As I mentioned recently, the NDC search page improved to include more data and CSV downloads. Now it is using tabular results, instead of accordion method. I love the improvement. the old results look like this (click to make the picture clear) new results look like this (click to make the picture clear) Great […]
Drones and healthcare. A brain dump.
Here are my thoughts about drones in healthcare. Most people are not really aware at how blindingly fast small drones are. Most demonstrations have them moving at a snails pace. They are incredibly quick and can cover large distances in the short time that they have battery life. This makes drones ideal for the delivery […]
Self-driving cars and healthcare. A brain dump.
Here are my thoughts on how self-driving cars related to healthcare. In no particular order. First, it is very likely that self driving technology is already well past the reliability and safety of any human driver. This makes for a classic engineering ethics debate. How long will our society tolerate a technical solution to a […]
NoSQL and Technical Debt
So I just had a chance encounter with a former professor of mine, Dr. Hicks from Trinity University. While I was at Trinity University, mumble mumble long time ago, Dr. Hicks assured me that I needed to take his database class, the course at Trinity CS department that was the most focused on SQL. That […]
Better NDC downloads from the FDA
Recently, the FDA Division of Drug Information, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research dramatically improved how their NDC search tool data downloads work in response to some complaints they received from… someone. Most notably they: Added the NDC Package Code (the NDC-10 code with the dashes) to each row as a distinct field. This is the only field […]
Open Data Frustrations
First, let me say that I applaud and salute anyone who releases open data about anything as relevant as healthcare data. It is a tough and thankless slog to properly build, format and document open data files. Really, if you work on this please know that I appreciate you. I value your time and your […]
Google Intrusion Detection Problems
(Update: Less than four hours after tweeting out this blog post, we got our access turned back on. So the Google support team is definitely listening on social media. We very much appreciate that, because it resolves this issue as a crisis. We are still concerned by the “auto-off” trend and the missing button. But […]
Mourning Jess Jacobs
Yesterday, Jess Jacobs died. Like so many others on Twitter, I knew Jess just well enough to be profoundly frustrated as I watched helplessly as the healthcare system failed her again and again. Today, the small world of Internet patient advocates mourn for her across blogs and twitter. The world of people who are trying to fix […]
Is the NSA sitting on medical device vulnerabilities?
Today is not a fun day to read slashdot if you care about healthcare cybersecurity. First, it highlights how the DEA is strong-arming states into divulging the contents of their prescription databases. Second, and even more troubling, was the claim that the NSA was looking to exploit medical devices. The story was broken by Intercept […]
Clintons Server Politifact
Most of the time that I spend as a security-wonk is focused on email security. This is due almost entirely to my involvement as one of the architects of the Direct Project, which is a specification for using secure encrypted email in healthcare settings. Which is why I was surprised by a recent analysis from […]