February 23rd, in Orlando, I’m presenting about Google Glass and healthcare workflow (and demoing, that’s the exciting part, see below) at the Society for Health Systems meeting. The name of the conference is Healthcare Systems Process Improvement Conference 2014 and is so appropriate. Glass has great potential to improve both provider AND patient workflows and processes. I hope you’ll register and show up. Regardless, I’ll be around that week, since HIMSS ’14 follows immediately.
Here’s my presentation abstract:
Information & Workflow
Google Glass is a small, sensor-equipped, head-mounted display connected to the Internet. How can Glass improve healthcare information management and EHR workflow? Dr. Webster, a Glass Explorer, will have Glass on hand to demonstrate, explain, and predict. Depending on audience size, attendees can try it out!
Google Glass, a small, sensor-equipped, head-mounted display connected to the Internet, promises many uses in many industries, from healthcare to law enforcement to education. Glass also aims at consumers. Its 3D games are surprisingly immersive. Immediate gratification (“I don’t even have to reach into my pocket!) and real-time social sharing (“Look I what I’m seeing!”) are seductive.
While it’s too early to predict killer apps and judge most compelling use cases, it’s not too early to try on Glass, build some prototypes, and speculate. In this presentation I will address the relevance of Glass to healthcare information management and workflow.
Due to billions of dollars of federal subsidies, a majority of physicians now use electronic health records (EHRs), some enthusiastically, some grudgingly. The greatest single complaint is workflow. Glass startups in health IT believe as much as 25 percent of current computer-related tasks can be potentially offloaded to Glass.
The speaker will have Glass on hand. After a short introduction to the basics, several prototypes and mockups will be demonstrated. Depending on the size of the audience, each attendee will experience several minutes of Glass demo “facetime” to better understand Glass’s potential and limitations.
Now here is the thing. I can talk about Glass all day, show you all kinds of stuff, but you won’t really understand Glass until you put it on. Two minutes of Glass ON your face is worth more then two hours of me pontificating IN your face. So, I’m aiming to devote the last twenty minutes of my presentation to on stage personal demos. I’ll call volunteers to come up and give Glass a spin, while audience looks on at the projected image of what the Glass wearer sees. (If the deities in charge of multimedia, USB, and Bluetooth smile on our efforts.)
Even when there are too many attendees to give every person a personal demo, the reactions of folks trying out Glass are kind of use (“Wow!” “Font is very crisp.”). And watching folks quickly move from awkward to fluid navigation of the Glass user interface is educational too.
Afterwards, depending on the number of interested attendees, we can move to more informal interactions in the hall. In fact, if you see me wearing Glass, and you didn’t come to my presentation, please, please ask to borrow them for a minute or two, while I coach you through the user interface (usually takes all of about 30-60 seconds, to get the initial side-of-head touchpad interaction down).
Finally, even if you’re not going to the Healthcare Systems Process Improvement conference, and you’re also not even going to be in Orlando for HIMSS’14, keep an eye on this space. Once a self-imposed embargo is over, I’ll post a link to my presentation here (slides and audio, just as I did for my 2012 presentation) . You’ll miss out on the personal on-your-head subjective experience part, but it’ll still be worthwhile. In fact, I highly recommend you search your local Meetups for Glass-related events. We Glass Explorers will give you a personal Glass demo at the drop of a hat. Hey, “drop of a hat…” 🙂
As my Twitter timeline is increasingly becoming my external memory, I’ve used Twitter’s new custom timeline feature collect tweets directly or indirectly relevant to my presentation. In fact, I’d love to get some pre-presentation and post-presentation conversation going. Heck, maybe even during-presentation conversation! I’ll be wearing Glass, you can just tweet me!