...and so to home...

Friday: to lunch with Mary Logan and Leah Lough (AAMI). It was great to be able to spend time with them, to understand more about their agenda and the relationships between AAMI, FDA, AAMI Foundation, HTSI, HFES, the people and groups I have met over the past few weeks, and other key individuals and organisations. Not that I think I comprehend it completely even now, but the picture is getting clearer. AAMI has been orchestrating research and development around the safety of infusions devices as well as other themes such has home healthcare. Hopefully, our work on CHI+MED contributes to the overall "picture" even if we have a UK / European focus (compared with AAMI's natural US focus).

Then to the airport -- rather early, just because that's the way the day turned out. Fortunately, there were power sockets in the departures area, so I could get on with reading and writing. I ought to create a personal hit-list of airports that hide any power sockets so that you can only work on a digital device until the battery runs flat. And avoid them. Come on, airports: get into the 21st century!

On an earlier flight, I had found myself sitting next to another professor of Computer Science. On this one, I was next to a safety critical systems consultant. It was great to compare notes and to learn from each other...until it was time to sleep.

I have managed to stay awake all day, and to do many of the mundane tasks that needed doing after such a long trip. I even managed to stay awake through an episode of Horizon! Now the challenge is going to be to maintain the momentum as the pressures of the ordinary reassert themselves. I am very glad to be home with family, and looking forward to meeting up with my research team again, but I had a great time (I thoroughly recommend such a trip!), and I hope that the many dialogues will lead to fruitful future collaborations. Thank you to everyone who made this trip so interesting and enjoyable, and to the Royal Society and EPSRC for funding it.

Last day in Baltimore

This is probably the penultimate post on this blog, as I'm preparing to fly home tomorrow. I am very much looking forward to seeing family and friends again. I feel that I have made a lot of new friends on this trip, and various people have told me I must come again... and that Chris must come too next time. That would be great! Conversely, I hope that I can welcome some of the people I have met to London in the future.

 I spent this afternoon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, learning more about their infusion pump safety project and much of their other human factors work, such as that on the management of alarms and even the layout of space and technology in the new intensive care units. I didn't see a single patient, but I did see a lot of infusion devices! And (yet again) I have a lot of notes scribbled down that I need to transcribe and make sense of.

We went for a quick drink in the Owl Bar at the Belvedere (which used to be a hotel, but is now condos), and for a meal at the Brewer's Art. I have never before been served a mushroom that looked so much like a steak; in fact, it wasn't even a whole mushroom – just a slice of one. It was delicious, but sooooo big!

The US-Canada asymmetry

Back in Baltimore for the last couple of days of my world tour of a few labs in North America. Looking forward to going home, to be honest, though it has been an amazing trip.

Yet another airport experience, but not as expected. Whereas flying Baltimore to Toronto felt like a domestic flight, the return trip involved entering all those tedious details such as destination address in the US, flight number, etc. etc. as part of check-in. And the queue at US Immigration (which happened in Toronto prior to boarding) had to be seen to be believed: it took at least an hour to get through it. What a good thing I'm a neurotic traveller who always allows at least two hours for check-in.

The plane was slightly larger than a domestic tumble-dryer, but not a lot. I somewhat resent the fact that I had to pay $25 to have my luggage stowed in the hold, whereas people with slightly smaller bags (who trundled them about 100m further than I did) had to pay $0 to have them stowed in exactly the same place. With 20:20 hindsight, I could probably have done this whole trip on a smaller suitcase and avoided all checked baggage fees, but when I left home I wanted to keep my options open. Climbing gear? Bring a minimum, just in case... Skirt and tights? Ditto... Hats, scarves, gloves? You can never have too many... The wisdom of hindsight is a wonderful thing.

On the flight I read a report on patient safety, which argued strongly that infection control is a much bigger issue than device design -- certainly in terms of cost-effectiveness of interventions. That is almost certainly true if one considers just hospital-based care in 2013. But home care in the future? We're all living longer; it will be essential to manage much more of our health outside the hospital setting; we're going to rely increasingly on medical devices for both monitoring and management... and they will need to be safe (as well as clean!). So hopefully our research has some long-term relevance.

Finally (for this evening): I love the defensive caution of the label on the condiments package that comes with the coffee machine in my hotel room. It apparently contains no nuts:

Smart pumps and technology that doesn't fit

Today, Nat Sims and Patrick Burdon gave a talk at University of Toronto on new technologies to improve patient safety. Nat is widely credited with introducing the concept (and the implementation) of "smart" infusion pumps that use drug libraries to reduce the chances of certain kinds of medication administration errors. Much of Nat's talk simply supported conclusions that I had reached by other means already, but I was particularly interested in his account of the history of the development of infusion pumps, which seems to account for some of the divergences in practices between the UK and North America. More details when I've checked my facts! Patrick focused on new neuroimaging techniques for managing anaesthesia (making sure the patient is properly sedated, but not so sedated that they won't recover full consciousness in a timely way). I won't pretend that I followed all the details, but it was a great reminder of how quickly medical science is advancing.

Then for a coffee with Kate Sellen. We have so many interests in common it is amazing that we hadn't met before: distributed cognition, situation awareness, human error, interactive medical devices and, in particular, the challenge of designing healthcare technologies that are not just 'usable' but that really fit their context of use. But I guess it illustrates one challenge of interdisciplinary working: that there are so many places one might publish, and events one might go to, that it's quite easy to move in the same 'space' without ever colliding. So to speak.

On the walk back, following my current strategy of taking a different route every time, I encountered the OCAD Design building. I have never seen a structure quite like it: a dalmatian-spotted box apparently standing over the top of a normal-looking building, on gangly stilts. The structural engineers must have had fun translating the artistic concept into a workable building!

Just around the corner, there was a very classical, colonial-looking building that is a complete contrast in style and culture... and almost certainly function too.

As you can see, Toronto is a little snowy, but not dramatically or debilitatingly so today.

Toronto: a day in the hospital

A day with the Human Factors teams at the University Health Network in Toronto. I gave my final talk of this trip, which seemed to resonate well with the work going on here. I also  had fascinating and thought-provoking meetings with many members of the team. They have an enviable set-up here, with excellent links into the hospital, good links into the university, and great connections with industry – both national and international. So they have opportunities to do good research that has a direct and immediate impact on practice. Much of their funding is industrial, and they are generally more concerned with practical impact than theoretical development, which would not go down so well in the UK funding system, but seems to work very well here. I am envious of the apparent ease with which they can engage with, and inform and be informed by, hospital functions such as procurement and incident reporting. It is an interesting illustration of the way that funding sources, physical location, organisational structures and history (a group emerging from biomedical engineering rather than HCI) influences the culture and practices of the group.

We all had dinner at Bannock (Canadian Comfort Food, apparently – sounds like a pretty good description to me). And it snowed (though it's actually rather slushy; will need to wear walking shoes tomorrow because my smarter shoes are now wet through...)

Freezing St Patrick's Day

It is cold (by my standards) in Toronto. I have been indoors most of the day (yes, working: it has to be done!), but took a stroll to the lakeside this afternoon. It feels as if the whole area is being rebuilt: big cranes, roads blocked, diversions everywhere: not actually particularly pleasurable for a wander. I thought of going up the CN Tower, but realised I'd have to get a bank overdraft to do so (it costs HOW much?!?). Ah well: there were some entertaining sights... and my brunch at the local Beer Bistro was definitely worth getting out for!

Today is St Patrick's Day. About half the people on the streets were wearing something green, and so were many of the dogs. I suspect the proportion (of green, not of dogs) was even higher in the pubs. I passed someone who was unashamedly wearing a big badge that proclaimed that he was "Irish for a day". St Patrick's Day seems to be much bigger here and in the US than anywhere in England; if it weren't at the weekend, I wonder whether it would be a national holiday!

There is a "beach" on the lakeside. I have some photos of family beach holidays when I was little that are good reminders of how unseasonal a British summer can be, but nothing to match the view of people sitting on deck-chairs under a sun-umbrella swathed in down jackets and fur hoods. Just along the way, people were ice-skating (and the ice didn't need to be artificially frozen: nature was providing that service). That seemed like a much more seasonally appropriate way to spend the time. I love the idea of a "turn up and skate" (no charge: just step onto the ice) rink. I can't imagine that happening as Somerset House (or any of the other places where rinks pop up around Christmas in London).

Another exhausting day of travelling

I'm now in Toronto. In a very well appointed apartment in downtown. Most things have gone well (flight on time, etc.), but had difficulty getting a bus ticket from the airport: found the ticket machine, but it would only take coins or cards. But not either of my cards -- no idea why, unless it's simply that they are foreign (like you don't expect to get foreigners passing through an airport). And I had no coins because I'd just arrived in Canada. Go to the bus; ask what to do. Can't pay on the bus -- have to go to the currency exchange (really? currency exchange?) upstairs to buy a cutesy little token for the bus. Who would have guessed it?

It's almost cold enough here that I'm glad I brought a down jacket. The air steward's comment on the plane was "minus one, minus three: is that cold?" in the tone of voice that made it very clear that he didn't think it was. It's cold enough for me!

Delight in Baltimore

Last day in Baltimore for a while. I'm getting rather fond of the place, despite its reputation and the painful divide between privileged and impoverished.

Today I spent the entire morning in my hotel room. I intentionally had not set my alarm, but then awoke in a panic at 7.15am, remembering that I had a skype meeting with people in London... but was it at 7am or 8am? I hadn't a clue! With the many small time-changes I've had on this trip, I had completely lost track of what time the meeting was meant to be. It turned out I was OK, and had 45 minutes to turn from a sleepy person into a professional one. Whew!

Much of the day was then filled with "invisible work", meaning that at 2pm (when I left my hotel room) I had no real idea of what I had achieved in the past 6 hours, other than having a meeting with people in London and clearing a backlog of email. Oh: and writing up some of the notes from many meetings and presentations over the past week or so. Got some way to go on that activity though...

The walk from the hotel to the Armstrong Institute is not far. The following two photos show the hotel from the AI offices (hotel on the far left on the horizon of the left-hand photo) and, conversely, the AI offices from the hotel (AI offices are 15th floor of the tower block next to the canal):










I chose to walk a different way to the offices today, and was delighted when I came across a "homonym path": a section of pavement where some of the paving blocks had had words carved on them, and homonyms had been juxtaposed:

Some of the homonyms only work if you speak American, but it was so surprising (in a very positive way) to encounter this playful pavement that it really brightened up my afternoon.

Postscript (just to add to the time confusion): I have just realised that all the posts in this blog appear to be time-stamped west-coast time. As far as I'm concerned, I've posted this entry at 8.28pm, and yet it is time-stamped 17.28. Whoa! Where am I?!?

WICU, SICU and a stranded lighthouse

Morning: went to look around two of the intensive care units at the local hospital here in Baltimore. Even in such a well resourced and well appointed environment, they need to be alert to vulnerabilities in the system, as exemplified by the notice on the back of one door, reminding staff to take care not to confuse anticoagulant with antibiotic.

Walking back from the Armstrong Institute to my hotel, I passed a lighthouse on stilts. I couldn't really work out why it was there, since there didn't seem to be a particular threat to shipping so close into the harbour. Apparently, it was moved there some time ago from its original position about 5 miles away, where it actually was alerting ships to danger, to bring all of the quaint historical landmarks of Baltimore within easy walking distance of each other. I guess the alternative would have been to provide decent public transport links between all the monuments... and that is hardly an American approach to travel.

I don't think anyone has tried moving the shot tower, which I thought looked like the offspring of a chimney and a small castle, but was apparently once the tallest building in the US. Used simply to drop molten lead from a great height to create pistol shot and cannon balls.

Baltimore apparently got caught up in the Civil War (hence the need for lots of shot, presumably), and is the scene of the first massacre of the war, where soldiers alighting from a train were ambushed by people who sympathised with the southerners. There were two stations in Baltimore, one each side of the centre, because trains were considered too polluting and dirty to cross through the city centre, so everyone had to alight from the one train to take horse-drawn carriages to the other station to continue their journeys. This is what the soldiers should have done...

And my last of what Pete called "LKBBFs, Little Known But Boring Facts" and I consider to be "LKBFFs, Little Known But Fascinating Facts" for the evening: the cobblestones that pave many of Baltimore's streets  around the harbour area were delivered here as ships' ballast when this was a thriving port, so they originate from all corners of the globe.

Thank you to Pete and Mahiyar for a very entertaining and also highly informative evening!

HFES and Grand Rounds

Morning: the last session of the HFES Healthcare Symposium. I chose to go to the presentations from three people from the FDA, who were all presenting different aspects of the Human Factors regulatory system. As an outsider to the system, I found this very striking for at least two reasons:

1) Tony Watson presented a pretty frank history of human factors in the FDA. Medical Devices are, of course, not a central focus for the organisation, but there has only been one HF specialist in the FDA for 15 years... and only two (and a couple of other people whose primary responsibility lies elsewhere) for the past 4 years or so. That's it! Those two people set policy and direction for the US... and the US, in turn, sets policy and direction for most of the rest of the world. That gives those two people more power and responsibility (and a much bigger workload) than I imagine they want. Last week, one of the people I was working with introduced me to a new acronym: PAMP: Problem Above My Paygrade. It seems to me that the HF folk at the FDA are dealing with a PAMP in spades!

2) They were all here! The key Human Factors specialists at the FDA, who set policy and manage practice in the regulation of all interactive medical devices, were at a conference that involved manufacturers and usability specialists and academics. And they were around to chat, to listen, to engage with their community. As a British researcher, I have better contact with the people who regulate medical devices in the US than I do with any such people in the UK.

Lunchtime: I gave a talk at the Armstrong Institute of Patient Safety Grand Rounds. It was in a large and imposing lecture theatre in the Johns Hopkins hospital, and felt quite like an inaugural lecture, except that half the audience were wearing scrubs and surgical masks.

Afternoon: meeting with Chris Gibbons, who is studying how to use new technologies to make healthcare more accessible to disadvantaged communities in the US. Baltimore is, of course, a divided city where a significant part of the community needs better access to healthcare, while much of the rest has excellent access. So a great place to do such studies.

HFES Healthcare Symposium Day 2

Another busy day in Baltimore, where my brain has got full to overflowing, and I have met yet more interesting and engaging people.

I cannot imagine a conference like this, which really brings together practitioners and researchers, regulators and manufacturers, MDs and PhDs (and people with other kinds of qualifications), happening in the UK. Not on an equal footing, anyway. It's not a highly academic conference: I haven't come away with great new scientific insights. But I have heard about a lot of research and practice, and experiences that resonate well with the findings from our studies. And I feel I have a better sense of the pressures and practices that shape healthcare and the design and use of interactive technologies in North America.

And some good news: after it has started, the Royal Society has awarded a travel grant for the trip – better late than never (I applied for it last October...). And two members of my research team have had journal papers accepted (subject to small changes) this week. Lots to celebrate when I get home.

Apropos of nothing, here's the view from my hotel room during the day (the greenish buildings are the Johns Hopkins medical campus / hospital) and at night (said buildings covered in lights).

HFES Healthcare Symposium Day 1

I am actually too tired to write much today, and I have no photos at all, but lots of notes scribbled in my notebook which I will have to make sense of when I have the time and the mental energy. I have met lots of interesting people, many whose work I have read but never met in person before. My brain is full to overflowing. And I still have a paper to review and a talk to finish writing this evening. Oh dear!

A sunny day in Baltimore

Today has been warm (almost t-shirt weather) in Baltimore -- a sharp contrast with Chicago yesterday, which was numbingly cold. I went for a short walk to Fells Point, which was lovely. Lots of people were out on the streets just enjoying the sunshine and warmth.

I just did a google search for Fells Point, and the first two pictures that appear are almost exactly the same as one of the pictures I took -- I'll opt for thinking of this as great minds thinking alike. See photo on the right of a street (which is actually cobbled, though you can't tell that from the photo) overlooking the harbour.

That part of town is Quaint: lots of interesting buildings in unlikely places. Twice, I just glanced down side-streets to see old buildings at the ends of the streets (see photo on left). Also, lots of Irish pubs; I think next weekend (St Patrick's Day) is going to be very green and very lively here...

This evening, I went out with the research group from Toronto, who have mostly been looking at multiple line infusions. I don't think we do many of those in the UK (an example of different practices in the different countries), so something that is a major human factors challenge in North America isn't such a focus for concern in Europe.

Errors, delight and delays

Friday: gave a talk to the HF group at Baxter. I gave an example of resilience (intentionally leaving night clothes in the safe with passport and other items to make sure that I would not leave passport etc.). This is a strategy I've used before. At the time of giving the talk, I was oblivious to the fact that I had left my handbag (containing passport, credit card, phone, car keys...: all those physically small things on which modern life and international travel depend) on the back of a chair in the reception area. Imagine the level of panic when, two hours later, I realised that, although I seemed to be carrying a ridiculous number of things, those things did not include said handbag. Too much to think about, too many physical objects in hands. Where had I left it? Reception? Seminar room? Ladies loo? Cafeteria? Of course, the last we checked was reception... but all's well that ends well (to quote someone famous). And apart from that panic, the meeting was great. I particularly liked the visit to their simulation lab (even if the mannequins were slightly spooky).

Friday evening: drove to Chicago downtown. All went fine (though I did resort to valet parking because I didn't have the emotional energy to do anything else). Dinner was wonderful, though I never cease to be amazed and appalled about how large the portions are.

Saturday morning: wonderful, but very cold, walk around Chicago, as it set out to confirm its reputation as the "windy city". The Naval Pier was impressive, but was completely overshadowed by my visit to the Bean. This looks quite innocuous until approached closely, but is just delightful on close encounter. We (and I quote Pat) "circumnavigated the bean" to savour it from all angles. If you look closely at the photo (left) you will see me facing both left and right in the image while I am in fact facing straight ahead taking the photo. Freaky!

The journey back to Baltimore was stressful in terms of both navigation and delays. You are on the freeway at an intersection, knowing that you want to turn North, but the options are East or West. Which to take (in the split second that you have to make the decision)? The wrong one, of course. Thank goodness for a reasonably detailed map of the city that made it possible to do a big loop around to the starting position and have a second go at it. Turned out I didn't need to worry about being late for the flight because it was a mere two hours late. Both of my neighbours on the plane had connecting flights; I do hope they made them...

A day in the office

An interesting day at Baxter Healthcare. I really must write up my notes before I forget what they mean (they are very cryptic, I fear...)

Had a lovely dinner with Pat and Diane, where the wine option was a "flight" of wine. I have never come across this idea before: three small glasses of wine to taste / savour / laugh about the descriptions of. We particularly like the idea of "exuberant Syrah notes being brought to heel by an almost austere Caberenet", and of flavours including "cassis and cola, licorice and graphite" -- did someone put a pencil in the wine?

...and so to Chicago

The day has been surprisingly long and tedious. No major delays, but lots of queuing, for no apparent reason: at the check-in desk, security, gate... flight was an hour and a half late... queues for the bus and at the car rental place... I really must learn to use this kind of distracting time better (I feel like I've wasted the day, even though I've achieved what I set out to do, which was to arrive safely in somewhere-near-Chicago). I have finally arrived at a hotel that is apparently in the middle of nowhere, thanks to perfect instructions from google maps.

The receptionist at the car rental place tried to persuade me that I was totally daft to choose a small car because of the snow. I was imagining a Fiat 500 or a Ford KA when she said this, but no: this car is apparently small...You could easily fit a family of five and a reasonable quota of luggage in it. I must learn to think bigger about my transport!

BWH & HMS

More excellent meetings today at Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. There was good discussion around my CHI+MED presentation at BWH, where they are doing studies that complement our own very well.

Maybe I'm seeing a very biased view, but what I am experiencing on this trip is a real breath of fresh air: people who palpably want to learn and improve matters; people who care about the design and use of medical devices. There are, of course, many individuals who care about these things in the UK, but they seem to be lone voices there. Here, "quality improvement" and "patient safety" seem to be embedded in practice in a much deeper way than anything I have experienced previously. That is exciting and invigorating.

Meetings at Brighams and Womens Hospital

An interesting day in Boston -- made me think (even) more about the ethics of obtaining informed consent from patients in studies of technology use.

It was fascinating to visit the hospital: I get a real sense that patient safety and human factors are comprehended and cared about here in a way that they really aren't in any particular hospital in the UK. I got the same sense at Johns Hopkins; what are we doing wrong in the UK?

Boston is getting colder, as the weather turned for the worse: very cold wind, and a little bit of snowy stuff -- though nothing on the same scale as the dump they apparently had here a few weeks ago. I really should have taken photos while the sun was shining this morning...

Boston (Somerville / Harvard)

I've arrived in Boston, staying in Somerville, which is a pleasant suburb not far from Harvard. All pastel-coloured clapperboard houses, peaceful and comfortable.

Mind you, the local coffee shop seems very concerned not to lose its toilet key. Attaching it to a broom-head seems a little disproportionate: actually quite awkward for taking to the bathroom. There must be a story behind it, but I didn't discover it.

Day 3: a talk at the hospital

Today, I gave a talk on our work to the Informatics group at Johns Hopkins hospital (Baltimore). Fortunately, I was taken there, so I didn't have to find my own way. The hospital is very well appointed, and clearly benefits from endowments of huge proportions. This photo is taken in the older part of the hospital, which was once the entrance; some people must have thought they had died and gone to heaven when they encountered this towering statue ;-).

I had some great discussions after the talk, which have brought home to me how behind I am with writing papers, since I don't have the papers to back up the material I was presenting in the talk. I really must use some of this sabbatical time to write. Maybe I should stop blogging for a while and just focus on papers... hmmmm...

Couldn't have done this 5 years ago...

Even 5 years ago, it would have been very difficult indeed to work out how to use the public buses in an unfamiliar city. But with the wonders of Google maps, it was really easy today. Just put in the starting point and destination and click on the bus symbol and "hey presto": an idiot's guide to crossing Baltimore. Perfect directions, except for the bus timetable, which turned out to be precise but not accurate.

The final walk was a bit more of a challenge. Who would have guessed that to get to the Armstrong Institute of Patient Safety, you have to go into Miss Shirley's Cafe? I was aiming for number 750. I realised I'd gone wrong when I passed 830 and the next building was 834. With the wonderful order of numbers, this meant I had over-shot. Doh! Time to retrace steps...

I've had an interesting day. No life-changing insights, but promising early discussions. The Institute is a wonderfully welcoming place, with an interdisciplinary mix of people... and some very comfortable sofas and excellent views over the harbour.

Baltimore: first impressions

Journey: long but uneventful. It still surprises me that a major international airport like Dulles can be devoid of pubic transport links, but a shared van to Washington Union Station worked fine (even if the windows were steamed up so that I think we went past the White House, but I'm not really sure).

It was difficult to locate the ticket sellers for the MARC trains since everything was labelled Amtrak. Eventually I found a machine that was labelled as selling MARC tickets, but when I requested a single to Baltimore the list it returned was only of (expensive) Amtrak tickets, and it didn't actually seem to offer the cheaper MARC ones. So I resorted to asking a human being, even though the sign above her indicated that she only sold Acela Express tickets. And that worked fine. So there's some strange disconnect that I don't pretend to understand between tickets ostensibly sold and tickets actually sold. And people still work better than machines.

The MARC train was very crowded – more like a rattly old bus on tracks than a train as I would recognise one. And their attitude to safety was relaxed: for about half the journey between Washington and Baltimore, one of the train doors was open. When an official passed and noticed it, he raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and pulled it closed. No big deal.

When planning a journey, it is (for me, at least) natural to start with the big steps then consider the smaller ones after. I had assumed that it would be really easy to get from Dulles to the place I'm staying in Baltimore. It would have been if I'd hired a car or a taxi, but public transport was a three stage, three hour transfer. And the place I'm staying is really close to Johns Hopkins University... but not so close to the Armstrong Institute, which is where I'm actually working this week. So today's adventure is going to be working out the local bus network.

Plan for my US trip (overview)

I'm looking forward to a month in the USA and Canada, finding out more about developments in the safety of interactive medical devices (funded by the Royal Society and linked to our CHI+MED project). Here's the basic itinerary (though travel will be by air, not road...):

26th Feb: arrive Baltimore
27th Feb - 1st March @ JHU (working with Ayse Gurses, Ant Ozok and others)
   1st March: Informatics Grand Rounds talk

3rd March: travel to Boston
4th - 5th March with David Bates, Kumiko Ohashi & colleagues
   5th March: presentation at Brigham & Women's Hospital
   5th March: meeting with Helena Mentis (Harvard Medical School)

6th March: travel to Chicago
7th - 8th March visiting Baxter Healthcare (Pat Baird and colleagues)

9th March: travel to Baltimore
11th-13th @ HFES healthcare symposium and AI Grand Rounds
14th - 15th @ JHU

16th March: travel to Toronto
18th - 19th with various healthcare technology groups (Joe Cafazzo, Tony Easty, Svetlena Taneva, Patricia Trbovich & colleagues)

20th March: travel to Baltimore (again!)
21st - 22nd @ JHU

22nd March: leave for London (evening)

I realise this is a crazy itinerary, but I'm counting on adrenalin, interest, and lots of engaging interactions to see me through!
More details of each event in due course...