SCATA - UK Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia

SCATA Members Newsletter March 2020

Dear SCATA Member

As we prepare for the COVID-19 peak, I see there have already been a few UK meeting casualties, including the Manchester peri-operative meeting on Monday coming. At this stage, we are still planning to go ahead with our ASM in Belfast in June, but there are going to be a few challenges, not least the collapse of FlyBe that has doubled the cost of flights to Belfast. For those that have already booked to attend our meeting in Belfast, be assured that you'll be entitled to a full refund should we decide to cancel. The committee have set a deadline of 27th March for a decision on whether our ASM will go ahead. In the meantime, we continue to look for speakers from England and Wales for the session on Tuesday morning on AIMS. Do you have recent experience of implementing AIMS locally ? If so, which system, how did it go, and has it added value to your clinical practice ?

Thank you to the members that responded to my requests for assistance with the session - it seems that a lot of Trusts are still very cautious when it comes to investing in digital systems for peri-op care.

Here is the link for the current ASM programme. If you have a moment, please forward this link to your colleagues, and invite your trainees to submit Free papers or posters.

Open Standards Working Group Meeting AAGBI 17-Feb 2020

Notes from the meeting can be read here.

#gashack2020 16-18 October 2020

At a recent #productforge event in Edinburgh, I had a conversation with Ian McNicoll about hack events in general. One of the downsides is that tech people tend to spend/waste a lot of time installing and learning to use a particular framework rather then getting on and building stuff. We agreed that it might be an idea to limit projects to a small number of popular frameworks and advise attendees that they should arrive prepared to develop using one or more of the "chosen" frameworks. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this as an approach. As a recent learner of the Ionic framework, I'd vote +1 for that.

Those that attended #gashack2017 will remember that we were a bit light on coders/tech people. A key to success of the event will be publicity in the universities and especially the computer science departments, as well as the med schools. Any thoughts on how we penetrate that particular target market ? Finally, I think to make the weekend more attractive to non-techs, we should have a think about scheduling a variety of "pop up" talks through the weekend. I was thinking:

Introduction to Coding
My first framework
If it can be written in Javascript, ultimately it will be written in Javascript
What are standards and why do we need them
Clinicians as Coders
What is blockchain and why is it relevant to digital health
Why is it so hard to get my beautiful app into production in the NHS

Trainee Sub-Committee Vacancy

We have a vacany for an enthusiastic tech-enabled trainee on the SCATA committee. The commitment is minimal - attend online meetings when you can and the rest is up to you. If you're considering a career in digital health or clinical informatics, SCATA is a good environment for meeting like-minded trainees. Informal enquiries welcome, just reply to this email.

ACCEA 2020

It's that time of year again. Details of how to get support from SCATA on the web site.

Kind Regards

Grant

Dr Grant Forrest

SCATA Chairman

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