Next General Meeting:
Dr. John Patrick – "The Future of Healthcare and the Internet"
Date: Tuesday, May 6th, 7 p.m.
Location: Danbury Hospital Auditorium
Directions

By Andy Woodruff

We are honored to welcome John Patrick back to DACS for his 22nd annual presentation! John served as IBM’s Vice President of Internet Technology, and many consider him a guru about future trends related to the web and the Internet. John is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery, and a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He was a founding member of both the Global Internet Project and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). He served as a board member at Danbury Hospital and Western Conncecticut Health Network, and currently is a board member of the Online Computer Library Center, and Mediabistro, Inc., and is a member of the Wesconn Biomedical Research Advisory Council.  John is president of Attitude, LLC and the author of Net Attitude.

In recent years, John has focused his own personal energy on the impact of the Internet on healthcare. He believes that healthcare quality and healthcare delivery methods can be dramatically improved by use of Internet-connected devices. Not that areas other than healthcare might not also benefit as we get more connected … but John believes that healthcare in particular will be especially improved. Hence he is putting his own energy in this direction.

John has just completed a doctorate in health administration at the University of Phoenix.  The title of his dissertation is: The effect of cardionet home telemonitoring for congestive heart failure patients: An observational research study. We could have expected that his dissertation topic would relate to his Internet connected theme!

We have heard John describe the Internet as “fast, always on, everywhere, natural, intelligent, easy, and trusted”. Surely we will hear these words again. We have also heard him describe Internet usage as being “in its infancy” or “at the adolescent stage” … as there are many ways in which the Internet could be utilized but is not yet. It will be interesting to hear John’s current thoughts about the extent of Internet utilization in healthcare … where he thinks this will eventually go … and the timeline for when we might expect to see various kinds of Internet-related healthcare innovations start to appear.
We can expect John to comment about home health care monitoring, new medical devices such as wearable devices that connect to the Internet, personalized healthcare from our genomes, and “e-prescriptions and e-dispensing”.

If we are lucky, we may also hear John’s thoughts about Internet topics not directly in the healthcare field. Will we hear his thoughts about the impact of the Internet on magazines and books? Or perhaps about threats to net neutrality? Or about BitCoin?

You can read John’s blog at patricweb.com or follow him on Twitter @johnrpatrick.

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DACS meetings are usually held at the Danbury Hospital auditorium. (Click here for directions and parking information.)

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for registration and casual networking. The meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. with a question and answer period (Ask DACS), followed by announcements and a short break. The featured evening presentation begins at 8:00. The meeting is scheduled to adjourn at 9:30 p.m.

DACS General Meetings are free and open to the public. Members and prior attendees are encouraged to extend invitations to anyone interested in this topic.

Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS) is a registered nonprofit and has been serving the region since 1990.