My husband says I must be really sick!

... and I am :(  He was shocked I didn't blog today as I spent the entire time sleeping on the couch.  I almost never get sick, and it's been like forever since I had any sort of intestinal bug which is what this is.  Oddly enough my hubby had it last week which seems too long ago for me to still catch.  So now I wonder if it's in the house or something we both ate from our fridge.    I can't figure out how it is possible I slept all day and I'm still yawning and can barely keep my eyes open typing this!

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Y A Y it's friday!!  i couldn't be more excited about a low key weekend!  see y'all next week!!

*images courtesy of side walk, pearls and peonies, emily clark,  sacramento street, decor 8, my quest for signature style

Is Sugar Fattening?

Buckle your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen-- we're going on a long ride through the scientific literature on sugar and body fatness.  Some of the evidence will be surprising and challenging for many of you, as it was for me, but ultimately it paints a coherent and actionable picture.

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i often tend to listen to the same song over and over again.  at this moment it's video games.  i can't help it, it's rather addicting....you've got to give it a time or two....trust me, you'll be singing it.

*images courtesy of southern charm, amanda talley, gabba gabba gorgeous 

HIMSS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas - Fitting for People Who Gamble With People's Lives to Make a Buck?

The setting for the Feb. 2012 annual meeting of HIMSS (the Health Information Management Systems Society, the gargantuan health IT trade group), ongoing as of this writing, is the Venetian Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, NV.

Judging by the pictures posted at the HisTALK blog here of the event, now ongoing, it seems to be one big, happy party:

Rolling the dice at HIMSS 2012, Las Vegas.

This is ironically apopos for an organization whose leaders beg for special accommodation for a technology they know their industry has not learned how to "do right" after decades of profiteering (at patient's expense), thus gambling with live, unconsenting people as the poker chips:

Barry Chaiken, former HIMSS Chairman of the Board, July 2010 interview: "We’re still learning, in healthcare, about that user interface. We’re still learning about how to put the applications together in a clinical workflow that’s going to be valuable to the patients and to the people who are providing care. Let’s be patient. Let’s give them a chance to figure out the right way to do this. Let’s give the application providers an opportunity to make this better." [While the systems remain in use on live, unconsenting patients - ed.]

It is difficult to imagine such a statement coming from the aviation, nuclear energy or other lives-at-risk industries.

HIMSS 2012 really seems to be a fun party. Even Elvis was in attendance:

Elvis, a fitting icon for an industry trade show on health IT? Journalist Tony Scherman wrote that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts."

Sounds like what the commercial health IT sector has done to the good intentions and well-thought out applications created by the health IT pioneers.

I note that prostitution is legal in Las Vegas as well. This allows making money from objectification of human beings, although at least the latter give consent to the exploitation of their bodies.

Final thought:

What was missing from HIMSS was the ED EHR Slot Machine of Risk. (From my March 2011 post "On an EMR Forensic Evaluation by Professor Jon Patrick from Down Under: More Thoughts.")

The ED EHR Slot Machine. Click to enlarge. You've hit the ED EHR mis-processing jackpot! Perhaps today is a good day to die...

-- SS