Peter Machell wrote: > On 30/01/2006, at 8:46 PM, Tim Churches wrote: > >> David, >> >> Don't dismiss the contribution of the chattering classes to, err, um, >> ahhh, never mind... pass the Cloudy Bay [chardonnay], would you? > > Tim, WTF? Please define 'chattering classes'.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes I was attempting to make an ironic distinction between the up-to-$100m spent on HealthConnect, with many unpublished reports and internal policy documents and defunct pilots to show for it, and the less-well-funded examples of real-life, useful initiatives, ranging from shared back-up scripts, through things like WagTail and ArgusConnect. In retrospect, "commentariat" might have been a better term, but that's not quite right either. Remember the miltary-industrial complex which was responsible for (or benefited from) promoting the Cold War (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex )? Well, in health informatics it seems like we have a burgeoning consultancy-bureaucratic[1] complex, with HealthConnect as one of its main theatre of operations up until now. But we now have a situation which closely parallels that described by Daniel Ellsberg in his essay "The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate machine", with respect to the Vietnam War (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg ). Tim C [1] Except that parts of the bureaucracy have been corporatised, in the guise of NeHTA Pty Ltd and other entities doing outsourced management. TC _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
