29/04/2012
Saw Ginger Baker’s African Jazz Confusion the night before last at Ronnie Scott’s in London [I had made a longer post, but it was trashed by WordPress]. Suffice to say a great experience: with Abass Dodoo (Ghana; can’t wait to see him again somewhere) on African percussion, Alec Dankworth on bass (great musician, wonderful rhythmic and melodic sensibility) and Pee Wee Ellis (a legend in his own right – ex-James Brown, Van Morrison, many others) on sax.
I love Ginger Baker’s style – his rolling, bounding river of beats just goes on and on, giving real movement and emotion to the music. This isn’t esoteric jazz or academic jazz drumming, this is something that taps into an underground river of rhythm and makes you want to get up and move, and start hitting some drums yourself. Younger ‘musicians’ and bands take note.
3 Comments | 
Culture, Gigs & bands | Tagged: african drumming, ginger baker, jazz, ronnie scotts | 
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Posted by wolandscat
28/01/2012
In his recent blog post, Eric Browne highlights what may be a problem in the design of the Australian PCEHR, due to the well-known CDA feature allowing dual forms of content – text and structured, supposedly equivalent – to be stored in the one document. If Eric’s examples are representative of real data in the future PCEHR system, there is definitely a problem. In any case, there is a general problem, to do with common misuse of the CDA architecture, which itself should be changed to remove such possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Health Informatics | Tagged: CDA, e-health, EHRs, HL7, standards | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
14/12/2011
The Clinical Information Modelling Initiative (CIMI) group led by Dr Stan Huff (Intermountain Health, Utah) met here in London 29 Nov – 1 Dec to make a final decision on formalism, from the two remaining – openEHR archetypes and various forms of UML (previous posts on CIMI: DCMs & RM, on formalisms). Instead of simply choosing one, the group made a more strategic choice of designating openEHR ADL/AOM 1.5 as the core formalism, with a corresponding profile of UML being developed to enable the more numerous UML-based developers (e.g. VA, NHS etc) to use archetypes within their UML toolchains.
Here is the public announcement resulting from this meeting.
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1 Comment | Computing, Health Informatics, openehr | Tagged: archetype, DCM, e-health, Health Informatics, openEHR | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
28/11/2011
Every so often I walk over the river to the famous (among Jazz & eclectic music-heads in London at least) Bulls Head in Barnes. Every time I think I am going to see some small possibly interesting gig in the 100 or so seat jazz room. And every time I am blown away by quality, and I think, hm, this should be a 1,500 seat gig. London is funny like that. There are these strange places where hardly any people can fit, and superstar quality just turns up on any night of the week.
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Leave a Comment » | Culture, Gigs & bands | Tagged: gig review, never the bride | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
22/11/2011
I created a new permanent page for Unwatchable Films. It’s a specific thing – not just bad films, but truly unviewable ones that have a similar effect to a general anaesthetic. They have their own criteria, and are nothing like the ’25 films so bad they’re unmissable’ lists you often see. I am talking cinema CRIMEs here. Please contribute.
Leave a Comment » | Culture, Film | Tagged: cinema, Film, unwatchable | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
20/11/2011
Over the last few months, I have managed to squeeze in enough thought-provoking films to think that my favourite medium is still alive and well. We drown daily in a such a stultifying rain of nonsense and noise that it sometimes it seems that any sign of intelligence must be a mistake. Here are some rays of hope.
Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier): *** We need to talk about Kevin (dir. Lynne Ramsay) ***** The battle of Warsaw: 1920 (dir. Jerzy Hoffman) *** Incendies **** (dir. Denis Villeneuve) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy **** (dir. Tomas Alfredson) The Skin I Live In **1/2 (dir. Pedro Almodovar) The Debt ***1/2 (dir. John Madden).
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1 Comment | Culture, Film | Tagged: Film, film review | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
14/11/2011
In recent weeks, the Clinical Information Modelling Initiative (CIMI), led by Stan Huff, has followed its stated process and is nearing a voting process in which a shared health domain modelling formalism is chosen. Proponents of each of the candidate formalisms have been asked to post arguments supporting their work.
A supporting statement for openEHR archetypes as the optimal formalism is posted
here, on the CIMI wiki. We have not included any beautiful tool-based views, nor even the ‘latest and best clinical models’, following Stan’s request for the ‘raw’ technical view of the syntax. Accordingly, the only thing with even any colour in it is
these screenshots of an ADL archetype in a raw text editor, with syntax highlighting on.
Leave a Comment » | Health Informatics, openehr | Tagged: 13606, archetype, e-health, Health Informatics, ISO 21090, models, standards | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
07/11/2011
Today on the London tube I was reading the introduction to ‘The Monstrosity of Christ: paradox or dialectic?’, a debate between Slavoj Žižek and John Millbank, edited by Creston Davis, the latter the author of the introduction. My post here is not about the main subject matter of the book (two views of theology / christianity) but the final sentence of the introduction stayed with me for the day:
The monstrosity of Christ is the love either in paradox or in dialectics – and I believe, may be the pathway beyond the current popular-absolutist rule of finance, spectacle, and surveillance.
Although we can argue about the faith part of this (or even reject it out of hand), the two sides this statement resonate nowhere better right now than at tent city in the forecourt of St Paul’s cathedral, in the heart of the City of London.
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3 Comments | Philosophy, Politics | Tagged: occupy london, st pauls, tent city | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
11/09/2011
Following the DCM meeting convened by Dr Stan Huff (Intermountain Healthcare) in Washington in July, reported in an earlier blog post, there is a further meeting this week in San Diego, which will discuss the issues of ‘data types’ and ‘reference models’ for the purpose of DCM (detailed clinical models).
I created two slideshows to explain my views on these matters (DCM_and_data_types and DCM_and_reference_model [both PDF]). Below is an extract of my arguments in these slideshows, based on experience, for adopting a particular approach to data types and reference model within the stated mission the DCM forum, which is to find formalism and attendant models in which to express universally shareable detailed clinical models. Naturally, my view on ‘the answer’ to that question is ‘openEHR (ADL/AOM) archetypes, templates and terminology’, but what I am providing below is not an argument supporting that, but one proposing how to proceed with respect to the ‘underlying models’.
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1 Comment | Health Informatics, openehr | Tagged: archetype, CEN, DCM, Health Informatics, HL7, ISO, ISO 21090, models, openEHR | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
10/08/2011
Every so often, someone asks: why can’t the health sector get its act together with ICT? Tell me why health is ‘different’?
Dilbert - advances in healthcare
Every so often a new and interesting answer to this question pops up… Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Health Informatics, Philosophy | Tagged: e-health, EHRs, Health Informatics | Permalink
Posted by wolandscat
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