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MEDICINE FOR DUMMIES
Ladies, meet Stan. He just lies around and complains. He has scores of illnesses, which he helplessly looks to you to heal. And if you feed him such things as Jell-O or oatmeal, Stan will produce the gamut of bodily secretions.
Sounds like he’s not much better than what you’ve got? Well, Stan is ready to die for you.
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photo: Cory Lum
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Stan, short for “Standard Man,” is the latest and greatest in medical training mannequins. With all his wonderful traits, Stan is putting the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the forefront of the latest medical school trend. (For the record, Stan will die for any man, too.)
In the old days—say, a year ago—most students didn’t practice medical procedures before performing them on live patients. But, since October, UH students have honed life-saving skills on a crop of high-tech mannequins designed to mimic human illness and injury, right down to verbal responses.
The hands-on practice allows students to poke and prod and put tubes down a patient’s throat while monitoring the patient’s vital signs and bodily secretions. If the student goofs, say, by prescribing the wrong medicine, Stan just might bite the dust. “I always let them make mistakes,” explains surgical instructor Dr. David Yew, “because that’s how you learn.”
JABSOM created its simulator center with a $3 million federal grant and bought a half-dozen mannequins, most of which are the $50,000 “SimMan” models and include a couple of child mannequins. There is only one Stan. His price tag was $250,000.
UH envisions the simulator center as a resource for Hawaii’s entire healthcare community. The first private company to use the center is AirMed Hawaii, an air ambulance provider and the first tenant in JABSOM’s new small-business incubator. Yew is AirMed’s associate medical director, as well as a UH professor. He’s training AirMed staff on the simulators, recreating real-life scenarios. Says Yew, “Our crew has to be able to deal with anything.”
Just like Stan.
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$2.6 billion The dollar value of merchandise sold at the nation’s jewelry stores in February of 2006. $397 million The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut flowers in 2005 for operations with over $100,000 in revenues. $76.9 million The combined wholesale value of domestically produced cut lilies for those same operations in 2005. $39 million The combined wholesale value for cut roses. That was the third most in sales after tulips, which had $39.1 million. 1,241 The number of U.S. locations producing chocolate and cocoa products in 2004. 43,222 The number of people employed by those 1,241 locations 25.7 pounds Per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2005. source: U.S. Census Bureau |
OUT OF THE BOX
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photo: Jen Tadaki
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Private chef Hiromi Ann Yonezawa offers a unique dining experience that she describes as “the fusion of French, Japanese and Italian culinary arts.” Yonezawa also offers it in a unique fashion, in your home, with your personal choice of menu. Yonezawa, who studied in Japan and later under Yves Garnier, chef at the Halekulani’s la Mer, targets high-end clients who are in search of that elegant dining experience found in exclusive restaurants, but who also cherish the intimacy of dining in their own homes.
But while we are sure the dining is divine, what first brought our attention to Yonezawa’s business, Rouge Haute Cuisine, was not her cooking skill, but her marketing kit. Yonezawa sent out a fine script letter introducing herself, a miniature menu, a gift certificate for a fresh pear tart and her business card laid on top of a dessert plate and folded inside a rouge dinner napkin. Yonezawa says she wanted her marketing material to reflect the elegance that is the heart of her business.
For her out-of-the-box marketing, we give her four stars.
-Scott Radway
THE STATE OF TRAFFIC
>>>If you lined up all the registered motor vehicles on Oahu, end to end, you could have cars, buses and trucks on every public roadway on the island and then some. On Kauai, Maui and the Big Island, there are tens of thousands more vehicles than people. Statewide, there are 264,000 less licenses than there are registered vehicles.
| Population | Registered Vehicles | Licensed Drivers | Miles of Roads | Miles of cars if were put end to end* | |
| STATE | 1,200,000 | 1,120,000 | 856,000 | 4,307 | 3,182 |
| OAHU | 876,000 | 715,000 | 584,000 | 1,622 | 2,031 |
| MAUI** | 128,000 | 160,000 | 102,000 | 811 | 455 |
| BIG ISLAND | 149,000 | 169,000 | 120,000 | 1,460 | 480 |
| KAUAI | 58,000 | 76,000 | 50,000 | 414 | 216 |
| Source: State of Hawaii Data Book 2005 * We used an average car length of 15 feet (the approximate length of a Toyota Corolla) to calculate the length of cars in Hawaii. ** Includes Molokai and Lanai |
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OH CANADA, OUR HOME AND TRAINING LAND
The Economist ranked the best cities worldwide for your next business conference. Factors ranged from cost and transportation ease to climate and crime rates. And while we are of course pleased to see Honolulu near the top, we were surprised to see when it comes to corporate training locations, Canada and Australia are superpowers. Out of 127 cities that were considered, here are the bookends.
-Scott Radway
| >> BEST PLACES TO ... | |
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GO FOR A BUSINESS TRIP 1. Vancouver Canada |
AVOID FOR A BUSINESS TRIP 1. Port Moresby Papua New Guinea |
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source: The Economist
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CARD DEALER
It’s business card time again and you’ve just reviewed the third proof of your cards, as has the office manager and your supervisor. The funny thing is that none of the information has changed. Also, when you do receive the new cards in three weeks, you’ll be stuck with three or four boxes of them.
Now, creating, updating or reordering business cards is just a mouse click away. Last summer, local printing company HONBLUE rolled out Boomerang, a digital-printing subsidiary, which enables customers to assemble, proof and print personalized mailers, brochures and business cards directly from the Web.
“We don’t even touch anything until it comes off of the machine,” says Matt Heim, HONBLUE vice president. “So, obviously, not only is it cost effective, it’s easy.”
Customers can choose from a set of templates supplied by Boomerang, and/or provide their own identities and templates. Boomerang personnel then set up a customized Web page with all the necessary tools. After creating or updating their documents, users simply hit send and the data is set directly to Boomerang’s digital printer. A technician reviews the file to make sure all the specs are correct before sending it along. The cards are ready for pickup or delivery in a couple of days, not weeks.
Boomerang’s services are generally aimed at larger businesses, which require bigger print runs. However, last month, HONBLUE made the Web-to-print technology available at its retail division, Best Printing, which has four locations in and around downtown Honolulu. The cost for a single order of 500 business cards is $49, approximately half the previous price. (www.bestprinting.net).
-David K. Choo
 Hawaii Business defines often-spoken words, new and old, to help you make sense of what's being said. |
PEBKAC: This term is often used by computer industry people when describing a computer problem that is caused by human error. PEBKAC is an acronym for: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. So, if you happen to glimpse an email from the IT Department, you know what they mean. Tech Engineer 1: Did you ever figure out why he couldn’t save the document? Tech Engineer 2: Yeah, PEBKAC. -Kyle Galdeira |
REAL ESTATE: LANAI HARVESTS LUXURY HOMES
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Bedrooms: Three to four
Highlights: Covered lanais, grills, some with spas, two-car garages, fronting a Jack Nicklaus golf course and ocean views Living Area: 2,314 to 2,946 square feet Price: $2.28 million to $2.53 million |
The Palms at Manele, Lanai
How’s this sound for a real estate bargain? $2.5 million for a condo on Lanai. Sound pricey? Well, according to Mary Hakoda, principal broker of Island of Lanai Properties, when it comes to high-end resort markets today, such Lanai properties are being viewed as “good value.”
“In other resort markets, people are starting to see the prices higher than where they want to go,” says Hakoda. “We are being compared very favorably to other resort markets on Hualalai on the Big Island as well as Wailea on Maui.”
Castle & Cooke is spending $100 million rebranding two Four Seasons resorts on Lanai and the first phase of a companion 19-building, 38-residential condominium project is expected to be completed early this year. The Palms at Manele, the second resort condominium project on the island, will offer ocean views from atop red-rock cliffs and front The Challenge of Manele, the 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus.
The buyer profiles for the condos are generally very well-off baby boomers looking for a second or third or maybe fourth home. The Palms at Manele condos provide “the freedom to lock it up and go,” say promotional materials provided by the Palms. Hakoda adds Lanai also provides buyers with the quiet respite they are looking for in Hawaii.
“The other islands are becoming a little busy, a little congested and people are starting to turn to Lanai as one of the few places that still offers the Old Hawaii lifestyle,” she says.
-Scott Radway
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