Smart cards, grad school and DoD (Doctor of the Day)

I had my presentation for one of my graduate classes this past Wednesday.  I went alright.  I think I got my point across.  I was pretty nervous during the beginning of the presentation.  A lot more relaxed once I really started to talk about the topic.  The topic was Disruptive Impacts of Smart Card Technology in Health Care.  I was planning on reading off my slides for my presentation.  The night before the presentation, I picked up my buddy, Chris, for our usual Tuesday basketball.  Chris teaches Astronomy classes at UVic, and I wanted to know how he handles teaching in front of a class.  Chris’s advice was that to talk about what you know about the topic rather than reading your slides to your audience.  Audience can read the slides later on their own if you made your point across.  Ain’t that the truth!  I took Chris’s advice and tried to make my point across in my presentation.  Smart cards will help us better manage our health information while keeping our health information safe if done properly.  It’s proven in many countries (i.e. France, Germany, Taiwan, and more) that smart card technology has a new-market disruptive impacts in health care delivery.  From a health care service provider point of view, smart cards help make patient information electronic, provide easier and more secure access to patient information and cut back paper and administrative costs in the delivery process (i.e. prescription and insurance claim forms).  As patients via smart cards, we can get educated on how to manage our health information better, receive health insurance reimbursement quicker and have fewer headaches on worrying about forgetting medical information when needed.

The first term of my graduate school adventure has been rewarding mentally and stressful physically.  I worked hard for my first assignment and realized when being interested and having curiosity on a particular subject helps learning.  Guests lectures on different professors’ research areas acted like a preview of what the school specializes in.  It was a great way for me to start thinking what I should focus on and define what particular field I want to research on.  I’m enjoying it so far.

I learned a new term from my supervisor at the MoHS this week.  The term is Doctor of the Day, or DoD.  A DoD provides the medical care required by orphaned patients including admissions to hospital and necessary physician care while in hospital.  Doctors of the Day can be any GPs and get compensated while providing available coverage for patients.  While there are no specified response times for DoD, physicians are expected to provide timely and appropriate care for patients.  Health authorities in British Columbia encourage and ensure physicians participating in a DoD program.  Physicians participating in the DoD program have obstrical privileges at the facilities where they provide services.  Here is a document came out in February 2003 to describe this program in BC.  Apparently, this Doctor of the Day concept is being implemented throughout the province right now, so we’ll see what kind of impacts it’ll have on our health care system soon.