Contemporary Issues in I.T

Contemporary Issues in IT

This is a post about the use of IT in the news and around the world.

Hospitals using IT to save lives

Better use of information technology in England's hospitals could help prevent 16,000 deaths a year.

University Hospitals Birmingham has recommended its system to the team investigating above-average death rates from 2005 to 2008 at Stafford Hospital.

The trust says it saw a 17% fall in deaths among emergency patients over 12 months, which would equate to 16,000 deaths prevented across England.

Advantages of New IT System

• More people will survive in hospitals.
• Patients will receive all of their drugs because of reminders from the system.  This is good because one in five drugs is not given to the patient at the moment, but this could stop it.
• This system can also keep the doctors and nurses informed about the patient’s condition and previous medical history.

Disadvantages of New IT System

• This new system will be very expensive and the NHS is funded by tax payers money so the tax payers will be paying for it.

In my opinion, the new system is a worth while project that can save thousands of lives and anything that can save lives is worth the money.

The London Roits

A number of politicians and members of the police force have suggested that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger were partly to blame for the organisation of the London riots.  This is because the information of the riot meet ups were shared over the internet on social networking sites, such as twitter and facebook, and the free messaging service offered by Blackberry called BBM.  These services were being used to start the riots by organising where to strike in the city.  Blackberry has offered their services in order to help the police find the rioters.

Websites and services like BBM and Twitter are extremely useful for people to contact friends and family, but unfortunately some people abused the easy communication to set up where they would next wreak havoc. One of  its disadvantages are that it is harder to track people down if they are in trouble with the police for doing something illegal, such as organising riots on the internet.

In my opinion, the social networking sites and BBM were partly to blame for the London riots.  This is because they offer a service that most of the people in the riots used and it was just convenient for them to use them for their illegal activities.

NASA Launches the NPP Satellite

The NPP satellite, NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite, soared into space aboard a Delta II rocket after lift off on 28^th October.

NPP carries five science instruments to help meteorologists improve short-term weather forecasts and to help climatologists observe long-term patterns. The mission will extend more than 30 key long-term data sets that NASA has been tracking, including measurements of the ozone layer, land cover, ice cover, clouds, the ocean surface, and vegetation.  It orbits 512 miles above the Earth.

Advantages of the NPP Satellite

• We will be able to predict what the weather will be like more accurately and we can observe the condition of other things such as the ozone layer better.
• It will improve our understanding of what earth is doing.
• It will be a step forward in better technology.

Disadvantages of the NPP Satellite

• The Satellite traffic will increase as it joins the many that are already in orbit.
• The satellite cost billions to make.

In my opinion, the satellite is a great project for improving weather forecasting by making it more reliable and accurate.  It can also collect more data and information for the experts that are working on this, so they can improve things even more in the future.