Aaron Berdofe, MHI – Health Informatics

Don’t you dare touch that Standby button.

Recently, I was reading an article about how sleep may have similar effects on our brains as a restart does for a computer.  In a sense, it cleans out the cache of junk that builds up throughout the day.  If the theory holds true, it could explain why we can think more clearly after a good night’s sleep while our thought process after pulling an all-nighter is a jumbled mess.  While the effects relating to our sleep still remain a theory, it is very much a proven fact when it comes to computing.  This is why one of the first steps in tech support is to always have someone restart their computer.  Maybe it was just some junk buildup.

This is also why I consistently recommend that Meditech users who are having issues restart their computers.  More recently I have been recommending full server restarts regularly in order to keep things tidy.  Meditech customers are all too familiar with undiagnosable issues that seem to pop up randomly.  Screen freezes, button clicking bugs, data loss, etc.; no matter how hard you try to find a pattern with the problem, sometimes one just doesn’t exist.

Inherently, due to the nature of the technology that Meditech products are created with, a lot of junk builds up during its daily use.  Therefore, in order to lessen, though not completely eliminate some of the random issues that Meditech users typically experience it is good practice to shut your computer down completely at the end of each day.  Additionally, it is even better to schedule regular downtimes for all servers running Meditech on them to clear out the junk that builds up on those too.

It has been my experience that a good portion of the random blips that occur with the background jobs are resolved by either toggling the background jobs or restarting the servers.  Restarts once a month for servers or more frequently if possible can be an effective means of proactively tackling issues.   While this does put a burden on staff to manage this process, it pays off in reducing some (not all) of the frustrations caused by those pesky gremlins in your machines.  Honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to restart your wireless routers regularly while you’re at it too.  Again, while this won’t completely eliminate those weird issues you experience, it does help, and additionally it helps to eliminate a variable when bringing the issues to your Meditech specialists.