Thursday, March 27, 2003

 
Time for your scan, Mr Jones

The FDA have just mandated a barcoding system to link hospital pharmacy issued drugs to the patients they are intended for. They claim that in trials, there is a 50% reduction in incidences of people getting the wrong drugs. Is it just me, or is that shockingly unimpressive ? I mean, what's the excuse for the rest of the failures ? Presumably patients wearing the wrong barcoded wristband. So the next step must be to inkjet the barcode straight onto the patient. I hate to imagine what the Hewlett Packard error code is for "large patient stuck in infeed tray 1".

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

 
Thinkpad tipple

I read today about a device that stands in for a laptop battery that is actually a methanol fuel cell. Several hours from 15 mls of juice. What annoys me is that after watching for years how only the first class airline passengers get a chance to use in-seat laptop power, the fat cats now have a head start again because they get their first scotch free while the rest of us will have to pay to get to fill up our notebooks.

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

 
Bleeding What ?

The "bleeding edge" is where the first adopters of technology sacrifice their time and money so that the rest of us later adopters can have an easy ride. It's where the unwise fritter away cash on stuff that is not ready yet, while the canny wait for version 2.1 and pay less. But it's a great place to go and spectate...

Random musings. No more.

March 2003 ♥ April 2003 ♥ May 2003 ♥ June 2003 ♥ July 2003 ♥ August 2003 ♥ September 2003 ♥ October 2003 ♥ December 2003 ♥ January 2004 ♥