Health Information System Seminar

As part of the IT-EXPO requirement and alternative class, I attended the Health Information System (HIS) Seminar held at Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Makati. 

Asian Institute of Management just in front of Greenbelt 1

When we (me and my friends) first arrived at AIM, we were relieved to see a parking lot beside the building. However, the guard on duty did not allow us to park the car and told us to park somewhere else instead. Luckily, AIM was just in front of Greenbelt 1 so we went there and easily found a parking space.

GDLC room where the seminar was conducted

Surprisingly, there were many unfamiliar faces at the HIS Seminar which I thought will be for us IT-EXPO students only but there were many guests representing different companies.  

The first speaker was Mr. Alberto Romualdez, M.D. who talked about Reforming the Philippine Health System for Universal Health Care. First off, he identified the most important health problem in the Philippines which is the inequity in health outcomes whether it be in urban or rural areas. 

Currently, the Philippine government doesn't have an Information System that covers the health department. So, Mr. Romualdez hopes that someday the government will implement a National Health Information System.

The next and last speaker was Mr. Alvin Marcelo. He expounded on ways to establish a responsive national Health Information System. There are five elements that are important: governance, human resources, regulation, financing, and services. But according to him, "Everything emanates from good governance."

Key Messages:

• Health information is the glue that keeps the health system together.
• Governance of health information is a fundamental requirement for a responsive health system.
• A simple standards-based information architecture is crucial for adoption.
• Capability building programs must be offered to fast-track health information systems development.

The procedures and components that are used in Health Information System.

Possible modules and users of HIS (photo grabbed from Mr. Marcelo's presentation)

To end the seminar, there was an Open Forum for audience to ask questions

Dr. Ramon Patero (Open Forum facilitator) beside Mr. Marcelo who explained and answered questions 

To the delight of all seminar participants, there were snacks prepared after the seminar. As Mrs. Arcilla said, our mind and most especially our stomach were so full after the HIS talk. :D

Fish fillet, Calameres, and Pork Barbeque!! 

With my blockmates/blockfriends/companions ☺

The Health Information Systems Seminar was very comprehensive since both speakers elaborated on a broad aspect of the field. They explained the problems, solutions, and the effect that Health Information Systems will bring to the society. Not only that, they were also able to suggest possible programs or modules that can be implemented which will make a huge impact to the nation. 

Upon entering the lobby, we were first greeted by two receptionists (wow, sosy!) and the institutes' huge logo (picture at the right). I was surprised at how it doesn't feel like a school but a professional working place instead. I guess the reason behind this type of setting is to train and make graduate school students feel like they're already professionals and not just students. 

BlackBerry "pinoyBBdev" Seminar

Mr. John G. Bibal II of pinoyBBdev

Last July 7, 2012, we were required to attend a Blackberry Seminar for our MOBIDEV class. It was an introduction to developing applications for BlackBerry Smartphones that was conducted by Mr. John G. Bibal II of Philippine Blackberry Developer Group (pinoyBBdev). He was accompanied by volunteers from Blackberry and Novare Technologies.

First thing we did was install some software that was required in developing a BlackBerry application. It took us a whole morning to finish installing because we were not informed ahead of time that we need to install some software before we can proceed with the actual development. While we were installing the software, Mr. Bibal asked if there were any BlackBerry user among the audience and he gave a BB magnetic pin to each of those users. Afterwards, he discussed some facts about BlackBerry, its history, platform, etc.

It was lunch time when we finished installing the Eclipse and Ripple software. We were given a one hour lunch break before continuing with the actual application development.

We followed the workbook provided and asked the volunteers for assistance while doing the step-by-step procedures. The workbook consists of four walkthroughs that we need to follow: reviewing online resources, setting up the development environment, creating and testing a new BlackBerry WebWorks Application and creating and testing a new BlackBerry Java Application. We were able to do the walkthroughs with the help of the volunteers who were there to assist us whenever we have questions or have encountered problems/errors.

pinoyBBdev workbook

The shirt I won during the seminar :D

The seminar was a great opportunity for us, Information Systems students, because we are tackling mobile application development as a partial fulfilment of our course. After the seminar, we now have a broader idea on how to develop BlackBerry applications and its difference in developing Windows applications. 

Mobile Computing

"Mobile Computing : A technology that allows transmission of data, via a computer, without having to be connected to a fixed physical link."

Mobile computing is the solution to all my connection needs. There are three devices that I consider very important: cell phone, laptop and iTouch, respectively. 

My first ever cell phone was Nokia 8210, which was a hand-me-down from my mom when I was in 4^th grade.  

   

Since I rely on the Internet for researching and doing collaborative projects, I would consider my laptop as a major component of my educational life, without it, I would have a hard time doing school works.

 

Not long ago, I brought an iTouch with my own money since I was really desperate for an all-in-one mobile device. I found my iTouch to be extremely useful because of the following reasons:

a.      I love listening to music whatever my mood is

b.      I can read books free of charge with the help of iBooks

c.      I can connect with my friends via social networking sites

d.      I can play games whenever I’m bored

e.      It can be used as a media player

f.      It helps me with school related matters (e.g. scheduler, web searching, PDF/PPT viewer) 

No matter how good mobile computing might be, it still brings some issues that may concern the users. Even if I am amazed with all the devices I have, I still worry that issues like the invasion of privacy may occur. Other issues that bother me are: the energy consumption of a device and the high risk of being robbed when owning a device.

We know that technology have evolved throughout the years, more and more products are being introduced and they are more innovative than ever.  So it would not be surprising if Mobile Computing in the future will be bigger and better. 

SOC-MED, a learning experience

One of the things I like about SOC-MED is that there's no quiz but it was still challenging because of all the projects and reports. I personally think that sometimes the project given to us were hard because it was new to us, like interviewing someone about their social status online or experimenting in Youtube and it takes a lot of effort to finish all the projects. Reporting is also one of my weaknesses, I don't want to report because I'm a very shy person and I easily gets embarrassed in front of a crowd.
But after all the reporting, I've gain confidence to speak up about what I really wanted to say without being so nervous. I also had so much fun because of all the experience in SOC-MED like using Twitter to tweet about our feelings and posting blogs. The use of avatars was one of my favorite activity, I created a new avatar because the old one was really outdated and I want to create one that really looks like me. The discussion about Web 2.0 taught me a lot of things that I wasn't aware of like the Typewithme, Bittorrent, Grooveshark, etc. Overall, this course offered a lot of new knowledge to each and everyone of us.

SOC-MED Youtube Experiment

Campos, Anjanette        S15
Lapus, Samantha
Lim, Tyrone
Uy, Sofia
Zantua, Jon

We conducted our Youtube Experiment during March 20, 2011 (Sunday) from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.


Category:

Above is the video category in Youtube, Sports is the most uploaded video while News and Entertainment follows.




Commonly used tags:

The image above contains the commonly used tags used by people when they uploaded the video. We noticed that most of the up-loaders used the title as their tags and they have a long list of tags.




Length of Video:

We found out that majority of the videos uploaded were less than a minute, but many also uploaded a 1 to 2 minute video, and there were lesser people who uploaded a long video.

The common video up-loaders are in between the age of 20 to 30 years old while the teenagers trailed behind, the 30 to 40 years old, however, are not the up-loader type.

As we can see, United States of America(U.S.A.) has the most number of uploads, followed by United Kingdom (U.K.), Japan and Netherlands. Most of the other countries have just 1 or 2 videos uploaded that day.

English is the most used language in the videos, while Arabic and German follows. The Others are the videos with background music or it may be a silent video.




* When we conducted the experiment, we encountered two videos which were blocked. 


Summary:

• Category: Sports has the most number of video uploads
• Length of the video: majority of the video was less than a minute
• Age group: many of the up-loaders were 20 to 30 years old of age
• Country: United States of America has the most number of uploads
• Language: English is the leading language
• Common content: Basketball, Music, Cars

Avatar

This is my newly created avatar. I made a new one since my past avatar doesn't really show a good example of who I really am. This is an image that best suits my appearance, with long, black hair, fair skin, semi-hazel eyes,  small nose, and thin lips.  I picked the blue shirt because my favorite color is blue and I love to wear plain clothes that is comfortable to wear. Blue pants/jeans is what I usually wear to school and I chose the flats because it doesn't give me a hard time walking. I also love to wear earrings because it makes a girl look elegant. (HAHA)

For me, Youtube is...

1. What is the impact of Youtube for you?

     Although I'm not a big fan of Youtube, I still think Youtube is a great website. It has a lot to offer; it provides entertainment and can be used for research purposes as well. I sometimes use Youtube to watch movie trailers and music videos that can rarely be found in other websites. Whenever we have a research, I also go to the site because it offers many educational videos. When I want to search for a video, I automatically go to Youtube because it offers almost all the videos a person would want.

2. How to use Youtube to improve education in Philippines?

     Youtube is a video-sharing website that allows anyone to upload and share their videos, so I think people can take advantage of uploading a video that will help students or anyone in particular in learning new things without the burden of paying just to learn. 

3. How do you see Youtube evolving 10 years from now?

     As we all know, time passes by so fast and technology also improves day by day, so I think all the websites that are famous today, including Youtube will improve their features just to satisfy the increasing expectations of the users. They might add new features that will attract more people to use their website as well. 

    Ten years from now, Youtube can also become infamous if there were new websites invented that would defeat the capabilities and features of Youtube.