True dictation of clinical staff notes straight into the electronic medical record (eMR)

A few weeks ago I shared a little light bulb moment on LinkedIn and it quickly became one of my most viewed items. 

Click on the image to be taken directly to the LinkedIn item.

Background

I unfortunately had to spend 15 hours in Royal North Shore emergency department and whilst sitting there got to quietly observe how the staff went about their various tasks. Not to pry or snoop, but out of curiosity, as I'm interested in workflows and how it translates back to the patient.

At one point early in the morning one of the clinical team members loudly sighed and said "you know what, it would be amazing if we hired a full time transcriptionist or secretary to just type up all this stuff into the eMR". 

That's when the idea hit me. Imagine if there was a seamless, but powerful dictation solution for medical professionals that would import their spoken words into clinical documentation.

Electronic Medical Records mean more typing for the clinical staff

Clinical staff have to spend a lot of time typing into computers to ensure their clinical documentation and notes are complete and accurate. The problem is that this frequently translates to more screen-time than bedside-time with the patient. 

Improved bedside communications / understanding for patients

If you had a system that captured everything, parsed it into usable notes for the eMR, then there would be a dual-win situation occurring. There would be less burden on being tied to the computer and a greater emphasis placed on holding detailed conversations. Clinical staff may even begin to explain items clearer, in more detail, knowing that eventually it would comprise the medical record. 

This need not only be bed-side discussions or investigations with the patient, but could also be for clinical handover and other important care points.

New idea isn't totally new - there are some solutions out there.

A lot of people commented that there are services and products that do this. I hadn't seen or heard about this existing, and I had hoped that my little idea would save some time and bring about some patient benefits.

Kimchi Fried Rice (김치볶음밥)

My wife is from Korea and this is one of her favourite quick and easy dinners. The great thing is that it only has a handful of ingredients, and it can be cooked really quickly. 

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM

I want to preface something about this recipe, and that's the usage of SPAM. I know that to a lot of people the idea of SPAM is not popular (at least in Australia), but trust me - it is really great when cooked/used in recipes. If you are really adamant about not including SPAM, you can substitute in pork mince (but make sure you cook it properly, I would do this as part of step 2 in that case).

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Ingredients

• Garlic minced, 4-5 cloves minced

• Kimchi (3 cups), cut into medium bite sized pieces. (Tip: retain juice for cooking!)

• SPAM, 1-2 cups, cut into small cubes. (substitute = pork mince)

• Rice, cooked, 2.5 cups (Tip: if you have left over or day-old rice, that always makes for better fried rice).

• Rice Oil, 4 Tbs

• Olive Oil, 2 Tbs

• Sesame Oil, 2 Tbs

• Salt, to taste

• Egg (per person/serving), fried, as garnish.

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Method

    1. Cut up all the ingredients (kimchi, SPAM), and have kimchi in a bowl cut up into 2-3 cm pieces. 

    2. In a large pan, heat rice oil over medium heat, add in Garlic mince. Cook garlic (without burning/browning) for 1-2 min.

(NB: if you are substituting in pork mince instead of SPAM, then this is when I would cook the pork mince)

    3. Lower heat and add in kimchi, then bring heat up to medium. Allow to cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

    4. Add in SPAM and stir. Once mixed, let it sit & cook on medium heat for 2 minutes then stir & flip so SPAM is being cooked. Continue cooking like this for 5 minutes.

5. Add in rice (approx 2.5 cups). The idea is to have more kimchi to rice, so the ratio is like Kimchi:Rice = 3:2 (it doesn't need to precise, just as long as its more kimchi than rice). 

    6. Stir, and then allow it all to cook on medium heat for 2 minutes without touching. This allows the bottom to become crispy / well cooked. After 2 minutes, stir and try to flip the stop rice mixture to the bottom where the pan is (to maximise crispiness).

    7. Add Salt to taste. Start with 1 Tbs at first, stir and taste.

    8. Add in Sesame Oil, approx 2 Tbs.  stir and taste. (when using Sesame oil, less is more. Add small amounts and taste)

    9. At this point you can take it off the heat (simply turn off the heat) and commence making the fried egg on top. Fry an egg in olive oil, over low-medium heat. As it is frying, at a pinch of salt on the egg yolk as it cooks.

    10. Serve with fried egg on top.

Enjoy! 

Let me know if you make this and how it turns out!

Why did you create the site & the blog?

There are a number of reasons as to why I have created this site and blog. I'll try my best to explain them all, and whilst it'll seem a little disjointed - my hope is by the end of this it'll make sense.

My struggle with the divide between my Professional and Personal life.

One of the challenges I've been wrestling with for a number of years now is how much do you separate your professional and personal life. How you define the balance is personal, but probably also governed by your workplace / industry. 

There is a cognitive dissonance at play in the workplace where I've struggled with having a professional personality that is (at times) contrary to my personal one. I used to think that to be a professional you couldn't share anything of your personal life. In recent years I realised my folly and begun to open up more. In sharing more of my life, who I am, I found that not only did I feel happier - but it improved my professional life. This idea of being able to share what is important to me forms a foundation for why I'm doing this.

Desire to share, to have a voice online that is my own.

I love sharing, interacting, and being involved in discussions. In recent years I have really wanted to share things like recipes and reviews of cafes with people - but couldn't ever find a way that felt appropriate. If I wanted to make the effort to write something - I wanted it to be in my name. 

On twitter I am @Benjamin_Lewis. The only problem was that like most people with their social media accounts, I set it to private and didnt feel comfortable letting people read what I was tweeting.

Last year I grew increasingly frustrated with the idea that I had this great opportunity to be involved in online discussions with my own name... but was afraid to take the dive and unlock my account. Fear is the mind killer. 

When I finally made the decision to do this the best way I figured was to delete all the old tweets and start fresh with a clean slate.

Curiosity over the idea of 'personal branding' - how to be genuine and authentic online.

In 2016-2017 I kept reading and becoming interested in the concept of personal branding. The idea was fascinating, but still pretty new and slightly unusual. I read over the articles I had saved, and still with questions saught out people with marketing experience that might be able to help. When I raised the idea and posed my questions - I soon learnt that it's still pretty niche. 

I eventually decided that the best way to learn was to just leap in and give it a shot. 

Small steps - sharing on LinkedIn.

This site and the blog is, in a way, an evolution of the feedback I've had from numerous people about how much they enjoy the items I share on LinkedIn.

A few years ago I made an arbitrary decision to share work-related / interesting items on my LinkedIn profile. Over time, this became more and more popular and before I knew it I began to enjoy seeing people interacting with the content I shared. 

It got to the point where people began telling me in person how much they liked / enjoyed "my LinkedIn" . As someone that likes to share information and ideas, this spurred me on!

The blog

I've always enjoyed blogging and I really wanted to have a little space on the web to create, write, and share my own thoughts. I've previously posted content to other sites, shared ideas elsewhere, but I was really keen on the idea of putting my name on my content.

For me, the blog will be the most interesting component of the site. This will be where I get to flesh out ideas, share things important to me and I hope you find it interesting. 

Lastly...

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I would really appreciate it if you would comment or share your feedback. 

You can use the comment features below, or simply just tweet at me.