To be presented at the GP Partners Practice Managers Network on the 14th of July.
Download PDF.

We'll leave all the "end to end solution" rhetoric to others and just say that we have been providing, since 1995, professional IT support and computer and network hardware, particularly to Doctors and other healthcare providers. We're passionate about free software, and are located in Brisbane, the capital of sunny Queensland, Australia.

This website is intended to provide information and encourage discussion. You may not contribute without registering (which is free, no adware, no spam), but have anonymous access to all public data. Much of the information previously available can be found in the forums.

Today I presented "Running a computer network - the missing manual" to the Australasian College of Dermatologists at their annual scientific meeting. The presentation was well received but unfortunately we ran out of time, so I'm posting a PDF of my presentation.

Click here to download the 9.6MB PDF, complete with presenter notes.

Tired of the challenges and increasing costs of running server and network infrastructure, some of our customers have asked us to develop a centralised computing environment for them, hosted in a high availability data centre.

This is particularly suited to multi-site practices, specialists operating from multiple locations, or any practice that doesn't want to manage their own servers.

Until recently, on-line backups have not been a sensible option for Australian business. Internet speed was not fast enough to get through a large backup in a reasonable period of time. Technology has moved on though, and online backups are now worth considering, due to the combination of readily available ADSL2 broadband (at least in major population areas) and the release of cheap mass storage through large data centres like Amazon S3.

We're installing on-line backups for many clients now and suggest this as a good secondary backup system. It's also an easy way to share documents and other data "in the cloud" between sites, or between home and the surgery.

Have you ever thought about a website for your practice? Do you currently have one that you don’t feel suits your practice’s needs?

A website is an excellent way to market your practice to a larger audience, as well as provide unique services and information to your customers. Mobile Computing has the ability to provide your practice with a custom made website, specifically developed to suit your healthcare practice.

There are two kinds of free software available on the Internet. Unfortunately much free software comes with all the worst intentions, and can result in virus or malware infections.

There is however a large range of free software whose authors choose to give it away for positive reasons. We're going to be regularly reviewing some of these products in an effort to support these projects and improve our users computing experience.

Today's free software pick is Teracopy.

If you have an error on your computer, it helps Tech support to see exactly what it looks like. Rather than writing down long error messages, it's easy to take a screen shot (a picture of the screen) and send this through e-mail.

Unfortunately every Windows based computer connected to any other data source is vulnerable to virus and malware infection.

Unsure of whether to trust the Anti-Virus recommendations provided by “Independent” testing labs, I decided to do my own.

After the process was completed, I found a new respect for these testing labs. The tests I have done are not comprehensive. To do so would take much more time and many more resources. Even repeating an identical process would not give consistent results, as these infections grow organically. I draw my conclusions not just on the numbers but on the feel of each product and the state of the computer after the testing was complete.

I configured a virtual machine with a fresh copy of Windows XP, updated it to the latest version, and proceeded to fill it up with viruses and malware by visiting the dark side of the Internet, logged in as an administrator and clicking on all the nasty looking stuff I could find.

Given the recent popularity of the Macintosh system, it was only a matter of time until we were going to see it targeted by the virus / trojan writers.

There are now at least two known exploits circulating on the Internet. Each of them requires the download and execution of dodgy looking files, but as OS/X has until now been free of serious malware, users may not be wary of potential exploits.

www.appointmentmanager.com.au
adding efficency to your appointment system...

A fast and cost-effective way to send SMS and / or e-mail appointment reminders, to reduce no-shows and late patients.

UPDATE

ESET did provide a free license for ESS for a period of time, but this is over. On the plus side, the cost of the anti-virus product has been reduced, and it's still our recommended option.

cheers,
Peter
August 2008

To all users of the NOD32 anti-virus system.

The creators of NOD32, ESET have been working on an additional product, ESET Smart Security (ESS) for some time.

Unfortunately the Australian distributor of these products promised in an e-mail in October that all Australian customers of NOD32 would receive a free "upgrade" to ESS. We've now been informed that this is not likely to happen and is beyond the control of the Australian distributor.

Although I don't have the authority to do so, I apologise on behalf of NOD32 Australia. The promise should not have been made, nor should they have taken the liberty of contacting our customers directly.

Possibly the most important part of your IT system is your backup. Don't take this for granted. It's very important that you take responsibility to ensure you have a sound backup system in place, and that it continues to work.

A good backup has the following characteristics:

Many of our clients choose to engage us in a service contract. These are available to any surgery in South-East Queensland. We also offer contracts to remote and rural sites - contact us to discuss your requirements.

Benefits of an IT service contract:

Virtualisation or Virtual Machine technology allows you to run an operating system inside an operating system, for example, Windows XP inside Mac OS/X. There are many reasons this is desirable but most users simply want the ability to run their choice of operating system, and still have access to software that runs on another system.

Microsoft has launched its latest operating system, Windows Vista, available now to corporate customers and at the end of the month for the rest of us.

While it's clear that IT Professionals will have plenty of work to do, I won't be recommending Vista to anyone soon - read more and I'll tell you why....

Electronic clinical messaging has come of age. Great benefits are available for GPs, Specialists, Allied Health professionals and Hospitals by being able to exchange clinical information efficiently without paper.

GPs in particular seem to be drowning in an ocean of paper. Those that are scanning incoming paper know that this is a time and space consuming task. Secure clinical messaging can eliminate scanning, and it's not only more efficient than scanning but less costly in terms of staff time.

It appears that the amount of spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail) addressed to our e-mail accounts is only going to increase. Apparently the supply / demand ratio is so low that spammers only need one in a million to reply to them for the process to be considered worthwhile. Changes to Australian legislation have had little effect and many users are receiving hundreds of spam e-mails every day.

Tips to reduce spam follow....

There was recently an incident where a backup tape was stolen from an employee's car. This is a real concern as every patient had to be notified that their confidential medical data was possibly compromised. While it's critical that your backups are taken offsite, they need to remain physically secure. In addition, we suggest encrypting the data on the backup media so the records cannot be accessed without decrypting it.

Many of you have realised that confirming patient appointments the day before can dramatically reduce the number of patients that don't attend their appointment. Having staff phone these patients is an expensive way to do it. SMS technology provides a better solution - it's less expensive in both call costs and staff hours, and patients with Mobile phones will appreciate the reminder that is less intrusive than a phone call.

Scanning incoming paper and storing it electronically is better than storing paper - but only just.

After a slow start, MDW3 upgrades are starting to be more successful with the release of version 3.5. Although we are still seeing some minor problems with the data conversion, these are usually limited to a handful of patients. Following are some tips for a successful upgrade...

Whether upgrading or installing a new computer or a network of them, a little bit of preparation can ensure a smooth and trouble free process.

Wireless networks are becoming very popular, and if you have difficulties running cables you may be tempted to attempt a wireless business network. Unless you utilise terminal server technology, running a medical database over a wireless network will be painful.

SSHFS - this is very important free software.

You may already be using Secure SHell (SSH) to access a server, now you can mount the file systems on that server securely and easily on the machine you are working on. Provided you utilise the appropriate security already built into SSH, you can securily mount part or all of a disk from a server on the other side of the world, and work on the files contained in real time.

Microsoft are not in the habit of giving away good software.
Outlook Express, like Internet Explorer, Paint and Notepad all do the job, despite lacking many features that are considered basic in their category, like displaying email in threads.

Medical Director 3 is finally released and available to any user of MDW2 at no extra cost. We installed it on a test machine and were quite impressed, so went ahead and converted the smallest of our sites who were chasing us to do an upgrade. Two days later they called and instructed us to roll back to MDW2.....

The Internet has made the world a much smaller place. It's now possible for you to access your practice data securely home, hospital or another location, using a VPN (Virtual Private Network).

A disaster recovery plan is a simple document detailing the steps required to recover data and resume business after a disaster. The bulk of this information will deal with the backup and restore process, and these details should be customised to suit your business.

Computer security is a constantly evolving and very complex field. There are many areas that need to be covered and it seems that by the time you implement a solution, some 13 year old kid has figured out a way around it. It just seems like such a headache and honestly, who has time? I mean who really cares what a stateful firewall is? Who knows why AES is better that DES? And what is IDS anyway? Antivirus! Adware! Spyware! Where does it end?