Ian Haywood wrote:
On Monday 11 June 2007 21:03:11 Oliver Frank wrote:
An open membership working group has been formed to tackle these
problems under the auspice of the Medical Software Industry Association
(MSIA), Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) and HL7
Australia. The current industry membership is:
• Argus Connect
• eClinic
• HealthLink
• Medical Objects
Members of this group will work on a technical solution to enable end
users, such as GPs, Specialists, Pathology and Radiology Services, and
hospitals to contract with one provider, should they choose, and that
communication can be directed to any recipient."
This sounds like a great idea and its long overdue.
The key issue is the business model.
Imagine a "Pathologists' and Radiologists' Communication Company". This is a
vendor which refuses to have GP clients and install on their desktops,
Instead it has radiologists and pathologists only, and sends to GPs via the
other vendors.
How would such a company capture these players, when it's actions are
against their interests? Being captured by a messaging vendor is already
seen as bad news by these providers. Providers want business partners
that can use them easily, as a competitive edge. Losing parity would be
a bad idea.
Advantage? This company does not need to subsidise free installation (which
GPs demand) and so can undercut the others for the senders market.
The investigations providers have paid for the installs at GP premises,
but this is becoming much less universal. I've done installs of both
Healthlink and Promedicus, because all the GP got was disk or an E-mail
attachment with some instructions.
HealthLink, MO, et al. then exist solely to provide free support and software
to GPs: not sustainable.
I don't think this would happen unless the magic new entity was run by
the mafia or a totalitarian government.
This is why, in a perverse way, I agree with Tom Bowden: inter-operability
must be on a contractual, rather than a standards basis, however I would add
this is a consequence of the business model, not of the fundamental
technology.
It won't happen without agreement [the business model] and standards
[the technology].
Greg
--
Greg Twyford
Information Management & Technology Program Officer
Canterbury Division of General Practice
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph.: 02 9787 9033
Fax: 02 9787 9200
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