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An HIT Report from the Inner City Trenches

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko; MBA, CMP™

[Publisher-in-Chief]

While not an IT guru by any means, I am a prudent fan of health IT where appropriate, and have always been a bit on the curious side.

A Bit about Me

OK; I am a member of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). I am also a beta-tester for the Microsoft Corporation, a member of the Microsoft Health User’s Group (MS-HUG) and the Sun Executive Boardroom program sponsored by CEO Jonathan Schwartz; as well as SUNSHINE [Solutions for Healthcare Information, Networking and Education [NASD/FINRA-JAVA]. I also was fortunate to just finish editing the Dictionary of Health Information Technology and Security, with Foreword by Chief Medical Information Officer Richard J. Mata; MD MS MS-CIS of Johns Hopkins University.

And, I was incredibly lucky to have  my colleague Ahmad Hashem; MD PhD, who was the Global Productivity Manager for the Microsoft Healthcare Solutions Group at the time, to pen the Foreword to the second edition of my book, the Business of Medical Practice

And so, it was with the pleasure of potential intellectual satiety that goaded me into testing the airwaves, so to speak, on my recent visit to my home town of Bal’more. Thus, this exclusive ME-P report follows.

Location … Location … Location

If you lived in San Francisco a few years ago, during the ill-fated and costly WiFi experiment, you have my sincere condolences. If you live in Baltimore however, and want to have fast, wireless Internet speeds, then congratulations because you’ve chosen your place of residence wisely. Me, I’m an ex-patriot who was ecstatic when Sprint announced in October 2008, that Baltimore would be the first US city to have access to its new Wi-Max mobile data network; known as Xohm. I visit my home town 3-4 times, annually.

About the Wireless Xohm Data Network

Xohm is a wireless data service which, thanks to its WiMax capability, reportedly provides broadband-like speeds on a wireless PC. With this, as long as you have a WiMAX adapter and can pay for the service, the Internet should be available anywhere within the city. For home use, service for WiMAX costs $25 per month for six months, and $35 per month after that. Laptop access was to be $30 per month for the first six months. If you’re just visiting the city, single day access will cost $10, which is a bit steep, but not bad compared to the price of Wi-Fi access in some airports. Or, their unsecure networks were purported free; anywhere in the city. This was the object of my informal beta-testing activities.

City of Baltimore

My neighborhood, in Baltimore, is known as the historic Fell’s Point District. It was founded in 1670 by William Cole who bought 550 acres on the Inner Harbor, downtown. English Quaker, William Fell then bought land he named “Fell’s Prospect”. The land was also known as “Long Island Point” and “Copus Harbor”.

This area was the ideal hostile site for the Wi-Max experiment. The surrounding neighborhoods are composed of many dense, old-brick and stone-masonry buildings, with abundant large expanses of Chesapeake Bay with its related estuaries and inlets. Local gossip about the experiment suggested that if it was successful in this hostile Baltimore environment, it would like be successful in more modern American cities.

Link: http://www.fellspoint.us/history.html

Test-Laptop Specifications

I used my daughter’s [age 12, eighth-grade] Dell Latitude D600 laptop PC, running a Windows XP professional downgrade, with an Intel® P4 micro-processor [1.4 GHZ, 512 MB, 30 GIG CD with 24X CD-RW/DVD] for data only. It was originally purchased used – not new – for a few hundred bucks and badly in need of some upgrades. For the test, we added 512 MB LT DDR PC-3200, and a wireless LINKSYS PCMCIA card [WPC54GX].

Network Results

First, set up was a snap. While the network is expansive, it was not exactly blazingly fast, at least not for unsecure roaming access. The network can provide “download speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second“. While, it is faster than most cellular networks, the service is nothing compared to some home internet connections. Although, the option to use it on a laptop is useful, the 4 Mbps is good enough for checking email or other smaller, lower bandwidth internet surfing usages. It’s hard to say if these estimates actually hold up with a lot of people using the network at once, especially if you are far from a broadcast tower – or in a funky part of the city – which is everywhere. But, they seemed to work quite well. My daughter, wife and I were suitably impressed.

Of Medical PACS

Of course, we also talked to local town folk about their free unsecured use. All were pleased with the Baltimore experience. We found business, law, nursing and graduate school students who were ferocious users. We even found medical students using open network wireless PCAS. To the uninitiated, picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) are computers or networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution and presentation of digital radiology images. The medical images are stored in an independent format. The most common format for image storage is Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine [DICOM].

Roll-Put in Other Cities

Apparently, Sprint plans on releasing Xohm WiMAX networks in Chicago and Washington DC, this year.  While they are both major cities, it is hard to speak for just how well the WiMAX works when you’re sitting in Atlanta, GA. Should these networks actually get some decent use, perhaps the service will be released in more markets. I just don’t know.

About NETGEAR

Local Baltimore provider NETGEAR has been a worldwide leader of technologically advanced, branded networking products since 1996. Their mission is to be the preferred customer-driven provider of innovative networking solutions for small businesses and homes.

Link: federal@netgear.com

Assessment

As an old city, Baltimore has a rich medical heritage. There is the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy. Up the street from the Inner Harbor are the famed Johns Hospital School of Medicine and the Kennedy School of Public Health. It is here where I played stickball, as a child, in the parking lot. Nevertheless, given the high demands of business networking security and emerging network management in the local, State and Federal space today, NETGEAR is reported to have an end-to-end solution to meet most agency needs. This did seem to be the case in my ad-hoc experiment. We always found an open channel, and dropped links were few and far between; usually while mobile or riding in an automobile, bus, train or high-rail transportation system.

Link: http://www.freewimaxservice.net

Conclusion

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Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Medical Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com

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Filed under: "Doctors Only", Career Development, iMBA, Inc., Information Technology, Op-Editorials, Practice Management, Research & Development | Tagged: AHIMA, Baltimore, Business of Medical Practice, CCHIT, Fell's Point, Global Productivity Manager for the Microsoft Healthcare Solutions Group, Hashem; MD PhD, HIMMS, Jonathan Schwartz, Microsoft Healthcare Solutions Group, MS-HU< SUNSHINE, NETGEAR, PACS, Richard Mata, wi-max | 3 Comments »