akrasia

This might not be the right place for this but if you are worried about cancer in yourself or a loved one, I have resources to set up a whole body PET CT for cancer screening. Please message me for more details if you are interested. We have the capabilities to detect cancer early if you have the resources.

guy doesn't know what he's talking about just spitting out numbers. An MRI doesn't pay $5000 each. More like $300-$400 from Medicare. Maintenance contract from the vendor is like $7000/month. MRI tech makes about 100k per year. Any decent MRI machine is 250k and up.

      Interesting, didn't sound like an ordinary nurse. Sorry if I came off somewhat arrogant in my earlier post.

      Was she acting as a nurse or NP when she was taking care of you? The radiologist deserves some credit too in my opinion as they are the one to interpret the study. It is easy to include aortic dissection in differential along with other things that could kill you quickly (e.g. MI, pulm embolism, pneumothorax, etc ...) but harder to make the definitive diagnosis. Glad you made it.

I really doubt a nurse made the diagnosis, the legal issues would be a huge problem let alone the education and complexity required to make such a diagnosis. I would know, in 2 years I'll be the single guy on around 1 out of every 10 nights who would have to make that diagnosis and I work in one of the top 10 busiest ED's in the country.

should be working 70 hrs a week perfecting his skills

I already work 60-80hrs/week, should I be working more? Would 100hrs/week make you happy?

I can only imagine what he will be doing 7 years from now

6 years from now if I continue on this road keep my head down and work hard I'll be making 300-400k/year as an attending physician. I can work 4 days per week and make 200k. I don't care too much about money as long as I can pay my loans off and eat out once in awhile. That's all nice and dandy but I'd rather spend some of my free time building something that helps the healthcare system.

Thanks for this buddy.

Yea, it's an messy area to start a company in. I'm trying to learn how to cover my bases as I go along but if I'm paralyzed by fear forever I'm not going to move forward.

Yea, I have to look into this, but even if it does do HL7, you need to write software to extract what you want and present it in a meaningful way to the other application.

Yea DICOM is for imaging though (CT scan, MRI, etc ...) but I think you know that already. Even though DICOM is a standard, there are still stupid things that go on (e.g. radiologists have to hand type radiation doses that the patient received because apps do not talk to each other).

HL-7 is the standard for other medical apps. Even though these standards exist, the problems are still there and solutions are sometimes too pricey for hospitals.

Thanks for the encouraging words ... it's been a long road.

I've struggled with this for awhile. I've had some thoughts about improving medical education that would avoid the legal hassles of healthcare and generate a good income. That idea is for another time though.

Good advice. I heard somewhere that they did have this ability but it was a very pricey add-on. It was just a rumor though. I'll check with IT.

I agree. It was late at night and I couldn't think of a shorter headline. I apologize.

Yea, this is why I didn't want to start a company in healthcare. It's ugly.

I think I can avoid the whole thing by having my software just be a tool, not a final read, and doctors will still have to double check the numbers against the PDF hardcopy. It will just take 1 minute or less to glance at 10 values or so and make sure they match up compared to typing it in themselves

depends on where you work and how much staff is hired for this type of work, but with the way the EMR is set up, and who legally has to start and sign notes (a doctor), you cannot avoid some data entry unless it is somehow automated for you

exactly what I'm trying to do

Unfortunately, the note that has to be entered in the EMR has to be started and signed by a fellow (a person who has finished residency but still in training before becoming an attending doctor for those who don't know), and this is the note with the data, and so I (a first year resident) would have to be sitting next to the fellow, he would have to start the note, then I would have to switch seats with him, do some data entry, then he would have to write his impression ("normal", "COPD", "asthma", but in more doctor like terms) and sign the note. The way the system is set up makes this impractical.

I will be talking to the purchasing dept after I build a prototype to show the director. I am aware that this will be an uphill battle since everyone in healthcare is paranoid including doctors and admins.

I'm taking your advice and I'll hack together a prototype and see if the administration will bite.

Your advice is duly noted. I am planning to talk to the director of the pulmonary team sometime this week and see if he is interested. I know most of the doctors who work in the lab will welcome the software. Seeing that most large hospitals pay 50+ million for their EHR/EMR setup, $500/month sounds reasonable.

I looked briefly into building it myself (just in case this thread did not get a good response), and I can parse out the text using the pdf-reader gem and now I just need to use some regex to match what I want and then stick those values into a report.

Thanks again for the advice.

Little known fact - most MRI machines are always on because they are made via a superconducting magnet, I know some residents who climb into them at night and scan themselves for educational purposes.

I'm not an expert in the field but from what I know, SHA1 is a one way function. When an encrypted password is cracked, YES, the hackers know that specific password. They brute forced it by guessing the password, running it through SHA1, and comparing the output to the hash. If they are the same, then they guessed the right password.

They do not know any other passwords and if "salt" was used, they would have to brute force each password. I think salt wasn't used in this case so once they crack someone's password, they know every other user who used the same password. So if you and I used the same password, and they brute forced yours already, they will know that I have the same password.