Joseph
Terry Wiechmann wrote:
If the community is going to revive the standardization process, it better have a 'vision' beyond the Millennium Standard. The fact is MUMPS is perceived as an old procedural language. It's viewed as dead by the 'outside' world. If you want to get new blood involved, the goals for the language will have to show an evolution towards what the rest of the world wants, not what makes the existing MUMPS community comfortable. Its future must be viewed as in step with existing technologies. Without climbing into the pulpit, I think everyone knows the direction it must take :-)
Terry L. Wiechmann www.esitechnology.com 978-779-0257 Skype: twiechmann ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Dal Molin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 8:01 AM Subject: Re: MDC/MUG Revival - Just do it (was) Re: [Hardhats-members] Nov17th interview [added] Dr. K, MUG, MDC, Goodbye Mumps
I have just returned from Brasil where I gave a worskshop on open source in health informatics. I was invited by the Brasilian Health Informatics Society and as a result have made some good friends and excellent contacts. I will contact both the current and past president of the Society as well as colleagues in Sao Paolo to inform them of this discussion.
What this will need is a small team of midwives and lots of publicity and support. With a team in place I will table a motion at our next WorldVistA board meeting to support to this effort. I should think that the VSA would want to do the same as well as the Pacific Telehealth Hui. We can then use press releases etc. to get the word out.... we have good access to reporters several trade journals etc. We can also use other medical informatics forums such as the openhealth list....and submit to Slashdot. Also all the medical informatics schools should also be
contacted.
Unfortunately all I can offer is to help launch this group, I have no expertise in M at all....but I do have a great deal of experience building communities of this kind in health informatics.
Cheers,
Joseph
Prof. em. Dr. med. Wolfgang Giere wrote:
I fully agree with Arden Forrey's remarks. It was a shame that the
"Millenium
Standard" did not happen. It took us a long march through the
institutions to make
Mumps an ISO-Standard.
To revive MDC as official body can be done either using the old
ANSI-affiliation or
through a ISO WG (that would be the "normal" way). Both ways reuire
international
participation. I suppose, MUG Germany would be willing to participate (I
cannot ask
my successor Wolfgang Kirsten, he is hospitalized right now). Also I
guess, Frans
Witte (Netherlands) could be reactivated. Ion Diamond in GB? I do not
know whether
he is still active in the field. But there is a new commercial Mumps
available in
GB. Finland? I do not know the actual state of M-use there. What about
South
America? Could George Timson trigger participation? I once visited
M-using
hospitals in Sao Paulo and might be able to find out. We should get NEW
people.
I did not follow the ISO-story. Is the standard sustained? I have been
asked in
Germany and suggested to vote yes, but I did never ask for the results.
Does
anybody know?
Wolfgang Giere
"A. Forrey" wrote:
I definitely support Joseph's statement, as Rick and other hard hats already know. I felt dissolution of both the MTA and the MDC were wrong following the 1999 meeting and the fact that the "Millenium Standard"
was
ready for ballot at that last meeting but never happened was a setback.
It
can be reversed. A host organization for the MDC and an organizational framework for an ANSI-accredited SDO must be written. The NE MUG remains
a
viable organization and encompass all the market, not just healthcare or VistA and this will be important. WV must actively promote getting this done. Bashkar can offer inputs regarding other market segments and an initial listing of Suppliers of of M-based products and services must be compiled quickly to aid in this effort. The HH website can be a
mechanmism
of dissemination. Another question of great importance has to do with building the education infrastructure to which Dick Walters insights
will
be important. We must stimulate the creation of programs which feature M and how it is integrated into the Life Cycle Principles for system
design
and implementation as well as how to utilize its unique features to advantage. This subject was pushed at the Sept 1998 MDC meeting in
Seattle
but had not taken off by the 1999 San Diego meeting; the resurrecred MDC must be structured to address this education issue in this broad context as it will drive a stake in the heart of the "MUMPS is OLD" saw being
used
to rid the market of a powerful component. We must draw on the M vendor list to be created. We here at UW will contribute to rebuilding the M Education capabilities.
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Joseph Dal Molin wrote:
It is definitely time to do it....it is not constructive to see this
kind of
press as the VA "hates" MUMPS.... rather it should be seen as "we need
help"
to a) address the deficiencies b) we do not be dependent on a single
vendor
c) we need company. Ironically, a new MDC that leverages an open source "business" model, can I believe, without any doubt do what the Red Sox
just
did. More importantly the rest of the planet will need an MDC etc.
because
the will need the same things the VA needs whether or not the VA sticks
with
MUMPS.....
I am not a MUMPSTer...so I say this from a practical strategic perspective..... it is indeed a time for revival...a pragmatic
one...that
focuses on improving and leveraging what is good about M and dispelling
the
mythology and misinformation that has bred in the absence of an
MDC/MUG. With
so many vendors still using M, eg. Epic, Meditech, Cerner, McKesson
surely
there is both commercial and user interest. Epic for example, has
become one
of the best systems in the industry....in part it's its
management...but one
cannot ignore its underlying architecture. BTW is there anywhere a
commercial
system that uses the full architecture proposed for 5 years from now??
joseph
Nancy E. Anthracite wrote:
This is the article I posted days ago that many of you could not read
and
that I said I would try to get for you, so here it is and this was the original URL. The original thread was Joseph Conn's interview with
Dr.
Kolodner.
http://www.modernphysician.com/news.cms?newsId=2817
Notice how the lack of a Mumps Users Group and as a corollary, I'm
sure,
the MDC, is the backbone of his argument that VistA needs to be moved
to a
SQL database. The MDC desperately needs to be revived.
I found this URL interesting last night. This is a company I was not
aware
of. If their product is good, it would seem to satisfy the VA's
burning
desire to extract and analyze their data in an SQL database as they do
not
seem to want to do that straight out of a Mumps database, probably
because
so many people are trained in making SQL queries but not in how to
extract
data from VistA. I actually thought that Cache had this capability in
it
already, but I may be mistaken. I suspect that this company owes its viability to already being used
by the
VA, but I don't know about that. In fact, maybe some of the folks in
the
company are on this mailing list or come to WV meetings, I don't know.
One
would think they are as disappointed as we are that the database is
being
moved by the VA.
http://mde.srs-inc.com/aboutmde.html It is interesting that he mentioned that it will be inexpensive to
move the
data from one SQL database to another, but the cost of the move from
mumps
to the SQL database will certainly not be. I wonder what the cost of performing the needed maintenance to a the
mumps
database would be as compared to the cost of this move.
On Wednesday 24 November 2004 01:08 am, Joseph Dal Molin wrote:
Could you please provide the URL for this so it is adequately referenced....thanks!!!
Joseph
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Here it is Nancy.
Tom Henderson
FOIA version of Vista remains available despite recent changes /*By Joseph Conn <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> / *November 17, 2004/ // Despite plans to overhaul its Vista clinical system, the Veterans Health Administration will continue to offer copies of its multimillion-dollar software to private-sector users for a nominal
fee
under the Freedom of Information Act, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs' top physician informaticist.
"We have the full support of the VHA leadership to continue to keep
this
in the public domain," said Robert Kolodner, M.D., acting chief
health
informatics officer at the VHA and deputy chief information officer
for
health at the VA.
On Nov. 8, the VA published a request for vendors to submit
statements
of their capability to provide the VA with what it called "rehosting support." It also called for vendors to provide routine service and support for the VA's Vista healthcare information technology system.
Kolodner said the move also would have no immediate impact on an
effort
initiated by the VA and the CMS to develop a version of Vista for
the
physician office practice. That software should be ready by summer
2005,
according to the CMS.
One goal of the proposed five-year contract is to move the VA's healthcare IT system from the programming language and database on
which
it was first written in the late 1970s and where it remains today:
from
MUMPS, or the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility
Multi-Programming
System (now known as M), to, as much as possible, open-source
versions
of the Java programming language and possibly at least two
relational
database systems, Kolodner said.
Kolodner said the VA initially plans to run a national database on software from Oracle Corp. and regional databases on the relational database portion of Cache, a program by InterSystems Corp., which incorporates a proprietary version of M now used by the VA.
"But it could be on (Microsoft's) Sequel Server or SQL or any other database," Kolodner said, adding the VA would incur a "relatively
small
cost" to convert Vista from one database to another if need be.
"We've had a history of staying vendor-independent," he said.
Within the VA, M has developed almost a religious following among programmers for its speed, dependability, flexibility and
scalability,
and several of today's leading commercial healthcare IT systems have
M
at their core. But Kolodner said it is time to switch.
"MUMPS has served us very well over the last 20 years," he said. "We have done a lot with it, and it has supported our needs."
However, many M vendors have been bought by InterSystems and a once-thriving MUMPS user group has gone defunct. Today, there are
fewer
programmers skilled in M than in a more modern language, such as
Java.
"There are times when it is much too expensive and takes much too
long
to make changes and support the needs that we have," he said. "Java
is
taught in more schools than MUMPS is."
In addition, Java and relational databases are better suited
together,
he said.
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