Richard Hosking wrote: > > I agree Tim. > IF this project were to take off (and it appears to have evolved from a > few casual comments a week ago - clearly there is a mood to do such a > thing) then the basic parameters need to be right. > I have the greatest respect for Horst's abilities. > However we are not all industry professionals and are possibly easier to > impress than they would be :) A second opinion would be useful. > It is clearly a large undertaking and it is likely that it will founder > fairly quickly. > I think we are at the stage in the design process of "feasibility" > assessment - can/should we do it?
It seems that Horst is self-financing a RoR-based initiative, and I suspect that others such as Ian may assist with this if it looks promising. I wish them well and am really interested to see what comes of it - we may all be pleasantly surprised. However, I still think that there is a need and role for a GP information system which meets immediate needs and thus can act as a practical test-bed for the development and refinement of the next-gen things which Jon Patrick has mentioned - terminology servers, analytics and so on. > It probably doesnt pass the feasibility test in several areas > Financial/economic > on the plus side there is no doubt in my mind that the cost savings > could be significant to practices if a viable system could be delivered. > Some of the list members couild be beneficiaries of this. However, on > the minus side there is no direct link between beneficiaries and those > who are proposing to do the coding/management. In other words we dont > have a group of clinicians looking for a better way with money to do so. > Some money may be available, but it is likely to be well short of what > is required. Much of the work will be gratis. My take is that substantial private-sector philanthropic funding is required - where "philanthropic" may mean "good for public relations and the corporate image". > Technical > Given enough resources the actual coding is probably not that hard - > several industry players have delivered systems written by small groups > of developers. It is harder than it looks to create a really flexible but really sound system - and tedious - no-one likes writing thousands of unit test fixtures, but that is what is needed for a quality system. > There is a code and experience base in Gnumed and > previous projects. Many lessons to be learnt and ideas to be gleened from GNUmed, but don't count on being able to re-use the code. > Open source systems have advanced a lot in recent > years. To deliver a basic clinical system without any research level > addons should be technically feasible (there that was easy :)) > However I think there should be a complete practice suite of software Certainly the open source infrastructure components are now very, very sound. > Operational > Will the system solve the business problem (what is the business > problem? Is there a business problem?) I have a vague frustration withe > current systems, but I guess I can live with them as I am a contractor > and there is no significant financial penalty to me. > I guess I would like to do it to scratch an itch and to move things > forward in the standards area and public health area. I would also learn > a lot about IT if I was heavily involved. Is that a good enough reason? Yes, if combined with other good reasons. > Schedule > Will we get it done in a reasonable timeframe? What is the timeframe? Needs to deliver within two years, max. > Legal > Are there legal barriers to such a project? I cant see any Nor I. > Political > What will the political effect be? Are there any political > showstoppers? Will others try to sabotage the project? Could it force > proprietary vendors to change their approach? Would it open up standards? Would certainly ginger up the local health IT marketplace. > Having said all that I still like the idea Me too, and I'm prepared to invest some time, starting in Dec, to try to progress a funding sales pitch. In the meantime, we look to the Horst-on-Rails locomotive. Tim C > Tim Churches wrote: > >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >> >>> Quoting Tim Churches <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> >>>> Horst Herb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Minix and Linux to me illustrate the battle between academia and >>>>> pragmatic engineering. Of course the pragmatic engineer will take >>>>> a leaf >>>>> out of the academic book and benefit from teachings and research, >>>>> but what they >>>>> do and how they do it is very, very different from academic >>>>> "solutions". >>>>> >>>> I suppose we are most interested here in solutions which see the >>>> light of day >>>> and can thus be used by many people, not just their genius progenitor - >>>> regardless of where such solutions come from. >>>> >>> Gentlemen, please! ;-) >>> >> >> Sorry, but frankly I am still smarting from being accused by Horst of >> spreading unfounded FUD, just because I dared suggest that it might be >> worth double checking Horst's take on RoR as the ant's pant's of Web >> application frameworks. >> >> >> >> >> >> > _______________________________________________ > Gpcg_talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk > _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
