Archive for June, 2009
Taking Control of Your Health Records
I think it would be great if I, a patient, could have a copy of my own health record, or medical chart. Not that I don’t trust my doctor but it is my health. Besides, when I need to go to a specialist, or to an emergency room, it would be handy to have my medical record with me. It is extremely inconvenient, not to mention redundant, to have to fill out my contact information and medical history every time I see a different health professional. Now with electronic medical records gaining wider acceptance shouldn’t I be able to have a digital copy of my own records? It seems reasonable to me.
The obvious problem with making the patient responsible for his own medical record is the fact that many patients are not that responsible. Medical records contain very sensitive data, like social security numbers, which can, in the wrong hands, wreak havoc. The security and privacy concerns outweigh the convenience issues. Also there is the matter of doctors having to make an extra set of records for patients. Back-logged busy practices are not about to add this to their current overload.
However an answer may be lurking. Microsoft’s HealthVault and Google Health are two laudable efforts in the Patient’s Health Record (PHR) revolution. Patients taking more active ownership of their healthcare can only be a good thing but what about the security concerns? The idea behind these ventures is to centralize the data, secure the data, and allow patients to decide who can access their data. As more doctors come online with EMR systems that interface with these PHR systems patients will only need to give access to a specialist to immediately “send” them their medical records. No more forms – imagine!
Another benefit has to do with patient wellness. Devices like blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, blood glucose meters, scales, and pedometers, interface with HealthVault and Google Health. This means the doctor’s plan for the patient can be monitored beyond the office. Specialized applications manage patients’ diet and exercise plans and log the results. Other apps connect to drug stores, labs, insurance companies, employer’s plans, and more.
But what do you do if you want to use Microsoft HealthVault now and your doctor is not with the program? Well, tell them to get with the program. Dr. Ware (that’s us) is committed to helping physicians and patients use technology to improve healthcare. Contact us with your physician’s office number and we will contact them on your behalf to explain the benefits to them. HealthVault and Google Health are free. Another alternative, if your doctor uses an EMR system but does not want to access your HealthVault account, is to ask them to copy your record to an encrypted USB jump drive. You can supply both the jump drive and the encryption. The video at the end of this article will show you how.
Please don’t let the tortoise-speed of healthcare professionals discourage you. We can help at no cost to you. Please contact us.
Search Engines – How Google works
According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, the word Google, “often occurs in print as a verb, sometimes in lowercase.” The search engine, named Google in 1997, has become such a part of day-to-day American life it is now a verb used to denote looking up anything online. Actually the name Google is a play on the word “googol,” that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (10100). The term reflects Google’s founders’ mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. I’d say they’ve succeeded.
We all know what Google is, and what it means “to Google,” but how does Google work? The metaphor Google uses to describe itself is that of a book. In this metaphor the “book” is the Web and Google it its “index.” When you perform a Google search their program checks their “index” to determine the most relevant search results and then serves them to you. Of course the “book” has billions of pages constantly changing with millions added each day. So how does the “index” keep track of all of this? How does it know exactly what’s in the “book?” Google does this by crawling billions of pages. Let me allow Google to explain how this is done:
“Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. We use a huge set of computers to fetch (or “crawl”) billions of pages on the web. The program that does the fetching is called Googlebot (also known as a robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process: computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site.”
Googlebot crawls the Web for page indexing
“Google’s crawl process begins with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, and augmented with Sitemap data provided by webmasters. As Googlebot visits each of these websites it detects links on each page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl. New sites, changes to existing sites, and dead links are noted and used to update the Google index.”
Got that? Of course “crawling” is only one third of the process. What good would a mountain of Web page data do if the information could not be organized and parsed quickly? This leads us to the next step – indexing. Google continues:
“Googlebot processes each of the pages it crawls in order to compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. In addition, we process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes. Googlebot can process many, but not all, content types. For example, we cannot process the content of some rich media files or dynamic pages.”
As you can see the way a site is developed has a lot to do with its search engine ranking (this will be the subject of a future article). This massive index of Web page data is what is queried when you “Google” something. The results of the query are displayed, or “served up,” to you in a list. How is this accomplished? Google concludes:
“When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content.”
“In order for your site to rank well in search results pages, it’s important to make sure that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. Our Webmaster Guidelines outline some best practices that can help you avoid common pitfalls and improve your site’s ranking.”
“Google’s Related Searches, Spelling Suggestions, and Google Suggest features are designed to help users save time by displaying related terms, common misspellings, and popular queries. Like our google.com search results, the keywords used by these features are automatically generated by our web crawlers and search algorithms. We display these suggestions only when we think they might save the user time. If a site ranks well for a keyword, it’s because we’ve algorithmically determined that its content is more relevant to the user’s query.”
Well you got it right from the horse’s mouth. Understanding the three steps; crawling, indexing, and serving, demonstrates the importance of thoughtful Web site development. Really of what use is a “cool” site nobody can find? In a future article we will discuss how to optimize your site for search engine placement. In the meantime, “Happy Googling!”