Docnotes

Medical Blogs etc.

Dave Winer linked to yesterday's Grand Rounds post and the server is taking a big hit today.  I reorganized the archive template to load a bit faster .. and provide more context.

Doing the Grand Rounds reminded me that bloogers like (love?) traffic.   Do lots of hits define a good blog?   I remember Steve talking at the first Bloggercon about watching his traffic logs and keeping an eye on the referrers - always interested in who is out there reading what he writes.

I'm getting lots of e-mail this morning about posts that I didn't include, or suggestions for more.  No - these aren't the online Vi_g_a (dare I even write the word for fear of attracting TrackBackSpam) sites - but real bloggers who just want their message "out there."

Contrast this with the bloggers like Kevin and Sydney and DB.  Bloggin away .. and doing great work - whether you read it or not.  My best posts are written for me - not for you. 

I'm not saying that wanting traffic is bad (yeh - I sent Dave an e-mail inviting him to post a link) but I don't think that it should be the primary reason for doing this sort of writing.  

Grand Rounds #53 Published

Here is Grand Rounds for the week of September 26th, 2005.  It's the 1-year anniversary of Grand Rounds - and I want to thank Nick for setting up and coordinating this weekly review of medical weblogs.  Grand Rounds has grown enormously over the past year .. and augments our medical weblog aggregator (medlogs.com) quite well. Here's an archive of all of the previous Grand Rounds editions.</intro>

Nick thoughtfully asked me to host this week's edition - even though I've not been as active with posting for the past 6 months or so.  He thought I was the first medical blogger - but in fact, that was David Theige who hosted MedEdNews beginning in 1998.  My blog - Family Medicine Notes - was started in earnest in early 1999 - but the current site has archives going back to November of 1999.

Grand Rounds this week will be a bit of a history of medical weblogging - with appropriate (I hope)  mention of some of the current issues and recent posts of interest.

Grand Rounds #53 - almost

Grand Rounds #53 is "in press" and will be posted shortly!

Grand Rounds

I will be hosting Grand Rounds this week - which will be the 1 year anniversary of Grand Rounds.  Thanks to Nick for organizing this weekly review of the best of the medical weblogs.  Last week's Grand rounds was over at SoundPractice

Please send me suggestions for this week's GR  by filling out the form here

PBX for the Medical Office

Bruce gave me a hard time about the Switchvox review (yeh .. I'll finish it) because there was no good introduction to exactly what the system is - and why I would want it.

 Here's an intro paragraph:

Asterisk is an open-source phone system.  It replaces the Nortel or NEC or Siemens Oro whatever) system that you have in your office.

Why would you want to replace your current system?  Well .. because it's old and hard to change settings and/or maybe it is just time to upgrage and you are shopping around.  In our case - it's that the old system (a perfectly functional Nortel Meridian Sytem with Voicemail and ~10 extensions) didn't do some thing that we wanted - and we're tired of struggling with configuration changes that take either a long time to learn - or $90/hr to pay the local phone guys to come and help when we are over our heads.

Asterisk is great and has many features.  It does all of the things that your current phone systems does .. like answer the phone .. route calls to extensions, etc.  There are two things that make Asterisk different from most systems: 

1. It usues VOIP
   
2. It is free

 

USb Flash Phone

Still thinking about how to outfit the office with phones for the new system (I don't want to spend a ton of $$ of Polycom phones for everyone! .. stumbled onto This Phone ... which (I think) looks interesting, but I am thinkin that the Chinese => English translator needs a little work. The Q/A is funny to read. Esample: 1.Why I need order combo desktop package? The combo desktop package will include one Telbox B2K and one USB phone P1K. You can install the Telbox B2K with your desk telephone, and use the USB phone P1K as your travel package. Also save your money.

SwitchVox Review - Part I

9-12-05  Update: I've posted an introduction to this review - as I had some feedback that I didn't introduce the concept of VOIP very well (at all).

Tom's Hardware Guide recently reviewed the Asterisk @ home system.   AAH was the first system that I used to implement Asterisk, and enabled me to learn about this wonderful open-source PBX.  This review will cover a commercial implementation of Asterisk - SwitchVox - from Four Loop Technologies

Implementing Asterisk with AAH is reasonably easy for someone with moderate technical skills – and I have previously been able to set up a home phone system without too much trouble.  Over the course of a few months last Spring, I learned enough about the innards of Asterisk to understand the potential of the software, and developed a rough model for how it might be used to enhance  the functions of a medical office. ...