GNUmed is quite interesting. Over time I have been contacted by many different groups, individuals and organizations. All of them see GNUmed fit for some of their intentions. Once GNUmed would be ready that is.
In other words some of them want to achieve goals *now* others have needed many years to achieve without realizing that there is an inverse correlation between effort and time. In my view GNUmed is a project which is to create an application that will help doctors to better care. I don't believe it is possible to use the GNUmed project to immediately free yourself from the chains (software vendors) we have accepted for too long. In the face of changing medical systems and economical pressure let's not hinder GNUmed development by letting our decisions being led by short terms goals alone. GNUmed is like medicine. There is no right or wrong way. There is no right or wrong development model. The current model does not offer the benefit of short term goals ( competing with established medical software). Maybe that is where some of our arguments originate from. Different short term goals. Taking into account that most of our interaction is based on assuming each other's intentions I have a strong feeling that GNUmed will still be around in 5 or 10 years , no matter how many vendors have supposedly enslaved the medical community or how many governments have dictated our dialy work. On a more personal note. I am currently employed in a high profile hospital which shows me daily how much their current software sucks. Having virtually no time left to drive GNUmed development I more and more believe that GNUmed's development work should be done by people who get paid to do the work. It's kind of a way to evaluate commitment. When I see people suffering from atrial fibrillation I tend to choose treatment strategy by how much people suffer from atrial fibrillation. In my experience 90% of the medical community does not suffer too much from being forced to use commercial software not being developed by doctors. As long as that is the case no money is there to pay a company to actually do the development work. So what can you do meanwhile ? Raise public awareness. Educate your collegues and show them alternatives. Grass root marketing. Our concepts are rather new. It takes some time for the medical community to get used to new concepts. A few words on what I think we achieved until now. 1.) We have show that is possible to find and organize a group of doctors who constantly focus on creating a software tool that will help them to better patient care 2.) We have shown that it is possible to abstract that software to fit different medical systems. 3.) We have shown that current computer technology is available to cater for different languages and medical systems. 4.) We have shown that there is indeed a need to change currently available software. 5.) We have been able to demonstrate a reference client that shows off some of the concepts that have been researched for some time. 6.) We have yet to establish the fact that GNUmed's development can be driven by non business entities. 7.) We have diluted from various mailing list arguments that concepts and ideas behind the reference client need to be documented far more extensive than what we done until now. 8.) I have yet to show that it is possible to base a successful business on GNUmed's concepts 9.) There is no such thing a 'the GNUmed'. There is a reference client and there is room for extensions and or forks. 10.) I have missed some points and have said enough. Hopefully I have been able to explain why I believe there is no single GNUmed application, no short term competing with existing vendors and no right or wrong development and there will be no such thing as a 'feature complete GNUmed software'. One last paragraph on my view on development models. There is many ways to to it and two are quite common. First is code now and redo later is neccessary. Second is think now and code later. I know that both ways are being followed by people on this list. As long as this is the case let's not fight over what can be achieved in whatever timeframe. Simply follow your modus operandi and see how far you get. Disclaimer: The above are some thoughts that explain my view on the GNUmed project. Since there is no formal GNUmed management team I can only stress that those are my personal experiences and don't represent any official statement of the GNUmed project. I encourage anyone on this list to voice their views. That way we will not be forced to assume each other's intentions. -- Sebastian Hilbert Leipzig / Germany [www.openmed.org] -> PGP welcome, HTML ->/dev/null ICQ: 86 07 67 86 -> No files, no URL's VoIP: callto://[EMAIL PROTECTED] My OS: Suse Linux. Geek by Nature, Linux by Choice _______________________________________________ Gnumed-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumed-devel
