Air Ambulance Challenges

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Crashes are generally the first thing that patients worry about when confronted with aeromedical, or medevac flights. However this is just one of many challenges that passengers and air ambulance personnel must address and overcome prior to take off. Other factors like cost effectiveness, emergency medical phenomena, and even preventing injuries onboard are equally important.

Air Travel Safety

For whatever reason, crashing seems to be the biggest concern shared by current and potential passengers. Blame it on instinct, conditioning, or a profound respect for the law of gravity; most people just don’t like being very far from the ground, let alone flying. In fact, something like 30% of the U.S. population has a fear of heights. Is this just an overreaction, though?

Not exactly, say experts.

According to public data and transportation authorities, the number of medical flight crashes has actually increased over the years. This rather unsettling trend first began in the early 90’s, then actually doubled from 2000-2005. After a safety report stated that nearly half of all emergency personnel deaths occurred in air ambulance flights, the government issued a number of guidelines designed to prevent such fatal crashes.

Cost Effectiveness

Affordability is the next biggest challenge individuals face when facing medical air travel. A huge misconception is that insurance will automatically cover these costs. Unfortunately, this should never be assumed in these types of situations. While obviously, some emergencies occur without warning and financial affairs are not likely the first thought a victim has, a little preparation can go a long way.

Overcoming this hurdle can be as simple as making a phone call to your health care carrier or even the flight coordinator. The alternative is getting blind-sighted with overwhelming medical bills, or potentially ruining your credit.

Emergency Medical Phenomena

Next, a medical phenomenon referred to as “the golden hour” presents a unique issue for air ambulance patients. In the medical community, the first hour following an emergency is largely considered the most important in terms of treatment outcome & patient survival.

To be sure, the golden hour is one of the leading reasons air evacuation is required in the first place. Yet, ironically, is a contributing factor in the high number of medevac crashes. Because pilots generally fly in conditions most commercial planes would never attempt, this time frame represents not only a danger to the patient, but to medical personnel as well.

Preventing Injuries While In Route

Finally, getting hurt during the flight itself probably seems like a remote possibility. The sad truth of the matter is that federal regulations only require a bare minimum when it comes to patient comfort and injury prevention in the air. At present, there is only one air ambulance company in the nation that provides the following features to ensure passenger safety & comfort:

  • harnesses for medical equipment
  • extra cushioning in patient beds
  • safety rails that can be adjusted to secure passengers
  • mechanical doorways

As you can see, crashes are a very significant air ambulance challenge that patients and personnel must overcome. Nevertheless, other issues such as cost effectiveness, unique medical circumstances, and in-flight injuries play equal roles in the lives of those dealing with emergency air travel.

Sidi Boots – Options for Motorcycle Riding

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If you love motorcycle riding then you must have heard about Sidi boots. These are among the best footwear that you can find for adventurous activities.

There is an interesting story about the origin of the name as it is really a play on words. This is taken from the name of the founder who is Dino Signori. When you take the first few letters from the first and last name, this will give you Di Si which is switched around to form SIDI boots. When you think about this kind of originality, you can now understand why these are considered to be some great items. These boots were actually created in Italy, which contributes to the elite stereotype.

With more than 40 years in this business, these people know a few things about footwear that is designed for motorcycles. When you consider that they have options for skiing, trekking, bicycling and they have offered some of the finest it’s not surprising to find out that they are now designing them for motorcycle riding.

Some of the fantastic designs that you will find nowadays include advancements like sole replacement, inner ankle protection, cam-lock buckles, just to name a few. You can expect to ride safely and get years of wear when you own one of the Sidi Boots. Some of the models will be highlighted below:

Sidi Adventure Rain Boots

You can purchase the components for this model separately. So, whenever a part of the boots gets damaged or perhaps it’s worn down, you can easily remove it and then get a replacement. This boot has features such as a:

  • A composite internal sole with softness for great gripping
  • Shock protectors for the heel made of spilt grain leather
  • Lorica and leather is used for the construction. The buckle system is actually a unique cam-lock style that is replaceable. There is Cambrelle lining and arch support that is removable.

Sidi Strada EVO Rain boots

These boots offers outstanding comfort and street performance. The heel cup will allow sliding whilst offering protection in the form of replaceable shin protectors.

Sidi Streetburner Boots

This design comes with an air vent that is closable, along with double stitching within the high stress sections. A composite internal sole is provided to give excellent comfort. There is an external system for the ankle brace with low cut design to give maximum comfort as well as good flexibility. Some of the other features include shock absorbing heel cups, Tecno-II buckles and removable arch supports.

All in all, Sidi Boots offers some impressive features which mean that they are not one of the most affordable options on the market. But when you consider all the benefits, you will discover that it’s well-worth the cost.

Thanks for reading my article.

Orange San Francisco – The Beginning of Commodity Phones?

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The announcement this week by Orange of it’s new San Francisco android 2.1 budget smartphone continues the recent trend of mobile phones moving away from the proprietary hardware/software combos that have dominated the market until recently.

Mobile phones were always a package of hardware and software that were both developed and manufactured by the same company, usually both were proprietary and not available from anyone else. This model worked beautifully for Nokia for years and continues to work for Apple, but Google’s android operating system changed the game, allowing anyone who could make hardware or afford to have it made to offer a handset with all the benefits of an open source OS without having to spend time and money developing software.

This is basically what happened to the PC market in the early nineties, manufacturers like IBM and Apple who made computers with proprietary hardware and operating systems came under fire from windows based PCs built with off the shelf components. The ability to produce and sell computers without having to spend vast sums of money on R&D lowered the barrier to enter the market and allowed for fresh competition, economies of scale and dropping prices. Whatever your opinion of Windows, selling an accessible operating system independently of the hardware revolutionised the industry, and the same looks set to happen to mobile phones.

Android was initially a little slow to take off, but once a few of the bigger handset manufacturers got on board it took off in a big way, allowing manufacturers to produce handsets with a familiar UI and access to apps and services without developing their own OS.

The Orange San Francisco is another step towards comoditized handsets – handsets that have little to set them apart from others running the same OS aside from price. With a suggested price tag of under £100, the San Francisco brings top end smartphone functionality at a small fraction of the cost of branded handsets.

Most manufacturers who use android place their own UI enhancements and branding on to the basic OS to differentiate their product from their competitors as well as styling the handsets, but how much value buyers will place on this remains to be seen.

Again comparing to the PC market, some manufacturers like Sony have succeeded in selling premium, branded windows based computers, but cost is still the main driver when people buy a computer. I suspect that the same will happen with mobile phones, branding and styling will obviously play a part, but if an “own brand” phone like the Orange San Francisco can provide the same functionality as a branded phone at a fraction of the cost buyers are sure to be tempted.

With intense competition and the event of mobile phone comparison sites, buyers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to getting the best mobile phone deal, so networks are under pressure to bolster their tiny margins. Selling own brand handsets hasn’t been a particularly effective way of doing this up to now as customers wanting the full suite of smartphone functions plumped for the high end branded phones, but if own brand handsets can begin to deliver the performance of branded phones then perhaps buyers will be swayed.

If I’m right and the analogy with home computers holds, the winners will be the customers, who will benefit from dropping prices and more functionality in the same way they did with PC’s – in 1995 a basic windows PC cost in excess of £1000, now you can pick up a computer with hundreds of times the performance for under £500.

Component manufactures are likely to be unaffected – it makes no difference which handset an ARM processor ends up in, they still sell a processor.

Networks will benefit, own brand phones will increase their margins, but branded manufactures are likely to suffer, with little to differentiate their products from the crowd except price it’s hard to see how they will be able to maintain their margins.

Hawaii Trip Rentals

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The Hawaii islands are a couple of the most amazing, beautiful places on the planet. Usually named “paradise” by everything from travel agents to the 80’s detective show Magnum, P.I., Hawaii is just about the most refreshing and relaxing places you could possibly pick to spend your time. The stunning weather year-around and the stunning sunsets are the conditions poetry is usually made of. Unfortunately, it’s not realistic for many of us to live there, but it is still a great option for your romantic trip or regular family holiday. The peace and tranquillity is sure to leave you feeling completely rested and re-energized when you return to where you live. To make things even better, you’re still located within the US, so there is no reason at all to even bother with customs or getting a passport, since it’s not even considered to be in international flight!

The crazy high-rise hotels were built to cater to tourists, but sometimes they just don’t fit the peaceable feel of Hawaii. Some people prefer to look at vacation renting for their stay. These rentals can be anything from a home to a condo that is legally owned by someone else, that you can rent while you’re there.

Choosing to rent a house can give you major benefits as opposed to abiding in a commercial hotel that is just built with the simple minded tourist in mind. If you want an extended stay, or simply need to feel as if you’re at your home away from your actual residence, a vacation rental property can be exactly what you are looking for! You can shop for groceries, cook your own food, park your rented car in the garage, use a fully furnished space, and depending on your visit, you might just save a ton of cash over a hotel.

As an alternative, condo rentals can offer some of the same fancy features that most hotels do, but at a reasonable price that is fantastically fair. Of course, the longer you stay, the more cheap the rates are on a per-night basis.