That will be my life for roughly the next 10-11 months.
Last year my wife received noticed that she was due for her sabbatical. One night while we were wondering what we might do in the coming year I made the oft-hand remark, why don’t we move to Vienna for the year. She loved the idea.
Why Vienna?
Well that is the home of Andrea’s parents and quite a few current relatives. Also, I personally had never been to this city but always dreamed of a time when I would have an opportunity to live abroad in some wonderful, historic European city known for its culture and arts. Now my dream has come true.
But just because I am here in Europe, does not mean that I will also be on sabbatical – far from it, though I may take longer weekend breaks…
Chilmark Research has always been a virtual company. Our analysts live in a variety of locales across the US and we effectively leverage the technology we talk about (e.g. Box for collaborative content mgmt, WordPress for the website, Gmail and Google docs, a variety of conference call services from Uber to Fuze, and now Skype among others) to create, collaborate and deliver our ground breaking research. Therefore, my move to Vienna really does not change how we operate all that much – but it will certainly change the hours I work. For those of you on the east coast, your lunch break will be my dinner break.
During my stay here I will of course travel to see other parts of Europe. And while those trips will be mostly recreational, I also intend to combine some research on the European healthcare market and their appetite for all things IT, or as they refer to it here, ICT (information and communications technology) in these travels. I am particularly interested in learning how advanced they are in the use of IT in the context of delivering higher quality healthcare and to what extent IT has penetrated this sector. I will also be interested in understanding how records are shared to support transitions in care and to what extent is the patient/consumer is involved in the process. Care management is one area that is seeing very strong interest in the US – how is it done here in Europe? Is there something the US can learn from our European counterparts or vice versa? These are just a couple of the countless questions I have and I am sure there will be many more. Please feel free to chime in, via comments, with your own ideas and suggestions of what I should dig into while here.
Occasionally I will post here brief tidbits on my observations of the European practice of healthcare in the context of their use of ICT. Of course I reserve the right to sprinkle those posts with some of my own personal musings of my experiences in Europe as well.
Auf wiedersehen for now.
Note: The picture above is of the Belvedere Palace, a beautiful place just a short walk from our apartment. The palace was built by the French officer who came to the rescue of Vienna in helping turn back the invasion of the Ottomans. Supposedly a brilliant strategist, this particular French officer had no future in France for he was considered too short and too ugly to move up the ranks. Looks like he had the last laugh.
Fantastic John! I might have to follow in your footsteps one of these days. I expect some reports on the biking in Austria as well as ICT updates. I’ll look you up if I get to your neck of the woods.
Yes, exciting to be here. As to the biking, what I have observed so far is that the public support of cycling in Vienna really puts the US to shame. Like many US cities, they have Citybikes that you can rent quite cheaply. Unlike the US, they have obviously been doing this for many years and the infrastructure to support cycling is fantastic – clearly marked bike lanes everywhere, bike parking everywhere. And I thought this only happened in the Netherlands and Belgium…