En innføring i helse-IT for utviklere

Etter å ha fulgt debatten om Helseplattformen og Akson blant utviklere har jeg sett at domenet helse-IT er et område mange av de med IT-bakgrunn som deltar i debatten ikke har mye innsikt i. Jeg har heller ikke bakgrunn i helse-IT men har vokst opp i en familie der alle er i helsevesenet og kjenner folk som har drevet med drift, support, test, utvikling og tilpasning av journalsystem. Jeg har hørt utallige historier og hjertesukk fra alle mulige kanter. Hvorvidt Helseplattformen og Akson som prosjekt og valgene som er gjort er bra ønsker jeg å forholde meg ganske agnostisk til, det får ettertiden bedømme. Jeg ønsker å belyse hvorfor helse-IT har en del utfordringer og kostnader som gjør disse litt annerledes enn mange andre IT-prosjekt.

Working from home for a long time with unknown end date

5 years ago I was living in Nairobi, Kenya for many months while adopting my son. And working remotely. Here are my survival tips for prolonged home office situations:

Create a good physical environment

• Bring a monitor with cables home from the office if you are allowed and don’t have a large monitor at home.
• Sit comfortably. Invest in a good chair for the sake of your own back. Put books under your table to get the right height.
• Move around and get some variation: Take a meeting on the couch.
• For the periods when others are taking care of little children, lock the door to your room.

Be social

• There will be less coffee machine chats and informal exchange of ideas. Talk to your colleagues without formal meetings and let meetings be on the topic.
• If you are home with your family, meet regularly in positive interactions. Eat together, take breaks with your family and have some fun.
• When there are limits on physical social interaction, be creative. Call people. Communicate with colleagues, friends and family.
• Balance your interaction with fearful people if it impacts you negatively. If possible be the one who brings peace, calm and hope.

Organize your life and work

• Maintain your daily schedule as if going to the office. In addition to being available to your colleagues it is good for you and others around you.
• Eat regular meals. Eat varied, not just to get all nutrients but also to not get bored of always eating the same. Don’t snack too much.
• Plan your activities. You may not be able to shop at night and follow your daily routine. Schedule necessary out-of-work activities as a break and work focused before and after.
• Networks may be overloaded and you may not be able to work on any task at any time. Always keep an offline list of non-urgent items that don’t require you to be online and things you can do if the company network is down (training, documentation). Remember to make backups when you get back online.
• You may not always be able to carry on with your main tasks e.g. due to a lack of decisions and communication. Make a list of things you didn’t prioritize when things were normal and pick from that list whenever you need.
• Keep track of worked hours. Use a single number for surplus/lack of hours and update often as you will quickly forget how much you worked when it was split in irregular intervals.
• Respect your weekends. Work on workdays, enjoy time off when it is not a working day.

That’s how I managed working far away when it was not safe to walk outside the gates after dark, very unstable internet connection, frequent electricity outages (at worst it lasted 19 hours), constant lag when working over RDP, stress from government banning adoption to foreigners and fear what the consequences would be, risk of some nasty diseases, not seeing family and friends for many months and it wasn’t always easy to talk to them either.

Don’t panic! Get organized and settle into the new normal while it is necessary. Limiting physical interactions limits contagious diseases. You may not be in a risk group, but you still risk passing it along. And should you need health care for any other reason be thankful to all who didn’t contribute to hospitals and health workers collapsing under the load.