Oliver Frank wrote: snip > The specialists' replies just appear in my clinical inbox, where I > read them like I do test results, mark them as read, and they are > filed away automatically into the patient's record, just like test > results. We are having a problem with the display of documents processed through Medical Director's import utility and saved in the Letters module. There appears to be a bug that stops the display of the "From Doctor" in the summary panel and this is not changeable even with manual processing. :-(
> I understand that Sonic has been supporting the development and
> implementation of Argus for some time, and has been trying to get its
> fellow pathology practices and also the medical imaging practices to
> contribute to the costs of supporting Argus. I believe that to date
> these others have not contributed, despite their interest in changing
> to using Argus rather than continuing with the commercial messaging
> systems that they are currently paying significant amounts to use.
> Sonic is now feeling a bit lonely in paying to support Argus, which
> will benefit everybody, while none of the other current and potential
> beneficiaries have contributed.
This is the bloodsucker (aka freeloader) phenomenon of open source
development. (Bloodsucker seems a better term for a pathology company.)
There are two options for Sonic.
1. Pull the pin and maintain the current state of multiple
non-interactive clients (their's is called Fetch) at a huge cost
to themselves, the docs and the nation.
2. Make a business decision to support Argus which will still be
positive for their profits even though there may be an even bigger
return for their rivals. There will be off setting advantages in
kudos for undertaking such a nationally strategic medical
enterprise and there is also the first mover advantage.
> ArgusConnect and its current and potential sponsors need active
> support now from users and potential users of Argus. When I told my
> former preferred pathology provider (the State owned Institute of
> Medical and Veterinary Science) that I was changing to Clinpath/Sonic
> because Clinpath is supporting and using Argus, I received an
> immediate strong reaction from IMVS. Clearly pathology and imaging
> practices are very sensitive to anything that may influence their
> market share.
You're a troublemaker, Frank.
> For those of us who have a choice in pathology and medical imaging
> providers, our most powerful way of supporting Argus and helping to
> increase its use is to choose to use the pathology and imaging
> providers that are supporting and using Argus, and to make sure that
> we tell those providers and their competitors why we are doing this.
> We need to put our clinical practice where our mouth is, by showing
> our pathology, imaging and medical specialist colleagues that we
> regard improved electronic communication and the use of the available
> open source not-for-profit Australian product as so important that it
> influences our choice of provider. If we don't do this, we will have
> only ourselves to blame if we find that we have to depend on
> profit-making commercial messaging providers to send our clinical
> messages.
A week tomorrow Sonic is coming around and installing their "Snoop"
software. (Should I be paranoid?) I gather this is a module that HCN
have permitted as an add on to Medical Director. As I understand it, it
intercepts the pathology dialogue box with their own and gives you some
generic and also some Sonic specific information about what battery of
tests might be suitable for the patient's clinical problem. When you
click print it sends an encrypted email request to the lab as well as
printing the hard copy to attach to the patient or the specimen.
Snoop seems to offer several advantages:-
1. Better test ordering.
2. Faster more accurate processing by Sonic.
3. Better matching of requests with reports as they come back into
the EHR.
4. And therefore the ability to chase up patients who have not
fronted for their pathology tests. This will be of increasing
importance as we enter the Nanny state on 1 January 2007.
Snoop is clearly proprietary but marrying it with something like Argus
and HeSA individual smartcards makes sense for Sonic. They can compete
in the pathology ordering and performance market while eliminating the
secondary market in request and results delivery.
It might be a moderate risk undertaking but if Argus fails they can
still fall back to Snoop with Fetch.
David
smime.p7s
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