David Guest <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Oliver Frank wrote: > > David More's blog today at: > > > > > http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2007/06/ahic-survey-will-they-hear-what-t > hey.html > > > > > > tells us: > > > > "Last week the President of the Australian College of Health > > Informatics (ACHI) was sent a survey which had been developed for the > > Australian Health Information Council out to ACHI members for > > comment. The survey â which was developed by the Nous Group > > (www.nousgroup.com.au) - had the following introduction and process > > description: > > > > âThe Australian Health Information Council (AHIC) > > > > eHealth future directions stakeholder survey > > > > Purpose of survey: > > > > In its role of providing advice to inform national policy direction > > for health information to the Australian Health Ministerâs Advisory > > Committee (AHMAC), AHIC wishes to look strategically at the > > development of the national health information program out to 2013." > > > > David's reply with twelve important points is excellent. > > > > We seem to simply keep having enquiries, committees and task forces > > that are supposed to set the e-health agenda, without very much > > actually happening to implement that agenda. This enquiry sounds like > > > just another one - a way to appear as if the government is doing > > something while in fact doing little, a bit like the national > > broadband issue in the news today. > > > <RexMossop> Let me reiterate back to what I said before </RexMossop>, IT > consultants do what they get paid to do, consult. It sounds like AHIC is > fulfilling its defined role. > > Only software developers develop software. If you want software you need > to pay them to do their job. If you don't, don't.
Yes, I have more than a little sympathy for David Guest's view of things: one can strategise, scheme, plan, plot, have visions, workshop, consult, survey, evaluate, theorise, research, blog, bitch and pontificate to one's heart's content, but ultimately this health informatics stuff happens when people engage in boring activities like writing software code, working out code sets, writing localised user manuals, holding training sessions, doing system testing, changing back-up tapes and so on. Yes, there needs to be guidance and governance of all that honest toil, but most of that needs to be at the tactical level, at the level of "Hell, we have 123 more bugs to squash" or "Bugger, we have to train 68 users by Friday...". David More's view is that it isn't all self-organising. Maybe so, but I am not convinced that Grand Plans work any better. If they were still alive, we could ask Comrades Stalin, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko about that. I can't help feeling that Comrade Gorbachev had the right idea. He is available for consulting, by the way: http://www.mikhailgorbachev.org/ > The vision thing is much more fun. Yes, one never even has to leave one's armchair, what with wi-fi and laptops and the Net and things. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
