
3. Probably there will be OCOP v4.0 some time soon (beginning of the next year, I think).
4. I'll be taking some time to work on several new Android apps.
5. I'm quite dissapointed that almost 1 year of work on my Q4U E-learning System didn't turn to be instantly fruitful, but I'm not giving up just yet.
2. STAT4U - just started rewritting everything from scratch - so there will be v3.0.
3. Probably there will be OCOP v4.0 some time soon (beginning of the next year, I think).
4. I'll be taking some time to work on several new Android apps.
5. I'm quite dissapointed that almost 1 year of work on my Q4U E-learning System didn't turn to be instantly fruitful, but I'm not giving up just yet.
Things don't just disappear
if ("things don't just disappear" statement is true) then there's no such thing as /dev/null ;
2011-08-13
New challenges
This post will not be modest.
After I learned quite fast and from scratch some basics of Java and Android API and created two apps to test my new skills I found myself in situation where I suddenly have to change job. After 4.5 years, mind you.
I got new job in one day, but this time the project required knowledge of C++ and MS Visual Studio 2008.
Good thing I have Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" book! But so far I couldn't bring myself to really read it. It took one weekend of reading and bang! "I know kung fu. / Show me." as it was in The Matrix. Or quoting from Star Trek Voyager's EMH when he first got his mobile emitter "It's just another environment to me".
Friend of mine told me, that these two are one of the best paying languages to know. I avoided them for years. Not any more. Hello World! Here I come!
After I learned quite fast and from scratch some basics of Java and Android API and created two apps to test my new skills I found myself in situation where I suddenly have to change job. After 4.5 years, mind you.
I got new job in one day, but this time the project required knowledge of C++ and MS Visual Studio 2008.
Good thing I have Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" book! But so far I couldn't bring myself to really read it. It took one weekend of reading and bang! "I know kung fu. / Show me." as it was in The Matrix. Or quoting from Star Trek Voyager's EMH when he first got his mobile emitter "It's just another environment to me".
Friend of mine told me, that these two are one of the best paying languages to know. I avoided them for years. Not any more. Hello World! Here I come!
2011-07-03
Crowdsourcing
Or GEO database and stupid turkish people.
Crowdsourcing is an interesting idea. It’s based on an assumption that greater and difficult (costly) task can be (in reallity where we have computers and Internet) divided into smaller tasks (sub-tasks, chunks) and performed by crowd of people who happen to have just some basic required knowlegde and a bit time to do small part of this bigger task each. A task that would take hours or days for only one person to complete and one person wouldn’t probably have all the data / expertise needed.
I myself decided to use this approach to do (and possibly complete) two quite not easy tasks:
1. Translation of a program interface (labels, dialogs, messages, etc.) into some foreign langauges (I only know polish, english and basic german and russian). In this particular case it’s my freeware Button Generator for Windows (I called it Button Generator Translation Project).
2. Collect and update geolocalisation data for all polish IP addresses (geo.4u.pl) for use with my STAT4U system (first polish web statistics).
Here are some of my observations on the subject after few years in the process.
In general people are heplpful. They seem to want to contribute out of their own free good will. That really keeps my belief in humanity up.
Translation of Button Generator into spanish and italian wouldn’t be possible without this great external help. Google translator is still not an option as it often tends to produce real crap. Also collecting geolocalisation data is not possible without such a help. Some things can be learned from whois or DNS, but a lot can’t. In Poland we have some ISP who have total mess in their whois data. For example Neostrada (by TP S.A.) is one big mess. Big IP areas here are described as Warszawa or Poznań or Lublin while in fact they are totally fragmented across the whole country. Some other ISP like UPC or NETIA have no city descriptions in whois at all. So the only way is to relay on what people tell you. And they usually give honest and accurate info (I always try to verify it to maximum extent possible).
These were the positive aspects of crowdsourcing. The negative ones are really annoying. I understand they are impossilbe to avoid, but ...
Why the hell people from Turkey are so stupid? They may not understand polish. That’s OK. They may even not understand english. But why do they have to fill web form they don’t understand. Why do they select city Turek (which is a CITY and is in Poland) and submit it as their location, when the form says clearly „We don't collect GEO information from outside Poland. If you are not in Poland please do not submit this form since your data will be discarded anyway.” ??? This happens every time I update the database (which is only semi-automatic). And there are always some IP-s from other countries entered as polish cities. WTF?
What I mean is I always process the data, but why people bother to enter such crap anyway?
Button Generator Translation Project – here often happens another crap – someone (or somebot) enters a lot of random text with some spam-like URL’s in it. I had to fix the form to be immune to (or ignorant of) HTML tags, URL and e-mails. This is something that shoud probably be done from the beginning. But I didn’t realize someone will actually do bad things here. There is no reason - again I will process everything manually when it’s time (when 100% is translated). UPDATE: I need to fix it more, it’s still not 100% immune!
Conclusion
I would guess when using crowdsourcing to accomplish something quality distribution will be more or less gaussian. One has to apply some filters on incoming data anyway - as usual always validate user input (any input). So standard do not trust rule (good oldschool paranoia) is ALWAYS required. Then and only then there will be overall benefit in the process.
p.s.
It seems to take a lot of time to complete crowdsourced task. Unless some marketing is done around it.
Crowdsourcing is an interesting idea. It’s based on an assumption that greater and difficult (costly) task can be (in reallity where we have computers and Internet) divided into smaller tasks (sub-tasks, chunks) and performed by crowd of people who happen to have just some basic required knowlegde and a bit time to do small part of this bigger task each. A task that would take hours or days for only one person to complete and one person wouldn’t probably have all the data / expertise needed.
I myself decided to use this approach to do (and possibly complete) two quite not easy tasks:
1. Translation of a program interface (labels, dialogs, messages, etc.) into some foreign langauges (I only know polish, english and basic german and russian). In this particular case it’s my freeware Button Generator for Windows (I called it Button Generator Translation Project).
2. Collect and update geolocalisation data for all polish IP addresses (geo.4u.pl) for use with my STAT4U system (first polish web statistics).
Here are some of my observations on the subject after few years in the process.
In general people are heplpful. They seem to want to contribute out of their own free good will. That really keeps my belief in humanity up.
Translation of Button Generator into spanish and italian wouldn’t be possible without this great external help. Google translator is still not an option as it often tends to produce real crap. Also collecting geolocalisation data is not possible without such a help. Some things can be learned from whois or DNS, but a lot can’t. In Poland we have some ISP who have total mess in their whois data. For example Neostrada (by TP S.A.) is one big mess. Big IP areas here are described as Warszawa or Poznań or Lublin while in fact they are totally fragmented across the whole country. Some other ISP like UPC or NETIA have no city descriptions in whois at all. So the only way is to relay on what people tell you. And they usually give honest and accurate info (I always try to verify it to maximum extent possible).
These were the positive aspects of crowdsourcing. The negative ones are really annoying. I understand they are impossilbe to avoid, but ...
Why the hell people from Turkey are so stupid? They may not understand polish. That’s OK. They may even not understand english. But why do they have to fill web form they don’t understand. Why do they select city Turek (which is a CITY and is in Poland) and submit it as their location, when the form says clearly „We don't collect GEO information from outside Poland. If you are not in Poland please do not submit this form since your data will be discarded anyway.” ??? This happens every time I update the database (which is only semi-automatic). And there are always some IP-s from other countries entered as polish cities. WTF?
What I mean is I always process the data, but why people bother to enter such crap anyway?
Button Generator Translation Project – here often happens another crap – someone (or somebot) enters a lot of random text with some spam-like URL’s in it. I had to fix the form to be immune to (or ignorant of) HTML tags, URL and e-mails. This is something that shoud probably be done from the beginning. But I didn’t realize someone will actually do bad things here. There is no reason - again I will process everything manually when it’s time (when 100% is translated). UPDATE: I need to fix it more, it’s still not 100% immune!
Conclusion
I would guess when using crowdsourcing to accomplish something quality distribution will be more or less gaussian. One has to apply some filters on incoming data anyway - as usual always validate user input (any input). So standard do not trust rule (good oldschool paranoia) is ALWAYS required. Then and only then there will be overall benefit in the process.
p.s.
It seems to take a lot of time to complete crowdsourced task. Unless some marketing is done around it.
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