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So I'm having dinner tonight with this group of happy medical students and they are bummin out about their EBM course and they ask me if I really use "EBM" and I say yes and then I do this little strep throat thing like this:
I see an adult in the office with a sore throat. No kids. No contact with kids
So I assume pre-test probability of about 5% Yeh - I made it up. I'm probably close.
And the sensitivity of the test I'm doing is 85% (possibly better -- but we'll be safe)
Specificty is very good - 99%
So let's do the poor man's version that I use to explain to the patient:
You have a 5% chance of having this BEFORE I do the test - so after the test you have a 15% chance of the 5% chance of having strep throat.
.15 x .05 = .0075 ... let's round it up to 1%.
"Mrs Jones - you have a 1% chance that you have strep throat after this negative rapid-strep. Go home and drink warm tea with honey and you will feel better soon." (ok .. go find the evidence for THAT!)
Posted by Jacob on October 27, 2005 at 08:26 AM in Medical Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
We are getting very close to the day that we go live with our new phone system at the office. Still a few bugs to work through .. but I've had enough random requests for the status - ever since I posted my review of SwitchVox that I do owe a bit of an update.
Here goes
The software is good, and we've been getting help from the tech support staff at FourLoop throughout. There remain some wrinkles here and there, but updates seem to be coming at a pretty good clip - so I expect things will continue to improve.
What sort of rough edges? Well - the features of the software have come along well since the publication of the manual in June - and the help system that is embedded in the software is good. But the documentation hasn't kept up with the features of the product - and this is sometime frustrating. It takes a while to "get" the best method for creating a really good IVR - and I wish that there were examples of more complex IVRs in the documentation - especially how to use the "option" functions. Here's how (I think) it works: Create an IVR. Have step 1 be "play a sound" such as: "choose 1 for eggs and 2 for peanut butter." Now choose "options" and tell SV where to go when the user chooses Option 1 or Option 2:
Yes - it really is easy-as-pie. And I THINK this is the way I'm supposed to do it .. but nothing in the documentation leads me there. Some of this makes perfect sense and is very powerful-yet-simple (an awfully challenging combination to create) but the simplicity gets the upper hand in some places of the IVR - especially where it comes to the handling of options - and the handling of conditional clauses.
Having "options" stuck at the bottom of an IVR means that they HAVE to be the last thing that a user encounters. While it's possible to develop a complex IVR that sends the user right to the end .. and then based on the option chosen - back up to a step above - this gets confusing quickly. It would be much more intuitive to have the "options" behave like any other IVR action - since they are really just a "case" statement.
And speaking of logic - the conditional clause is GREAT .. except it's only part of what I'd expect to see in a conditional clause. I want ELSE and OR and AND and ELSEIF.
Ok.. enough complaining.
Josh and his team built something that I LOVE - and it's easy to use too. It's a URL that I can put into web applications that causes the system to do something.
Here's the documentation for how it works:
What is the Call API?
The Call API provides a web interface for originating calls through the PBX. This is often called click-to-dial, and is done by requesting a specially fomulated url from the pbx.
How does it work?
Below is an example URL and a description of its functionality.
Originating a call Example URL:
https://IP.OF.PBX/api?cmd=call&extension=104&number=918005551212cmd=call Tells the PBX this command is a call origination command extension=104 What extension to ring on the PBX system number=18005551212When the call is answered by the extension this will be the number it will try to ring
How do my Call API Settings effect the call API?
The Call API settings allow the pbx to modify requested phone numbers so that they correctly match what the system expects. For example, if you request that the API dial 8005551212, the Call API Settings will add a 9 and a 1 to make the number 918005551212, which will then be dialed by your phone.
© 2004-2005, Four Loop Technologies, LLC
When attempting this, I receive an Error Detail of I/O Exception: Name in certificate `www.domainname.com' does not match host name `xx.xx.xx.xx'"
Hmm .. looks like I have the same problem.
But I figured out the solution! Since I know that the certificate is called "pbx" and I now have it installed on the application server (which in this case is the client - SwitchVox is the server) .. still follow? .. I make an entry in the "hosts" file of the application server called pbx and point it to the IP address of SwitchVox.
Now I run my test page and my cell phone rings (every 40 seconds!) and it tells me I need a flu shot and the browser window of the debugging test page says:
| Explanation | OK |
| Http_Version | HTTP/1.1 |
| Server | Apache/2.0.48 (Fedora) |
| Status_Code | 200 |
Hooray!
So we have solved the problem of coldfusion having trouble with SSL and reporting a connection error: I/O Exception: Name in certificate. First, Install the certificate on the Colfusion server. Next, make a "hosts" entry to fool cf into thinking that the name of the remote server is the same as the name in the certificate.
Posted by Jacob on October 25, 2005 at 06:43 AM in Technology | Permalink | Comments (2)
Posted by Jacob on October 21, 2005 at 04:29 AM in VOIP | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by Jacob on October 20, 2005 at 05:41 PM in Dermatology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by Jacob on October 20, 2005 at 04:17 PM in Pediatrics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by Jacob on October 17, 2005 at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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