Richard, You wrote: "We are now stuck with MDW for at least the next decade. Most of the available software is 'kindergarten software', with a long history of 'bolt on solutions', because they programs lack conceptual vision. I take my hat off to paperless practices using MDW, but then I guess you get used to anything - sort of like a bad marriage which you can't leave. BP despite some advantages I think has major conceptual design flaws and is little more than nextgen MDW with new clothes."
Richard, of course you can leave a bad marriage only a fool doesnt. And you can leave MDW. Why stay with it another Decade ? Although you think BP stinks, it is much better than MDW and it is a far better option than staying with MDW that is why so many MD users left the MD marriage for something much better. I dont know how well you tested BP, obviously very superficially if you say it is the next generation MDW. The differences between MD2 & MD3 vs BP is so obvious, that even I was astounded to read it is MDW with new clothes now I might not be that well known & respected in IT circles, but I use to be a Betatester for MD2 (for many many years) & PS. I was an Alphatester for MD3 so Id know if BP was MD with new clothes. Although BP is easy to use & easy to get accustomed to, there was a learning curve, which was very easy. If it was MDW with new clothes, there would not have been this learning curve. If I invent something that I think is good, Ill try & market it & sell it. That is what Frank P did years ago with MD1 for DOS. It wasnt initially free. We had to buy it. Buying it gave you a 1-3 user license. For more users there was an extra fee. Later due to ads it became almost free. Then price increased. If like some other users who has written their own excellent programs, why wasnt there's put on the market so all of us could enjoy the luxury of such a superb program ? The tree view in BP: The function is not to display all the past visits, just the most recent ones. If you want to see all previous consults, you do it on the main screen. It is obvious you dont know how BP should work etc. If Profile is light-years ahead of other software, but it has enough deficiencies to make using it in Australia difficult, then for the Australian market it is not light years ahead, but light years behind. Various users every week say we need an open source solution. Gnumed you say is a failure Why? Because none of you have the guts to do what Frank P did - develop and market his products. And remember Frank has now done it twice. Please note that some people on this list told Frank that hell never do it again he proved them wrong as we can see with BP. You wrote: "In my experience it is difficult to get a group of people together who can agree on a fundamental design -everyone tends to think their idea's are better". Now surely a few of the participants on this forum feel the same about open source etc. and surely they will all agree to a fundamental design? Cedric -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Terry Sent: Monday, 12 February 2007 5:52 PM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: [GPCG_TALK] In quest of OS Medical Records for AU was (Open letter to Medtech) On Monday 12 February 2007 12:39, Jim Glaspole wrote: > As a Medtech user I thought a lot about James' letter over the > weekend. As has been said before the frustrations he is experiencing > with software vendors are pretty universal. I am interested to know > from the open source gurus on the list whether any of the following is > feasible: Assuming in the future Medtech decide the move into the > Australian market was a mistake and they want to get out to reduce > support costs etc, is it possible to release a version of software > like Medtech under a GPL for a territory while keeping a profitable > commercial version in another territory, i.e. NZ? > Based on the above would it be likely that a band of volunteers would be > able to help the stranded "Medtech" users develop and improve the product? I wouldn't single out Medtech for criticism. (Who I think are being really unfairly picked on), as there are problems across the board. I took part in an intensive evalution of many of the major software programs 12/12 ago. Australia desperately needs an open source solution. The problem with GP's not getting the software they need from the MSI is a grumbling continuing problem which will never go away. The state of all the major players (except Profile which I think is conceptually light years ahead of anything on the market - but has enough deficiencies to make using it difficult in Australia) is woefull. We are now stuck with MDW for at least the next decade. Most of the available software is 'kindergarten software', with a long history of 'bolt on solutions', because they programs lack conceptual vision. I take my hat off to paperless practices using MDW, but then I guess you get used to anything - sort of like a bad marriage which you can't leave. BP despite some advantages I think has major conceptual design flaws and is little more than nextgen MDW with new clothes. Despite the availability of web 2 toolkits for rich web client interfaces running on thin clients, I'm yet to be convinced of their maturity, utility, reliability given the fact that the interent is not 100% reliable nor available everywhere. Others will of course violently disagree, and yes I'm aware they have been used for many years with java based rich web clients. I've looked at many fromqooxdoo, backbase, dojo, heaps of other ajax ones, ruby on rails etc. Ultimately I guess the way to go. Based on my experience with gnuMed which I consider a failed (relatively) open source project, going open source not easy. Many of the major open source projects which have succeeded are supported in some way or other by companies. Such a pity the MSI wouldn't band together, create a unified open source project, then let them continue to charge for support. Who cares. Personally I wouldn't mind paying for support, as long as the solution is open source and I can modify the bits I want to for me and have free access to the database to import/export as I need. As to an open source project, developing software, let alone open source software is often not easy, In my experience it is difficult to get a group of people together who can agree on a fundamental design -everyone tends to think their idea's are better. To run such a project you would need proper planning and then an autocratic dictator (like me!!!!!!!!!) who basically says 'No, we will do it this way and it will look and function this way, and allocate the tasks. Done that way I'd estimate it would take about 6 months if everyone pulled out all stops to get a basic proof of concept functioning client. Ask Tim Churches his opinion as he has huge experience in this area. Often coming up with conceptualisation is not hard (for those like myself who are good at it), but the path form conceptualisation to being debugged is another question, and takes others whose skill maybe not design/functionality, but abstraction of the code etc into managable units. For the exercise, just before Xmas I wrote myself an updated MIms Annual Browser (I'd written one in VB back in 1995, and mucked around a virtually identical design in the early days of gnumed - never linked to data as I could never be bothered learning wxPython or python, leaving that to the coding guru's, and 12/12 ago did few days work on it to display data as a concept thing). In early January took a few more days of design, and then a couple of weeks debugging in my spare time, it to make it relatively stable - written in python/wxpython which I've now forced myself to learn a modicum of, with postgesql backend. I enclose some piccies. Back in the early days of gnumed I donated an entire medical records program schema/screen designs to the project from a fully functional vb client based on a script writer I'd written for a HUDGP project at the end of 1995. I still use the software on my desk as of this minute (never did progress notes or importing pathology, so it was never finished, however it does everything else just so quickly and easily I'm finding it hard to give up. I'm probably now the least properly computerized practice in Australia, somewhat of an irony given my IT interests. However its hard to give up a system that generates an entire script in 2-3 key presses of the drug name, with all other steps automated, prints common forms, saves an entire rich text file letter to a specialst in 1-2k of footprint (yes I stripped out all the non-essentail control characters), etc etc. Despite the gift and a full multi-paged html description of the concepts, it was never taken up, or what idea's were taken up were bastardised and corrupted because those coding didn't understand overall funcitonality of a whole program, and how my usability design concepts fitted into that, and I basically almost became a pariah on the list (at least to some of the europeans with thin skins), so eventually one gives up. Geof Stockeld (?spelling of his name) who I've not heard from for a number of years probably still has a complete billing system in Access which could be ported. Horst has a skew of code, the skills, but not the time, as does gnuMed. Syan is a very clever programmer as is Ian, and there must be dozens of other GP's out there with similar skills. As to how/language you would code it, I guess that's up to debate. I personally like wxPthon/python for its extensibility and modular na with the advent of the wx.aui window manager has made gui-design much much more flexible. If anyone is really interested, and has programming skills in python/wxPython, feel free to contact me to toss around ideas, however I personally think it is totally useless having yet another project which raise hype and hope, but will be consigned to the dustbin of time because those involved cannot recognise their own skills, skills of others, and learn to play as part of a team. Enclosed, for the exercise are some screen dumps of my drug viewer (design copyrighted to me of course!, but code could be GPL with a little leeway from MIMS + you purchasing the data of course). Regards Richard. PS: Third try lucky perhaps, this message kept bouncing, so I guess you all miss out on the piccies which accompanied the original!!!, sorry, speak to the moderator. _______________________________________________ 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
