Club All Ireland Football semi-final

Club All Ireland Football semi-final

Kerins O’Rahilly against Kilmacud Crokes – GAA Club All Ireland Football semifinal. A Kerry Dublin clash.

Nothing like having your parish involved in the closing stages of Club All Ireland – have to admit my Crokes connections. Amateur sport – all the players completely accessible in their clubs and parishes.

Great to have your Club playing here at HQ- Croke Park. Great surface for playing top level games mid winter. Though today is more like a spring day.

And The Glen v. Moycullen to follow.

First half exhibition of fielding from Kerry stalwart David Moran. But Crokes looking more threatening on the break. Two points in it at half tome – game in the balance.

Crokes finally got the goal that was eluding them. Thereafter they seemed to have something to spare. Right until the end when Kerins O’Reilly pulled them back to three points and threatened goal to no avail.

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Competitive all the way

For Kilmacud Crokes a chance in two weeks’ time to go one better than 2022.

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Heading away on Jones’ Road.

Getting strategy right

Will be interesting to see how Elon Musk and Tesla go forward – what changes, if any, getting strategy right. On the face of it looks tricky: slowing global economies, higher finance costs for consumers, significant additional capacity coming on line, competitors catching up, Tesla cars more expensive than previously.

Musk has attracted mixed coverage for his Twitter take over – at the same time as his car company is experiencing these challenges. How much does the Twitter acquisition impact sales of Tesla cars? Are current/ potential Tesla owners concerned that the founder may be distracted? Are Tesla shareholders concerned?

But Musk and Tesla have been and continue to be innovators – and competitors should not underestimate this commitment to getting the tech right, creating new experiences for drivers. Why would Tesla not continue to deliver new ideas, innovations, enhanced experiences?

In some ways reminds me of Ryanair and Michael O’Leary. O’Leary has been the people’s champion – low cost flights, enabling travels for the masses. He has not always been popular – and some of his PR stunts have not always been well received. But he has stayed focused, he seems to have used each recession as an opportunity to strengthen his business. He has created capacity heading into (or during) downturns – only to accelerate in the upswing. He has weathered economic downturns and COVID19.

Will be interesting to see how Tesla moves forward. Reminded me of Rumelt’s ‘Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors. A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.

Breast cancer detection – another tool

Interesting to read this piece on BBC today: new tool to detect breast cancer.

Read the various inputs from different doctors – fully get it: not a replacement for the doctor and not a replacement for visiting the doctor. But when you read about the shortage of doctors, the pressures on hospitals, the numbers of late detected cancers – we have to look at tools which enable patients/ potential patients work in partnership with their doctors.

Thinking about Dementia

Thinking about Dementia

Unfortunately thinking about dementia is not too difficult for most of us – having seen the impact in our families and/or close friends. Just listened to a series of three podcasts published by The Conversation.

I was familiar with the ideas about Alzheimers – build up of plaque/ tangles in brain (amyloids, tau). And had read recently about some exciting developments in terms of drugs which may slow down development of Alzheimers.

But found the podcasts very interesting on a number of fronts (as a layperson);

  • Potential relevance of education and socio economic background to onset of dementia
  • Possible relevance of untreated high blood pressure during peoples’ 30s and 40s
  • Research of Common Cold Sore Virus (HSV1) as a possible cause/ instigator of Alzheimers
  • Impact of sports injuries/ concussion – CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy)
  • Typical clinical diagnoses for Alzheimers
  • Views of a range of researchers in US and UK

Unfortunately seems like we are going to have to live with Alzheimers and other forms of dementia for some time – and will be more prevalent as the population lives longer. But as one of the researchers reminds us – so little progress on cancer for so long and now we are seeing personalised medicine in cancer treatments. Hopefully we will also see breakthroughs of significance in field of dementia in next few years.

Thinking about metaverse for healthcare

Thinking about metaverse for healthcare

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When I read Tom Coughlins’ thoughts on the metaverse, some of the challenges and opportunities, I can’t but compare this with hospitals operating a hybrid of paper based and electronic healthcare records – and what the metaverse for healthcare would mean. The world has move on – so far. Belated implementation of old fashioned software is not digital transformation – and is not positioning healthcare to move forward and leverage the opportunities presented by the metaverse.

In this discussion Coughlin considers some of the challenges in terms of access, connectivity e.g. if trying to accommodate 5,00 people from multiple devices in a concert type situation.

Clearly, from the bets being made by Meta, Mark Zuckerberg thinks we will solve many of these technical challenges.

Interesting comments also about the car industry – KPMG suggesting that >50% of the cost of electric cars is semiconductors. I have just finished reading ‘Chip War‘ – FT business book of the year. I think it should form part of basic courses in economics, social science, engineering. Amazing to see the role being played by this industry across the globe.

This piece from venturebeat well worth a read for anyone getting over excited about implementing an EHR solution in 2022. If we want to serve a public in the metaverse need to throw out some of the old thinking and reinvent ourselves.