Week 3: Moving Up the Ranks

Note: Sorry for the tardiness of this post. Me at 4:00 AM in the morning a few days ago couldn't distinguish between the "Publish" button and the "Save" button. Only now did I realize. Anyway, expect the next post this Saturday. I have some very...interesting stories to tell. :)

Week 3: Moving Up the Ranks

Hello again! I hope you all are having a wonderful day today. I've got another week full of the mundane and the exciting to share, so without further ado, let's jump into it.

You Bet It Is

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I'm finally finishing up one of the first main Excel spreadsheets with a full set of live patient data! It took a long time, and was quite tedious at points, but the results show. Over 30 panels across and 300 panels down, all filled, it is truly a giant of a chart. Unfortunately, due to the fact that there is patient data unreleased to the public for confidentiality reasons, I cannot show you guys any part of my spreadsheet, at least right now. I can, however, give you the variables I list on the x-axis.

A typical lesion on a typical patient will require a variety of factors to be logged. These include, but are not limited to: Patient Name, Patient #, Patient ID, Date of Birth, Date of Service, Lesion #, Lesion Type, Lesion Description, Possible Diseases, Data Logging Type (RECIST, Chesion, Bi-Dimensional, Tri-Dimensional, etc.), Long Axis, Short Axis, Depth, Volume, Image #, Series #, Comments, Evaluation, IRB Index (basically which folder the patient is put in), Priors, Visit Name (Baseline, Followup 1, Followup 2, etc.), and many more.

(basically if every variable that has ever existed got together and threw a party)

These all must be logged for both the core lab patients and the clinical patients, as one of the main focal points of my SRP is to determine which of the above methods of lesion identification and classification is better.

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Moving on, I attended two lectures this week. The first discussed radiology software on mobile devices, the second focused on cystic fibrosis and the kind of technology Mayo was using to fight it.

Lecture 1: Apparently the first time the lecturer's colleagues proposed adding software such as XOsiris and Mintleaf (both of which are used to view and edit high-rez images of medical scans, among other uses) as an app to the first IPhone, only recently announced by Jobs at the time, they were quite literally laughed out of the room. (So I hear, anyway.)

"There's no way a PHONE can properly run our top notch software without crashing!" Oh how wrong they were. As the IPhone and IPad went on to become the international sensations they are today, the technical specs increased dramatically with every update. Now, an IPad can run most software as apps better than actual machines/computers on Mayo's (and other hospitals') sites designed specifically to run those softwares. Iphones are almost as good. Interestingly enough, Android devices tend to have problems, so most medical professionals don't use them on the job. *cough* Shrey Gupta *cough*

The lecture went on to talk about levels of security and accessibility and how mobile devices could also use these in needed apps. On the topic, I currently have an unofficial clearance level of 2. According to the lecture, level 1 entails moving data, level 2 allows for viewing data, level 3 permits limited editing of data, and so on. One of my supervisors, Christine, is trying to get me the equivalent of level 3 access due to my good work and general helpfulness thus far. Good, good, I am moving up the ranks. First Mayo, then the world.

cheesy forcibly inserted meme is cheesy

The second lecture about cystic fibrosis mentioned the use of NVidia graphics cards to help patient scans be of top quality. I perked up when I heard 'NVidia', for I knew the same graphics cards to be top notch for PC gamers. There's actually a really funny story related to this that happened at a Mayo conference I attended, but I'll tell it on the next blog post, you'll see why.

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And finally, let's talk about what I'm dubbing "the Quest for Edward".

My supervisor Christine told me and an ASU Graduate Student whom we'll call George (he's awesome, btw, he just looked kinda bad at one point in this story so I'm not giving out his real name) to go find this guy called Edward. Apparently he was the one who shipped a server Mayo needed to our Scottsdale clinic, so he was the one who knew where we could find it and carry it in. All we had to go off of was a phone number.

So we called him. No response. Fantastic.

We starting combing Mayo asking everyone in the most awkward ways where 'Edward' was.

"Ah, excuse me, do you know anyone here by the name of Edward?"

"What's his last name?"

"Uhh...he shipped a server over here. That's all I know."

"No idea, sorry." Or some variation of this.

We eventually decided to check the last few corners of the building we hadn't crossed yet, and give up if no leads were found. As we're doing so, I faintly hear Uptown Funk playing in the distance. Curious, George and I follow the music as it gets louder and louder. Finding the source, we see two individuals and a radio BLASTING the song at maximum volume. And - you guessed it - one of them was Edward. (Well no wonder he didn't hear his phone considering Spotify Top List was playing at no less than 3000 decibels haha)

And even then it wasn't over. George started asking for a server, and Edward didn't seem to know what a server was, so he started describing a package he brought in recently. Turned out, it was the exact description of what a server looked like, but it also turned out, George didn't know what exactly a server was either, because he kept asking 'for the server' even after it was described. I tried to interject to clear things up, but I was shushed.

Eventually though, everyone understood what was going on, and we got our server. Yay! :)
(ugh finally)

See you next week!