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From Hospital Visits to Continuous Care: Why Moldova Should Invest in Remote Heart-Failure Monitoring

Business concept: This article is associated with my business idea for Remote Heart-Failure Monitoring. Moldova is making significant investments in the modernisation of its healthcare system. Digitalisation, electronic health records, telemedicine and better access to healthcare outside the country's largest medical centres are increasingly part of the national discussion. There is, however, an important difference between digitising healthcare administration and changing how healthcare itself is delivered . Heart failure provides an excellent opportunity to make that transition. Instead of relying predominantly on periodic consultations and waiting until a patient's condition deteriorates enough to require emergency treatment or hospitalisation, Moldova could introduce a nationally supported remote heart-failure monitoring programme . The principle is straightforward: allow medical teams to observe important changes in a patient's condition while that patient is ...
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What Prolog Taught Me About Building an AI-Assisted Family Tree

My family-tree project has become considerably more complicated than entering names and dates into genealogy software. I am now dealing with civil records, parish registers, old photographs, certificates, correspondence, archives in several countries, translations, uncertain relationships, research hypotheses and a steadily growing collection of people who may or may not turn out to be relatives. As the project expanded, I realised that the difficult part was no longer simply finding information. I needed a system that could remember how I wanted the research to be conducted. For this I am using two large language models, ChatGPT and Grok. Both are connected, with the appropriate permissions, to parts of my Google environment, including services such as Google Drive, Gmail and Calendar. They can therefore do considerably more than answer an isolated question. Depending on the available tools and permissions, they can search material, examine documents and correspondence, help ...

Wine

 

Too Much Furniture and Not Enough Decisions

Sunday is traditionally supposed to be a day of rest. Apparently nobody involved with our current life in Moldova has been informed of this. After yesterday's expedition around Chișinău, I could quite happily have spent today doing very little. The renovation, however, continues to generate decisions, shopping lists and things that need to be investigated, while family life produces another collection of tasks entirely. One practical difference I continue to appreciate in Moldova is that Sunday does not necessarily mean putting everything on hold. Shops, supermarkets, restaurants, shopping centres and many other businesses remain open, so if Saturday's list survives Saturday, there is still a reasonable chance of attacking it again the following morning. And our list definitely survived Saturday. Birthday season has arrived The first part of the morning was devoted to birthdays. Viorica's birthday is tomorrow, but by one of those interesting pieces o...

My Italian Family Tree Has Reached the Point Before Italy

My latest hobby continues to get slightly out of control. When I returned seriously to my family tree, I thought I was essentially going to tidy up information I already had, fill a few gaps, attach some documents and perhaps push a few branches back another generation. Instead, it has become something much closer to historical detective work. One document produces two new names, those names produce another village, somebody gets married and introduces another family, and suddenly what looked like a small missing branch has become an entire collection of people I did not know existed. Today was another particularly productive day on the Italian side of the family. The descendant chart accompanying this post gives some idea of what is happening. The Pochettino and Ravera branches have been expanding, more relationships are becoming documented, and the colourful collection of boxes on my screen is beginning to look less like a family tree and more like the organisational char...

Wine

 

Two Hours, One Jacket and Far Too Much Cheese

Only a week after our first proper visit to Port Mall, we went back. This time there was a very specific mission. Viorica had decided that she needed a new jacket for autumn and, apparently, several other seasons of the year. From the way the subject was presented, this was clearly not going to be just a jacket. It was going to be a special jacket, requiring proper investigation, comparison, inspection and whatever other mysterious processes are involved in selecting the correct item of clothing. My enthusiasm for participating in this operation was approximately zero. I have long accepted that there are certain shopping expeditions where my contribution is neither required nor particularly useful. Standing outside changing rooms while being asked whether two nearly identical jackets look different is not one of my recognised professional competencies. Fortunately, our previous visit to Port Mall had already revealed an excellent alternative: the upper food level, an I...