Albert Einstein uses real-time tracking system to save lives, cash

If the guy who said “what gets measured gets managed” stepped foot into Albert Einstein Medical Center he would have been a happy man.

The Logan-based hospital has been using a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) that monitors and measures the location of doctors, medical devices and patients since last September, according to RIFD Journal, but the North Broad Street fixture has just released their first round of related metrics.

What Twitter is to your friends’ eating habits, the RTLS is to medicine.

Each patient who comes through the hospital is given one of the 350 special ID cards that gets synced with the patient’s medical file. The devices act as a GPS of sorts, relaying the location of the wearer to receivers throughout the hospital which transmit the data over a local area network to a computer running special software. Hospital employees can pull up the building’s floor plan and see in real-time where patients and co-workers are and how long they have been there.

Doctors no longer have to go searching for equipment (and each other), while the time patients spend waiting around to be treated is being cut down.

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Technically Not Tech: Tech training and another chance at YouthBuild Philadelphia

YouthBuild Philadelphia Leads a green build at the National Mall in D.C. on March 17, 2009. YouthBuild also has technology courses.

She wasn’t going to pass.

Testing for an ICDL, a license noting she had mastered general computer functions, is the goal of the six-week technology class at the YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School, but sometimes there are too many challenges for some students to get there.

This young woman tried, but it sure seemed like she’d be one of the students who miss the mark. Female high school dropouts aren’t often thought as players in technology fields.

But then, she passed. And now, one year later, she’s at the Community College of Philadelphia, reaching even further.

Stephanie Virgo, a YouthBuild technology instructor who had those concerns about that student she liked, now sees that triumph as something of a lesson on how technology can challenge and motivate.

“We have students who have never used a computer before,” Virgo says. “It can be very empowering and help them pursue that post-secondary education. If you’re given a paper to write, that can be hard. If you’re given that paper and you don’t know how to use a computer, it’s a whole ‘nother challenge.”

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Green initiatives remain popular despite lull in oil prices

If you live sustainably in Pennsylvania, you just might get a break on your home owner’s insurance.

The Donegal Insurance Group, based in Marietta east of York, will begin offering policies May 1 that offer a five percent discount on insurance for homes that use solar energy or a geothermal heat pump.

It is part of a growing trend for green initiatives to actually expand, despite relatively low gas prices. The commodity’s price still dictates interest in products like hybrid cars for some, but as oil seems destined to only increase in expense, the movement maintains.

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