WebPT Blog
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6 CommentsJun 13, 2012| Charlotte Bohnett
As most of you probably know, last week was PT 2012, APTA's Annual Conference & Exposition. This year the APTA held the conference in Tampa, Florida, and despite the rainy weather, WebPT was front and center, along with a record-breaking number of therapists, about 1,000 more than last year.
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Jun 12, 2012| Erica Cohen
Lights, camera, action! Let’s talk Dartfish video analysis software, an ideal technology for therapists to help patients increase athletic performance and prevent injury.
Background
In an effort to further develop the digital imaging industry, five international business and IT specialists founded Dartfish (originally known as inMotion) in 1998. The once-small startup quickly grew to 50+ employees with offices in six countries and a reputation for developing innovative, interactive internet content enhancements and cutting-edge training applications for sports, education, and healthcare.
From Dartfish.com: “Dartfish offers a complete state-of-the-art digital video analysis solution to enhance patients' understanding and the recovery progress in all areas of physical therapy. From filming a movement to illustrating an explanation with the use of Dartfish drawing tools to exchanging patient files, Dartfish delivers.”
Here’s how Dartfish is helping Olympic athletes increase performance:
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Jun 5, 2012| Erica Cohen
You work your PT keister off, and we love that kind of work ethic. Still, we want to help make your professional life easier. A lot easier. So we’ve put together a list of tips, tricks, and tools to help streamline your front office. That way you can take a vacation. Or at least a lunch break.
Automate your appointment reminders.
You may be the world’s most organized therapist but that doesn’t mean your patients share your love of sticky notes and iPhone alerts. And even if they do, they’re bound to miss an appointment from time to time. Help your patients remember to come in—without your hand holding—with WebPT’s automatic text, email, and call reminders. Select the method and interval best suited for each patient when you schedule his or her next appointment and be amazed when even your most forgetful patient shows up.
You’ll save more than just time—WebPT’s automated appointment reminders reduce no-shows by 30%. Think about what that might mean for your bottom line.
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Jun 4, 2012| Erica Cohen
Today’s blog post comes from Noraxon's Clinical Gait & Sports Performance Specialist Sally Crawford, MS, Biomedical Engineer. Noraxon is a leader in manufacturing and distributing high-end tethered and wireless surface and fine-wire electromyography (EMG) instruments, software, sensors, and accessories.Thanks Sally!
Surface electromyography (SEMG) offers therapists a goldmine of measurable patient data, including muscle recruitment, imbalances, timing patterns, pre- and post-treatment differences, and training successes. Having access to such a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use system allows clinicians to wirelessly measure muscle activity and precisely evaluate patterns in functional movements. In our current therapeutic environment, where competition and the pursuit of athletic excellence are more extreme than ever, SEMG gives clinics a competitive advantage in treatment.
Figure 1: Dynamic Activity with Direct Transmission SEMG, transmitted to a laptop on the track. -
Jun 1, 2012| Charlotte Bohnett
Our Members are the end all be all, so we’re constantly looking for new ways to show you our love and appreciation. Initially, we thought WebPT Members Only jackets, but then we decided—rather than venture into fashion—we’d stick to what we do best: helping you achieve greatness in therapy practice.
With that in mind, I give you Members-Only Benefits, four exclusive business perks for you and your clinic. After learning about our new partners below, log into WebPT and visit the Member Network to get the specific details about each deal.MOO made my list of nine small business tools to help grow your clinic. We knew we loved MOO then, so why not partner with them now and get you some freebies?
Every business needs business cards, and there’s no better (or prettier!) source than MOO. MOO, an award-winning online print business, produces quality prints at great rates. With MOO, you can easily create professional business cards.
Use your own photos, logo, and text or choose from a range of MOO Designs to match your business needs. Select silky smooth, matte-laminated “MOO Classic” paper or an eco-friendly “green” stock. And voila! Business cards! -
May 31, 2012| Charlotte Bohnett
Ever rush back to your house to double-check that you remembered to lock up? You care about security, about having all your belongings safe and sound. So do we. In fact, we’re a bit obsessed. But you can never be too cautious when it comes to your clinic’s data, right?
Enter IO Data Centers, the crème de la crème of data storage. With centers in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona as well as Edison, New Jersey, IO is home to some of the most profitable and security-conscious companies in the world, including us. Not only do we house all your WebPT data here, but we store all our own data, too.
Who is IO?
I’ll let their company video do the talkin’: -
May 30, 2012| Erica Cohen
As technology fanatics, we absolutely love when our Members pose questions about how they can use WebPT with other nifty products on the market right now. Case in point: the speech recognition software, Dragon. After doing a little “yay tech!” happy dance, we got to work researching this fire-breathing product and discovering best practices for PTs.
Dragon Dictation, created by software tech company Nuance, is an “easy-to-use voice recognition application that allows you to quickly speak and instantly see your text or email messages.” Dragon currently operates in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.
While most PTs are comfortable typing their WebPT documentation, some therapists crave dictation, and with Dragon, talk-to-text lovers can swap their recorder for their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You talk. Dragon types. All for free.
But it’s definitely not for everyone and if you’re used to a traditional dictation service this is a totally different beast. We also don’t recommend using your iPad as your practice’s only device—there isn’t a tablet out there (yet) that has enough power to optimally support WebPT on its own.
So how can you use Dragon Dictation with WebPT? We picked the brain of our resident physical therapist and WebPT Marketplace Manager, Brian Kunich, PT, OCS, COMT, to find out how he used Dragon to enhance his documentation. Here’s what I gathered from our convos:
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May 29, 2012| Erica Cohen
For most people, any mention of the cloud causes flashbacks to high school science class—a white, fluffy cumulus or dark, stormy nimbus. But when we talk cloud, we mean neither. We’re talking the techy type: cloud computing.
Cloud computing is, quite simply, internet-based computing. Essentially, shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices (like your smartphone) on demand. Think about it like an electricity grid for information—you plug in (sign on) and immediately are able to access the flow of information available to you without needing your own generating station (in this case, bulky servers to house all your data).
Have a Gmail account? Then you’ve used cloud-based software. You get all the benefits of access, storage, tools, and features without any of the hefty storage or upkeep responsibilities you might have if you were running it directly from your hard drive.
Want more perks?
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May 24, 2012| Erica Cohen
Your anything-that-starts-with-a-lowercase-i addiction is getting worse. It started innocently enough with an iPod, or maybe one of the first iPhones. But for years you could leave it at home, in the car, or at the bottom of your desk drawer without puddling to the floor in the sobs of severe separation anxiety.
That was until the iPad—the magical tool that allows you to browse the web, check your email, manage your practice, and slice your way to the high score on Fruit Ninja.
As if that wasn’t enough, here’s some more fodder to fuel your Apple affinity—three must-have 2012 iPad apps
for physical therapists.
Core ($39.99) Make Core the core (see what I did there?) of your iPad app collection and you’ll have over 250 clinical tests to diagnose musculoskeletal and orthopedic disorders at your fingertips, plus detailed descriptions, instructions, and videos on how to use them. Here are some of the coolest features:
- pocket reference with periodic updates of emerging research
- Covers tendinous, neuropathic, ligamentous problems for each body part
- Reliable and valid diagnostics
- Links to supporting medical references
- Reference reviews via abstracts in PUBMed
- Free updates when new tests are available in the literature, or newstudies with diagnostic properties for old tests are published (i.e., no need to buy a newer edition)
EIM PT Mobile ($1.99) Choose from over 150 of the top physical therapy journals, blogs, and news sources and stream the feed directly to your iPad. Then, share the top stories with your entire network through Facebook, Twitter, and email. And feel good doing it; 10% of EIM’s proceeds will go to The Foundation for Physical Therapy or PTHelpForHaiti.org.
Pocket Body ($29.99) How better to visualize the human musculoskeletal system than with this anatomically accurate interactive atlas of the human anatomy on your iPad? Experience high definition illustrations, add learning notes, and self-assess with built-in anatomy quizzes. View each layer of the skin, musculature, ligaments, and skeleton from an anterior, posterior, lateral, and plantar view.
How do you like them Apples? Let us know about your favorite PT iPad apps today!
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May 23, 2012| Charlotte Bohnett
Last week, we tackled the topic of Internet connections. In that post, I noted that many of our Members found that WebPT works best via a cable connection. That got me thinking: what about browsers, hardware, routers, and all that other tech gear that makes your clinic run?
Apparently, I wasn't the only one wondering these things. Frequently, our Members ask us what technologies we recommend to optimize WebPT. While our software works great with just about any setup, there are some steps you can take to create the most ideal WebPT experience.
Internet Connection
We recommend Cable or DSL Internet with a connection speed of at least 1 Mbps (megabits per second) upload and 10 Mbps download. If your clinic uses QuickScan and/or eDoc, you'll benefit from a faster upload speed.
Wireless Routers
Pretty much any current wireless router will work great with WebPT. However, many therapists have said that the Linksys E3000 and Asus RT-N16 router models work well. Just make sure that the quality of your router is in in proportion to your clinic’s router workload; (the more Internet users, the better the router you’ll need).
