Met at 4.30am at Kilmacud Crokes and headed off by bus for Mizen Head. No masks – all the old slagging in full flow, even before sun up. Just great to be heading off with nearly 100 people to do something worthwhile together. Stopped for breakfast at Skibereen and arrived at Mizen Head c. 11.00am.
Day 1 cycle
Blessed with fantastic weather as we sped through Cork and Kerry (slightly slower climbing to Caha Pass and Moll’s Gap!). Scenery in West Cork and Kerry never fails to amaze – and in sunshine like Wednesday hard to beat it anywhere. Four groups on the road – and we met up at various stops on the route.
Tired bodies arrived in Killarney at 7.00pm. Dinner at 8, preceded by Liam O’Carroll’s Rose of Tralee and ‘de Banks’ – and almost everyone gone to bed by 10.00pm. After a 4.30am start, 5 hour bus journey, 120km cycle – and the promise of a 7.15am breakfast and 8.00am departure the next day – not that surprising.
Highlights of Day 1
The weather, the craic with your mates, getting our team on the road and cycling hard and safely. always love cycling through Cork and Kerry – top of the Caha Pass and Moll’s Gap on a day like this is very special.
And loved the chat on the bikes – when not climbing. and I have blown past my initial fundraising target of €2,000 – headed for €3,000.
and thank yous
To all the support team – keeping us safe on the road, moving our luggage, providing water, fruit, food at all our roadside stops. And in my own case – thank you the our physios in the group – lots of support, help dealing with the limits of my ageing, ‘slightly’ inflexible body.
My 5 day cycling challenge: Mizen to Malin 2022 – is nearly here. And I can’t wait: Wed 1st June to Sunday 5th June. Postponed twice because of the Covid19 epidemic. But we are good to go this day two weeks. Thinking back to my last M2M (in the other direction), finished 4 years ago at Mizen Head.
Mizen to Malin 2022 and Breast Cancer Ireland 11
With whom am I doing this?
Up to 85 of us – all member of Kilmacud Crokes are doing the 5 day cycle. This is the biggest number we have had to date. We will be divided into 5 groups on the road – and looking forward to being in the middle group, I think. We have all trained together throughout the winter and spring.
Sunday spin
The funds raised
We are raising funds jointly for Breast Cancer Ireland and our club development fund. I am very excited to be raising money for Breast Cancer Ireland again – unfortunately I know too many friends who have been impacted by this awful disease. So important to raise awareness, raise money and fund ongoing research.
Sponsors
We have so many generous sponsors – over 40 have placed advertisements on the jersey we will wear. And our lead sponsor again for the whole event is Nissan Ireland.
The route
Day 1: we will set out by bus on wednesday morning at 4.00am from Stillorgan, heading for our start point: Mizen Head. Day 1 we will cycle from Mizen Head to Killarney – over the Caha Pass and Moll’s Gap. Great test on Day 1.
The Bus in 2016 – one bus used to be enough!
Day 2 (Thursday): cycle 130km from Killarney to Lahinch. Catch the ferry along the way. Already looking forward to getting into the sea to cool off having completed 2 days.
Catching the ferry 2016
Day 3 (Friday): cycle gets longer: 150km from Lahinch to Kiltimagh.
Day 4 (Saturday): Longest day’s cycling: 180km from Kiltimagh to Letterkenny. Am sure we will have an extra early start. By then my bike and I will have become very well reacquainted.
Day 5 (Sunday): Shortest spin of the week: 80km: but finish with that particularly nasty little incline up to Malin Head.
Made it in 2016 – now just need to repeat!
Your chance to sponsor my cycle
I would really appreciate your sponsoring my cycle. This will be my third time doing M2M – and I have always been very generously supported . Great cause: please go to my fundraising page and donate whatever you can. Many thanks in advance.
Great memories of 2016 and 2018
Great Mizen to Malin in 2016Our subgroup just before leaving Malin Head in 2018
Great podcast recently on healthcare rap focused on consumer strategy in healthcare.
Thinking about a consumer strategy in healthcare
Was particularly interested in contributions of Craig Kartchner of HonorHealth and his thoughts in his role as AVP Marketing and customer experience.
Patients love their doctors and doctors – from their perspective – have been patient (read ‘patient’ for ‘customer’/ ‘consumer’) focused from the word go. Craig thinks of the patient as a customer (or potential customer) before and after the patient experience – and he wants them to be a repeat customer. The doctor may see a monogamous relationship – the customer will have multiple relationships.
Improving customer experience
Some ideas:
Research where we are failing – in the before and after experience (We need to accommodate their needs and wants for entire journey – not just sitting in front of physicians)
Streamline access to care – when, where, how, speed
Improve care navigation – multiple systems, multiple visits, multiple tests, different sets of instructions
Simplify patient communication – ability for patient to communicate with clinical, financial, administrative – too complex, too slow, too unpredictable
Don’t let the tech get in the way of humanity/ empathy – patients want to be there for their kids/ their grandkids – may need a shoulder to cry on
Where can tech help?
Lots of ideas – leverage what you have:
Online scheduling
online wait lists – automatically offer appointments as they become available
eCheckin – avoid queues/ delays
telemedicine/ telehealth – avoid the trip
asynchronous care – complete electronic form and provide initial diagnosis
Challenge/ opportunity
Consumers (patients) are not interested in our complexity – they want it to be easier and cost less. Do we really understand what drives consumer thinking and decision making – to select a particular service or no service at all?
If we are to move to a focus on keeping people well we will need to build out better relationships. Intelligent outreach to patients, better care plans, people are more likely to follow treatment plans and in turn this will keep people out of hospital.
MXR per Rafael Grossman – ‘augmented reality where you have an interactive connection with the digital content over the real world for a medical application of some type’ – can be applied in surgery, training and other areas in medicine.
Now seeing Virtual Reality as another medical tool – not just diagnostics; opportunities to immerse yourself in the data more therapeutic uses for VR – impacting surgical procedures. Other applications in mental wellbeing, mental disorders, PTST, Depression, Anxiety
People now understand difference in VR and AR – and the use cases for both. Lots of use cases now in surgery. Training and education are ‘no-brainers’ – but more complex surgical applications likely to deliver real results.
Great mission: ‘liberate the world from fear and pain’. Focused on VR. Demonstrated power of VR for Exposure (PTST, Anxiety), Movement, Focus with absence of distraction (e.g. mindfulness practice). Global market developing for non pharma therapies.
Thoughts on XR – listening to this podcast
What really caught my attention was: ‘How do we take things that are well understood and demonstrated to be effective in a live analog setting between therapist and patient or maybe have been digitised in a 2D manner. How do we translate to something where we are working in an immersive medium where we can get all the digital benefits of standardisation, repeatability, personalisation, lots of data collection, closed loop of your reaction driving the experience itself while we’re doing an immersive medium where movement in involved and the brain is engaged differently, literally’.
Yes – there are challenges: need mor clinical studies/ research, comparative assessment capabilities across the industry, additional education/ talent e.g. thinking about how to maximise use of 3D. Lots of smart people with no real understanding of why XR is transformative – thought this is probably true for lots of people who have not experienced the online games world.
New technologies are enabling advances in XR – AI and Edge computing. AR brings lots more data – how to integrate with other data and what does this mean?
MXR (VR/AR) is just a new way for medicine to interact with the digital world.
Like this comment ‘2D pane of glass is not the end game’. And if you watch this video on YouTube, to paraphrase the patient: ‘if my world is 3D why should medicine stop at 2D’?.
Recently listened to a ‘Faces of Digital Health‘ podcast from 11th August with Lea Davis (former Medication Safety Pharmacist at Perth Children’s Hospital – addressing medication safety. Interesting perspective on role of electronic health record and technology in medication safety. It is not difficult to see how electronic records and systems can assist healthcare staff in improving patient safety.
How do overdose errors happen?
Interesting observations by Lea Davis: All nurses, doctors, pharmacists busy – checking lots of charts, sometimes lack of knowledge, sometimes checking books, sometimes decimal point goes in the wrong place, sometime doses are transcribed from one sheet to another, if not checking back to references may not pick up the errors.
What is the role of technology in improving medication safety
Keys to success included a clear vision and strategy of the systems hospitals wanted to bring in, the problems they were tackling and the type of data they wanted to capture. Best practices related to vision, funding, implementation and not just technology, automation, robotics. Solutions include scheduling, management of systems, closed loop medication management (scan barcode on a package to verify that the does matched what was prescribed).
Integrity of information on medication management is related to the biggest clinical system (EHR/ EMR – including community medicine records) – with this you will have less errors. When you look at hospitals who do not have the budget for this – then major efforts required to integrate the patchwork of systems (a lot of work and time, interoperability challenges). More recently developments in HL7, FHIR, open systems are simplifying some of this integration/ interoperability. Benefit should be less burden on doctors and executives in safe patient care.
Future of patient safety and technology
Patients to have tools to better manage their own care. Reduce fear for patients. Able to be treated more often in their home environments. Patients to have more of a say in how the information looks as they transition through their care journey.
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and arrived at Mizen Head c. 11.00am.
