Horst, Once vendors have signed a licence (even open source stuff has a licence to protect the opensource IP) they can use if and any of their customers can use it.
The cost for each country to sign up is on their website and is pretty reasonable based on national wealth. If you are a software developer and want to use SNOMED in practices/hospitals outside the member countries the cost is again very reasonable and would be a small fraction of the software development or purchase cost. ($1000 or less - would need to check). There has to be some encouragement to get the other countries on board. So whats the barrier. The biggest barrier will be the technical challenge of implementation and actually using the SNOMED features to support software functionality Peter -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Horst Herb Sent: Wednesday, 2 May 2007 8:51 AM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] International Health Terminology SDO owns SNOMED IP On Wednesday 02 May 2007, Jon Patrick wrote: > I think this view does not take account of the mechanism for providing > SCT nor the need to support it in further development. > Someone has to pay to maintain it and develop it to a useful point. In > OZ the government has decided to absorb that cost and provide it free to > vendors and users. SCT has a potential to make a difference. If > physicians take Horst's position it will not advance and its potential > will be lost - that will truly make it a waste of money. Oh no. What you have now is 10 of the richest and most developed countries on this planet putting heaps of money into *preventing* other people from accessing the coding system. Development costs, maintenance costs - of course. Real money. But you will find that the costs of preventing others form accessing it ("administration") will probably at least equal the costs of development and maintenance - come on, how many people do you need (in a paid position) to maintain a vocabulary??? Now, if these countries had any common sense they would simply commit the money it takes to pay the developers and maintainers and their infrastructure - crumble of a peanut in the context of their budgets. Tadaaaaa - all of a sudden the system would have a chance of becoming a GLOBAL enabler of health communication and expert systems literally over night. Leading to others wanting to join the club because they want influence and control, and willing to pay for the privilege. It does not take more than a handful of functional synapses to see that. But no, bureaucrats are so small minded that they can't see past their blinding fear somebody might benefit from something they haven't paid for, so they rather destroy it before anybody else could make use of it. Morons. Horst _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.2/781 - Release Date: 30/04/2007 9:14 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.2/781 - Release Date: 30/04/2007 9:14 AM _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
