Improvement Insights Blog
Tools to Monitor Your Own Health
Even before COVID-19, I gave my staff digital thermometers, oximeters and blood pressure cuffs to help them monitor their health. You can too. Here’s how:
“Hi, I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals” and QI Macros [software].
“I don’t know about you but when I was a kid growing up and my mom needed to take my temperature we used something called a thermometer. This is actually the original box that it was in, but that’s no longer necessary right? Now we have these kind of tools which you can just buy at your local store. Once you press it and turn it on you just scan it across your head and it’ll read your temperature. That’s a quick and easy way to know what your temp is. I think we’re all going to have to be taking care of ourselves more these days.
“Now this is what’s known as an oximeter; it’ll measure your pulse and your oxygen and it takes a couple of seconds to get everything figured out and then of course it’ll come in and tell you exactly what your temperature… (not temperature,) but what your pulse rate and your oxygen are. So that’s another great thing. They talk about shortness of breath which means you have difficulty breathing. Well, if your O2 is less than 90 you’re having difficulty breathing.
“Now I just found this tool: this is called Cardio and literally with my iPhone I can take an EKG on my phone and it’ll tell me if I’m normal or not with this little device here. About $100, all right?
“So I gave all of my employees the thermometers and the oximeter and I gave them all blood pressure cuffs because you can get those for about $100+ that will read (your blood pressure) automatically and detect where you are. We can all start to do a better job of taking care of ourselves. I asked my employees, I said, “If you’re running a hundred degree temperature, please don’t come to work,” right? “I’ll pay you to stay home and you can work from home.” My folks are working from home because we’re mainly digital. That’s not true for everybody, but again, if you’re sick, stay home… but maybe you need a way to detect whether you’re sick or not.
“I’m Jay Arthur. That’s my Improvement Insight for this week. Get some tools to monitor your own health and I think you’ll feel better for it.”
